by: Zsofia DeCheke ’26
KATSEYE (a six-member girl group formed through the 2023 reality competition series Dream Academy) may not be a K-pop group, but it is certainly marketed like one.
From the group’s numerous appearances on music shows to the styling and concepts for each new song or EP release, HYBE – KATSEYE’s parent company – sure didn’t try to shy away from that impression.
And yet, at the end of the day, both the group and their company go to great lengths to avoid explicitly naming themselves as a K-pop group. Which is fair – only one of their six members (Yoonchae) is Korean, while the rest are from various countries and ethnicities around the globe. But it begs the question: if KATSEYE isn’t K-pop, why are they trying so hard to fit into that market?
One simple answer: It’s lucrative. And it’s what HYBE does best.
Over the past decade, HYBE has debuted a number of successful groups in the genre (take BTS, Tomorrow by Together, NewJeans, or CORTIS, for example), all with their own dedicated fans. So why wouldn’t it try to capitalize on that same market with its newly created global group? It shouldn’t be that hard to achieve the same results, especially considering the talents of its members. At first, this rang true. Many of KATSEYE’s singles found commercial success quickly, not just because the group didn’t have the same perfectly managed images as other K-pop groups, but because they kept the authenticity in their attitudes and the talent in their live performances – a breath of fresh air in a polish-heavy industry. Things were looking up for the group.
That is, until KATSEYE dropped their latest single, Internet Girl. A song which, on its own, might not have broken the internet, but ended up being the final straw for a lot of already disgruntled fans. In HYBE’s attempt to make KATSEYE as viral as possible, they forgot what made their K-pop groups successful in the first place: a cohesive concept.
There is a plethora of extremely subjective reasons that Internet Girl didn’t resonate well with fans, but I think many of them stem from greater issues with releasing a song like this in the context of a group like KATSEYE. To put it as plainly as possible: Internet Girl just doesn’t fit KATSEYE.
Let’s break this into pieces, starting with the lyrics.
Here’s a short selection taken from the chorus to give you a better picture:
Eat zucchini, eat zucchini
Eat zucchini, eat zucchini
Do you read me? Like the emoji?
Oh, won’t you? Oh, won’t you? Oh, won’t you?
In your feelings (Zucchini), cause you need me so
Keep on breathin’ (Zucchini), cause you never know
What I might do (Let’s break this down)
It just might be you
As you can probably tell, these lyrics are not the most… poetic in nature. They’re repetitive at best, shallow and befuddling at worst.
To fans of most K-pop groups, this isn’t an entirely unfamiliar style of writing. Pick any group, and their fandom knows at least one song of theirs whose English lyrics just don’t make sense. Whether that’s Tomorrow by Together’s Cat and Dog, or Red Velvet’s Zimzalabim, or half of NCT’s songs at this point… take the following, for example:
Sweet tooth, I eat all of the skittles
I like my doughnuts with jam in the middle
You’re a great example of what I’m into
I was thinking we could jam for a little
… K-pop is not without its share of weird English lyrics.
But there’s one fundamental difference between NCT and KATSEYE when it comes to nonsensical lyrics – for NCT, these strange English lyrics aren’t the entirety of the song (the majority of songs are at least 80% Korean). Are the meanings behind these few lines all that deep? Not really. There’s only so many ways you can interpret “you so hot, hot like soup”. But at their core, they’re short and give a memorable point to NCT’s songs, though phrased in a way an English listener might find childish.
That’s just it, though: KATSEYE’s songs are all in English. Unlike NCT, KATSEYE doesn’t have the freedom of switching languages to better communicate their concept. They have to be far more careful with the lyrics they choose, because they can’t hide behind Korean to convey their real wordsmithing prowess. NCT’s lyrics may mostly be Korean because their members and producers are far more fluent in that language, but even their limited skills with English lyrics manage to communicate some complete (though simple) ideas… Internet Girl, on the other hand, seems intent on repeating “eat zucchini” ad nauseam.
I’m not saying there isn’t a place for whimsical or funny lyrics… but they have to fit the rest of the song in a way that supplements the song’s intended concept. (Even if, in NCT’s case, all it does is connect one verse to the next by introducing an idea or word that will later appear in the pre-chorus.) If the producers had a concrete vision for the message of Internet Girl, I would have loved to see it, because even the best lyric interpreters the internet has to offer were struggling to find good theories for this one.
Moving on to the next pressing problem for Internet Girl: the mistreatment of KATSEYE’s talents.
If you listen to the live stage version, it’s easy to distinguish between different members of the group. Not so for the studio version. If anything, their voices were all edited to sound the same in the official release, which really doesn’t help for a song that’s already this repetitive.
Compare that to Touch, one of their other studio-released singles, in which you can tell exactly who’s singing and what quirks they bring to each part. By no means am I a professional in assessing singing quality, but even I can tell that Internet Girl just falls flat in comparison. I love KATSEYE’s voices, but I can’t fully appreciate them unless I can hear them – not the overly autotuned versions of them HYBE seems intent on pumping out.
Internet Girl already isn’t a very challenging song vocally – not ideal for a group that does so well singing much more complex songs, with full choreography, live – and without the dance or visuals to grab the listener’s attention in the studio release, all they’ve got is this all-too-clean version of the instrumentals and topline to go off of. If the producers truly understood the group, they’d know that songs like this just aren’t the way to go. These six girls went through insane levels of vocal and physical training, and this is what they get? Voices edited beyond recognition? None of their other songs have this problem. And as if that wasn’t enough, one of their members, Lara, is a producer who has already shown her capabilities long before she joined the group. She clearly has a strong artistic vision that audiences seem to like, so what’s preventing HYBE from letting her take some creative control over KATSEYE?
But perhaps the saddest part about all of this, and the real reason for Internet Girl’s failure in the KATSEYE fanbase, is that it literally shattered whatever concept KATSEYE was based on in the first place.
For a group that adheres so closely to the world of K-pop, you’d think that a clearly-defined concept – a staple for nearly every K-pop group – would be prioritized by the team behind KATSEYE. And for a while, they had one: a global group reinventing the world with a strong feminine voice.
Of course, almost every K-pop group experiments with micro-reinventions at some point in their careers. KATSEYE made a more extreme attempt at this via their acclaimed single Gnarly, which diverged from their cleaner concept into a realm of – you guessed it – nonsensical English lyrics and the occasional badly concealed innuendo. So why did one reinvention succeed while Internet Girl failed?
For this, we can look no further than another group who underwent serious changes in a single comeback: I-DLE (formerly known as G-IDLE) and their song Klaxon.
Compared to the rest of I-DLE’s discography, Klaxon was a step away from their usually harsher sound, featuring bright, colorful visuals and summer-themed, happy-go-lucky lyrics. For a group that usually used darker-sounding vocals and aggressive lyrics to discuss modern issues like misogyny and objectification, this comeback seemed to come out of nowhere. Many fans were surprised or even frustrated by the change-up, criticizing it as a loss of what made I-DLE, well, I-DLE. But rather than forcing their fans to put up with the change in the long term, I-DLE used this comeback to more deeply consider their pre-existing concept and develop their members’ talents in previously underutilized areas – be that the softer dance moves or lighter singing parts.
When they returned to their prior, darker concept, I-DLE now had much more to work with. They were able to give their songs more nuance, not just thematically, but vocally and choreography-wise, too. Klaxon was still a gamble with their fanbase, but taking that time to experiment allowed I-DLE to improve as a group and as individuals.
On the other hand, we have KATSEYE, who never returned to their original concept. In the world of K-pop, too drastic a change (whether in concept, lineup, or management) can often spell disaster for a group.
Unfortunately, instead of heeding the warning of eons past, HYBE has decided to double down on what should have remained a one-time experiment. Yes, Gnarly had commercial success, but at the end of the day, it’s more of a novelty song than something you might add to an oft-used playlist. Its shock factor is not meant to be reproduced over and over, else it loses what made it so attention-grabbing and fun in the first place.
To follow up that already very niche song with the poorly defined ideas behind Internet Girl just put a nail in the KATSEYE coffin. They didn’t develop their vocal or dance skills with this comeback, nor did they elaborate on anything in their original concept or show us a nuanced take on the members and their talents. If anything, they’ve done the opposite, regressing to the same slop music that defines the majority of the pop genre.
That’s the saddest part of all this. KATSEYE has so much potential as a global group – exploring the unique facets of their members alone provides plenty of material for a solid comeback. But instead, HYBE chose to ride the wave of whatever’s trending, sacrificing the qualities that attracted people to KATSEYE in the first place.
There’s still hope, though – if HYBE restrains their addiction to virality and focuses on honing the existing talents of KATSEYE’s members, there’s a chance for them to rise back to the top. Of course, no one will quite forget their Internet Girl failure, but a clearer musical vision will make sure they remain the internet’s favorite girls for a long time to come.
[1] Excerpt from Internet Girl, KATSEYE (distributed by HYBE x Geffen Records). Accessed 5th of January, 2026.
by: Zsofia DeCheke ’26
KATSEYE (a six-member girl group formed through the 2023 reality competition series Dream Academy) may not be a K-pop group, but it is certainly marketed like one.
From the group’s numerous appearances on music shows to the styling and concepts for each new song or EP release, HYBE – KATSEYE’s parent company – sure didn’t try to shy away from that impression.
And yet, at the end of the day, both the group and their company go to great lengths to avoid explicitly naming themselves as a K-pop group. Which is fair – only one of their six members (Yoonchae) is Korean, while the rest are from various countries and ethnicities around the globe. But it begs the question: if KATSEYE isn’t K-pop, why are they trying so hard to fit into that market?
One simple answer: It’s lucrative. And it’s what HYBE does best.
Over the past decade, HYBE has debuted a number of successful groups in the genre (take BTS, Tomorrow by Together, NewJeans, or CORTIS, for example), all with their own dedicated fans. So why wouldn’t it try to capitalize on that same market with its newly created global group? It shouldn’t be that hard to achieve the same results, especially considering the talents of its members. At first, this rang true. Many of KATSEYE’s singles found commercial success quickly, not just because the group didn’t have the same perfectly managed images as other K-pop groups, but because they kept the authenticity in their attitudes and the talent in their live performances – a breath of fresh air in a polish-heavy industry. Things were looking up for the group.
That is, until KATSEYE dropped their latest single, Internet Girl. A song which, on its own, might not have broken the internet, but ended up being the final straw for a lot of already disgruntled fans. In HYBE’s attempt to make KATSEYE as viral as possible, they forgot what made their K-pop groups successful in the first place: a cohesive concept.
There is a plethora of extremely subjective reasons that Internet Girl didn’t resonate well with fans, but I think many of them stem from greater issues with releasing a song like this in the context of a group like KATSEYE. To put it as plainly as possible: Internet Girl just doesn’t fit KATSEYE.
Let’s break this into pieces, starting with the lyrics.
Here’s a short selection taken from the chorus to give you a better picture:
Eat zucchini, eat zucchini
Eat zucchini, eat zucchini
Do you read me? Like the emoji?
Oh, won’t you? Oh, won’t you? Oh, won’t you?
In your feelings (Zucchini), cause you need me so
Keep on breathin’ (Zucchini), cause you never know
What I might do (Let’s break this down)
It just might be you
As you can probably tell, these lyrics are not the most… poetic in nature. They’re repetitive at best, shallow and befuddling at worst.
To fans of most K-pop groups, this isn’t an entirely unfamiliar style of writing. Pick any group, and their fandom knows at least one song of theirs whose English lyrics just don’t make sense. Whether that’s Tomorrow by Together’s Cat and Dog, or Red Velvet’s Zimzalabim, or half of NCT’s songs at this point… take the following, for example:
Sweet tooth, I eat all of the skittles
I like my doughnuts with jam in the middle
You’re a great example of what I’m into
I was thinking we could jam for a little
… K-pop is not without its share of weird English lyrics.
But there’s one fundamental difference between NCT and KATSEYE when it comes to nonsensical lyrics – for NCT, these strange English lyrics aren’t the entirety of the song (the majority of songs are at least 80% Korean). Are the meanings behind these few lines all that deep? Not really. There’s only so many ways you can interpret “you so hot, hot like soup”. But at their core, they’re short and give a memorable point to NCT’s songs, though phrased in a way an English listener might find childish.
That’s just it, though: KATSEYE’s songs are all in English. Unlike NCT, KATSEYE doesn’t have the freedom of switching languages to better communicate their concept. They have to be far more careful with the lyrics they choose, because they can’t hide behind Korean to convey their real wordsmithing prowess. NCT’s lyrics may mostly be Korean because their members and producers are far more fluent in that language, but even their limited skills with English lyrics manage to communicate some complete (though simple) ideas… Internet Girl, on the other hand, seems intent on repeating “eat zucchini” ad nauseam.
I’m not saying there isn’t a place for whimsical or funny lyrics… but they have to fit the rest of the song in a way that supplements the song’s intended concept. (Even if, in NCT’s case, all it does is connect one verse to the next by introducing an idea or word that will later appear in the pre-chorus.) If the producers had a concrete vision for the message of Internet Girl, I would have loved to see it, because even the best lyric interpreters the internet has to offer were struggling to find good theories for this one.
Moving on to the next pressing problem for Internet Girl: the mistreatment of KATSEYE’s talents.
If you listen to the live stage version, it’s easy to distinguish between different members of the group. Not so for the studio version. If anything, their voices were all edited to sound the same in the official release, which really doesn’t help for a song that’s already this repetitive.
Compare that to Touch, one of their other studio-released singles, in which you can tell exactly who’s singing and what quirks they bring to each part. By no means am I a professional in assessing singing quality, but even I can tell that Internet Girl just falls flat in comparison. I love KATSEYE’s voices, but I can’t fully appreciate them unless I can hear them – not the overly autotuned versions of them HYBE seems intent on pumping out.
Internet Girl already isn’t a very challenging song vocally – not ideal for a group that does so well singing much more complex songs, with full choreography, live – and without the dance or visuals to grab the listener’s attention in the studio release, all they’ve got is this all-too-clean version of the instrumentals and topline to go off of. If the producers truly understood the group, they’d know that songs like this just aren’t the way to go. These six girls went through insane levels of vocal and physical training, and this is what they get? Voices edited beyond recognition? None of their other songs have this problem. And as if that wasn’t enough, one of their members, Lara, is a producer who has already shown her capabilities long before she joined the group. She clearly has a strong artistic vision that audiences seem to like, so what’s preventing HYBE from letting her take some creative control over KATSEYE?
But perhaps the saddest part about all of this, and the real reason for Internet Girl’s failure in the KATSEYE fanbase, is that it literally shattered whatever concept KATSEYE was based on in the first place.
For a group that adheres so closely to the world of K-pop, you’d think that a clearly-defined concept – a staple for nearly every K-pop group – would be prioritized by the team behind KATSEYE. And for a while, they had one: a global group reinventing the world with a strong feminine voice.
Of course, almost every K-pop group experiments with micro-reinventions at some point in their careers. KATSEYE made a more extreme attempt at this via their acclaimed single Gnarly, which diverged from their cleaner concept into a realm of – you guessed it – nonsensical English lyrics and the occasional badly concealed innuendo. So why did one reinvention succeed while Internet Girl failed?
For this, we can look no further than another group who underwent serious changes in a single comeback: I-DLE (formerly known as G-IDLE) and their song Klaxon.
Compared to the rest of I-DLE’s discography, Klaxon was a step away from their usually harsher sound, featuring bright, colorful visuals and summer-themed, happy-go-lucky lyrics. For a group that usually used darker-sounding vocals and aggressive lyrics to discuss modern issues like misogyny and objectification, this comeback seemed to come out of nowhere. Many fans were surprised or even frustrated by the change-up, criticizing it as a loss of what made I-DLE, well, I-DLE. But rather than forcing their fans to put up with the change in the long term, I-DLE used this comeback to more deeply consider their pre-existing concept and develop their members’ talents in previously underutilized areas – be that the softer dance moves or lighter singing parts.
When they returned to their prior, darker concept, I-DLE now had much more to work with. They were able to give their songs more nuance, not just thematically, but vocally and choreography-wise, too. Klaxon was still a gamble with their fanbase, but taking that time to experiment allowed I-DLE to improve as a group and as individuals.
On the other hand, we have KATSEYE, who never returned to their original concept. In the world of K-pop, too drastic a change (whether in concept, lineup, or management) can often spell disaster for a group.
Unfortunately, instead of heeding the warning of eons past, HYBE has decided to double down on what should have remained a one-time experiment. Yes, Gnarly had commercial success, but at the end of the day, it’s more of a novelty song than something you might add to an oft-used playlist. Its shock factor is not meant to be reproduced over and over, else it loses what made it so attention-grabbing and fun in the first place.
To follow up that already very niche song with the poorly defined ideas behind Internet Girl just put a nail in the KATSEYE coffin. They didn’t develop their vocal or dance skills with this comeback, nor did they elaborate on anything in their original concept or show us a nuanced take on the members and their talents. If anything, they’ve done the opposite, regressing to the same slop music that defines the majority of the pop genre.
That’s the saddest part of all this. KATSEYE has so much potential as a global group – exploring the unique facets of their members alone provides plenty of material for a solid comeback. But instead, HYBE chose to ride the wave of whatever’s trending, sacrificing the qualities that attracted people to KATSEYE in the first place.
There’s still hope, though – if HYBE restrains their addiction to virality and focuses on honing the existing talents of KATSEYE’s members, there’s a chance for them to rise back to the top. Of course, no one will quite forget their Internet Girl failure, but a clearer musical vision will make sure they remain the internet’s favorite girls for a long time to come.
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