How Katseye’s “Gnarly” Tore the Internet Apart
A little controversy can be good for a pop career. Just ask Madonna, the genre’s queen, who’s been castigated by several popes and world leaders. An edgy red carpet outfit, a tabloid-baiting dating scandal, or a risqué magazine shoot usually provides just the right amount of fuss. The music itself? Well, as the genre’s name suggests, it’s supposed to be undeniably popular: sugary-sweet, crowd-pleasing earworms that go down as easily as lemonade (or, maybe, “Espresso”). Last week, girl group Katseye tore the internet asunder after releasing their latest single “Gnarly.” It’s two minutes and 17 seconds of abrasive electro, lyrically based around a slang term that hasn’t been in wide circulation since the early ’90s. The immediate reaction? Well “genuinely fucking atrocious,” was one of the nicer takes. Then something shifted. The more people listened to it, the more they got it. By the weekend, the song was being declared a genius bit of post-modern pop perfection and a potential song of the summer contender (at least, in some circles).
Until now, Katseye had been a minor curiosity on the global pop music scene. They’re the result of the corporate union of Hybe—the K-pop superlabel responsible for BTS and Le Sserafim—and Geffen, the blue-chip American record label that has been home to everyone from Nirvana to Cher. The idea was to take the K-pop girl-group format global. Their assembly was documented with a YouTube competition show called Dream Academy, with six members (three from America, with the other three coming from South Korea, Switzerland, and the Philippines) making the cut. Their debut EP SIS (Soft Is Strong) produced a minor viral hit with “Touch.” A delicately catchy pop song that you’ve probably heard even if you don’t realize it (it’s the one that goes “Touch, touch, touch, touch, touch / Thought about you way too much, much, much, much, much”). Yet, it failed to cement the group in the wider American consciousness.
Enter “Gnarly.”
In an interview with The Fader before its release, member Manon warned fans that, “some of them might be in shock.”
That was an understatement. Terminally online pop music fans already have a bad habit of pretending to be their favorite artist’s management team, but the reaction to “Gnarly” on both TikTok and X was apocalyptic.
Fans criticized the inclusion of the word “Tesla” (which, perhaps subversively, is replaced on the official “clean” edit with the word “robotics), along with the discovery that co-writer and hyperpop pioneer Alice Longyu Gao had used the intro to the song years earlier in a TikTok.
Perhaps anticipating the reaction, the group took to TikTok to mouth a version of Nicki Minaj’s meme-able quote, “You’re not gonna get this on the first time you hear it. After a second and third time, you can be like, whoa, what is this?”
And, well, listeners did end up getting it.
The group’s live performance of the song on South Korean television seemed to make it click for some fans.
In a matter of days, popular opinion had turned.
The band’s cool-girl turn is no accident. Gao as a co-writer on the song brings Katseye instant credibility. Humberto Leon, the former co-designer of Opening Ceremony and Kenzo, is the band’s creative director, and they enlisted Cody Critcheloe (a musician and music video director best known for his collaborations with Perfume Genius) to handle the song’s visuals. The band promises the rest of their upcoming EP is going to be just as bonkers.
Sometimes taking a big risk pays off. In a matter of days, the girls went from K-pop adjacent also-rans to potential agenda-setting pop stars. We can’t wait to see how they upset the internet next.
