But what makes their debut different? K-pop companies constantly compete for the world's spotlight through each group's image and earworm pop/electronic melodies. However, Hybe Entertainment's NewJeans revolutionizes the precedent with unique harmonic progressions and an innovative structure
without a quintessential electronic dance break, and even a soft folk-style track on a debut album. The name of the group itself has a dual meaning as a play on
"new genes", representing a new wave of K-pop music. In multiple
interviews, the members have also explained how a new pair of jeans are versatile and can have many types of uses, while also having the quality of never getting old – like NewJeans aims for their music to be.
Their marketing strategies are fresh and appear to derive from Western pop influence. The clever branding with Y2K hair clips, braids, and vintage-style clothing evokes the same generational buzz in K-Pop as Olivia Rodrigo spearheaded for Gen Z through her 2021 hit album "Sour."
The aesthetic is cute, youthful, and relatable. Not to mention their
YouTube channel is decorated with portrait-oriented, one-three minute TikTok-length clips, appealing to the Gen Z target audience with colorful content bombardment.
New Jeans has successfully been able to capture the Gen Z x Y2K aesthetic through its debut, and honor music influences such as New York Drill and RnB harmonies. The group's cleverly targeted marketing is progressive and takes advantage of many forms of media creation, and it manages to curate it all perfectly under the brand that the girl group has created for itself. We can only expect for NewJeans' influence to grow and reach broader audiences that the K-Pop genre has yet to tap into.