When I started writing this, it was actually supposed to be a completely different post about wasted potential of some of the recent girl groups, but as I was writing about STAYC (which would be my pick for that discussion), given how much I’d written, I had realized that the group probably deserves its own post.
So, what happened/has been happening with STAYC?
To give a brief overlook of the group’s career so far, as I recall it:
STAYC started in High Up Ent. in 2020, under BEP as producers. The company was acquired by Kakao Ent. in 2021, a year after STAYC’s debut (same parent company that owns Starship Ent.). The girls came out of the gate pretty strong. In a relatively open (in terms of competitiveness, at least at the time) 4th gen GG scene. They came out with “So bad” with decent results. Within a year of that they released another successful single album “ASAP” as well as their first mini-album, “STEREOTYPE” that blew their debut song’s success out of the water. In 2022 came time for another mini-album – “YOUNG-LUV.COM” – to success similar to their 2021 work and widely considered as their best body of work.
As the 4th gen GG landscape was getting more saturated with clear frontrunners and the big 3 (or the big 4) of aespa, IVE, LSF and NewJeans started to form within the next 2-3 years, STAYC’s decline started to begin. “Beautiful Monster”, “Poppy”, “Teddy Bear”, “Bubble”, “Metamorphic” album, “GPT”, “BEBE” and “I WANT IT”, 5 years in and none of them came anywhere close to the success of their 2020/2021 work.
If you look at their discography, it’s quite interesting as majority of it can be roughly described as “cute girly pop”, however there is one big outlier in it – the “YOUNG-LUV.COM” album. The music on the album is far more experimental compared to what they’d done before or even after. It drew a lot from RnB, some darker themes, clearly a much more mature tone. That’s where I thought the girls found their niche, given the successful reception of the album. I remember listening to some of their western music cover, which was also more mature and I thought they navigated those concepts incredibly well. STAYC seem to have almost completely abandoned that vibe and went back to cute girly pop (only few songs afterwards gave me the vibes of that concept, such as “Pipe down” and “BOY”).
I expected a summer mini-album this year, but all we got was a single album, 2:LOVE (banger btw), which did pretty bad commercially, even for their standards.
When we look at the numbers, it’s a pretty linear decline, which doesn’t bode well for the group. I also remember reading somewhere about Sumin, the leader, wanting to leave at some point. BEP, the original production duo, no longer works with the group, only Rado, a member of the duo, still remains with STAYC as a producer. High Up Ent. just debuted their new GG, UNCHILD, and we know what that usually means for the senior group. In addition to that 5th gen GG landscape has been incredibly dynamic and competitive, which decreases the odds of a “second wind” happening.
It’s such a pity, because they were one of the first 4th gen group that really caught my attention. With Sieun’s highly polished voice, Yoon’s powerful vocals, ISA’s playful tone, Seeun’s delicate tone, Sumin’s smoky tone and J’s deep voice I thought they had one of the best vocal blends of 4th gen and (probably) 5th gen.
What do you guys think about their situation? Is it just the usual “company isn’t doing enough” or “they just didn’t get their big viral hit”? Is there an issue with the concept or the music direction? Is there something else? Is there still a chance of a second win and a breakthrough? Have they already peaked? Maybe some SWITHs care to weigh in?
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