In Defense of ITZY’s Sneakers (…Sort Of)

The title isn’t really accurate, or at least not exactly. This isn’t a defense of the song itself, because I personally don’t like Sneakers, but more a defense of the era as a whole. It’s about why Sneakers isn’t actually the reason ITZY lost momentum, and how we as i-fans are often stuck in our own bubble when talking about it.

I originally left a comment (which ended up being huge, so I turned it into a post) on another thread about Sneakers in this subreddit, and I’d really like to hear other opinions, because the conversation around ITZY is honestly such a weird case.

🚨Disclaimer🚨

I’m a huge advocate for the idea that ITZY didn’t fall off as hard as people claim, lmao, and I wouldn’t even necessarily call myself a Midzy. All groups have a peak era, and ITZY just happened to have a huge one during their rookie years. Over time, they’ve established a very loyal fandom, even if they’re no longer GP or average Western K-pop stan darlings. No group in their 7th year that still sells around half a million albums per comeback and tours internationally has “fallen off” or is a flop.

The conversation around girl groups is always a mess anyway, ITZY are flops now, I-DLE are flops, Red Velvet are flops… bfrfr.

In Western international K-pop circles, Sneakers is treated as the slippery slope that caused ITZY’s downfall after Loco, a comeback people were really crazy about… in the West, at least.

The real issue is that international K-pop fans and the Korean and other Asian fans and general public have never really agreed on what they want from ITZY. JYPE ended up playing ping-pong with their comebacks, trying to satisfy both sides, and in the end, that approach didn’t fully satisfy anyone. Because you simply can’t please everyone.

During their debut, ITZY were clearly positioned differently from TWICE, aiming more toward an international audience, something their seniors didn’t really do in their earlier years. TWICE was Korea’s girl group, and that worked. That doesn’t mean ITZY didn’t blow up in Korea, because they absolutely did. They were called monster rookies, Dalla Dalla is their best charting song, and at that point, JYPE had the reputation of knowing exactly how to sell a girl group domestically. But ITZY blew up for different reasons in different markets.

Internationally, the timing was perfect. The “love yourself” concept was at its peak, and it was something Western i-fans were, and to an extent still are, eating up. Even though their sound was more out there for a JYPE girl group at the time, they were still very JYPE-coded: catchy, bright, youthful in a somewhat juvenile but undeniably fun way, bratty in a good way, poppy, and very in-your-face. ITZY’s teen-crush concept basically became the blueprint for a lot of 2019–2020 girl groups. Weki Meki walked so ITZY could run.

The problems started with Not Shy. International fans began saying the “be yourself” concept, and to some extent, their sound was getting overdone, even though those same fans had been eating it up before, and Itzy were literally still rookies. So JYP shifted direction with MITM. Opinions were split, and while it didn’t land as expected with all fans, some complained that ITZY had abandoned their original identity. MITM became ITZY’s highest-charting song on the Billboard Global 200 and Billboard US World chart, while also being their lowest-charting song in Korea up to that point, performing worse than Not Shy domestically. From ICY through MITM, their comebacks performed fairly evenly internationally and domestically, slightly stronger internationally, but still consistently Top 10 in Korea.

Then Loco dropped…

International fans loved it and started saying this should be ITZY’s direction moving forward. The problem is that it didn’t perform well domestically at all, not even reaching the Top 25, which was very unusual for them at the time.

And then…came Sneakers**.**

I never really understood the massive backlash or the accusations of false advertising. Whether people liked the song or not (and I personally don’t), it felt very obviously like something ITZY would do. It’s extremely on-brand. Even the Checkmate title, the whole “you thought it was a royal concept, but actually it’s ITZY’s royal concept 🤪”, fits their brand perfectly.

Checkmate sold almost twice as much as Crazy in Love in its first month**.** It’s hard to argue that this was the moment they lost momentum when, domestically, it was actually their strongest result since Dalla Dalla, and their second best overall at the time. No matter how much Western i-fans trashed Sneakers or refused to stream it, Korean fans clearly backed it heavily. That version of ITZY, closer to Dalla Dalla and Sneakers than Wannabe or Loco, is what many of those fans prefer, and they put their money where their mouth is, making Checkmate their first album to surpass one million sales.

And that became a pattern.

Songs international fans enjoy don’t resonate as much domestically (or across Asia many times, the highest charting Korean single in Japan is Not Shy, a comeback neither domestically nor internationally was their strongest), and vice versa. Cake sold more than Cheshire, Checkmate sold more than Crazy in Love, and while international fans praised Born to Be online, with Untouchable becoming their first song to gain notable international charting again since Loco, album sales dropped significantly. Sales picked up again with Gold, which many Western fans weren’t particularly enthusiastic about. At that point, charting had dropped overall anyway, but it’s noticeable that the comebacks Western fans dislike tend to sell better.

To me, it looks like JYP genuinely tried to listen to fans, but international and domestic audiences wanted completely different things from ITZY. Instead of committing to one direction, the company tried to satisfy both, and that slowly caused them to lose momentum on both sides. Personally, I think leaning more into their Asian fanbase would have made more sense, since JYPE’s musical style tends to resonate more strongly there anyway. To many people in the West, this type of sound simply feels too “Kidz Bop”-like, and Asian fans tend (not always, but often enough) to buy more.

If there was a real breaking point, it was probably Born to Be, even though it pains me to say that because, in my opinion, it was one of their best comebacks and my favourite Title Track of theirs. The only real downside was Lia’s absence. Western K-pop fans can be just as fickle as the Korean general public, even if we like to think otherwise. Many hyped the song but didn’t support the album as strongly, while Asian fans have consistently supported brighter, brattier, chaotic ITZY and pull back when a release doesn’t resonate, and Born to Be seems to be where some domestic fans started checking out, even after Lia returned.

Maybe the exact same comebacks would have been received very differently if they had come out in another order. If Sneakers had come before or right after Not Shy, and the transition into more “mature” songs (though personally I still see MITM and Loco as teen crush, just more 19-crush than 16-crush) had happened later, the transition might have felt more natural. Domestic fans would have understood the group aging and evolving, and international fans wouldn’t have felt the constant back-and-forth as strongly. Because all this experimentation started in 2021, right after they stopped being considered rookies, idk I feel it was way too early, and they shouldn’t have listened to international fans on that. Twice started to mature in their 4th year, given or taken, and it worked much better, even if at times there were some stumbles.

To me, the issue was never really the songs themselves, but the sequence and the overall direction, which ended up feeling messy for everyone involved.

Thank you for coming to my TED Talk.