What the heck happened? Kpop shocks and upsets in May. PT2: Gfriend

Jul 12, 2021 | K-pop, Pop | 0 comments

No matter if you’re a fan of the irresistible force of the Tsundere SinB or an admirer of the ditzy yet mysterious Eunha, the month of May had some really upsetting news in store for Gfriend fans. At the height of success having released the massively popular single Mago as the follow up to a string of successful releases and hits during the past years, the Kpop equivalent of Donna Tartts Secret History: Gfriend, abruptly announced that the 6 year old group had disbanded and left Source Music, the now subsidiary of Big Hit Entertainment of BTS fame. What the heck happened?

Gfriend

If Apink was the figurative banana peel that made me stumble into Kpop, Gfriend was the fix that got me permanently hooked. Without reflecting too much I think Gfriend is most likely the Kpop act I’ve gotten the most enjoyment from. And Gfriend always seemed slightly different to most other similarly successful groups. Hailing from a small company, not unlike BTS, Gfriend rocketed to fame through a combination of timing, some lucky hits songs and going viral falling down and, most importantly, standing up again. Not to mention the groups surgically sharp and disciplined formation dancing.

In contrast to their highly polished contemporaries like Red Velvet, Twice and Blackpink, Gfriend, while obviously very talented, still seemed a bit quirky, homegrown and maybe just a bit more real. Not a product of some very edited survival show and not coming from any of the powerhouse agencies but rather from a small company where the CEO, according to myths and lore, had to re-mortgage his house to reinvest in the group when things were tight, Gfriend were the unlikely underdogs who managed to repeatedly sweep the Kpop world and domestic charts.

What happened to apink?

If you haven’t read the first installment of Kpop Shocks and Upsets in May – you can go here to read it:
What the heck happened? Kpop Shocks and Upsets in May. Pt 1: Apink

“Powerful innocence” & Falling down

When Griend started out the plan was that they would stand out by having an innocent image amid the “girl crush” and sexy images of 2014-2015. Being unusually energetic, a fact showing in their trademark hard and exhausting choreographies, this was with typical asian nuance and precision then instead called “Powerful innocence”. Quite the mouthful. The Korean need, capacity and propensity to label things obviously has few, if any bounds.

Gfriends first break was partially attributed to the group going viral in Korea performing in soaking rain on a wet and slippery stage. During the performance several members slipped and fell. Most notably main vocalist Yuju falls multiple times, even breaking a finger in the process, only to get up to push on with the performance together with the rest of the group.

The video, showing the determination and work ethic of the rookie group managed to endear Gfriend to the general public while at the same time bolstering the popular “Me gustas tu” release. Nothing like a bit of stoicism to get the general publics affections! (Recent events surrounding Brave Girls are another example of this: read more here)

So what’s so cool about Gfriend?

Well firstly Gfriend had an atypical sound. Favouring a more traditional Kpop arrangement some of the songs, even singles are, for Kpop fairly quirky. “Rough” with it’s discretely mixed background of distorted guitars overlayed by a string arrangement that would make even producer Stephen Street proud, to the jaunty tempo and key changes of Time for the Moon Night, Gfriend just didn’t sound like their contemporaries, neither the hugely popular Red Velvet or Twices polished RnB and Pop. While some comparisons could be drawn to Oh My Girl or maybe Lovelyz, both groups in the mid range bracket of success, neither groups really sound the same as Gfriend. Gfriend carved out a distinct sound both through their vocal capacity, with Yujus powerful and strong vocal pyrotechnics complemented by the diminutive but equally powerful yet delicate voice of Eunha, as well as the combination of clever choices of unique songs with production and arrangements generally standing out as different to their contemporaries Gfriend was unique to their genre.

Gfriends background isn’t typical either. The founder of Source Music, a friend of Big Hit Entertainments CEO – of BTS fame, ran a fairly small company, and the early joint venture between Source Music and Big Hit resulted in a real scare as the girl group Glam had a short almost three year career ending in disaster as one of their members was involved in a scandal together with a model blackmailing a Korean actor. Despite this brush with death, the same year that Glam disbanded (2015), Source Music launched Gfriend. Source Music being quite a small company had a limited budget and the first single, Glass Bead, accompanying music video was sparse in production values. The song did reach some success, some seeing the parallel to Girls Generation debut of “Into the New World” as unimaginative and derivative while others saw the potential for a new girl group having a similar feel and impact as Girls Generation – often dubbed the nations girlgroup.

Glass Bead marked the starting chapter of the School Trilogy, the mid section being the catchy “Me Gustas Tu”, a popular song with the general public, and ends in the song cementing Gfriends traction in the Kpop market: “Rough”. All of the songs had Gfriends trademark intense and complex choreography showcasing vocal capacity, dancing skills and just plain old stamina.
Rough was the song that made me realise that Kpop could be a viable pop cultural addiction with the ending single of the trilogy hinting at some of the mystery and charm of future releases.

Gfriends background isn’t typical either. The founder of Source Music, a friend of Big Hit Entertainments CEO – of BTS fame, ran a fairly small company, and the early joint venture between Source Music and Big Hit resulted in a real scare as the girl group Glam had a short almost three year career ending in disaster as one of their members was involved in a scandal together with a model blackmailing a Korean actor. Despite this brush with death, the same year that Glam disbanded (2015), Source Music launched Gfriend. Source Music being quite a small company had a limited budget and the first single, Glass Bead, accompanying music video was sparse in production values. The song did reach some success, some seeing the parallel to Girls Generation debut of “Into the New World” as unimaginative and derivative while others saw the potential for a new girl group having a similar feel and impact as Girls Generation – often dubbed the nations girlgroup.

Glass Bead marked the starting chapter of the School Trilogy, the mid section being the catchy “Me Gustas Tu”, a popular song with the general public, and ends in the song cementing Gfriends traction in the Kpop market: “Rough”. All of the songs had Gfriends trademark intense and complex choreography showcasing vocal capacity, dancing skills and just plain old stamina.
Rough was the song that made me realise that Kpop could be a viable pop cultural addiction with the ending single of the trilogy hinting at some of the mystery and charm of future releases.

Success and Evolution

After the School Trilogy and up until now Gfriend has been mostly successful. Though never fully going in the direction of their contemporaries, Gfriend managed to do several genres with their own flavour and tone of voice. From the so called Girl Crush with Fingertip to the jauntily orchestrated Time for the Moon Night, which together with the Tartan-clad Japan pleaser Memoria, wins the Gfriend prize for most online fan speculation about the meaning of a video. The videos of each respective offering filled with perceived symbolism and hidden meanings with the eerie closet-emo darkness of Time for the Moon Night emotively paired with the magical anime vibes of Memoria. And without doing an epic History of Gfriend – several themes, “eras” and concepts must be omitted from mention. The last period of Gfriend history roughly started with the summer release of Fever which took Gfriend firmly out of the cute genre and into a more mature style in Crossroads, Apple and the last and highly successful single Mago.

Mago, has powerful imagery of the group coming to age, with the witch references a more than obvious hint at newfound independence and power. Additionally the slick production values of the Mago video coming at the heels of the merger of Source Music into the now huge Big Hit Entertainment group, home of BTS, seemed to hint at a consolidation promising an increasingly powerful backer behind Gfriend. Everything was on the surface looking up. And then things suddenly imploded.

Out of the blue and with no more explanation than the end of the members 6-year contracts with Source Music, a not very explanatory statement from the company as well as the standard disbandment posts across the group members respective Instagram accounts, Gfriend were suddenly disbanded.

What just happened to Gfriend?

An end such as Gfriends obviously creates a whole lot of speculation. From the implausible fan speculations ranging from the occult to the banal, to the more plausible, the fact is that no hard facts are available besides that there was no renewal of contracts and the finality of the statements from company and members respectively. Gfriend are, however abruptly, as a group ended. So without being too distasteful and for therapeutic reasons let’s speculate for a while.

What now? Where could Gfriend go? And an alternative take on Apink Syndrome

So Gfriend had reached their most successful state to date. Several successful releases and a clear change to a more mature image starting a few years ago may have transitioned the group more into the mainstream of Kpop. An unforeseen or unmanageable consequence of this could be that some critical volume of the hardcore fanbase was alienated in the process. And since Kpop groups to some extent rely on a core cohort of fans to engage heavily in a group to generate revenue, perhaps the transition both led to less revenue per fan and in total, as well as this being a state that was tricky to reverse. This could be somewhat likened to the problems Apink had their entire career when trying to move away from the overly sugary cutesy image they initially had. And only now has Apink managed to do this and it is not clear whether this has been a financial success for them compared to the alternative.

The lifespan of a Kpop group, Pandemic economics & a Fan theory

A brutal fact of the music business in general and Kpop most certainly, is that longevity isn’t exactly the norm. Record labels have since time memorial had a cynical approach to artists longevity with standard contracts stretching only as far as the known average lifespan of artists and groups. Due to this a replacement group could have been the focus of the Big Hit group (there was actually a launch of a girl group quite close to the Gfriend disbandment). But with Gfriends stature and the size of the Big Hit group it does seem like the company should be able to maintain more than one group in a large category as well as the obvious risk of dropping a successful revenue generating group like the Gfriend franchise…

There has also been some mention of declining revenue due to the pandemic. For the same reasons this wouldn’t make a lot of sense. A fairly sure investment with a stable fanbase at the pinnacle of their individual success should be maintainable even with liquidity problems – venture debt is always an option if regular credit isn’t possible. So this reason doesn’t seem all that plausible to me. A shift in focus and the Big Hit group aiming for a flagship girl group whose potential could match BTS’ international success would seem a more likely reason from the corporate perspective.

A fan theory that has surfaced is that Source Music overextended their loans from the parent group to expand activities just before the pandemic hit, and were then left with a huge amount of debt and no way to pay it back quickly just as the artist contracts were to be renegotiated. The theory claims that the company would transfer the debt to the new contracts with the artists, meaning that signing up again would immediately put the members of the group back in debt. This sounds pretty outlandish to me but I have no experience of South Korean business practices, but you really can’t discount the awful terms that Kpop artists can get.

IT was always a bad deal for the artist

There is one factor that can’t be disregarded. The Kpop business like the music business in general is fairly predatory. Artists have become more and more of a commodity to be bought, packaged and sold. Artist contracts while having evolved since the 50’s and 60’s slave contracts that literally stole the rights of music from artists, to the transition from the old distribution model to streaming services – with the record labels pushing the cut to revenue share to the artist to avoid a hit to their own revenue, to the notorious “slave” Kpop contracts, the music biz was never pretty. Maybe Gfriends members had just made enough money to kick the business and call it a day? Maybe the great relation between group and agency was just the standard PR and not so great in reality? And perhaps at some point the endless rehearsals, dieting, lack of freedom etc was just not desirable enough to stay?

Maybe it was personal?

In the end you can’t discount that there might be numerous personal reasons for quitting. Maybe just a desire for a normal life. Different career wants have been known to make even the most outwardly coherent group disintegrate. And Kpop history has always had it’s scandals based on the interpersonal stuff within a group. The AOA bullying scandal being the most recent.

In the end it could be any of these reasons and quite a few of them combined. Let me know what theories or hunches (or even facts) you have.

The End – Bye Bye Gfriend

With no poetry or heart to impart to the story I’ll have to settle for this. Gfriend was a really interesting group because it was a bit atypical and odd. The members were quite disparate and the music didn’t sound like the rest of Kpop girl groups. I’m also a big fan of several characters in the group. SinBs dancing and general irreverence and Eunhas incredible delicate and powerful singing in particular (and great pairing with colleague Yujus vocals). The group in total was greater than it’s component parts (though Eunha, admittedly is pretty great).

In the end, however it saddens me, I have to admit not being completely surprised by the news of Gfriends disbandment. Probably mostly because I couldn’t see where they would go from now. And even though it would be more in character to be angry about not being able to get more of a good thing, maybe, just maybe Gfriend is better like this, not having declined, instead having to guess at what Kpop greatness they might have accomplished had they continued.

Hakuna Matata Gfriend and Buddies.
January 2015 – May 2021