How KATSEYE became K-pop’s first global girl group

In mid-September, when KATSEYE – Daniela, Lara, Manon, Yoonchae, Sophia, and Megan (absent from this interview due to injury) – stepped onto a tiny stage set in a multi-storey Manila shopping mall, they were shocked. There were fans, rows deep, crammed against the railings on each floor. “I thought it was going to be the first floor, maybe some people on the second, but the mall turned into a stadium,” says Sophia, the group’s Filipino member. “Growing up, I’d shop there with my mom and grandmother. There wasn’t a single moment of silence. When we tried to talk, they’d start chanting our names. It was crazy.”

In a heady and triumphant year for women in pop, with a welcome avalanche of earworm choruses, viral dances, memes and outfits, record-breaking festival crowds and tours, KATSEYE’s “Touch”, with its sweet stammer of a chorus and an easily replicated finger dance, made its viral mark after its release in late July, blowing up across TikTok.

It was a pivotal, vital moment for the band. A month earlier, they’d released their first track, the catchy and confident “Debut”, seven months (an eternity in the pop-sphere) after being formed via the survival show The Debut: Dream Academy. The brainchild of a partnership between American label Geffen and K-pop mega-corporation HYBE, its executives undertook an expensive risk: no non-K-pop, performance-led pop group had made a dent in the US charts in years. The Debut: Dream Academy would eschew a regular format by airing on only social media and in short form, focusing more on dancing and vocal skills and less on spotlighting big personalities. And though based in Los Angeles, the group was to be multi-national (KATSEYE’s members are Ghanaian-Swiss-Italian, Filipino, Korean, Indian-American, Cuban-American and Chinese-Singaporean-American).

“Debut” deeply divided audiences, many of whom were global K-pop fans who brutally critiqued the labels’ still unfurling creative and marketing strategies. KATSEYE, with hindsight, are equal parts pragmatic and staunch: “That’s always the risk with a song, you never know how they’ll [the public] receive it. We saw a tremendous amount of love for ‘Debut’ so that was amazing for us,” says Manon, and Lara agrees: “Everything was put out for a reason. Everything was very thought through. ‘Debut’ was my fave song off the album, I was like, ‘This is gonna be the one!’ and then it ends up not being the one, and that’s OK.”

But with “Touch”, the group knew something magic was happening when, Daniela says, “Every single scroll through our FYP was just people singing or dancing to it. We were like, ‘Wow, this song is actually doing really well’. It’s really cool to see so many people liking our music.” Sophia adds: “It was even on random videos, like cooking videos, that was crazy. Or influencers I'd been following for a long time, seeing them doing our dance, I was like, ‘Oh, you know our song?!’”

KATSEYE are back Stateside following their successful mini promo tour through South Korea, Japan and the Philippines where they met fans, made TV appearances, did interviews and performances. Onstage, they look powerful, with long limbs and glossy hair moving in flawless, graceful unison. Offstage, KATSEYE, who are all aged between 16 and 22, are joyfully chaotic and loud – in their livestreams and socials they play music, sing, dance, do make-up, show off their pets, often in a bedroom or a studio setting. They do this interview from a nondescript, brightly lit room where they listen carefully and sometimes talk excitedly over one another. They are charming, self-aware and funny. Out in the other world of the internet, the wave of love for “Touch” is seemingly unending.

A version featuring Yeonjun of idol group Tomorrow x Together racked up over 2.4 million Spotify streams in under a week in early October. The original version sailed past 100 million Spotify streams two days after we spoke. “I think when we see the number of streams, that’s when it hits us and we’re like, oh yeah, it’s real,” says Daniela. Manon adds: “We still have days where we’re unsure if this is really happening because, honestly, it’s so surreal. We debuted four months ago and we’re still getting used to it.” Their Spotify monthly unique listeners stand at nearly 12 million. Lara smiles: “The monthlies are really crazy. They’re what sent me.”

The track’s sticking power was amplified by an eight-part Netflix docuseries (Pop Star Academy: KATSEYE), which followed the survival show’s original 20 trainees (whittled down from a staggering 120,000 applicants), and their debut EP, SIS (Soft Is Strong), both released in August. Manon likens making the record to a “collaboration”. “We’re all still very new so we trusted the label a lot,” she says. “They asked us for our stories – I think ‘My Way’ is a beautiful song that really reflects our journeys - that’s how a lot of the songs were formed.”

I saw [vulnerability] as a weakness. Dream Academy was awesome but also so mentally hard. Now we’re in the public [eye], we’re learning how much we can share and what we’re comfortable sharing ... But we also want to show people who we actually are, not just the fine-tuned version

Its overarching message is that it takes strength to be openly vulnerable – “Being vulnerable is super important, it helps us connect with our fans,” says Daniela – but, Lara adds, as a project “SIS was like an experiment. You know what I mean? The EP has a lot of cohesion, but each song has its own vibe. It was us testing the waters, figuring out what our fans wanted and what people would respond to.”

“Each of us has a story,” says Sophia. “Vulnerability is really hard for me as a person. It actually takes a lot more energy than you think, that’s the message I connected with the most in our music. It’s easier for me to put on a front. Us as artists, and as women, especially with that whole journey we went through, a lot of the times you just had to keep it together. Sometimes when people would ask, ‘Are you doing good, what do you need’?, you’d be like, it’s all fine. But that vulnerability, I think we were able to find in each other. We’ve said this a lot, we really only had each other that whole time, so we learned to open up and made each other comfortable [with the process].”

“I saw [vulnerability] as a weakness,” says Lara. “Dream Academy was awesome but also so mentally hard. Now we’re in the public [eye], we’re learning how much we can share and what we’re comfortable sharing with [their fandom] EYEKONS, and also what we want to keep to ourselves. But we also want to show people who we actually are, not just the fine-tuned version. It’s been a process.”

KATSEYE’s positioning as a global pop group trained via K-pop’s gruelling and exacting idol system places them between the clean-cut Korean idol and the West’s grittier, earthier pop stars. So far, they lean more towards the former. They follow K-pop’s marketing strategy of having a prolific TikTok presence (Chartmetric, the platform which tracks artist data across streaming and social sites, ranks them as having ‘explosive growth’), they consistently cross-pollinate their fandom with a variety of other artists and influencers, and use HYBE’s bespoke social platform, WeVerse, to chat with fans.

The middle ground isn’t always the easiest turf on which to stand. Whereas the K-pop methodology is to cultivate deep parasocial relationships – resulting in frequent power tussles between fandoms and entertainment agencies, and the unchecked, ongoing rise of sasaengs (obsessive/stalker fans) – more Western pop artists, women, in particular, are explicitly laying firm boundaries around their time, privacy, and personal space.

It’s Sophia, who holds the position of group leader, who speaks first. “Our number one priority is our fans. And I don’t know if it’s being such new artists but we’re so open to doing anything for them. It’s such a unique situation, because our fight to be where we are is something our fans did go through with us, so there’s a special connection. We’re finding a good balance, our relationship with our fans feels like family.”

I know that if there were any fans that were stepping over boundaries, that our true fans would let them know. I’ve seen it. I’m not too worried

“It’s very friendly,” Lara says. “We’re their fans,” adds Daniela. “I was just going to say, it’s, like, tricky. Obviously we love them, we trust them. And I know that if there were any fans that were stepping over boundaries, that our true fans would let them know. I’ve seen it. I’m not too worried,” Manon continues.

It’s worth noting that they’re more protective than they let on: When certain fans began asking, mid-livestreams, how they could “marry Yoonchae”, they repeatedly called it out – “No, because she is a child” was their scathing reply. “We wanna be a voice for a lot of girls. We wanna tell them that you’re allowed to say things, you have a voice, so through our actions, even little things, it’s really valuable”, says Sophia.

Yoonchae calls the members her “sisters”. It’s not just in these kinds of situations that she feels their group bond. “It’s every time, actually,” she laughs. “When I can’t understand [in interviews], they always tell me how I can understand. When I feel sad or happy, they’re always with me, and they take care of me and they’re there for me.”

Lara believes the group is made stronger by their “strong sense of [the] individual” as six young women who’ve “worked to mould ourselves to the identity of KATSEYE but not change who we are. We’re usually on the same page about what we like and don’t like but when we don’t, not to gas ourselves, we’re pretty amazing at communicating with each other.”

Despite having been followed by cameras for the best part of two years, they say, they’re still in the process of revealing themselves to fans. “So many things,” says Manon on what she wished had been included. “I wish I would have been more vulnerable back then because it would have told my story more. But you learn, you grow.”

“I think we were all really scared to be open because we were so in the dark about what the actual story of the documentary was going to be, whose perspective it was coming from,” Lara adds. “Things were so vague to us. I felt like if I was vulnerable then people would think I couldn’t handle being in this group. It’s OK, no regrets, but like we all could have afforded to show who we are more, at least for me.”

For Daniela, there was sometimes a little too much realness. She laughs: “I was rehearsing. No make-up, My hair was floofed out. And I had this face, like, when I concentrate, I go like this…” She furrows her brow into a tight, thin line. “My mouth was open. It was ugly. I was like, no way this is on Netflix right now.”

“But it’s raw,” says Manon.

“Yeah, it’s raw, that’s a good thing. People like it,” Daniela responds.

But we are thinking very big because the idea of being global is something we all fell in love with, like, it really means so much more than just a girl group. There’s so much representation and emotion and history, and that’s why it’s so deep for us

“We were so physically comfortable and emotionally uncomfortable. One other thing we talked about was that the documentary was years put into eight hours, so you’re never really going to see just how much work was really put in,” Lara says.

It makes sense then that KATSEYE are champing at the bit to show how much further they’ve already come since the show’s ending, even since the late summer, when everything started to get crazy exciting. “We’re always thinking about something new,” says Manon, even as Sophia jokes: “All you get is ‘Touch’.”

They sold out their October 19 performance and meet and greet at the largest mall in the USA (Minneapolis’s aptly named Mall off America) in minutes. They’re booked alongside Benson Boone and Kesha for the annual Jingle Ball tour, put on by US broadcast giant iHeartRadio in December.

“Whenever we get the chance to meet our fans, it’s exciting, that’s what we’re doing it for. No matter if it’s five or 5,000 fans, I would have a concert in a parking lot. It’d be amazing,” says Manon. “We have certain goals that we set for ourselves but we don’t want to plan too far ahead because you never know.”

“But we are thinking very big because the idea of being global is something we all fell in love with, like, it really means so much more than just a girl group,” says Lara. “There’s so much representation and emotion and history, and that’s why it’s so deep for us. Everything will happen in good time, and when it’s supposed to.”