Image extraite du clip officiel « Attention », HYBE LABELS
In barely two and a half years, NewJeans rewrote the rulebook for breaking into K-pop. No talent-show build-up, no member-by-member teaser rollout, no endless hype cycle: the girl group formed by ADOR showed up in July 2022 with a video and a sound that borrowed as much from Y2K Western pop as from the genre’s established Korean playbook. Here are ten tracks that tell, better than any interview could, how Minji, Hanni, Danielle, Haerin and Hyein became the most talked-about group of their generation.
Behind that tonal break stands one woman: Min Hee-jin, formerly SM Entertainment’s creative director, where she had shaped the visual identity of f(x) and aespa, before taking charge of ADOR, the label HYBE built for the project. Her choice to lean into an aesthetic closer to a Western teenage mood board than the maximalist visuals dominating early-2020s K-pop was divisive at first, before becoming the genre’s most widely copied visual grammar.
The breakthrough: the “New Jeans” EP (2022)
Attention
The debut single, dropped with no prior reveal of the members or even the group’s name. The video, shot in ordinary-teenager settings — a basketball court, suburban streets, a bedroom — broke sharply from the spectacle-driven staging that dominated the genre at the time. “Attention” set the group’s signature from day one: a groove pulled from UK garage and 2000s house, sung with an almost anti-performative nonchalance.
Hype Boy
Released right after, “Hype Boy” became the group’s first video to cross 100 million views on YouTube, confirming that the buzz around “Attention” was no isolated fluke. ADOR rolled out multiple versions of the video, one per member, a promotional strategy that turned the release into an ongoing storyline for the fledgling fanbase. Poppier and more immediate than “Attention,” it has remained a live-set staple ever since.
Cookie
The most controversial track on the 2022 EP. Lyrics that part of the public deemed too suggestive for underage performers at the time of release landed the group in one of its first public controversies, one ADOR had to address directly. Beyond the controversy, “Cookie” already showcases the signature production of 250 (Frankie Gavin), the sonic backbone of the group’s first two years, built on swaying samples and an almost minimalist rhythm section.
OMG, the single that changed the scale (2023)
OMG
Released as a standalone single in January 2023, ahead of any full album, “OMG” pushed NewJeans into a different league entirely. More melancholic in its chorus than the 2022 EP tracks, it gave the group its first major placements on Korea’s biggest charts, while raising the question that would follow the group for months: how fast could a Y2K pop act written for a teen audience turn into a generational phenomenon.
Get Up, the EP that locked in the phenomenon (July 2023)
New Jeans
The title track sharing the group’s own name, placed to open the “Get Up” EP. A way for ADOR to close the loop opened a year earlier and to state that the group’s name was never just a wink at vintage fashion, but a musical identity in its own right, somewhere between deliberate nonchalance and a chorus built to stick.
Super Shy
The track that pushed NewJeans into mainstream pop culture at large, carried by a chorus that went viral on social media before the full video even dropped. “Super Shy” remains the most-played track from their catalog at parties and on playlists today, and the single that most decisively crossed over beyond K-pop’s usual audience into general pop listenership.
Cool With You
Released as two separate videos, side A and side B, “Cool With You” leans into a more grown-up melancholy than the rest of the EP, carried by more elaborate vocal harmonies. Splitting the video into two, a practice that has since become one of the group’s signatures, let ADOR tell two versions of the same emotional story, deepening the attachment of a fanbase that has grown used to dissecting every visual detail of the group’s releases.
ASAP
The most abrasive track on “Get Up,” deliberately cutting against the sweetness of the rest of the EP. With “ASAP,” NewJeans proves it isn’t confined to the bittersweet niche it was quickly filed under, opening a more electronic, more nervous-energy door the group would return to later in its catalog.
How Sweet, the global peak (2024)
How Sweet
Released as a double single in May 2024, “How Sweet” spent thirteen weeks on the Billboard Global 200 and climbed into the UK singles chart’s top 30, a rare feat for a Korean group on that specific market. The track crossed 300 million Spotify streams, becoming the group’s ninth song to hit that mark, proof that the catalog’s consistency runs well beyond the headline singles.
Bubble Gum
The second track on the same single, “Bubble Gum” closes this best-of on a lighter, almost childlike melody, a reminder that NewJeans never fully left the pop-club register that defined its sound from “Attention” onward. Two years into their career, the track proves the group can still produce, seemingly without effort, the kind of simple hook that takes over every platform within weeks.
From “Attention” to “Bubble Gum,” this fast-forward decade tells the story of a group that built its identity on an unapologetic paradox: a self-aware Y2K nostalgia put in service of one of the most modern approaches the Korean industry has ever seen. Ten tracks later, NewJeans remains as much a listening phenomenon as a case study in how K-pop changed its face within the span of two years.
What makes the catalog hold up is less any single chart record than its refusal to repeat itself: a controversy-courting B-side, a stripped-down global hit, a two-sided emotional ballad and a nervy electronic outlier all sit on the same handful of releases, without the group ever settling into one predictable lane. That restlessness, more than any one video or streaming milestone, is what keeps NewJeans worth revisiting one track at a time.
