Unless Mystic Story really messes up Billlie will definitely not flop, the talent and the way they are being marketed is pretty good and I would say they'll become mid-tier at least.
They lost it ever since they became an SM subsidary back in 2013.
They haven't been anymore for some years though.
I don't think any aespa title track is overrated because I really like them all but Girls is great.
Not a fan of this type of promo at all, I just dislike these type of challenges... The only thing about them that I liked was hearing a snippet of a new b-side (Faster) because I do not get the point of hearing a lot of remixes of old songs for the promotion of a new album, it just comes off as cheap imo. The intro and outro are fine at least. Hopefully the new promo like the mood samples and the highlight medley is better!
Weird of you to say something positive about NCT OP 
Am I in an alternate reality?
I like this song even though the flute part bothers me.
That's a whistle lol
Producers come and go but Kenzie and YYJ aren't going anywhere, they may participate on other works but as long as they keep producing music they'll be releasing songs for SM groups, they are the ones who have shaped SM's sound for not just years but decades.
In fact, SM doesn't have that many "in house producers", most of their songs are taken by demos sent by many different ones from all around the world, and although they have some producers they often contact with like Moonshine, Adrian McKinnon, LDN Noise and now DemJointz the amount of producers they have worked with is insane. They even had Darkchild produce NCT 127's Favorite lol.
You can't have too many ideas with writing. Writing's a one man job, a few men sometimes. You can't put 10ish people in a room and say "okay, write lyrics," cause that's not how it works. Same goes for production, you can't have too many ideas.
I do think songs can have added embellishments though. Yoo young Jin did a great job with the rework of Next Level, lyrics and arrangement wise.
I understand this point of view from a writing perspective but I disagree with the production. Songs with many producers with different ideas can make each section of a song amazing, because different producers have different strengths and specialties.
In fact, the mix of genres on a song has been one of K-Pop's trademarks for a long time, because otherwise it would be like listening to an average western radio pop song, which in my opinion completely misses the point and would make the industry much more dull. A song can have 10 producers and if every section is well done, the transitions are clean and the song has a personality to it, I will like it.
I honestly think K-pop fandoms nowadays are even more toxic. Almost everyone on any SNS is a music critic, a dance analyzer, a vocal and rapping expert, and they are constantly shady to groups and idols they don't like. And the amount of nitpicking about everything, cancelations, etc is unbearable.
I like it 
The bridge and the dance slap
tbh I dislike the whole akb48 system, I feel like it's designed more for the profit of the company than the idols cuz it makes the idols more disposable. you literally have a fight between the members of who gets the most screen time, this leads to fighting within the fandom as well.
Not sure if this is the case with NCT though, I don't know them.
That would be a pretty long convo about what makes idols disposable and all. It's true that being part of a big brand makes the members seem less "unique" and more disposable, but because these fixed units almost work as pretty much any other group (and since most of the time the units work separated), it's not as easily replaceable as you could think. The units so far have from 7 to 9 members and every one of them have their own fandom. Make a member leave without reason from any unit and I can assure you the backlash would be as heavy as any other big boygroup.
That's why NCT Dream's concept of graduation didn't work out and some of SM's efforts of "ranking" the members have been boycotted. The korean and international market for K-Pop doesn't work like J-Pop and fans empathizing with the members is too much of a thing to make something like AKB happen.
NCT's concept take different things from different J-Pop groups but they are their own thing pretty much.
Good god. What connects them all? Like, do they have the same members or sth?
They interact and support each other a lot and their style of music, while different, definitely has the "NCT feel" to it. They also share some members (Mark and Haechan are both on 127 and Dream), and through projects like NCT 2020 (yearly albums NCT has done where all members participate) they use NCT U with many different configurations of members.
For example: one of the most popular songs of NCT U is 'Make A Wish'. The members that participated on that song were:
- Taeyong, Doyoung, Jaehyun (NCT 127)
- Shotaro (a new member who's still not on a fixed unit)
On that same NCT 2020 album, NCT U had another title track with '90's Love'. On this song the members were:
- Mark, Haechan (127/Dream)
- Jeno (Dream)
- Ten, Yangyang, WinWin (WayV)
- Sungchan (like Shotaro, a new member at the time that's still not on a fixed unit)
How many of them are there?
NCT units? 4
- NCT U. Members rotate depending on the song. Kind of like a "special edition" of NCT
- NCT 127. The main korean unit that has 9 members.
- NCT Dream. The youngest of NCT that were supposed to "graduate" (leave the unit) once they reached a certain age. SM scrapped that idea and now they are a normal group of 7 members.
- WayV. The chinese unit, they have 7 members so far.
More members have been introduced lately so they are surely debuting another unit soon.
of course not? so you're saying even excluding the big4/former survival show groups last year which year wins then?
(assuming you have data for 2021 up to the end of August) since by just an eye check they look pretty similar
not wrong there mate - lightsum certainly failed to meet expectations - I had high hopes for them as well
Oh I thought your question was about if the numbers this year would have been similar if those ggs debuting under big companies would have done so on not so big ones. It's true that if you compare them excluding those big 4/produce groups the years are pretty similar, it's just crazy to me how many big ggs debuts have happened on a short amount of time. Specially seeing how for comparison on the last 2 years the bgs debuting so far have not made themselves that much of a name (also because yes, no big 4/Produce bgs have debuted lately)
well if one were to exclude the groups from big4/former survival show groups
would the numbers look similar?
Of course not, it's just crazy how big companies decided to debut girlgroups this year. Last year Cube (while not being a big big company) debuted Lightsum and I think it's fair to say they are underperforming too.
