f(x) Influenced a New Generation of K-Pop. Why Are They Not Remembered?
The group debuted fifteen years ago today and quickly transformed K-Pop. But in an industry that prioritizes innovation, the group’s albums remain out of print and their music is rarely written about.
It’s hard to imagine what K-Pop would sound like without f(x)’s influence.
The SM Entertainment girl group debuted fifteen years ago today, and their short but revelatory career quite literally paved the way for a new generation of idols. They experimented with sounds and imagery that, even by today’s standards, was bizarre. “Rum Pum Pum”, one of my favorite tracks from the group’s legendary Pink Tape album, is about a root canal. They called themselves “Sweet Witches” and flirted with metaphors in fairy tales like Pinochio. And the music? It was wildly immersive, experimental even. Their best work, like “Hot Summer” or “Electric Shock” combined high-octane EDM with sassy, snappy bars.
f(x) was also a prototype for how female idol groups could push against beauty norms. We have never seen another female idol as androgynous as Amber, and we’ve also never seen a group created with so little mind given to the male gaze. If Girls Generation was thought of as Korea’s girl group, f(x) was the nation’s weird little sister. They were brat before Charil made the term a cultural phenomenon. They embraced weirdness long before Red Velvet debuted with tracks that would eventually define K-Pop like “Psycho”. Above all, f(x) gave girls in K-Pop permission to be whoever they wanted to be – strange, outspoken, wickedly funny.
After Sulli departed in 2014, the group released what I consider to be their best and most creative album “4 Walls”. Helmed under the creative direction of Min Hee Jin (former CEO of ADOR and creative director of NewJeans), f(x) worked with the British producing duo LDN Noise and pivoted to house music. This was a thrilling plot twist in their career, and shamefully, their last comeback. Today, the biggest problem with f(x) is that the casual K-Pop fan has no idea who they are. The farther we get from second generation K-Pop – and the farther we grow from their last album’s release – the wider the gap gets in understanding their influence.
Yet K-Pop has never been an industry that prioritizes legacies. As big of a phenomenon as groups like f(x) were at one point, a group's disbandment means that an entire catalog risks being forgotten. This was exemplified most pointedly when V-Live was acquired by Weverse, and all companies that did not join Weverse would lose their content. This most directly affected disbanded groups from companies who had folded over the years. V-Live had become an archive of sorts for those groups’ vlogs and livestreams – but in an instant, it was all gone. f(x) will likely never see that large of an erasure, but their albums are currently out of print and their music has never been repackaged for streaming.
These kinds of stories are what motivates me to write about K-Pop, and groups like f(x) have always troubled me. What happens to an artist when their work isn’t being published anymore?
While in Los Angeles over the summer, I had dinner with a friend who’s a Korean musician. I was puzzled,I told him, because I had found so many stores dedicated to Japanese oldies records. Where, I wondered, were the stores in Koreatown that prided themselves on selling Korean music made long before K-Pop became the juggernaut it is today. My friend laughed for a second. “The Japanese are much better at archiving music than we are. Koreans have always been too busy making money to worry about that.” He paused. “And, well, Koreans have always just been trying to survive.”
Though they came from one of the most powerful companies in Korea, Victoria, Krystal, Amber and Sulli never seemed comfortable as idols. In interviews they often appeared shy or bored. The girls seemed uninterested, even confused, by what was expected of them as idols. For all of the group’s strenuous media training, on variety shows, they often looked as if they couldn’t get off the set fast enough. Amber, the group’s Taiwanese American member, had only a light grasp of Korean. Sulli, the group’s youngest, was often angered by the misogyny and hate female idols received.
“I don’t feel like people think celebrities are human. They don’t see us as human,” Sulli said in an interview weeks before her death. Idols, she said, were packaged and disposed of as products to consume. "You need to be the finest, top-quality product for the public. That's what you are.”
Sulli left the group in 2014, exhausted and defeated from the vitriolic hate she had received from the public. She was tired of being criticized for not wearing a bra; angered that she was constantly thought of as a “bad girl” because she spoke her mind. She wanted no part of it anymore.
4 Walls, the album recorded without Sulli, was a critical success for f(x), but SM had already begun to shift their sights to new ventures. Within a few years, NCT would become one of the company’s biggest priorities, and f(x) members would be left to languish before they reached their contract negotiations. By 2018, Sulli had committed suicide and all of the remaining members had left SM – many with extensive trauma from their time in K-Pop.
A visibly shaken Amber appeared on CBS This Morning only weeks after Sulli’s death to speak about “the dark side of K-Pop”. She alleged that there were mandatory weigh-ins, and significant pressure to reach an ideal look. Ironic given that f(x) was marketed as not being the ideal girl group. When an idol would eventually break due to the pressure, the industry would look at them with scorn. "When [people] hear you're getting help they're like, 'What? Why are you getting help? That's weird,” she said, her eyes red and puffy.
A few years after f(x)’s unofficial disbandment, Luna made her Broadway debut in KPOP: The Musical. It was the first time in her entire career, she told Time Magazine, that she felt genuinely free and hopeful.
“When I was working in the K-pop world, I was always the person who was the worst. I was the ugliest. I was someone who, however much I tried, I always felt so unlucky in everything because that’s how I was conditioned to think,” she said. “It really got to the point where I was thinking, if I’m putting in all this work, and this is what I’m getting, what have I actually achieved in my life?”
It’s striking to me that none of the members of f(x) have gone on to become household names. Indeed, each member has carved out their own path for themselves: Victoria is enjoying success in China; Krystal has become a fashion industry darling; Amber is attempting to stage a solo career in the U.S.; and Luna has tried to envision herself as a choreographer. And yet, that just doesn’t feel good enough to me. For a group that pushed so many boundaries, it’s shameful that none of the women have been given their flowers. It’s near-sighted that an industry that is only about innovation and consumption can’t understand that to make this last, we have to look back. We must honor those who came before us.
At Lollapalooza last August, I watched as NewJeans performed for one of the largest crowds in the festival’s history. The group had been trained by Min, f(x)’s creative director, and the group was, in real time, transforming the industry again. If f(x) opened the door for girls to not fit in, NewJeans ushered in an authenticity to K-Pop. Their healthy, long black hair looked lucious – especially as they whipped it over their shoulders during “Attention”. Their style, jeans and colorful jerseys or tube tops, was accessible and imitable. The girls, like Sulli or Amber, laughed when they wanted to laugh and cried when they wanted to cry. They were effervescent, funny, gracious idols who - media training notwithstanding - felt wholly accessible to teenagers.
For the entirety of their forty-five minute set, as I looked around Chicago’s Grant Park, I could barely make out an area that wasn’t covered with people trying to catch a glimpse of the five teenagers who perhaps most directly followed in f(x)’s footsteps. A baton was being passed, I realized, only f(x) would never get to enjoy this crowning moment. They are, instead, spread out across the globe, doing their best to make good out of what was lost.
