“Oh!”
At dawn, on the way to the broadcasting station for the prerecording of our second week.
“Ooh!”
“Oh!!”
As usual, I had my eyes closed for a moment when Chiyo unnie, who had been exclaiming beside me, poked the back of my neck repeatedly.
“Ah, why againnn.”
Chiyo unnie refrained from fooling around whenever I was resting, so she must have seen something exciting enough to keep poking me over it.
“Fine, what is it? What.”
“Naeun onnie...!”
I tried to humor her, but Chiyo unnie had already begun ignoring me again.
It made me reflect on whether I had been ignoring her too much all this time.
Wait, why do I suddenly feel hurt?
Could it be that I was being trained?
“Naeun-jjang, Naeun-jjang!”
─Tap tap tap
“...What?”
Of course, Naeun unnie, who had grown used to responding to her, also sounded drained. Everyone was tired right now, traveling with their eyes half-closed.
“Look at this, our first-week sales are totally insane...!”
Actually, Chiyo unnie usually traveled quietly while sleeping at times like this.
“Wow, she’s right. 1.6 million copies...?”
So that was what she was talking about in the end. First-week sales.
“I thought it was something else.”
I had already expected results around that level, so I wasn’t particularly impressed.
“1.6 million? Seriously?!”
I was more amazed by Seoyun unnie making such a fuss.
“To be precise, it’s 1.64 million, hehehe.”
Applause for her learning ability—five years into her debut and still refusing to lose her beginner’s mindset.
“Hey, maknae. Maknae, look at this.”
“Wow, I’m jealous. That’s amazing.”
“From now on, just pretend you don’t know me.”
No, unnie. If you’re making this much of a fuss over something like this, what are you going to do when we reach number one on the Billboard chart? That was my point. If you set your sights high, you should learn to stay calm too!
“Don’t even look at me.”
“No, unnie, think about it. Of course the first-week sales have something to do with the quality of this album, but mostly, they reflect the upward momentum we built before the comeback, so they don’t mean that much, you know? At least eighty percent of this figure should be viewed as the result of the momentum we had around the end of last year. What matters is the eventual total sales.”
“Do you think I don’t know that?”
Oh. She didn’t?
“The album royalties are different. The copyright royalties. The amount that comes in with this settlement is going to be different, so how can that not mean anything? Huh?”
“Ah...”
So her reason was much more materialistic than I’d expected.
That actually made sense.
“But... are you really that hard up for money, unnie...? Want me to lend you some...? Since you’re my unnie, I could push myself and lend you up to a billion won...”
“What are you talking about? I’m just annoyed thinking about how you must’ve milked your copyrights during the last settlement.”
I was guilty of making even the members jealous.
“Hmm, I understand you, unnie. Still, at your level, you should be a little more composed... I’ve always thought highly of your abilities...”
“Just go the hell to sleep.”
What a mean girl!
I was trying to say something nice!
“But Dohui, apparently we’re number thirty-four on the main Billboard 200 chart right now.”
This time, U-a unnie began sensuously kneading my thigh.
“Our incredible maknae doesn’t care about anything unless it’s number one, so don’t even bother telling her things like that, okay?”
Oh, honestly. Why was Kim Seoyun sulking again?
“Come on, Dohui’s smiling too. She’s happy.”
That was because you were gently tickling my thigh.
“But it’s good news, isn’t it? It’s not like I have a case of too-cool-for-school syndrome.”
“Right?”
“But you should still view the Billboard 200 chart as an indicator that we’re getting a response in the United States, okay? It’s a chart you can enter just by having a few tens of thousands of copies sold in the Americas, and you can reach number one with a hundred thousand copies. Of course, what I mean is that once people start responding, we’re likely to climb higher than our current ranking, so rather than celebrating too early...”
“What did I tell you? She’s just got a terminal case of too-cool-for-school syndrome.”
“I know.”
What we really needed to check at a time like this was the domestic response.
“...What day is it today?”
“Friday. Melody Bank.”
“Oh, right.”
After spending the entire week traveling at dawn and returning to the dorm late at night, I was so out of it that I couldn’t even keep track of the days.
In any case, it had been a week since the album’s release, so a column should have been posted on the country’s largest music review site.
Of course, I didn’t care all that much about criticism, but regardless, there was value in having someone listen to my album and review it seriously.
“Why?”
When I suddenly took out my phone, U-a unnie leaned her head against my shoulder in curiosity.
“What are you looking at? You said you were sleepy.”
“Nothing, really.”
I simply searched the site name and entered Debonair.
Joy, Sorrow, Pleasure, and Pain (RNBD) - 2026
DEBONAIR
★★★★☆
As expected, the review had been posted the day before.
“Huh? Four stars? Dohui, isn’t that a really good score?”
“What, half a note? Four stars from them is the highest score an idol album can get, isn’t it?”
“Oh, really?”
“Yeah. The fans pay a lot of attention to that. I don’t think you need to read too much into it, but they say four and a half stars means it’s one of the albums of the year.”
“Oh, then that’s huge.”
Kim Seoyun, who had been sulking, explained it in a subtly excited tone, but in truth, I wasn’t satisfied with the review.
Of course, I wasn’t expecting a perfect five stars. Getting five stars depended on the reviewer’s personal sensibilities and whether their subjective tastes happened to align with the album.
Still, I thought this album was perfectly structured from beginning to end, so four and a half stars should have been the bare minimum...
“Well, four stars is still... something.”
For now, I should read it.
I calmly clicked the title.
“Ah...”
“What? You don’t like it?”
But the more I read, the more I decided it was best to consider it nothing more than one person’s opinion.
“No, I just thought, ‘So this is how this person interpreted it.’”
“What’s it say? Let me see.”
* * *
Idol communities are more similar to sports communities than one might expect.
That is simply their nature. They rank things and distinguish between the classes of their players. Just as people enjoy choosing the best players in a league or naming a few world-class athletes, idol fans choose a few idols based on their visuals, sales, or number of advertisements.
Naturally, they share certain interests.
One of them is the evaluations of relatively trusted experts.
Just as people pay attention to the class of players as judged by commentators, coaches, and managers,
K-pop fanatics also want to know what kind of evaluations each idol receives.
And the review of Debonair’s latest album, *Joy, Sorrow, Pleasure, and Pain (RNBD)*, read as follows.
==============
Joy, Sorrow, Pleasure, and Pain (RNBD) - 2026
DEBONAIR
★★★★☆
In an era of upward standardization, the key to K-pop now lies in the execution that supports its planning. In other words, however unconventional the idea, the final product must be able to back it up. Debonair is a group that has successfully completed this very task, from *Sweet Demon*, which dealt with the freedom and coolness of the new generation, to *[title omitted]*, which dealt with the freshness and beauty of girl groups.
In reality, Debonair’s albums follow the systematic progression of the group’s universe. Their debut single, *[title omitted]*, establishes the group’s intense identity. Their first mini-album, *[title omitted]*, introduces the individuality of each member. Finally, their second mini-album, *[title omitted]*, asks how the identity of the group Debonair and the individual identities of its members combine and manifest themselves to the world.
Within that progression, the members’ direct participation in the work was, in a sense, inevitable. And at last, on the album *[title omitted]*, where their individuality fully blossoms, only the members’ names appear. Lyrics, composition, arrangement. With the help of professional producers, the members had generally participated in creative work as a promotional tool, adding their names to the credits. This is a bold step worthy of praise as creation itself, breaking away from such superficial creative acts.
However, bold acts always carry the possibility of failure. If the creative work fails to reach the group’s standard, it could instead produce the worst possible result: preventing the group from fully demonstrating its abilities.
The album *[title omitted]* does not suffer from that problem. The composition of its tracks and the flow between its songs, which never feel out of place, suggest that Lee Dohui’s genius—recognized from early on—made a tremendous contribution. *[title omitted]* is the result of a member-producer’s abilities creating the greatest possible synergy based on her understanding of the group to which she belongs.
(Excerpt)
Nevertheless, the limitation lies precisely in the fact that the members produced it themselves. The clearest example is the autotune and synth sounds scattered throughout “Euphoria,” which expresses Rejoice—the joy of love (喜)—among the tracks on *[title omitted]*. The tackiness that interferes with immersion appears to have targeted retro as its desired direction amid the Y2K boom, but it is ultimately a second-generation idol sound brought about by the superficial experience of members who never directly lived through the romance of the 2000s. In other words, the cycle of rewinding is excessively short. Ultimately, this is a misinterpretation of the demands of the times.
Even so, Debonair’s transformation into true artists continues to offer much food for thought. This is particularly true of “Do it anyway,” the album’s third title track, which expresses Blue—the sorrow (哀) in *Joy, Sorrow, Pleasure, and Pain (RNBD)*. Apparently borrowing the famous maxim associated with Mother Teresa, “Do it anyway,” which can be translated literally as “Even so, do it,” this song is innovative in many respects, repeatedly speaking of solidarity and philanthropy in time for Ash Wednesday, which calls to mind forgiveness and repentance.
(Excerpt)
Narrative and concept are inseparable in the K-pop idol market, but music must lie at their center. In that regard, Debonair’s second mini-album, *[title omitted]*, comes close to success, even if it falls a little short of its planning.
This progression of events makes one curious about what, exactly, they will bring us in the future.]
By Im Jiyoung
—Tracklist—
1. I DO (到喜) — Recommended
2. SAME — Recommended
3. Euphoria
4. Do it anyway — Recommended
5. Just Another Day — Recommended
=================
And the title under which the post was reposted throughout the community was:
[Information/News] The first idol to receive four stars from Ban-eum this year
─Wow, four points again? ㄷ
─Four recommended songs, wow
In essence, it meant that the review directly helped elevate the group’s standing.
─Everything except Euphoria was recommended ㅠㅠ It’s my favorite song right now
─I’m really enjoying the album
─“In an era of upward standardization, the key to K-pop now lies in the execution that supports its planning.” I completely agree with this. Debonair’s planning and execution really don’t feel like those of a small agency anymore.
However, it was common for reviews and personal opinions not to align.
─Just like their last album, Ban-eum is obviously being generous with Debonair’s score lol
└It’s just someone’s impression. What do you mean, generous?
─It was a decent read, but I don’t understand some parts. *Sweet Demon* was a little retro too, and Lee Dohui was the main composer, wasn’t she?
└Ban-eum really has a talent for making even compliments sound ridiculous.
─Ban-eum has always been full of cultural chauvinism and nonsense. That last paragraph is doing it again. Those idiots don’t even have any professional knowledge.
Even so, such reviews carried a certain degree of authority, making them likely to become the dominant opinion in a post. Rebuttals from ordinary people were often buried.
─I can see why they might find the songs lacking. The planning was just that innovative.
└I don’t know who came up with the concept, but they seem like a genius. Of course, all the songs are so good too. I’ve been listening to them nonstop.
But things were different when the conflicting opinions came from people with more expertise than anyone else.
[Two working producers review DEBONAIR’s album *Joy, Sorrow, Pleasure, and Pain (RNBD)*]
─Oh, Double G uploaded a Debonair reaction video?
─It’s thirty minutes long this time? Don’t they usually do about five minutes, covering just one single at a time?
Especially if they were producers rooted in popular music, who were even more knowledgeable about idol music.