What Purple Kiss, Lightsum and Cherry Bullet have in common and their perhaps shared fate as well?

I'll quote myself from an other thread :

I'll not talk about Lightsum and Cherry bullet cause i don't stan them but for Purple Kiss they lack" branding" and "Luck"

Its hard to break through in this industry. Especially since legendary groups aren't disbanding and making way for newer groups (not a bad thing, longevity is great). Groups find it harder to compete bc of this

firstly if you don't come from a big4 company you have less people checking you out

we always forget that we are part of the kpop fandom and that means we as fans generally check out songs from mid-tier newer groups even if they aren't from the big4 because someone might post it and we are informed by it

the GP does not have such indulgences

secondly unless you already have an established fandom who are willing to buy your albums/stream your music etc etc you are going to rely on the GP for support and greater recognition and unless you have a song that goes viral or something - there is very little the company or even the group can do to bolster that

Lightsum had an opportunity (they had a little bit of noise and some good debut album sales) but cube fumbled the ball with an absolute cluster fuck of the worst type of songs - boring mid tier songs. Not even bad like O.O where people talk about it, just plain boring.

Vanilla and Vivace.

They also rushed to market with way more people then required. They had a great core with the 3 from produce 48, Juhyeon who was known from the Unit, and Sangah was a great addition obviously. 5 members is a strong group.

Adding the other 3 was a waste. People have argued for Hina but since LS haven't even done any debut in JP then what's the point.

In essence, they fell into the EXACT same trap that groups like Pristin, Weki Meki, Gugudan ran into a few years prior - dilute your group with too many non-factors, and debuting with a mid-tier 'safe' song.

I mean it was evident on pre-debut, with the kind of mixed promo themes, the reveal of 8 instead of the expected 5-6. I saw people saying this sort of stuff before they even dropped Vanilla, and just louder once they released such a middling song. It's not like any of this was only visible in hindsight, it was all very visible to people as it was unfolding.

After that, it was done. Like game over. It's almost impossible to pull yourself out of being written off as a group like that after debut, and Cube certainly don't plan to spend the money on promotional activities, better thematic promo, or songs, to pull themselves outta that category.

Cube have more or less done it again with Nowadays quite frankly. What type of song is Oowee? Cube's only win in the last several years has been Miyeon's Drive. That was their only decent choice of a song.

The last Pentagon lead single sucked. LS songs have been far too mediocre. OoWee is just plain mid. I could go on but you get the point.

Lightsum have literally one of the strongest dance lineups for 4th gen. Shame it'll always go completely under-the-radar.

As bartkun said. Visuals my friend, visuals. All their seniors have in common is that they all had visuals that attracted stans. And yes, even Mamamoo, Hwasa is not your typical pretty girl but she's still very attractive in her own way, she raises eyebrows.

All the junior groups lacked that.

Lightsum is a bit different story tho. Their entire debut and existence is a mess. Cube literally has no idea what to do with them.

Quote from Disevidence

After that, it was done. Like game over. It's almost impossible to pull yourself out of being written off as a group like that after debut, and Cube certainly don't plan to spend the money on promotional activities, better thematic promo, or songs, to pull themselves outta that category.

I really thought after the two members were gone and they went on a hiatus for a while that Cube is going to legit redebut them. Like a complete relaunch with different concept and etc. And then after 9 month they announced a Lightsum comeback. I was shocked.

Also Cube seem to have lost the composer network and connections since they've got used to depend on selfcomposing with Btob, Pentagon and Gidle. During Beast and 4minute early years they worked with variety of local and foreign composers.

You can try to watch them live

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BEG4DAWIN

Apr 11th 2024

As for Purple Kiss, I was quite hyped before they debuted. I like Mamamoo, so this seemed like a sure instant-stan situation for me.

I remember they kept changing the debut time and then did some pre-release stuff. Don't know about others, but pre-release stuff tends to delute the hype I have for a comeback. I just want a comeback to splash and then if they have 10 other MVs for the other songs, I'm fine. What made it worse, none of the songs were ones I liked. After that, I didn't bother anymore. So, they went from being the number one group I was most hyped for that year, to losing interest completely within one comeback.

Regarding Lightsum: I think (G)I-dle is actually an outlier. Like BP, they have members that are easily distinguished at a glance. They're not a bunch of generic pretty girls that you first need to get to know before you start caring and seeing the differences. Of course, they have Soyeon, who not only is a great talent but was never afraid to use this talent and probably only chose Cube because they let her.

Cherry Bullet-AOA: AOA did something quite different in 2nd gen. To me CB is just one of those nice but ultimately not very outstanding groups with lots of members that debuted around the same time. It doesn't help that quite a few left by now either. After Twice, there haven't been large girl groups that have been very successful. I think 4-6 is now the amount that do best. The reason for this is that global audiences are not used to large groups at all. People first hearing about BTS think that 7 is an extreme amount, so having groups of like 9-10 members is mindboggling to them. They seem to want 4-6 and otherwise it becomes too much for them.

So, I think there are all different reasons why they're not as successful.

Of course, there are some reasons they share as well, like for instance: no visual that went viral, like another user mentioned.

The core is probably that their big sister groups were outliers for some reason. So the big sister groups are the anomaly, not the younger sister groups that are following the path many do that are on the edge of nugudom and mid-tier.

Quote from Fansamy

Of course, they have Soyeon, who not only is a great talent but was never afraid to use this talent and probably only chose Cube because they let her.

Cube was the only agency that accepted her.

Soyeon was rejected from over 30 auditions for being a trainee. For her looks. Despite her generational talent.

Says it all about most of the kpop labels in Korea, really. Cube may have many many problems but they're routinely one of the two (the other being RBW) who put up talent every time instead of just visuals.

BtoB were famously an 'ugly' group too.

Quote from icyruios

Did not capitalise on the Produce Hype well enoug

Obviously they aren't going to become like IVE or LSFM, but Everglow for instance is way more well known at least internationally

I went to both the Purple Kiss and Everglow concerts in my city, they had about the same number of fans, 700+

But, Everglow has done Europe, PK has not, yet.

Edit:, never mind, Everglow had over 900, while PK sold out the venue with a capacity of 700.

Another group that is not in the same exact situation that OP described, but have also struggled to get recognition and are in a bit of a limbo spot, not necessarily nugu, but not breaking thru.

Rocket Punch - WOOLIM Entertainment

Woolim was a medium size label that was absorbed into SM, but operates independently, they had Lovelyz, who never made it big, but had more success than what rocket punch is having. They also had boy groups like infinite and golden child before Rocket punch debuted.

I was going to also add Secret number - VINE Entertainment; But Vine was a relative small company and their prior GG only lasted a year, SheFla (2018-2019).