K-Pop Fans Have Divided Opinions About The Era Where Nearly Every Girl Group Was Doing Sexy Concepts

Was this a legendary period, or a tacky and exploitative one?

Back in the early days of the third generation of K-Pop, from about January to August 2014, there was a sudden influx of K-Pop girl groups releasing songs with sexy concepts. It’s unclear why exactly so many artists released similar concepts in such a short period of time, but there are plenty of examples to give from this era!

The topic of this “sexy era” of K-Pop was recently discussed on a popular online forum. The example given on the post that was released earliest was “B.B.B” by Dalshabet, released on January 7, 2014.

Just a few days later, on January 15, 2014, AOA came out with arguably their most successful release, “Miniskirt”.

The following day, January 16, 2014, Girl’s Day came out with their mega-popular hit, “Something”.

And following with the trend during the first month of the year, sub-unit Rainbow Blaxx released their sensual song “Cha Cha” on January 19, 2014.

About a month later, on February 12, 2014, the talented members of STELLAR came out with “Marionette”, which was met with much controversy due to the highly sexual nature of their choreography. The members would later reveal how uncomfortable and even traumatized they were by what they were made to due for their sexy concepts. Their songs, however, are still phenomenal.

Moving forward to the summer of 2014, SISTAR came out with one of their most well-known bops, “Touch My Body”, on July 20, 2014. It was a bit more on the playful side of sexy, but sexy all the same!

And later that summer, on August 26, 2014, EXID dramatically changed their concept for the release of “UP&DOWN”, which ended up propelling them into much greater success.

It wasn’t just girl groups, either. There were a couple of solo female artists that also joined the mature, sexy bandwagon with releases they made in early 2014. For example, Sunmi (a member of Wonder Girls during that era) released “Full Moon” on February 16, 2014, perfectly encapsulating the seemingly popular concept trend at the time.

Finally, former SECRET member Hyosung released her debut solo song “Good-Night Kiss” on May 11, 2014.

K-Pop fans commenting on the forum post about this “sexy era” of the music genre have a lot of varying opinions. While some look back at the time with fondness and the wish that more girl groups would release mature concepts in the modern era, others think it was tacky or cringy or, with the more extreme examples, downright exploitative.

How do you feel about this time during the K-Pop industry?