Anton Holmes

I haven’t been to Araneta Coliseum to watch anything since 2016. My last visit to the area was a few months before it closed its doors because of the pandemic, when I was told by an attendant that a popular Korean singer was holding a concert. She apparently even ate at the Café Adriatico nearby. I had yet to be sucked into the world of Hallyu then; it wasn’t until a couple of months later that I realized I was within walking distance of IU and passed up on watching her concert.

K-pop music is chronicled in terms of “generations,” a way of categorizing groups in terms of the target age range or the overarching message they’d like to convey. For Korean entertainment agency JYP Entertainment, its girl group generations span from the Wonder Girls (“Nobody”), Twice (“What is Love”), and now the five-piece Itzy (stylized as ITZY), who debuted with the ultra-confident track “Dalla Dalla” in 2019. Their first full-length studio album “Crazy Love” came out in Sept.

As far as K-pop is concerned, idols have always had superhuman abilities — the power to transcend language and become a global force with followings in the millions. But in the last few years, entertainment company SM Entertainment has seen the virtual world as a new frontier to conquer, and fourth generation girl group Aespa (stylized as aespa) is proof of this.