The dance challenges have become an intricate part of album promotions and 4th generation K-pop that it is hard to recall when our feed wasn’t always filled with artists dancing on the latest tracks with their contemporaries. Enormous credit goes to TikTok, the global pandemic, and BlockB Zico’s Any Song.
Combining the three changed the promotional pattern of K-pop idols and fan interactions significantly. However, the amount of fans getting inundated by dance challenges is on the rise. This raises the question of how much the challenges actually impact the comeback promotions and sales for K-pop Idols. To understand it, let’s explore the history and impact of dance challenges on 4th generation K-pop.
How did the K-pop Dance Challenge start?
The roots of current trending dance challenges go back to the beginning of the global pandemic in March 2020. When everyone was forced to change their routines and shift inside, the most significant way to connect to audiences was through social media. Many trends started during this time, including hand-making the whipped coffee Dalgona, but one trend that changed the promotional pattern in the K-pop industry is Zico’s Any Song Challenge.
If you are doubtful why Zico’s #AnySongDanceChallenge is the first song credited for starting the Dance Challenges in K-pop, then you aren’t entirely wrong. If we go a few years back, PSY’s Gangnam Style not only took K-pop to a global platform but also made everyone do the horse dance move. If we go a little further back, Super Junior‘s SORRY SORRY and Girls’ Generation‘s Gee became trendsetters with their easy-to-follow moves.
However, fans have always been copying the choreography of their favorite group. Even during the 80s and 90s, when K-pop took its first steps, Sobangcha’s Last Night and Seo Taiji & Boys’ I Know made everyone wear their dance shoes. Despite that, Zico’s Any Song challenge spread an industry-wide change, impacting the chart ranking and album sales, giving this long-going fan activity commercial importance.
When Zico started the Any Song Dance Challenge by performing the song with MAMAMOO’s HwaSa and soloist ChungHa, its direct impact was seen on the music charts, where the song attained certified All-Kill within two days of its release and perfect All-Kill two days after that. This opened the gates for the industry to commercialize a new platform.
Importance of TikTok in the K-pop Dance Challenges
K-pop has always aimed to incorporate and conquer the latest pop culture trends as their target audience is usually youth. The earlier generation of Idols that interacted with fans through Fan Cafe gradually started to reach them through social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter. Later, when Naver Corp. launched their livestream platform VLive, the idols began to update the fans about events, album progress, and everyday things through livestreaming.
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Much more changes and progress were made when the artists began to upload their content on YouTube. So naturally, when the short video platform TikTok started to gain popularity over the long video platform YouTube, K-pop Idols found a way to connect with fans through it. Hence, it rolls in Zico’s Any Song and the dance challenges.
Now, in the fourth generation of K-pop, social media is an inseparable part of their promotional schedules. The choreographies of title tracks such as aespa‘s Next Level, Somi‘s Dumb Dumb, (G)I-DLE’s Queencard, NewJeans‘ Hype Boy, EXO Kai‘s Rover and more are created by keeping the dance challenges in mind. The groups also learn the choreographies of their contemporaries to perform them together. However, its greatest impact is shown on the music streaming charts.
Do K-pop dance challenges help in comeback promotions?
The K-pop dance challenges immensely help in the promotion of their latest releases. As more and more people join these challenges, the song reaches the non-fans (or locals) who aren’t regular consumers of K-pop and makes them curious. Adding English lyrics in the chorus is also part of the strategy to gather audiences who can be curious about the complete track and its singers and jump into the rabbit hole of K-pop.
The fandoms play an essential role in the group’s promotions. When new fans join the fandoms, they try to learn the members’ names and explore their discography and other content. After forming a rapport with the group, they start to purchase the latest album or merchandise. However, even more remarkable and something that the companies can not spearhead themselves is when the fans start to use their talents, such as creating fan art merchandise, editing videos, and more to share with others.
When fans start to participate in activities such as dance challenges, they reach a much greater audience than what the company’s promotions alone could have done. This phenomenon has helped many nugu (underdog) groups reach significant stardom; one of its examples is FIFTY FIFTY, whose song Cupid went viral over social media. Another example is BB Girls (former Brave Girls), whose past release Rollin’ went viral and saved the group from disbandment.
This has also helped push the B-side tracks of the groups that aren’t performed on music shows, such as ENHYPEN’s Polaroid Love, TXT‘s Anti-Romantic, and TREASURE‘s DARARI. As such, dance challenges immensely help K-pop Idols in comeback promotions. However, they aren’t spared from the downside of the promotions either.
Downside of K-pop Dance Challenges
What initially started as a fun way of promoting music and reaching new audiences has now started to become more and more competitive. The choreographies for the challenges are getting tougher, and the comparison of the K-pop idols has also grown. Recently, Street Woman Fighter 2 participant choreographer BEBE’s Bada Lee Smoke Dance Challenge became a barometer of idols’ dancing abilities.
Many of the artists suffered a backlash from the netizens for differently interesting the choreography or participating in the challenge despite it being out of their comfort zone. In this comparison and criticism, the initial excitement and joy of dance challenges or attempting something new is replaced with the pressure of performing it the best.
The dance challenges are essential for K-pop idols’ comeback promotions, but they shouldn’t be taken as a barometer of artists’ talents or discography.
