They were wearing costumes and Lia looks like she was trying to be the Natalie Portman character in the movie the Professional.
These results look like sajaegi, Babymonster having a huge fandom and popularity, sold the same amount against a group that is only played in shopping centers. So I would not believe in the reliability of these indicators.
In general, Illit's success is so inorganic that I don't believe at all that they have popularity comparable to their positions in the charts. Since their debut, this group has been involved in Spotify boosts, and now they are simply taking advantage of the results.
You are confusing the timeline.
Babymonster debuted in November 2023 to a digital single that was not well received and missing a popular member. It was considered a low effort BP ripoff that was years out of style.
ILLIT debuted with a huge bop that was very well liked, so its debut sales were very good.
Babymonster first album and single Sheesh were awesome and well liked. But many fans in Korea took a wait and see approach, but they still had very good sales of 400,000 albums the first week. Remember that BM had a huge SEA fanbase, but those fans don't buy albums.
NOW the Babymonster fanbase is growing in SK and getting a lot stronger, as they realize this is a very talented and appealing group with staying power. They are killing it in the live shows and variety. ILLIT is stuck in a turf war with New Jeans and they are likely going to get hurt from further.
Babymonster has been destroying ILLIT on fan votes for the music shows, but ILLIT's Magnetic is a killer bop and just killing it on streaming. It is a very much a viral and mainstream, GP friendly hit. There is no denying it. But it isn't easy to replicate them and Lucky Girl Syndrome, a pretty good song, isn't charting at all.
The next album for Babymonster is likely to have a much higher first week sales than ILLIT. If ILLIT can still produce bops, they can build a good fanbase, but it seems just much more casual fans than Babymonster. But ILLIT just doesn't have the talent to probably keep on producing hits over and over. They are cute as hell and will play well in the Japanese hand shake market, but if they produce duds like STAYC does once in a while, they will fade in popularity like GFriend or Itzy did after coming out with a bunch of meh albums after their first few huge hits.
Anyways, that history makes that ILLIT had better debut sales plausible because of the timing and failure of Batter Up. But that advantage is pretty much gone with the knife that MHJ stuck in ILLIT and BM's talent and appeal.
Yunjin isn't really being pushed as a soloist. Pledis basically fucked her over as a teen trainee, cut her and kicked her out. She was still a Hanlim student and basically had to move back the USA to finish high school and gave up on being an idol. Went to college, then Source asked her back. But it wasn't like a few weeks later, it was a long time later. She didn't want to be fucked over again like a 16 year old. One of her demands was that she gets to write songs and release them as a solo. A lot of them of dime a dozen folky stuff you see at every coffee house in the USA. But HYBE agreed to get her back, probably against their wishes if they had a choice as that kind of music doesn't sell.
A lot of LSF songs are really dance focused, so the lyrics she adds to some of them aren't particularly crucial or special. But for western fans, being a song writer for a pop act adds credibility over more plastic and disposable pop stars.
IVE is going to be fine. They sing with at least a 50% volume vocal backing track. Maybe Yujin and Liz will do a lower one like 30% volume, but since this is an outdoor festival they will probably do 50%. Saw them on tour, they sounded fine and didn't sound lipsynced like the groups that blast the vocal backing track to the point even if they shouted she couldn't hear them over a vocal backing track like Everglow.
The issue with LSF at Coachella is they used a live band and tried to sing without a vocal backing track. It is super hard to do and sound stable and consistent while doing choreo, and even harder if you are primarily a dancer not a trained vocalist. In the rock world, they don't use vocal backing tracks at all and the singers would like frogs croaking half the times.
Lollopolooza let New Jeans use a vocal backing track and they are going to let IVE and VCHA do it as well. This isn't going to be LSF at Coachella part 2.
I don't think Natty or Haneul are fluent. KIOF was on the DIVE Studios podcast last year. It was the Eric Nam Daebok Show that is typical an interview done in English. Eric ask the girls questions and had to translate them into Korean for Natty and Haneul. They didn't even attempt to answer in English, not even a little bit, for any question in a nearly 1 hour interview. Compare that to Yuqi and Minnie that did the entire interview in English while struggling with some words and pronunciation here and there.
I don't doubt that they can read English, read English aloud when scripted, sing in English, say common phrases, and understand a bit of it, but they clearly cannot freely talk unscripted in English.
