I’m not an Itzy hater. While I’m not a Midzy either, I’ve casually listened to them since their debut, and I think it’s undeniable that Itzy, as of right now, has lost a lot of relevance in the K-pop world. Of course, everyone who isn’t super new to K-pop knows Itzy, but you don’t go from topping the charts with every release to kind of… struggling to chart at all sometimes without a reason. I know a lot of people will jump to their defense and say they didn’t fall off, but to me, it’s kinda undeniable.
I love comparing Itzy to Aespa , both groups debuted around the same time, both had huge success early on, and both had a comeback that was widely hated and caused a big chunk of their fandoms to leave (“Sneakers” for Itzy and “Girls” for Aespa). But while Aespa managed to bounce back , 2024 was their biggest year yet with “Supernova,” “Armageddon,” and “Whiplash” charting extremely well , Itzy just never seemed to recover.
A lot of people like to say it’s all because of “Sneakers,” but I don’t agree. It definitely played a role, but again, you don’t go from being the biggest girl group of your generation to what Itzy is experiencing now just because of one bad comeback. It just doesn’t make sense.
Just looking at their monthly Spotify listeners numbers the situation is quite clear:
Itzy around 3.8 million, aespa 9.9 million (and last year they peaked around at 11-12 million)
So, in your opinion, why is Itzy where it is right now? While groups like dreamcatcher kind of experienced the same thing, it’s just crazy to me that a group that was so popular and debuted under a big 3 agency can experience such a loss of mainstream traction and never recover from that for no apparent reason (no crazy scandals or something like that)
(Just to clarify again: I don’t hate Itzy, and I’m not calling them flops , I’m just stating what I and a lot of others have observed.)
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