SuperM, five years on: What happened to the Avengers of K-pop?

Some may see 2019 as the definitive end to a type of life. It’s been called the ‘before times’ – the last moment before everything changed forever in 2020 when COVID-19 shut down the world, creating a ripple effect that still spreads into how we live our lives today. But every action has an equal and opposite reaction. And while life as we knew it hurtled toward an end, another cataclysmic force was birthed into existence. It was born when two exertive movements combined like colliding stars bursting into a supernova that lit up the sky in a blinding haze. We are, of course, talking about SuperM’s ‘Jopping’.

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The symbiotic mash-up of “jumping” and “popping” was introduced to the world in October 2019 by SuperM, SM Entertainment’s ambitious take on a K-pop supergroup. It was made up of some of the industry’s deadliest weapons: SHINee’s wunderkind Taemin; EXO’s vocal powerhouse Baekhyun and dance machine Kai; NCT 127’s illustrious leader Taeyong and SM’s most-employed idol Mark; and WayV’s lythe and slinky Ten and booming presence Lucas. Together, they united to create “he Avengers of K-pop”.

SuperM was a two-pronged attack – they further bolstered the notion of a one-stop shop SM Entertainment “family” and were spawned as the brainchild of the label (and its founder Lee Soo-man) and Capitol Music Group as a purposeful way to push the boundaries of K-pop’s success in the West. Though, supergroups weren’t an entirely new idea in the Korean music industry either. 10 years earlier, 4Tomorrow harnessed the power of four separate K-pop agencies for a group consisting of Brown Eyed Girls’ Gain, After School’s UEE, KARA’s Seungyeon and 4Minute’s Hyuna.

After drip-feeding “the Avengers of K-pop” throughout the summer, SuperM officially debuted at the iconic Capitol Records building in Hollywood on October 3 with an all-bells-and-whistles press conference introducing themselves to America as the next great K-pop group.

Unexpectedly (or, in hindsight, very expectedly), ‘Jopping’ – which was sung almost entirely in English and backed by a fittingly anthemic Marvel-esque score – was instantly divisive. To every K-pop fan, especially those who had tried to convince their uninitiated friends and loved ones to give the genre a chance, it was immediate that this was not going to be a crossover hit. The song was decidedly un-Western with its overstimulating bombasticness, harsh edges and, let’s face it, ludicrous lyrics.

Normally, that isn’t much of a concern when it comes to K-pop, which is marked by its penchant for juxtaposing musicality, but this was a song and project intended to hook America. Despite the decidedly mixed reception, SM Entertainment forged on with SuperM. They committed to the hard, pulsating edge of the boyband’s sound – found on both ‘Jopping’ and much of their self-titled debut mini-album – with an arena tour across the US, Europe, Asia and more.

Like many artists heading out on the road at the end of 2019, though, things were cut short when the pandemic hit. But the impact was wider-reaching than expected, also impacting the roll-out for their first full-length record, ‘Super One’, that September by having to promote it remotely through pre-recorded performances and Zoom interviews. It was led by the thumping mash-up single ‘Monster (One & Infinity)’ which, in musical terms, is a certified banger and hinted at inherent talent that “the Avengers of K-pop” had initially promised. Things were finally looking up for SuperM after a rocky start – but here’s where the dominos truly started to fall.

After the release of ‘Super One’, members Baekhyun and Taemin both enlisted in the military in May 2021. Not unheard of in K-pop, but a hard hit for such a new group. But then, a series of controversies surrounding Lucas sent him into an extended hiatus (one that would last nearly two years and see him leave NCT in 2023), leaving the boyband with only four members. And that seemingly was the end for SuperM – not with a bang but a whimper.

There was one last release, the single ‘We Do’ in April 2021, a strange tie-in with the insurance company Prudential Guarantee. As an “unofficial disbandment” song, as fans called it online, it matched the group’s chaotic journey that started with ‘Jopping’. At least that’s what we thought until New Year’s Day in 2023. SM Entertainment had a surprise for us all: “SuperM will be coming in 2023”.

It was out of the blue, not least because the group were down three members at the time of the announcement. Rumours started to swirl thanks to a teaser video that showed seven different beams of light bursting into the sky: four neon green, one white, one blue and one red. Fans theorised that, like a real-life superhero team, new members would be subbed in. We would, sadly, never find out, because said return never happened. To this day, you can trigger a SuperM fan with that announcement alone.

So, what happened? Well, Kai ended up having to surprise enlist within a week’s notice in May 2023, with Taeyong following earlier this year. Meanwhile, both Baekhyun and Taemin have contentiously cut ties with SM Entertainment as solo artists, leaving only Mark and Ten to hold the group’s mantle. But beyond the artists themselves, SuperM’s comeback-that-never-was seems, ultimately, to be the result of drama at home.

It’s no secret that SuperM was the fever-dream-turned-reality of SM Entertainment founder Lee Soo-man. But a series of internal struggles – SM terminated their production contract with Lee in October 2022, before he was ousted from the company in February 2023 after a messy series of back-and-forths with the CEOs – effectively diminished his creative power within the company.

Funnily enough, that brought on its own domino effect, starting a dogfight between South Korean giants Kakao and HYBE for Lee’s majority shares of SM Entertainment. The corporate battle would see Soo-man’s almost 30-year tenure at the K-pop agency come to an end – and with it his ambitious world-building plans – when HYBE, which Lee had thrown his weight behind, lost to tech behemoth Kakao.

Since then, Lee’s fingerprints have slowly been erased from active SM projects. Kwangya, the interconnected multiverse he created to connect all of the agency’s groups, has gone quietly dark; NCT, a group incepted from the idea of never-ending expansion, stopped adding new members; and SuperM, as well as its girl group counterpart Girls on Top, have faded into distant memory.

It’s hard to pinpoint what exactly SuperM’s legacy is five years on. For some, they’re a failed experiment, a wasted opportunity that was never able to reach its full potential thanks to a series of unfortunate events. For others, they’re a symbol of the greedy commercialisation at the heart of K-pop, a blatant attempt to bleed the most ardent fans of SM Entertainment’s groups in new and fresh ways.

But then there are those who still mourn their loss – the chaotic, frenzied blip of their existence as dazzling and surprising as a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it shooting star. In many ways, it’s those fans who’ve secured the group’s most enduring legacy that they have five years on.

When the dust eventually settled in the aftermath of the release of ‘Jopping’, the song and SuperM eventually morphed into something magical and mythical. Their initial life as a signifier of Lee Soo-man’s Icarian hubris turned into a kind-hearted meme – the rare kind that unites famously adversarial fandoms and ushered in a nuance of how to laugh about things that are funny on the internet without the fear of a mob hounding you in the DMs.

To this day, you’re still likely to see a ‘Jopping’ meme filter into your timeline ever so often, and every time it will be funny. In that regard, SuperM did manage to change the face of K-pop and create something trailblazing and prevailing. Just maybe not in the way they originally intended to.

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