While contemporary T-ara is little more than a footnote in the vast, vast history of Korean pop music, they used to be a driving force behind K-Pop trends in the early-to-mid-2010s, and it all started here with Bo Peep Bo Peep, perhaps the ultimate definition of a “earworm”.
The circumstances behind their eventual fall from grace is long, complicated, and twisted with multiple narratives from lots of different sides with lots of different agendas, and is the reason why longtime K-Pop fans will chuckle when you mention “determination”.
Here’s a brief summary: one member of the girl group seemed to be the victim of mass bullying by the other group members, and was then kicked out. Years later, it turned out that wasn’t the whole story, and the girl that was kicked out was found to be guilty of some shady stuff herself. Add a healthy dose of conflicting communication from the agency and overzealous fans, and you have a recipe for disaster.
Since I know I’ll be featuring T-ara a lot more in the future (seriously, their title tracks are so good), I’ll refrain from linking more of them here, but this is one of those groups that you can’t go wrong with a Google search.
I’ll leave today’s column with one piece of advice:
Don’t lose your temper s-s-s-so quickly.