*This article was also published in Headliners in Education.

Kim, a fervent fan of IVE, cheered with exuberance as his angelic idols Wonyoung and Leeseo walked onto the stage with mics in their perfectly manicured hands. But after the concert, he stomped off the set and crushed the light-stick that was once his pride and joy. 

Turns out, the two ‘singers’ didn’t sing at all. Instead, they sat in their chairs, smiled for the camera, and lip-synced the entire performance. 

Dance serves as the keystone of fourth-generation K-Pop. Compared to earlier generations with all-rounder artists, “4th-gen idols usually focus on dancing and the performance aspect nowadays, not the actual singing,” Luisa Silva in seventh grade, a BTS and Seventeen stan, said. 

Personally, I think companies take the emphasis on the visual aspect ludicrously far. On most stages, groups lip-sync entire songs. In fact, fans only hear their voices live on encore stages when they perform without a backing track. Even these forms undergo heavy pitch corrections before public release. 

IVE, a top girl group in Korea, brings the lip-syncing controversy to the spotlight every time they release a new album. Although they improve with each comeback, many still consider their vocals subpar. At Tone Knob, a vocal academy, trainers Lee Pu-rum, Kim Dong-Hyun, and Yoon In-Ku reviewed IVE’s live singing for their debut track ‘Eleven’. All three coaches pointed out the instability throughout the performance. “The members seem to struggle with switching their vocal registers,” Lee said.

Initially, I loved the group’s hits like ‘Love Dive’. But as someone who values ‘talent’ in idols, their unstable live singing turned me off big time. For instance, at the M Countdown encore live for their recent track ‘I AM’, Wonyoung went off-pitch for most of the bridge to the point where I turned the video off. 

Fans often defend their favorite artists with excuses like, “They were emotional from the win,” or “They were tired because of their busy schedules.” But on a fundamental level, K-Pop idols are professional ‘singers’, not entertainers or dancers. We don’t expect divas like Ariana Grande, but they should at least try to stay in tune. 

Many K-Pop stans agree with this view. “Of course they need to be good singers,” seventh-grader Michelle Doh, an Army and NCTzen said. “Idols are supposed to be good at singing, dancing, rapping, and everything.” 

Despite this popular opinion, management companies continue to emphasize dance over everything else. Starship refused to respond to IVE’s lip-sync controversy at the 2022 MBC Music Festival even when the incident went live on the national news. I can’t help but say that they should have retrained the girls, especially when better vocals could be the cherry on top of their catchy discography and help them garner a skill-based fandom. 

In all honesty, the upgraded stages of newborn groups mesmerize me. But I also empathize with the angry fans who want to hear their favorite performers sing even more. The K-pop industry should work to create artists that strike a golden balance between vocals and dance so fans can wave their light-sticks in joy instead of trashing them in anger.