Can KATSEYE make ‘Gnarly’ happen with their new single?

“Gnarly” starts out with member Yoonchae suggesting how, “They could describe everything with one single word.” Ear-splitting 808s alternating between thumping and metallic chime in, and the girls begin laying out an incoherent list of items and ideas that may serve to illustrate that very point. Ranging from boba tea, to Tesla, to “this song” itself, “everything’s gnarly,” which of course would imply that “gnarly” has no concrete sentiment attached to it in KATSEYE’s proposition. “Gnarly” can be good or bad—that’s up to interpretation—but above all, it can just be. Just as Gretchen Wieners tried to make “fetch” happen in Mean Girls (2004), more than two decades later, KATSEYE appears to be simply trying to make “gnarly” happen (although it’s too soon to tell if they’ll succeed). The song includes offhand conversational bits, featuring irony-tinged mimicry, bragging about mansions, and a borderline ostentatious amount of cursing. Its boisterous chorus sounds like trains colliding in the most bad*ss sense fathomable while repeating “I’m the sh*t,” dialing things back to a tried-and-true girlboss anthem hook pocket. Needless to note, risqué choreography moments abound. 

On the surface, a release like this can read like your typical “any press is good press” rollout, in which shock value is prioritized in order to get the town talking and engaging. There’s no doubting the vaguely artless nature of what we’re hearing. Though one would hope that K-pop-overlapping audiences in particular would, by now, be more receptive to hyperpop, which has had significant tango with K-pop over the years (and whose explosive cultural stock even got Pitchfork to reconsider a 2016 Charli XCX four and a half, years later), the claims that the lyrical soup in “Gnarly” resembles a 10-year-old’s brain vomit do hold some merit. The dissonance between the song’s content and KATSEYE’s exceptional performance skills is palpable, flawlessly encapsulated by Lara, arguably the strongest vocalist of the group, delivering madcap spoken word that concludes in “gang gang gang gang gang.”

An attempt to dive deeper into the public’s intense aggravated reaction would naturally point to the stark contrast between this drop and KATSEYE’s previous output. This past summer, the group put out their debut EP SIS (Soft Is Strong), bolstered by lead single “Debut,” a radio-friendly, upbeat pop number tapping into an aspirational theme of self-confidence which, in spite of boasting production credits from One Republic’s Ryan Tedder, was met with lukewarm commercial response. The project’s real highlight quickly became “Touch.” Employing bubblegum charm and a majorly trendy, liquid drum and bass beat, the catchy single was TikTok-optimized from the get-go and experienced worldwide virality through its dance challenge, while also getting playlisted alongside hit K-pop girl groups such as NewJeans and ILLIT.