ATEEZ

True confession time: I went down a K-pop (Korean pop music) rabbithole sometime in April. And as I currently spend at least 15 minutes every day checking in with my favorite K-pop band(s) online, it was starting to get a little weird that I never brought it up on what is essentially a blog about my daily life.

I’ll admit this hesitation was largely embarrassment-motivated: I mean, how many middle-aged ladybloggers are K-pop fans (or will cop to it if they are)? Would my family and friends start worrying about me if I posted about this? But then this video dropped today, and I was just too excited not to share it.

And the nice thing I’ve discovered about being nearly 50 is that how much I care about what others think of me is rapidly approaching zero (see Figure 1). So, I hope this video gives you as much joy today as it gave me (as my friend Aimee put it, “Those boys can dance.”) If not, no worries.

How DID you become an ATEEZ fan, MourningDove (you may be asking yourself)? Excellent question, dear reader. I don’t remember for sure how it started, but I think the YouTube algorithms suggested this great documentary series, and after watching I thought, “Huh, I’ve never really given K-pop a fair shot. I mean, I listen to enough pop music, and I love dance, so I might like it?” I’d heard of BTS, as has everyone on the planet under the age of 50 at this point (Malena will remember being asked about them on our exit survey at Incheon airport after our Baekyangsa trip). However, I didn’t have opinions about them, and I didn’t know any other K-pop bands. So, I think my next move was to check out this omnibus video as a kind of cheat sheet on 3rd and 4th generation bands.

At first I had all the reactions I’ve had to K-pop in the past: they’re children, selected by Procrustean criteria (often via shady competitions), made to dress and dance and sing the same; the music tends to be a mash-up of American R&B and pop hooks from the last 20 years…. But as I kept watching, one band stood out, and that was ATEEZ. Their production company accepted kids whose “visuals” strayed outside the narrow straits of Korean beauty standards (though they’re all still gorgeous). They let them express their personal style. The music they performed sampled from a wide range of genres with a hard tack toward 80s anthems (+5 pts and a shout-out to EDEN, their producer, who is largely responsible for their sound). And then there was their dancing: it was lit, as the kids say these days. The choreography was SO hard, and so different from what all the other bands were doing, and the performance was SO clean.

Those things by themselves weren’t enough, however, to make me watch their latest music video on YouTube at least 25 times to help boost the “view count” up over 10 million in 24 hours…. (FYI this is a whole thing: the K-pop industry is obsessively statistics-driven, and so fan groups create “goals” for a certain number of video views or album pre-orders to help their favorite groups achieve certain certifications and prizes.) I generally need a good story to help me connect to a band at that level. Fortunately (or unfortunately) for me, there were terrabytes-worth of ATEEZ stories online: interviews; profiles; game shows where they played silly singing and dancing for prizes like fried chicken (let’s face it, I would do a lot of things for fried chicken, so I’m not gonna judge); reality shows where they stuck them together in a house in Australia and made them…play silly games for prizes like fried chicken; wholesome pajama parties at their dorm where they played rock-paper-scissors to see who had to cook breakfast in the morning while drinking coke instead of beer because even though they’re all like 22, most of their fans are underage; “day in the life” vlogs where individual members try to cook japchae from scratch or surprise their mom with flowers at work; tik-tok challenges; dance cover videos…. And that’s just the official content. Then, there’s the whole Atiny (ATEEZ’s official fanbase) content universe: remixes of ATEEZ songs, mash-ups of their songs with the songs of other K-pop groups, fancams, fan-made music videos, “ships” (content edited to focus on the interactions of two members in the group), re-broadcasts of live videos subtitled for international audiences, dance covers, dance tutorials, membership guides, member tributes, tik-tok and Vine compilations, etc.

Hoo boy. I think I started out just trying to figure out who was who in the group. And then I wanted to learn a bit more about the members I thought were the best dancers. And from there the rabbitholes split and spiraled, and at some point ATEEZ started becoming real people to me. And I started getting invested in their story. And then I started to worry about them.

I think it’s because they’re roughly the age my kids would be if I had kids. And it’s because I watched the K-pop documentary at the start and so knew that they were working in a pretty brutal industry. Some experts estimate that 100% of K-pop stars have had plastic surgery of some sort, usually by the age of 18. The cattle-call auditions are humiliating, and the “trainee” selection process that follows within the companies to hone and select band members is notoriously stressful. On the tiny, tiny odds a kid is actually selected to be in a group and “debut” with that group, there are strict conduct rules: they have to live in the dorm; they are charged for all their training and living expenses and have to pay that sum back if they leave the company before turning a profit; they only see a tiny percentage of the millions of dollars that their songs, likenesses, and merchandise earn the company; when they’re preparing for or promoting a “comeback” (a new album, which is most of the time), they put in 18-20 hour days filled with practice, training, hair-and-makeup, and public appearances of various sorts; they can’t date anyone for at the first 3-5 years; they can’t drink or smoke or swear or really even complain on camera; they can’t talk about politics or religion or anything even remotely controversial with fans or the media; they have to weigh in every week and are shamed into dieting if they gain even 2 pounds over their target weight; and after all this, they’re considered washed up by the time they’re 30 and have to transition to another part of the industry (i.e., producing, MC’ing, acting, etc.). And that’s just the stuff that goes on in good companies.

So, as I got to know the ATEEZ boys through their music and other media, I started biting my nails a bit when they would congratulate each other on losing 25 pounds (how? from where? They’re all like 5’10” and 145 lbs…), or when they talked about falling into bed after “schedules” at 2 in the morning, or when they regretted not being handsome enough or not dancing or singing well enough. OK, sure, that last could just be a ploy to garner compliments from their co-members and fans, but wasn’t that behavior worrisome in its own right? They were estimating their value as young men by entirely external (and often cruel and fickle) benchmarks.

And yet…these guys were clearly over the moon to be doing the things they had wanted to do ever since they were little kids–the things the 1st and 2nd generation bands whose posters plastered their bedroom walls did. They were literally jumping up and down with excitement. They were magnetic on stage and humble and sweet with their fans. Their families were so proud of them. They were respectful and grateful to their support staff and managers. And they were loving with each other, cuddling on the couch in their dorm after their day was done to play video games or watch soccer, like a big pile of puppies. I found myself feeling jealous of them–because they were still made of cartilage and adrenaline and were living their dream with their best friends and didn’t know or care about the hard times and decisions that were surely waiting for them. So, I worried about them, sure, but would I save them from it, take them away from it all, if I could wave a magic wand? I don’t know, and I don’t have a magic wand. I do know that of them (Mingi) recently took a six-month mental-health hiatus. That tells you a lot about an industry that can burn out a kid with that kind of energy and talent in 2 years…. But, it’s also a hopeful sign the industry might be changing, and the artists might be more willing to speak up for themselves. Anyway, I’m rooting for these boys.

So, that’s the story of how I became an ATEEZ fan. Cheryl said I need to tell you who my “bias” (favorite member) is, so I will tell you it’s Yunho, their main dancer (here’s a guide to all the members if you’re curious). His combination of power, grace, and charisma is pretty unique, and there are plenty of videos you can watch of his dancing online if you want to. But all of ATEEZ are incredible dancers, which is why I posted today’s video. It’s the dance practice for the title track of their most recent comeback, “Dejà Vu,” and it showcases the things they’re famous for: their coordination (which you can see in the way the camera bounces when they all stomp the floor at exactly the same moment) and their innovative choreography (by the Korean hip-hop ensemble BB Trippin’); as well as the ways they’ve improved over the last year, particularly confidence and control. While they’ve been known since their debut in 2018 as one of the top 4th-gen performance groups, early practices read a little tense. Now, with 3 years under their 27″ belts, they know what they can do, and their movements–even the powerful and fast ones–are fluid and relaxed. As a result, their placements and angles are precise without looking labored; their extension is improved. All this development allows them to engage genres they couldn’t before–jazz and modern, mainly–and look like pros doing it.

I’m just really proud of them and wanted to share their progress with you. You can watch the full-production music video for “Dejà Vu” on YouTube if you are in the mood for lightning and drift-racing cars…as well as the videos for all their other title tracks: I’m particularly fond of the videos for “HALA HALA” and “Wonderland,” though “Answer” is my overall favorite ATEEZ song (and one of my all-time favorite pop songs, truth be told).

Welcome to the ATEEZ rabbithole.