Red Velvet’s latest album is on its way, born into controversy as befitting any high-profile K-pop group – I suppose! With turmoil at the top of SM and a group lifespan nearing ten years, I figured Red Velvet was in the midst of an exit strategy, promoting solo acts and mixing members into other groups. This is how they always manage to surprise me. But I first heard about “the new album” from the opposite perspective: fans apparently angry that Red Velvet hasn’t released an album since 2017. Now, if you’re like me, you’re thinking, “What are you talking about?! They put out an album every year! They work themselves to death!” If anything, 2023 ought to be an exception, given they’ve been touring all over the eastern hemisphere. Guys, you know, the “globe” in “global tour” also includes America.
If you follow K-celebs on social media, you might on occasion see them posing next to coffee trucks on the sets of their dramas or even commercial shoots. These are usually sent by friends or colleagues (fellow members of a musical act, for example), or the fans themselves. “The trucks, as seen on Instagram, also tend to be personalized for a certain celebrity, with pictures of them from their professional TV and movie work.” On a related note, fans will sometimes purchase physical ad space to wish their favorite idols a happy birthday, or just in general. Lee Da-hee’s character Scarlett did this for Seol Ji-hwan in Search: WWW, if you recall. That still makes me tear up a little. This summer, Red Velvet fans decided to flip the script and send protest trucks to SM Entertainment, which is less sweet. (And what do those truck drivers think about all this?)
“Fans of the K-pop group Red Velvet have sent more trucks to the company, SM Entertainment’s building in protest of their actions.” (Emphasis mine). Instead of being emblazoned with posters of Joy, however, these trucks carried an indeed joyless message: “Only 2 studio albums 10 years after debuting?” Well, message received! On August 1, 2023, the Red Velvet members hosted one of their typically chaotic livestreams, entitled “Ladies Night,” as part of a ninth-anniversary celebration. Toward the end of the show, Yeri announced that “We are preparing our third full-length album,” scheduled for “the second half of the year.” Ah! See, this was my confusion: “full-length.”
Those two albums in ten years? In 2015, it was The Red, with ten songs (including one of my favorites, “Cool World”), and in 2017, it was Perfect Velvet, with about twelve songs (it’s a little complicated, but includes further winners like “Time to Love,” “All Right,” “I Just,” and also their hands-down worst song “Attaboy”). So theoretically, in 2019, you’d expect another release of about ten to twelve songs. Wrong!
Instead, Red Velvet embarked on their ReVe Festival project, manifesting at that point as three “mini-albums,” or extended plays. On June 19th, you had The ReVe Festival: Day 1, with six songs; on August 20th, it was The ReVe Festival: Day 2, with six songs; and finally, on December 23rd, the deceptively titled The ReVe Festival: Finale, with four songs (two years later, we’d see the release of The ReVe Festival 2022 – Feel My Rhythm). So in the year 2019, instead of a twelve-song “full album,” Red Velvet released three mini-albums comprising a total of twenty songs. What am I missing here? And again, Red Velvet has been releasing music every year since 2014 (excepting 2020, for obvious reasons – we got “Irene & Seulgi” instead). I keep a running playlist of every Red Velvet track, not including solo work, and it’s up to 100. Wow. One-hundred songs. (That’s an average of eleven songs per year, assuming zero in 2023).
So, this is a real brainteaser for me. Are we saying that full-length album songs better than mini-album songs? The ReVe Festival trilogy also has personal favorites, like “LP,” “Jumpin’,” “Psycho,” and “Remember Forever.” So I don’t know, but I have a theory; the story continues, you see. So, on August 28, 2023, the fandom restored some sense of normalcy when Irene returned to being the face of things after a three-year hiatus imposed by her big scandal. As KpopStarz has it, she started working with a Japanese brand 2aN, and in “less than a minute, items were marked SOLD OUT, proving her power as ‘CF Queen!’” That’s not really part of the story, I just wanted to note it.
On September 13, 2023, the rumor mill started to buzz about Irene potentially leaving SM Entertainment. This was, indeed, almost a month after Seulgi re-signed. There was reason to worry, about any such disruption in our just-restored normalcy but also in general. As NME wrote, “Seulgi’s decision to renew her contract with SM Entertainment comes after a tumultuous year for the K-pop agency, which saw a number of long-time artists leave the label. They include Girls’ Generation’s Sunny, and Super Junior members Eunhyuk, Donghae and Kyuhyun. Earlier this year, EXO members Baekhyun, Xiumin and Chen also filed to terminate their contracts with the agency over alleged ‘mistreatment and unfair contract terms.’”
Irene is the leader of Red Velvet, the go-between for management and her fellow members, and she’s as essential to the brand as she is, apparently, to 2aN. The people, they love Irene, and I could certainly write at length as to what makes her a unique idol, so it’s just as difficult now to imagine an Irene-less Red Velvet as it was in 2020 (during her big scandal). Of course, when Wheein left her agency, she remained part of Mamamoo (can’t say the same for Naeun!). But if Irene was D-O-N-E done, I would hope that Red Velvet would be, too. And then they can reunite for the 15th anniversary like SNSD and Kara!
The interesting wrinkle isn’t the content of the rumor, but the rumor itself. Originating in Star News Korea, it was framed in English translations as “Irene reportedly not renewing her contract with SM Entertainment,” which is definitely gonna trigger emotions in the audience. SM had nothing to say on the matter, drawing “the ire of Red Velvet fans, who accuse SM Entertainment of using the media to put undue pressure on Irene to sign a new contract.” This is where the theory about full-album outrage comes in, as Koreaboo continues, with “a major contention point is the media insinuating blame on Irene’s contract situation for the group’s lack of activities, a move many see as a tactic to strong-arm her into an agreement.”
So, let’s say that Irene is unhappy with SM for any litany of very plausible reasons, and she has been for a while. Did they really have her back in 2020? Are they taking care of her and her members? With the deck-shuffling at the executive level, let’s not assume that there’s a ton of money flowing in for a third-generation girl group – not while Aespa’s music videos do the numbers Red Velvet can only dream of. SM’s next move would have to be a creative one, so they plot an already-anticipated third album to use as a carrot. Then they can say, “Hey, that’s a nice third album you got preordered, kiddos. It’d be a shame if Irene were to leave before we could produce it!” And to stir the pot, why not send protest trucks to your own doors, previewing the outrage Irene can expect when she bows out?
Now, only that last part is pure speculation, though like with everything that happens in a very far-away country, in another language, with a different culture, the whole picture is unclear. In the end, Irene signed with SM and the third album officially has a name: What a Chill Kill. Let’s hope that isn’t putting too fine a point on things. Mostly because it’s hilarious and completely on-brand, but also because this episode raises an uncomfortable issue. SM had apparently applied similar pressure tactics before, on EXO members (those guys still leaving in droves), and I don’t think anybody’s gonna be like “What? A K-pop agency? Nooooo.” Management and talent rely on each other, so it’s unfortunate that the relationship can be so, well, like this.
It’s my grand hope that Irene signed with SM because she wanted to, not because she needed to and not because of “or else.” But I’ll never get an answer, and I resent the industry because of it. You know, my introduction to K-pop was the industry at its worst, in 2019 with Sulli (whose agency was SM) and Goo Hara. In the beginning of my fandom, I wanted to learn as much as I could about K-pop so that I could understand how to prevent those kinds of international headlines. Yes, I took on a sort of white-savior complex, but understand, this was in the midst of the Trump administration, and if you weren’t attending protests and changing your profile picture, you weren’t doing your part. It was a time that made solution-knowers and go-getters of us all.
And I see this in other people making first contact with hallyu: the concern, edged by xenophobia. In my case, the more I “learned,” the more I came to see idols – so often depicted as victims in movies like Perfect Blue or its 2010 American remake – as human beings. Irene is an adult woman, and if she’s dealing with a toxic work environment, it’s probably the same as Taylor Swift rerecording her albums or, you know, Janice, two cubicles down from you – unacceptable, but not necessarily life or death. So I have this weird reflex now: yes, the K-pop industry is an unknown boogeyman, but it’s also the product of a foreign culture we can’t by default presume to judge. It leaves me in an unresolved space, where I want people to see idols as more than their victimhood, but I also don’t want them to be victims at all.
Jesus. I was just trying to listen to some music, man.
With Eyes East 