Korean Media Pointed Out ‘Min Hee-jin Core’ In NewJeans’ Comeback And Its Differences With ILLIT

On April 27th, NewJeans released a music video for the track “Bubble Gum” on its official website ahead of the release of its new double single “How Sweet” on the 24th of next month.

The music video of “Bubble Gum,” a pre-release song that adopts the city pop genre, drew attention with its images of “Naturalness,” “Refreshing” and “Girl” all presented by Min Hee-jin. The video also showed the same effect by using the form of a video tape in the early 2000s, reminiscent of “Ditto” with Y2K sentiment.

Since ILLIT’s debut, the public has eagerly discussed the similarities and differences between the group and NewJeans. The images of each group’s contents are very different. The public chose “sadness” as the emotion that NewJeans wanted to evoke. It makes them think back to the good memories of the past. NewJeans is also the one who made “refreshing” and “high-teen” popular in the K-pop market. On the other hand, ILLIT is creating content focusing on ‘cute’. They have the image of unreal fantasy characters. The public also described ILLIT as giving the same feeling of a Japanese animation protagonist.

The music taken by the two groups to express this image may have similarities in genre, but there is a big difference in melody composition and production.

NewJeans’ sentimental music starts with light and soft. They chose a leisurely, blank melody instead of the addictive “hook” in the chorus. The melody interval is not large, and there are few changes in the composition and chord of the instrument, so there is no noticeable and intense part. As a leader in the UK Garage genre and the “Easy Listening” trend, the group seems to focus on selecting beats that subtly capture the ears without much stimulation. In contrast to this trend, they do have two songs with addictive hooks. “Attention” and “Hype Boy” contributed to the formation of another representative image of NewJeans, “High Teen,” with their refreshing music video production.

On the other hand, ILLIT are actively utilizing the addictive “K-pop-style hook” as it targets the domestic and Japanese markets. Regarding their debut song, “Magnetic,” they added an element of “Easy Listening” created by NewJeans to the typical K-pop composition. The song moves with a fast beat centered on the synth base, and there is no gaps in the vocals. It’s a good choice to show off a cute image.

The pre-release song of NewJeans can be seen as a stepping stone to the Japanese market, as it is ahead of its future activities in Japan. However, in order to avoid comparison with ILLIT, the song seems to have taken a different direction the junior group, who has emphasized cuteness and girlishness from the beginning.

Hanni’s bobbed hair and Daniel’s hippie perm are the talk of the town. In the music video of NewJeans’ “Bubble Gum,” their appearance follows the sentiment of “school girls” that have been popular in Japan for a long time. They show different charms from ILLIT’s character, which is similar to an animation.

On the contrary, ILLIT tried to be casual through the “Lucky Girl Syndrome” music video, and the overall atmosphere of the music video is warm and dark compared to NewJeans. While NewJeans usually produces bright and low saturation in the music video, ILLIT creates a bouncy playful girlishness.

Now that the public has begun to focus on differences, not similarities, it is necessary to stop the comparisons between the two groups that have been made so far and bring them back to square one. The role of the public now is to enjoy the trends formed by artists.

Source: naver