pink-blooded: thirty years of SM entertainment.
part iii: third generation.
members: suho (leader), xiumin, lay, baekhyun, chen, chanyeol, d.o., kai, sehun
former members: kris, luhan, tao
fanclub name: exo-l (exo calls their fans eris)
fan color: silver (unofficial)
fan lightstick: eribong (unofficial name)
호칭 (introduction): we are one / saranghaja!
exo debuted during those few years when i was taking an emotional break from k-pop, so i missed pretty much everything about them until i got really into exo in late 2024, and i have since come fully around and wish SM would debut another group who can sing like exo can. exo debuted as twelve members divided into two units — exo-k (korean) and exo-m (mandarin) — and apparently they had lore attached to them, something about a red tree and a planet (or twin planets?) and the two teams with superpowers trying to fight evil and come together. you’d think i’d look this up to provide accurate background, but the lore has died, and i was only introduced to it when i finally watched the music video for “mama” and could not stop laughing.
the reason exo stands out so much is that they are still a superior standard for vocal talent. i can’t really think of many idols in third, fourth, or fifth generation who can sing at the technical and emotive level that jongdae, baekhyun, and kyungsoo can, and, while those three make up the vocal center of the now-nine member group, most everyone in exo adds to the vocal color of the group (honestly, sehun is questionable, though, i’m sorry!). exo’s harmonies are layered, warm, and delightful, and, while their music isn’t ground-breaking or revolutionary, exo consistently releases very good pop/r&b music that they sing incredibly well.
sometimes, i think it’s kind of funny that exo debuted with “mama,” then released “으르렁 (growl)” and “늑대와 미녀 (wolf)” (kenzie, i have so many questions). of the three, “으르렁 (growl)” is maybe the the safest choice., and “늑대와 미녀 (wolf),” particularly, is a song that only exo could do. the members themselves were not enthused about that song; when i’m feeling sad and need to laugh, i listen to the demo.
(i absolutely hate the way exo was styled early in their career, and cultural appropriation is still a conversation we need to be having more in k-pop — but with more nuance and sensitivity that also stops centering a western-centric perspective. it is possible to talk about racism in k-pop while also taking into account cultural context and without being racist back, and i generally take the stance that SM needs to do a lot better in being more aware of geopolitics, especially as a company with foreign idols, and stop participating in appropriation and colorism.)
exo is a great example of how you don’t need an enemy when your company is SM. the TVXQ lawsuit shook SM up, and i think exo’s history is a great example of the suit’s most significant effect within the company — SM fears its artists becoming bigger than the company, and exo was that. exo was huge — they performed at the 2018 pyeongchang olympics, they toured the U.S. in 2016, they had such a chokehold on korea, there was outrage when bangtan won an award over them in 2017 or 2018, i don’t remember, and there was even a school that had to make an announcement that, no, students could not be excused from school just because they were distraught that baekhyun was dating taeyeon.
now that all the members have returned from gundae, the group is currently slated to stage their first group comeback since 2023 in december 2025, but there is a lot of tension around this. i am not getting into all of this now, but three members of exo (CBX) are caught in a lawsuit with SM, and SM being SM refuses to meet them anywhere in a reasonable middle. CBX, actually, has stated that they are actually willing to concede to all of SM’s demands in order to participate in this comeback, and keep in mind that CBX is still contracted with SM for exo group activities. SM is petty as hell, though, to the point that they will willingly sabotage themselves as a company because SM actually has a lot to gain from letting this go, especially if we’re being cynical and talking on a purely capitalistic level — the fandom is rabid and there is so much money to be made with a OT9 comeback, especially with china potentially-maybe-who-knows reopening to allow k-pop artists to hold their own concerts in the country. SM knows this, too, given that they’re including lay in this comeback.
how things will pan out remains to be seen, but it looks like SM is digging its heels in presently and stupidly moving on without CBX (which is also ridiculous considering how sizable baekyun’s solo fanbase in china is). as of now, exo will be returning in december 2025 with a single and a fan meeting with only six members, but the fandom, including myself, is still delusionally holding onto hope that the members will somehow pull through.
(i do wonder if SM would take less of a hardline if one of CBX wasn’t baekhyun. in general, you don’t really find solo artists who are able to become bigger than the group, and baekyun isn’t at that level yet, but he’s got the best chance to have a very significant, sizable solo career away from exo. like i said above, SM doesn’t like when their artists become bigger than the company, and baekhyun was the “instigator” [in SM’s eyes] in removing CBX from SM. at the same time, in all this mess, we can acknowledge that baekhyeon’s decision to seek advice from mc mong of all people was questionable at best — like, sir! MC MONG?!? REALLY?)
there’s a lot i have to say about exo, but this is long enough. i’ll just leave it at — i’m amused that SM gave three of the members chinese-sounding stage names, even though jongdae (chen), minseok (xiumin), and jongin (kai) are korean. given that china sits at the top of the power hierarchy in asia, i’m amused by this.
recommended tracks:
“mama” (mama, 2012)
“나비소녀 (don’t go)” (xoxo, 2013)
“run” (overdose, 2014)
“el dorado” (exodus, 2015)
“monster” (ex’act, 2016)
“universe” (universe, 2017)
“love fool” (exist, 2023)
members: irene (leader), seulgi, wendy, joy, yeri
fanclub name: reveluv
fan color: pastel coral
fan lightstick: 김만봉
호칭 (introduction): happiness~
red velvet is SM’s third-generation girl group, and they were not named for the cake. rather, the name is to signify two sides of the group — “red” for their brighter pop sound, “velvet” for their more experimental, darker side. generally, red velvet would vary their releases between “red “and “velvet,” but i think that has kind of fallen to the wayside, especially after lee sooman’s ouster.
red velvet also debuted during my break from k-pop, and i wasn’t super into them at first. to be honest, when they debuted, i couldn’t tell them apart, and i thought it was hilarious that the four members each had their hair dip-dyed in a different color, in my opinion, to make it easier for the public to tell them apart. (or maybe this is a me problem — i’m honestly not the best with faces.) yeri was added to the group in march 2015, and i think she really rounded the group out.
wendy is one of the best vocalists to come out of k-pop, but i wish she’d pick better solo work. (also, on a side note, SM needs to stop trapping their vocalists in ballads — like, i know korea loves their ballads, but, good lord, come on! we all heard exo’s chen in “drop that.”) in 2019, she was in an accident at SBS, during rehearsals for their annual gayo daejeon. she fell off a lift into a tunnel due to lack of proper stage marking, and the fall broke her pelvis, her wrist, her cheekbones. i don’t know that SBS was ever really held accountable for the accident, and my cursory google search doesn’t really say much about the aftermath. i really hope SM pursued some kind of accountability.
groups don’t debut with fan club names or official light sticks (those come later), and i learned the other day that, apparently, before red velvet’s official light stick was launched, fans would bring feather dusters to concerts because the colors matched the girls’ colors. SM missed the opportunity with that one; they should have made red velvet’s light stick shaped like a feather duster. SM makes pretty unique lightsticks for a few of their groups, but red velvet’s is in the disappointingly boring group. aespa’s was boring, too, but they recently launched version two in an … interesting … design. i mean, it has grown on me, and it’s certainly unique, but i did tilt my head when i first saw it.
i think i might forever hold a grudge against SM for not promoting “cosmic” more. that song should have been everywhere in 2024.
recommended songs:
“피카부peek-a-boo” (perfect velvet, 2012)
“oh boy” (the red, 2015)
“in my dreams” (the reve festival 2022 - feel my rhythm, 2022)
“chill kill” (chill kill, 2023)
“cosmic” (cosmic, 2024)
fanclub information: same as SNSD
it’s pretty standard for members of groups to launch solo careers, and i’m not including every solo career in this massive write-up (lol i’m only including two), but taeyeon is very much a soloist in her own right — and she really should be up there in terms of prominence, numbers, and respect as IU, if SM would stop fumbling when it comes to taeyeon and actually throw support and money behind her consistently.
my gripes with SM are many, but at the top of that list is how the damn company does not properly respect or support their legacy artists. the presence of legacy artists is one of the things that makes SM very unique as a company in k-pop, but SM has not historically done a good job of promoting their groups beyond a few years, which is unsurprising in the context of korea being a very pro-trend country, glomming onto the big hot Thing of the moment and quickly moving on. longevity isn’t really something that seems to be prioritized or pursued by the culture as a whole.
i understand that the idol industry is young — thirty years! — and i think no one really knew how much longevity idols would have twenty years ago. pop music, in general, is dismissed as the realm of the young, particularly of young girls, and fans are still expected to “grow out” of pop music and leave it behind as they “mature” into more “grown-up” taste. in connection, there is (or, at least, there was) an implicit understanding that idols, too, will leave behind their idol selves, but then the question, i think, is to what? some idols segue into acting, into variety show appearances, into musicals, but what about the ones like taeyeon who are in it to sing and perform and little else?
SM should have been bending over backward for taeyeon over the last ten years, in my opinion.
koreans love to make acronyms (줄임말) of everything, and, as i learned, 믿듣보 is short for 믿고 듣는 보컬 or “a vocal you can trust and listen to.” taeyeon is so known for her vocals that there’s an acronym specifically for her — 믿듣탱 — taeyeon (or taenggoo as fans call her) who you can trust and listen to — because taeyeon stands out in the idol landscape for her incredible technique and voice. many idols pursue idol-dom as a step into something else (i.e. acting), which is fine, but taeyeon is one of the rare idols who got into this industry to sing and little else.
i love taeyeon. i worry a lot about taeyeon. she went through a series of loss with jonghyun, sulli, her father, and she was alarmingly thin for a while. (she’s still much too thin.*) she’s talked about living with depression, and she’s also famously a homebody, and i’m so glad she has her dog. she spaces out the stops on her asia tours because she likes to be home in-between (and probably because of nolto filming), and, as much as i’d love for her tour outside of asia, i wonder if she ever will because she like to be home — which is fine. i just want her to continue to sing and release the music she wants and for SM to give her all the support she deserves.
* i hate commenting on people’s bodies, but it is absolutely alarming how thin some idols are becoming. i think taeyeon actually gained a tiny bit of weight very recently, which is really good to see because she was terrifyingly thin for a few years around 2022. i despise korean beauty standards and how normalized disordered eating is, not only in korea but everywhere — we just mask it behind health and wellness — and i hate how idols contribute to this normalization by talking about how they’re dieting and need to lose weight when they’re already frighteningly tiny.
recommended songs:
“U R” (i, 2015)
“time lapse” (my voice, 2017)
“circus” (‘s, 2019)
“voice” (voice, 2019)
“그대라는 시 (all about you)” (hotel del luna, 2019)
“can’t control myself” (invu, 2022)
“siren” (invu, 2022)
“letter to myself” (letter to myself, 2025)
NCT 127 members: taeyong (leader), johnny, yuta, doyoung, jaehyun, jungwoo, mark, haechan
NCT dream members: mark (leader), renjun, jeno, haechan, jaemin, chenle, jisung
wayv members: kun (leader), ten, winwin, xiaojun, hendery, yangyang
NCT wish members: sion (leader), riku, yushi, jaehee, ryo, sakuya
former members: lucas, taeil
fanclub name: nctzen (n-citizen) — the neos refer to their fans as czennies
fan color: pearl neo champagne (aka neon green)
fan lightstick: neobong — 127, dream, wayv, wish
호칭 (introduction): “to the world, N-city.”
apparently, SM has NEVER LET GO of this idea of rotating members out of a group, even though they failed with TVXQ (though TVXQ’s rotational scheme was rumored) and suju. they also failed with NCT dream, but it looks like they might be trying again with xnghan (see part iv).
i think lee sooman got the idea from groups in j-pop, like AKB48, where members “graduate” out of the group and new members get added in, so the group, essentially, goes on forever as its own brand, even while the idols themselves cycle out. i’m pretty sure there are other examples in j-pop. NCT dream, at least, initially had a clearer idea — the members would all be teenagers, and they would “graduate” when they hit the age of majority (twenty), but the company ended up abandoning the idea before they even did one rotation. i’m personally glad the idea for dream died because the graduation age meant that the idols added to the unit would be really young (dream’s maknae, jisung, was fourteen when he debuted), and i don’t think idols should debut when they’re in their early to mid-teens.
NCT stands for neo culture technology, and they are a sprawling group of twenty-something members who are divided into different units. when i first started paying attention to NCT, i did not get the appeal — who needs twenty-some members in a group, how is anyone supposed to remember who they all are, and, wow, does that mean everyone gets, like, one line per song? it felt like a lot — and, to be fair, it kind of is. there does seem to be general fan acknowledgement that there is a barrier to entry when it comes to NCT; not only are there so many members, some of the members are in multiple units (here’s a chart, if you want to try parsing it out), and then you add on NCT’s noise music that in and of itself can get some getting used to.
(NCT isn’t all noise music; their b-sides are more digestible pop/R&B; and 127 tends to be the most neo of all the units.)
i admittedly still don’t know all the members of every unit, but i’ve got at least 127 and dream down. i also don’t listen to everything from all the units (maybe unsurprisingly, i gravitate to 127 and dream), but i actually love the idea behind NCT and think what SM is doing with this whole sonic universe is really cool. only SM would do something like NCT because SM has a history of trying things, and there’s a lot of experimentation that comes out of the NCT universe. i don’t know that they originated the noise music trend but they certainly got it going, and they have the vocal skills to pull off songs like “sticker” that another group very likely could not. there is a tremendous amount of talent across the units, and one of the things i like a lot is when SM artists show improvement instead of stagnating or regressing — i think haechan and jisung are great examples of this.
like, haechan has a voice that could be polarizing, that could 튕겨 in an unpleasant way because it’s nasal and very unique. when i first started listening to NCT and heard his cover of utada hikaru’s “first love,” i was a little put off because i thought his voice was too much, but his voice has grown on me because he’s also gotten better at bending it, letting the natural warmth in his tone flow, and, in general, becoming better at controlling his voice. jisung’s recent cover of exo’s “sing for me” blew me away, and i’m looking forward to solo work from him whenever he’s ready.
in general, the solo work from the various NCT members is so varied and interesting, and i like that SM [seemingly] gives its artists more leeway and input in their solo work. after a few years of maintaining tight control over their groups, SM has started to give their artists more opportunities to get involved in songwriting and the like, though, to be honest, i don’t really subscribe to this notion that idols have more authentic artistry if they write or produce their own music. i don’t particularly care if an artist is involved in production; i just want them to sing and perform well.
it remains to be seen how successful the whole NCT concept will continue to be now that lee sooman has been ousted, or if it will even grow after their tokyo unit, NCT wish, debuted in 2024, but who knows! i think the general NCT universe has been well established, and, thus far, the neo sound continues to be threaded consistently through the various units. the wishies seem to be coming into their own, and i hope NCT releases something as a whole with the wishies soon, so we can really see how they fit into the neo universe.
also, one of my favorite things about NCT fandom is the running joke that you will see a neobong at any concert you go to, whether it’s a k-pop concert or one for a western artist, and i find that so delightfully hilarious. it seems to be largely uncontroversial, too; the neos are apparently pretty known for being gregarious and having lots of idol friends. (there are a lot of clear extroverts among the neos and exo; in general, the members seem to be very well socialized, which is nice to see.) the neobong was a prominent sight at the impeachment protests last winter because it looks like a meat tenderizer (in my opinion), has flat surfaces to put words over, and is bright neon green — though the new version of the neobong, with the individualized unit plates, is not as aggressively neon or as aggressively green as the previous version, and is, thus, inferior in my opinion. why SM changed a good thing is beyond me.
(also, the resonance album released by NCT U in 2020 is brilliant; that album is an example of something great that came out of lockdown, that could only come out of lockdown.)
recommended songs:
NCT (2016): “resonance” (NCT 2020 resonance, 2020), “golden age” (golden age, 2023)
NCT 127 (2016): “sticker” (sticker, 2021)“favorite (vampire)” (favorite, 2021), “lemonade” (favorite, 2021)
NCT dream (2016): “boom” (we boom, 2019), “hello future” (hot sauce, 2021), “broken melodies” (ISTJ, 2023), “you (숲)” (dreamscape, 2024), “chiller” (go back to the future, 2025), “cold coffee” (beat it up, 2025)
wayv (2019): “big bands” (big bands, 2025)
NCT wish (2024): “songbird” (wishful, 2024), “melt inside my pocket” (poppop, 2025)
members: taemin (shinee), baekhyun (exo), kai (exo), taeyong (NCT), mark (NCT), ten (wayv), lucas (wayv)
fanclub info: n/a
super m is (was?) a supergroup put together by SM in collaboration with capitol records, pulling members from shinee (taemin), exo (baekhyun and kai), and NCT (taeyong, mark, ten, lucas). until october 2025, i thought super m was the mandarin unit of super junior, so i never actually looked them up — and i am relieved to report that i am not the only person who thought so.
super m isn’t the first time SM has put together mini-units from across their groups, though this might have been the first they did so in an “official” capacity. honestly, i’m still learning a more about super m, so i’ll probably come back and add to this section later.
in short, superm had bops, even if their lyrics were too heavily reliant on english.
recommended songs:
“jopping” (superm, 2019)
“100” (super one, 2020)