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      Humberto Leon’s Making of a Girl Group

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      Last year, it became Humberto Leon’s job to shape the appearances of 20 young women, whose ages ranged from 14 to 21.He decided what kind of clothing, shoes and jewelry they would wear. He told them how their hair should be cut and their makeup applied.“You have to imagine, with 20 girls, I want each and every one of them to stand out,” Mr. Leon said.Still, young women do not always take kindly to being told how to dress. There were tears. “That’s not how I like to do my hair,” some of them told Mr. Leon.“I said, ‘I know, but trust me. I’m helping you own your personality,’” Mr. Leon recalled. “They think they know what’s best for them. And I have to give them an objective opinion of what I think would look great on them.”Professionally, it was in their best interest to listen to Mr. Leon. Under his guidance, they could become the main characters in their own makeover montage — a tradition stretching from “Pygmalion” to “The Princess Diaries” to, perhaps more relevant to this group, “The Hunger Games.”Mr. Leon rose to prominence in the aughts with Opening Ceremony, which he founded in 2002 with Carol Lim, a college friend. After the pandemic, he decided to expand his horizons.Elizabeth Weinberg for The New York TimesThese 20 girls were in direct competition with one another. Six of them would eventually be named members of a new pop group. Upon its debut, this group would already have the support of Hybe, the company that brought K-pop to the world, and Universal Music Group, the world’s largest record company. The competition would also be the subject of a Netflix documentary series.Throughout it all, the contestants’ public image would be in the hands of Mr. Leon, a 48-year-old fashion designer who rose to prominence in downtown New York during the 2000s with his store Opening Ceremony — a popular boutique for up-and-coming labels — then was recruited to reinvigorate a luxury brand in Paris, then started opening restaurants with his family during the pandemic in Los Angeles.In September 2022, he was brought on as creative director for this girl group competition — a partnership between Hybe and Geffen Records, which is owned by Universal Music Group — in which 120,000 applicants from around the world were narrowed down to 20 contestants, or “trainees,” all of whom were relocated to Los Angeles to train intensively in singing and dancing.When those contestants were announced in August, Mr. Leon dressed them for their first group photo shoot in matching gray schoolgirl uniforms. They wore blazers bearing the name of their competition: Dream Academy.By November, half of this group was eliminated through a combination of fan voting and judges’ evaluations. The culling was chronicled on YouTube. (“We’re not forming a friend group, we’re forming a girl group,” one young woman said during a particularly tense elimination round.)For the final photo shoot before the six winners were announced, Mr. Leon dressed the trainees now as “elevated” schoolgirls. This time they showed more skin in tailored gray sets, trading their chunky white socks for black mesh, looking like more polished, modern versions of Britney Spears in “ … Baby One More Time,” the music video that made a 16-year-old girl a star.One morning in Hollywood, I watched as Mr. Leon oversaw these final portraits. He reminded one 17-year-old contestant, Megan, to correct her stance. She had a tendency to stand with her legs wide apart, which Mr. Leon had nicknamed “the Megan.” As in, “Don’t do ‘the Megan,’ Megan.”Later, while the 10 remaining trainees filmed a music video, I noticed that Megan had a way of staring down the camera with a cool, come-hither expression — similar to the seductive one Ms. Spears adopted. (Megan, of course, was not yet born when “ … Baby One More Time” was released.)This tendency was not corrected.When it came to being sexy, Mr. Leon said he had always told the girls, “Whatever you’re doing, do it for yourself, because you want to feel that way.”A “Dream Academy” trainee poses at a Hollywood studio days before the final six winners were announced.Elizabeth Weinberg for The New York TimesK-pop, But Not“Dream Academy” was not Mr. Leon’s first time working with a girl group.In 2021, he met the Linda Lindas, a punk quartet that went viral after performing at the Los Angeles Public Library. At the time, its members were between 10 and 16 years old. They had come to eat at Mr. Leon’s restaurant Chifa, named for a Chinese restaurant his mother, Wendy, opened in Peru in the 1970s before the family moved to the United States. When Mr. Leon offered to direct their first music video, the group said yes. “Growing Up” showed the four girls and four cats shredding in a suburban home, dressed in 1970s-inspired outfits.When she saw the video, Michelle An, now president of creative strategy at Interscope Geffen A&M, said she thought it was “so cute and so innovative and so appropriate for their age.” She was particularly taken with the illustrations of cats painted on the girls’ closed eyelids.The final 10 trainees rehearse an original song, “All the Same.” Their outfits, hair and makeup choices were directed by Mr. Leon and his team.Elizabeth Weinberg for The New York TimesMs. An’s job is to help her labels’ artists, like Billie Eilish, with “visual world building,” she said. “You make this music — what imagery do you want out there to help your fans understand what this song is trying to say?”Geffen had an unusual project in the works with Hybe, a Korean entertainment powerhouse. What began as a conversation about music distribution ended with Bang Si-hyuk, the chairman of Hybe, proposing that they build a group together. Hybe would bring elements of K-pop’s famously rigorous training and development program — the same system with which Hybe built BTS — to the United States for the first time, filling it with trainees from various regions, not just East Asia.One hurdle, though, was the Americans’ concern that the group could seem too factory-produced. “K-pop has a reputation of being manufactured,” Ms. An said. Even outside K-pop, the history of boy bands and girl groups reeks of “not being as organic and real,” said John Janick, the chief executive of Interscope Geffen A&M, pointing to glossy reality shows of the 2000s, like “Making the Band.”In order to make the group feel real, the executives said, the girls had to feel real. Their personalities couldn’t be forced; there would be no extreme archetypes, no Posh or Sporty or Baby Spice. They needed someone who could draw out the girls’ distinct backgrounds and abilities but also make them cohere visually as a group. They were convinced Mr. Leon could be that person.“In the entertainment business,” Mr. Janick said, “everybody wants to have taste, but not all people do.”‘A Curious Mind’Instead of going to fashion school, Mr. Leon likes to say, he worked at the Gap for 10 years.At 14, he was hired at a store in West Covina, Calif., and learned he had a skill for designing windows. He continued working on visual displays for Gap while attending the University of California, Berkeley. After graduating in 1997, he accepted a corporate job with Old Navy in San Francisco.In 2000, Mr. Leon left for New York, working at Burberry as the director of visual merchandising. Mr. Leon called Lara one of the most “fashion savvy” of the group.Elizabeth Weinberg for The New York TimesA selection of shoes. Some trainees were more confident performing in heels than others.Elizabeth Weinberg for The New York TimesIn 2002, he founded Opening Ceremony with Carol Lim, a college friend.“We have a similar approach to life,” said Ms. Lim, who was the business-minded chief executive to Mr. Leon’s creative director. “A curious mind,” she called him.A decade later, having cultivated a Midas-touch reputation for coolness, the duo became design directors at Kenzo, a LVMH-owned brand in Paris.At Kenzo, Mr. Leon took a particular interest in marketing visuals. Mr. Bang, the Hybe chairman, called a 2016 fragrance advertisement starring a frenetic dancing Margaret Qualley, directed by Spike Jonze, one of his “favorite fashion artworks.”Mr. Leon and Ms. Lim left Kenzo in 2019, then sold Opening Ceremony and closed its stores in 2020, moving to the same neighborhood in Los Angeles to raise their families.Around this time, Mr. Leon said he had an epiphany: Even if he was “good” at it, he didn’t have to keep working in fashion. “I was able to create a feeling, and a feeling can transfer,” he said. “I decided to open up my world a bit.”Sometimes Mr. Leon still designs clothes; recently he got a call from the choreographer Justin Peck about creating costumes for a spring performance of the New York City Ballet. But what appeals to him now is making things not for runways but for culture. For example, when Heidi Bivens, the costume designer for “Euphoria,” was working on the teen drama’s first season, she sourced several outfits from Opening Ceremony. The “‘Euphoria’ effect” became a phenomenon, inspiring trends in fashion and beauty.The label hoped that given Mr. Leon’s experience raising daughters, he would be sensitive in guiding the young women, here with Megan, through the competition.Elizabeth Weinberg for The New York Times“I went to them, and I said, ‘For Season 2, let’s design this from scratch, so everything you see on ‘Euphoria’ is something we’ve never seen before,’” Mr. Leon said. Consumers could then directly buy the clothes they saw onscreen.That pitch didn’t work out, but it’s an idea Mr. Leon still wants to explore. .‘Trust Me’In November, Mr. Leon showed me a video of his twin daughters at their 10th birthday sleepover. In matching pajamas, the girls recreated choreography from a “Dream Academy” mission. (Missions were essentially live music videos in which the trainees’ singing and dancing skills were tested.) Five of the trainees had participated in a rump-shaking cover of “Buttons” by the Pussycat Dolls.The twins had become invested in who would win the competition. So had fans around the world, some of whom paid for billboards in an effort to drum up votes for their favorites, like Sophia (20, Filipina) and Manon (21, Swiss-Ghanaian).Still, during the 12 weeks that the competition unfolded on YouTube, “Dream Academy” did not exactly become an international phenomenon. Just three of the trainees’ 15 missions cracked more than one million views — somewhat underwhelming by K-pop viewership standards.Next year, around the time the six winners will release music under their new name, Katseye, the project has another chance to break through. In summer 2024, Netflix will release a documentary series about the competition by Nadia Hallgren, who directed the Michelle Obama documentary “Becoming.” This may be the ideal format for capturing the drama, major and minor, of the process.When the 20 contestants were introduced in August, Mr. Leon dressed them for a group photo in matching gray schoolgirl uniforms.HYBE x Geffen RecordsThe six winning members of Katseye come from the United States, South Korea, the Philippines and Switzerland: Daniela, Yoonchae, Lara, Sophia, Manon and Megan.Kanya IwanaWithin just an hour on set, I watched a trainee in a silver paillette minidress with tendinitis in her knees fight back tears, take after take, while filming a video for an original song called “Dirty Water.” I watched another in a tube top and reflective wide-leg pants be told to exert better control over her hair flipping.I also watched the adults in the room engage in a delicate dance of evaluating, correcting and handling these young women, while trying to be sensitive to the fact that they were young women. (The youngest was 15.)“Tell the girls it’s us, it’s not them,” the director of one music video instructed an assistant during a technical delay.In hiring Mr. Leon for the project, Ms. An hoped his experience raising two girls would help in this regard. His first self-appointed task was interviewing each contestant individually before making any decisions on their new looks.“I wanted to look in their eyes,” Mr. Leon said. “I wanted to ask them the hard questions about their upbringing.”He told the trainees who came in wearing heavy makeup to take it off. “I want you to look gorgeous and beautiful, and I want you to be yourself,” Mr. Leon recalled saying.“I think it’s hard for people to see themselves,” Mr. Leon continued. “You need somebody to tell you that you look amazing without much.”To assist in the makeovers, he brought in stylists who worked on the “The Idol” — an HBO show about the relationship between a pop star and a cult leader. He brought in the hairstylist to Bella Hadid.To the 14 trainees who didn’t make the final group, he seemed to want to send a message: “I did the best thing I could for you. And you have to trust me.” More

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      Jung Kook, BTS and English Language K-Pop

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      Subscribe to Popcast!Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Amazon MusicA few weeks ago, Jung Kook — a member of the world-beating K-pop group BTS — released his solo debut album, “Golden,” a sleek affair notable for high-profile collaborators on its tracks and behind the scenes, as well as for the fact that it’s sung fully in English.That’s a logical extension of the shift undertaken by BTS beginning in the late 2010s and into the early 2020s, when it became the biggest pop act in the world, and focused its energies on the American marketplace. But it also is part of a longer story about how K-pop has been expanding its global reach, which has in turn altered the priorities of some of its biggest stars and record labels.On this week’s Popcast, a conversation about K-pop’s long march to American awareness and embrace, the earlier acts that began making inroads with American pop audiences, and whether there’s a point at which K-pop delivered fully in English ceases to be K-pop at all.Guest:Kara, host of the Idol Cast PodcastConnect With Popcast. Become a part of the Popcast community: Join the show’s Facebook group and Discord channel. We want to hear from you! Tune in, and tell us what you think at popcast@nytimes.com. Follow our host, Jon Caramanica, on Twitter: @joncaramanica. More

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      Stray Kids Score Another No. 1 With ‘Rock-Star’

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      The K-pop group’s mini album opens atop the Billboard 200, bumping Taylor Swift’s remake of “1989” to second place.Stray Kids, the eight-piece K-pop group that was formed on a South Korean reality TV show, has scored its fourth No. 1 in two years on Billboard’s album chart, bumping Taylor Swift to No. 2 after two blockbuster weeks at the top.“Rock-Star,” an eight-track mini album — including two versions of a song called “Lalalala” — becomes Stray Kids’ latest No. 1, selling 213,000 copies in the United States, mostly on CD, and racking up a modest 16 million streams, according to the tracking service Luminate. It was available to American fans in 11 collectible CD editions, with variant packaging and goodies inside like posters, stickers and a photo book.After striking a deal in the United States in 2022 with Republic Records — also the label for Swift, Morgan Wallen, Drake and other stars — the group landed two albums at No. 1 that year (“Oddinary” and “Maxident”), and another one this summer (“5-Star”).Swift’s “1989 (Taylor’s Version),” her latest rerecording, falls to No. 2, while the gritty singer-songwriter Chris Stapleton opens at No. 3 with “Higher,” which draws from the sound of classic Memphis soul. Drake’s “For All the Dogs” is No. 4 and Wallen’s “One Thing at a Time” is No. 5. More

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      Taylor Swift’s ’1989 (Taylor’s Version)’ Repeats at No. 1

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      Jung Kook of BTS’s solo album “Golden” debuts at No. 2 in another dominant week on the charts for Taylor Swift.Taylor Swift holds the top of the Billboard 200 album chart with her latest remake, while Jung Kook of BTS opens at No. 2 and a posthumous release by Jimmy Buffett lands in the Top 10.“1989 (Taylor’s Version),” a rerecording of Swift’s nine-year-old LP, stays at No. 1 for a second time after a huge debut, when the new edition topped the opening-week sales of the original. In its second week out, the remade “1989” had the equivalent of 245,000 sales in the United States, including 160 million streams and 122,000 copies sold as a complete package, according to data from the tracking service Luminate.Jung Kook, the latest member of the K-pop kings BTS to release a solo album during the group’s hiatus, starts at No. 2 with “Golden,” which notched nearly 42 million streams and sold 128,500 copies as a complete album, mostly on CD. Jung Kook — whose name is also sometimes spelled Jungkook — had a No. 1 single this summer with “Seven,” featuring the rapper Latto.Buffett, the “Margaritaville” singer who died of skin cancer in September at age 76, opens at No. 6 with “Equal Strain on All Parts,” which Buffett recorded this year and completed before his death. Featuring guest spots by Emmylou Harris, Angélique Kidjo and others — Paul McCartney plays bass on one song — “Equal Strain” arrived with 51,000 sales.Also this week, Drake’s “For All the Dogs” is No. 3, Morgan Wallen’s “One Thing at a Time” is No. 4 and Bad Bunny’s “Nadie Sabe Lo Que Va a Pasar Mañana” is No. 5. More

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      9 Songs That Will Make You Say ‘Yeah!’

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      Usher is headlining the Super Bowl halftime show, inspiring a playlist of fantastic “yeah” tracks.Usher said “Yeah!” to the Super Bowl halftime show.Scott Roth/Invision, via Associated PressDear listeners,On Sunday, the N.F.L., Roc Nation and Apple Music announced that Usher will headline the 2024 Super Bowl halftime show. Only one reaction will suffice: “Yeah!”Such was the refrain heard everywhere in 2004, when the singer’s enthusiastically titled club banger “Yeah!” topped the Billboard Hot 100 for a whopping 12 weeks (only to be dethroned by “Burn,” the next single from his blockbuster album “Confessions”). Slick, strobe-lit and infectious, the smash featured a dexterous guest verse from Ludacris and production and assorted yeah!s and OK!s from Lil Jon. “Yeah!” remains irresistible — and among the most successful homages to one of pop music’s trustiest syllables.The word “yeah” — or, even more emphatically, “yeah!” — is so entwined with the history of modern pop that when the critic Bob Stanley published a 2014 book charting “the story of pop music from Bill Haley to Beyoncé,” he titled it “Yeah! Yeah! Yeah!” Stanley was probably referencing the specific yeah!s that punctuate the iconic chorus of the Beatles’ “She Loves You,” but the phrase also captures something quintessential about the exuberance of popular music.“Yeah” is slangier, more irreverent and often more musical than “yes,” and it bypasses that pesky hissing sound, for one thing. “Yeah” is also younger than its stuffier counterpart “yea” (as in the opposite of “nay”); its earliest citation in the Oxford English Dictionary is from 1905 — not too long before the popularization of recorded music, incidentally. “Yeah” is both question (“yeah?”) and answer (“yeah!”). “Yeah!” can be used in a song as a vehicle for both percussion and melody, an easy call for audience participation or an ecstatic place holder for those moments when more complex language just won’t suffice.Am I suggesting that this glorious word is worthy of its own playlist? Oh, yeah!With Usher, Lil Jon and Ludacris as my inspiration (and with all due respect to the Yeah Yeah Yeahs), I have chosen to limit today’s playlist to songs with “yeah” in the title, and specifically songs that revolve in some way around that particular lyric. This still left me with an eclectic collection to pull from, including songs from Daft Punk, Blackpink, LCD Soundsystem and the Pogues.Does this playlist also include a certain zany theme song from a certain 1980s teen comedy about playing hooky and hanging out with Connor from “Succession”? I think you know the word I’d use to answer that question.Listen along on Spotify while you read.1. Usher featuring Lil Jon and Ludacris: “Yeah!”What van Gogh is to sunflowers, Lil Jon is to yeah!s. I cannot imagine — and do not even want to imagine — this song if he had not produced it and blessed it with his gravelly, prodigious exclamations. (Listen on YouTube)2. Daft Punk: “Oh Yeah”Perhaps the greatest musical qualifier of “yeah”: “Oh.” Gently ups the ante but doesn’t take too much attention from our prized word. (That attention-seeking “ooooh” is another story.) Daft Punk certainly knows how to spin that titular refrain into mind-numbing bliss on this hypnotic, bassy track from the duo’s 1997 debut, “Homework.” (Listen on YouTube)3. The Pogues: “Yeah, Yeah, Yeah, Yeah, Yeah”Five yeahs in a song title? These guys mean business. This 1989 single finds the English rockers the Pogues at their most jubilant, leading the way toward a fist-pumping, shout-along chorus. It also features a midsong saxophone solo, which is basically the nonverbal sonic equivalent of “yeah!” (Listen on YouTube)4. Pavement: “Baby Yeah (Live)”The phrase “baby, yeaaaaahhhhh” comes to hold an almost talismanic power in this Pavement B-side (a personal favorite), released only as a live cut on the deluxe reissue of the band’s 1992 debut album, “Slanted and Enchanted.” (Listen on YouTube)5. The Magnetic Fields: “Yeah! Oh, Yeah!”A (very) darkly funny duet between the Magnetic Fields’ Stephin Merritt and Claudia Gonson that relies upon the tension created by their contrasting vocal styles, “Yeah! Oh Yeah!” appeared on the group’s 1999 epic, “69 Love Songs.” (Listen on YouTube)6. Yolanda Adams: “Yeah”“Yeah” becomes a spiritual affirmation on this uplifting song from the gospel singer Yolanda Adams’s 1999 album, “Mountain High … Valley Low.” (Listen on YouTube)7. Blackpink: “Yeah Yeah Yeah”“Yeah” also transcends language barriers, as the K-pop girl group Blackpink remind us on this track from the 2022 album “Born Pink.” Most of the lyrics are sung in Korean, but the quartet deliver that catchy chorus in the universal language of “yeah.” (Listen on YouTube)8. Yello: “Oh Yeah”An early exploration of pitch-shifted vocals, the Swiss electronic group Yello’s absurdist “Oh Yeah” was used heavily, and memorably, in the 1986 comedy “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.” Yello’s Boris Blank once recalled that the group’s vocalist Dieter Meier initially came up with more lyrics, but Blank told him that would make the song “too complicated.” Said Blank, “I had the idea of just this guy, a fat little monster sits there very relaxed and says, ‘Oh yeah, oh yeah.’” Sure! (Listen on YouTube)9. LCD Soundsystem: “Yeah (Crass Version)”Our grand finale is a nine-minute extravaganza of yeah (extravaganz-yeah?) from LCD Soundsystem. By the end of this mesmerizing 2004 single, on which James Murphy and company chant the titular word ad infinitum, “yeah” has transcended language, and maybe even music itself, to become a state of mind. (Listen on YouTube)Yeah, yeah,LindsayThe Amplifier PlaylistListen on Spotify. We update this playlist with each new newsletter.“9 Songs That Will Make You Say ‘Yeah!’” track listTrack 1: Usher featuring Lil Jon and Ludacris, “Yeah!”Track 2: Daft Punk, “Oh Yeah”Track 3: The Pogues, “Yeah, Yeah, Yeah, Yeah, Yeah”Track 4: Pavement, “Baby Yeah (Live)”Track 5: The Magnetic Fields, “Yeah! Oh, Yeah!”Track 6: Yolanda Adams, “Yeah”Track 7: Blackpink, “Yeah Yeah Yeah”Track 8: Yello, “Oh Yeah”Track 9: LCD Soundsystem, “Yeah (Crass Version)”Bonus Tracks“Baby yeah: a seductive and sentimental call for human connection.” I thought I was alone in my obsession with that live recording of Pavement’s “Baby Yeah” until I read this beautiful, heart-wrenching n+1 essay by Anthony Veasna So.And, on a much lighter note: Watch the “CSI: Miami” star David Caruso, compelled by the power of Roger Daltrey’s “Yeah!” to deliver an endless string of mic-dropping one-liners. This video has 7.5 million views, and I believe that over the past decade or so I have been responsible for at least two million of them. More

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      QI.X, a Queer K-Pop Group, Wants to Change South Korea

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      In conservative South Korea, few L.G.B.T.Q. entertainers have ever come out. The young members of QI.X don’t see the point of staying in.At a bar in Euljiro, one of Seoul’s up-and-coming hip neighborhoods, two voices intertwined in a duet. One was high-pitched, the other an octave lower.But there was only one singer, a 27-year-old named jiGook. The other voice was a recording made years ago, before he began his transition and hormone therapy deepened his voice.“I don’t want to forget about my old self,” he told the 50 or so people at the performance, a fund-raiser for a group that supports young L.G.B.T.Q. Koreans. “I love myself before I started hormone therapy, and I love myself as who I am now.”jiGook performing at a bar in the Euljiro district of Seoul.Chang W. Lee/The New York TimesLike many other South Korean singers, jiGook, who considers himself gender fluid, transmale and nonbinary, wants to be a K-pop star. So do Prin and SEN, his bandmates in QI.X, a fledgling group that has released two singles.What makes them unusual is that they are proudly out — in their music, their relationship with their fans and their social activism. They call themselves one of the first openly queer, transgender K-pop acts, and their mission has as much to do with changing South Korea’s still-conservative society as with making music.In the group’s name — pronounced by spelling out the letters — Q stands for queer, I for idol and X for limitless possibilities. Park Ji-yeon, the K-pop producer who started QI.X, says it is “tearing down the heteronormative walls of society.”Very few K-pop artists, or South Korean entertainers in general, have ever been open about being lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender or queer. Though the country has become somewhat more accepting of sexual diversity, homophobia is still prevalent, and there are no legal protections against discrimination.The bandmates saying goodbye after a livestreaming session in Seoul. “Someday, we want to be on everyone’s streaming playlist,” Prin said.For entertainers, coming out is seen as a potential career killer, said Cha Woo-jin, a music critic in Seoul. That applies even to K-pop, despite its young, increasingly international fan base and its occasional flirtation with androgyny and same-sex attraction.“K-pop fans seem to accept the queer community and imagery so long as their favorite stars don’t come out explicitly,” Mr. Cha said.That’s not a compromise that QI.X is willing to make.The bandmates’ social media accounts, which promote their causes along with their music, are up front about who they are. So are their singles, “Lights Up” (“The hidden colors in you / I see all the colors in you”) and “Walk & Shine,” which Mx. Park says “celebrates the lives and joy of minorities.”“Someday, we want to be on everyone’s streaming playlist,” said Prin, 22.SEN dancing before the start of a recording session in Seoul for Q Planet, an online show, as jiGook and QI.X’s producer, Park Ji-yeon, watched. As a producer, Mx. Park, 37, who identifies as queer and nonbinary, has worked on hits for well-known K-pop acts like GOT7 and Monsta X. But she wanted to make music that spoke directly to people like her, with “an artist who could encapsulate our lives, love, friendships and farewells.”She met some of the QI.X members through a K-pop music class she started in 2019, designed with queer performers in mind. (In other classes, she said, “It was assumed that female participants only wanted to learn girl-group songs and male participants only boy-group songs.”)SEN, 23, said that when Mx. Park asked her to join QI.X, “it was as if a genie in a bottle had come to me.”SEN had been a dancer and a choreographer for several K-pop management agencies, including BTS’s agency, Big Hit Entertainment, now known as HYBE. The people she worked with knew she was queer, and they were welcoming.Mx. Park, leaning against the mirror, with SEN and other QI.X members during a rehearsal in June. In the red shirt is Maek, an original member who has since taken a break from the group. But whenever she auditioned to join an idol group, she said, she “never fit the bill for what they wanted.” People would say she was too short or boyish, or comment about her cropped hair.That’s not an issue for QI.X, which doesn’t aspire to the immaculately styled look of the typical K-pop act (and, in any case, couldn’t afford the ensemble of stylists those groups have). Individuality, they say, is part of the point.QI.X often performs at fund-raisers, for L.G.B.T.Q. and other causes, and sees its music as inseparable from its activism. Maek, for instance, an original member who sang on both singles but is on hiatus from the group, works for the Seoul Disabled People’s Rights Film Festival and volunteers for a transgender rights organization.With no support from a management agency, Mx. Park and the group do everything themselves. They handle their own bookings and manage their social media presence, recording videos themselves to post on TikTok and Instagram.Many of the videos are shot at LesVos, an L.G.B.T.Q. bar in Seoul that often serves as QI.X’s studio and rehearsal hall. Myoung-woo YoonKim, 68, who has run LesVos since the late 1990s, grew up at a time when lesbians were practically invisible in South Korea. “I would often think, ‘Am I the only woman who loves women?” they said.Rehearsing at LesVos, an L.G.B.T.Q. bar in Seoul, as its manager, Myoung-woo YoonKim, and Mx. Park look on.Chang W. Lee/The New York TimesThe QI.X members adore Mx. YoonKim, whom they call hyung, a Korean word for older brother. During a recent video session at LesVos, after dozens of increasingly comical lip-syncing takes of “Walk & Shine,” Mx. YoonKim started to join in. Before long, everyone was bent over with laughter.To a casual observer of K-pop, it might seem surprising that so few of its artists are out. As Mr. Cha, the music critic, notes, L.G.B.T.Q. imagery has been known to surface in K-pop videos and in ads featuring its stars.Some critics see this phenomenon as “queerbaiting,” a cynical attempt to attract nonconformist fans — or to deploy gender-bending imagery because it’s seen as trendy — without actually identifying with them. To Mr. Cha, it suggests that K-pop has a substantial queer fan base, and that some artists might simply be expressing their identities to the extent they can.From left, SEN, Prin, Maek and jiGook livestreaming on YouTube in June. Many of QI.X’s fans live outside South Korea and follow the group online.Mr. Cha thinks the taboo against entertainers’ coming out reflects a general attitude toward pop culture in South Korea: “We pay for you, therefore don’t make us uncomfortable.” (Similar attitudes seem to prevail in Japan, where one pop idol recently made news by telling fans he was gay.)QI.X’s fans, who call themselves QTZ (a play on “cuties”), love the group for charging over that boundary. Many are overseas and follow the group online, leaving enthusiastic messages. “I’m so happy I can finally have an artist in the K-pop industry that I can relate to on a gender level, on a queer level,” one said in a video message to the group. “I’m so excited for you!”The band also gets hateful messages, which its members do their best to ignore. Prin, 22, is optimistic that attitudes in South Korea are changing. (Joining QI.X was Prin’s way of coming out as gender queer, but friends were much more surprised by the news that Prin was in an idol group.)The biggest show of QI.X’s career, so far, was in July at a Pride event, the Seoul Queer Culture Festival. In recent years, it had been held at Seoul Plaza, a major public square. But this year, the city denied organizers permission to hold it there, letting a Christian group use the space for a youth concert instead.QI.X onstage at the Seoul Queer Culture Festival in July.Activists saw that as discrimination, though the city denied it. Conservative Christians are a powerful force in South Korean politics, having lobbied successfully for years to block a bill that would prevent discrimination against gay, lesbian and transgender people. Organizers held the festival in Euljiro.For its set, QI.X had about 20 backup performers, some of whom were their friends (Mx. YoonKim was one of them). They had rehearsed only once together, on the festival stage that morning, because they hadn’t had the money to rent a big studio.Christian protesters were picketing the festival, some with signs that read “Homosexuality not human rights but SIN.” But fans were there, too. As QI.X sang “Lights Up” and “Walk & Shine,” hundreds crowded in front of the stage, many wearing headbands that were purple, the group’s color. There were Pride flags, and signs that read “We only see you QI.X.”A Pride parade was part of the festival. Hours later, the excitement still hadn’t faded for QI.X. “I felt alive for the first time in a while,” SEN said. More

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      Jason Aldean’s ‘Try That in a Small Town’ Hits No. 1

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      The country star’s song, now a culture war battleground, is his first all-genre chart topper. The K-pop group NewJeans’ new album edged out the “Barbie” soundtrack on the Billboard 200.Last week, Jason Aldean’s song “Try That in a Small Town,” which the country star portrays as a paean to neighborly values but critics have described as a call to racist vigilantism, opened at No. 2 on Billboard’s Hot 100 chart, after its music video became a culture war battleground.Now the song has ascended to the peak, becoming the first No. 1 single on Billboard’s all-genre singles chart in Aldean’s nearly two-decade career as a top Nashville hitmaker.Just two weeks ago, before the controversy began, the song was posting minimal numbers. But in its most recent week out, it garnered 31 million streams, sold 175,000 copies and reached a radio audience of nine million people in the United States, according to the tracking service Luminate.As the song has stirred debate, tweaks have been made to its music video, which early on was pulled without explanation by Country Music Television but remains available on YouTube. Last week, a new version appeared, six seconds shorter than the original and scrubbed of news clips showing Black Lives Matter protests in 2020.Aldean has denied that “Try That” is “a pro-lynching song,” or that race plays any part in the song’s lyrics. “These references are not only meritless, but dangerous,” he wrote on social media.On the album chart, the K-pop group NewJeans beat the “Barbie” soundtrack in a photo finish.“Get Up,” a six-track EP by NewJeans, a quintet that is part of the newest wave of K-pop acts, opens at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 with the equivalent of 126,500 sales in the United States, according to Luminate. “Barbie: The Album,” featuring Lizzo, Dua Lipa, Sam Smith, Billie Eilish and other artists, was credited with 126,000. (The service’s publicly reported figures are rounded.)The results were delayed by several days, with Billboard saying only that there was a “processing issue” in combing through the data.The breakdown of the two albums’ “equivalent” numbers — which are determined by comparing sales, streams and track downloads — illustrates the various ways music is consumed these days, and how different formats can affect the charts.“Get Up,” like many K-pop releases, came out in a variety of collectible CD packages. Of its 126,500 equivalents, 101,000 copies were sold as complete albums, with 99 percent of that on CD, according to Billboard; songs from it were also streamed 34 million times.“Barbie: The Album,” on the other hand, sold 53,000 copies as a complete package — 33,000 on vinyl — and had 94 million streams.The arrival of NewJeans and “Barbie” sent last week’s top album, Taylor Swift’s “Speak Now (Taylor’s Version),” to No. 4, while Morgan Wallen’s “One Thing at a Time” falls to No. 3, the first time in 21 weeks that it has dipped lower than second place. Also this week, “Génesis,” by the Mexican songwriter Peso Pluma, is No. 5. More

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      Stray Kids Reach No. 1 (Again) With CD Sales, Not Streams

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      An array of collectible CD packages sent the K-pop octet to the top of the Billboard 200, while new releases by Jelly Roll, Enhypen and Foo Fighters open in the Top 10.For 12 straight weeks recently, the country star Morgan Wallen dominated the Billboard album chart, but others are now breaking through. Last week, Taylor Swift returned to the top with deluxe versions of her latest album, “Midnights,” and this week the K-pop group Stray Kids scores its third No. 1 album in 15 months with “Five-Star.”A barrage of collectible CD releases — 18 in all — sent the eight-member Stray Kids to No. 1. “Five-Star,” with 12 tracks sung mostly in Korean, opens with the equivalent of 249,500 sales in the United States, 231,000 of those on CD, according to the tracking service Luminate.The album was also credited with nearly 20 million streams. To put that number in perspective, on last week’s singles chart Wallen had 33 million clicks for his No. 1 song “Last Night” — just one of the 36 tracks on his album, “One Thing at a Time,” which holds at No. 2 this week. (Swift’s “Midnights” falls four spots to No. 5.)The success of Wallen, Swift and Stray Kids is also notable in that all three share the same record label: Republic Records, a division of the giant Universal Music Group. Counting releases by those artists and another in February by the K-pop group Tomorrow X Together, Republic has now held the No. 1 spot for 15 of the 23 weeks of the year so far.A clutch of new releases are in the Top 10. In third place is “Whitsitt Chapel” by Jelly Roll, the face-tattooed rapper-turned-country singer who has become the toast of Nashville. Enhypen, another K-pop act, lands at No. 4 with “Dark Blood.”The soundtrack to “Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse,” by the star hip-hop producer Metro Boomin — with guest appearances by Offset, ASAP Rocky, Future, Lil Uzi Vert, Lil Wayne, 21 Savage and many others — opens at No. 7. And Foo Fighters’ “But Here We Are,” the band’s first since the death of its drummer Taylor Hawkins last year, starts at No. 8. More