Probably the most virulent song of KPop history is Through the Night, which was ranked #7 in the 2022 Gallup report, 5 years after its release.
Few KPop songs last for 5 years, and frankly speaking, although Spring Day is still in Melon 100, it is because of Armies still supporting it and the K-O-R-E-A-N-S still follow this extremely harmful song to this days 5 years later.
Twice used its 2 most powerful songs in 2016.
I have said a few times that Very*3, which was given to IOI, should have been given to Twice and TT used on early 2017. If TT was used against Lee Jieun, she would have a harder time beating Twice and returning back to the top tier.
But Knock Knock was a weaker copy of its earlier hits, which did not mark a last impression among the K-O-R-E-A-N-S.
Thanks to Laboum, IU's attempt to seize KPop in the spring of 2017 was stopped; it is really interesting that Laboum was more effective against IU than all the might of Twice. A feat only comparable to Laboum back then is IU wresting K-O-R-E-A from BTS in late 2021, but that's another story.
Twice, by that time the top 3gen act (at that time EXO, BTS and Twice were neck and neck) could not dislodge IU for the song of the year competition, and it never beat the Senior Singer again.
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It is rumored that NewJeans has several s ongs in its arsenal and they are only released as time goes on.
Twice used their two hit songs to seize the top, and by the time Lee JIeun challenged them, it had no songs to counter the ambitions of the Senior Singer.
I don't know what groups are stashing what songs in their cache to be used when the time comes, but if they don't have enough songs strong enough to overcome the Senior Singer, who can always release a digital whenever she feels like, Lee Jieun will break their hopes and wills.
The power of Melon has been weakened, which means Lee Jieun cannot use Melon as a last resort, but the singer who has been so detrimental for the advance of KPop still has enough power to derail at least one 4th Generation act, and given that she watched IVE (she was watching IVE carefully when Yoona told her to move ; IVE owes a favor to Yoona) and NewJeans carefully in the movie award show, she will probably attack one of them within 2023.
The companies should have taken a note of that and prepare one hidden song to use against the Senior Singer, in case the Senior Singer does something like Strawberry Moon last year, the song which probably broke aespa's back and put herself as Korea's boss and BTS' chief rival.
