KATSEYE are living the teenage dream. Daniela, Yoonchae, Megan, Sophia, Lara and Manon come from a generation of kids raised watching the likes of One Direction, Fifth Harmony and Little Mix find superstardom via reality TV. Naturally, this fostered hopes within millions that their raw, malleable talent would be discovered and they too would one day be performing on stages worldwide. Only for these six, it just became a reality. “We each have that core childhood memory of holding a hairbrush in our hand as we perform in the mirror, which is kinda cute,” says 21-year-old Manon, speaking exclusively to i-D alongside her KATSEYE bandmates, the new K-pop-inspired girl group formed from an online, publicly-voted audition programme.
Unlike those aforementioned The X Factor bands, the standards set for KATSEYE were far, far higher. After HYBE (the South Korean entertainment label behind BTS and NewJeans) and Geffen Records (the LA label behind Olivia Rodrigo) announced in November 2021 that they were joining forces to put together a new girl band, they had over 120,000 applicants. This was then whittled down to 20 promising talents, who spent the next two years training to sing, dance and perform with the awe-inspiring precision of K-pop idols at The Dream Academy in the US. Throughout autumn 2023, performances from the girls were posted on YouTube and TikTok as part of The Debut: The Dream Academy series, with the public voting for the members they want to save after each round.
Cut to 17 November, and the six girls we now know as KATSEYE are standing on a giant stage somewhere in Hollywood for the live finale. Dressed in grey school uniforms, they sob and hold each other’s hands tightly on the cusp of possibly becoming the world’s next big girlband. “We’ve been dreaming of this feeling for so long,” Lara tells us. The genuine joy is evident in the voice of the 18-year-old (the self-titled “middle child” of the group). “It felt so far away and exciting and unknown. It was the best day of our lives because it was the moment when all that hard work had paid off and we were going to be doing this for the rest of our lives. That’s the best thing I’ve ever felt.”
How do you celebrate achieving the dreams of teenagers everywhere and making it into the world’s next big pop group? Already in superstar mode, the girls celebrated with the fans via a YouTube afterparty with a cake, singing and presents. But, privately, they claim to have kept it pretty tame and reflective. Understandable, given the whirlwind they’ve been through. “It’s taking a lot of convincing ourselves and each other that we made it into KATSEYE,” 20-year-old Sophia says. “We’ve had two days to sit and look out into the world and process everything.” Some of the girls did this in the house they’ve been living in together with the other competitors for the past two years, while others, such as Manon, escaped to Malibu.
“This is the first time an American girl group is going to make American pop music but trained to do the crazy choreography of K-pop.” Daniela
Now, a couple of days after their win, the excitement of doing press together is palpable across the Zoom call, as is the fact they’re still very much normal teenage girls. The walls behind Megan are plastered with posters of artists such as Kurt Cobain and Travis Scott. Lara refers to Fifth Harmony as “the girl group of our childhoods. They came up with our generation.” Later, they collectively sign off the call by each making a cute Gen Z heart with their hands.
But they’re also aware of their global position, and the unique position they’re in to revolutionise the music industry. “This is the first time a global girl group is going to make American pop music but trained to do the crazy choreography of K-pop,” 19-year-old Daniela says. “It’s never been done before and it’s really, really cool! I’m so excited to share with the world our talent and our cultures and put it into our performances!” The other girls agree. “Lara is the first Indian girl to be signed under HYBE, I’m the first Black woman, Sophia’s the first Filipino, and Daniela’s the first Latina,” Manon says. “So this is a huge responsibility, but we also get to influence young girls with the same dream in some small country somewhere out there.” Lara adds: “I really, really see it for us that this group is something that changes history.”
While Daniela, Manon, Lara and Sophia were all able to graduate high school before joining the programme, Yoonchae and Megan have had wildly different adolescent years in comparison to their peers. “I definitely think I missed out on some high school experiences and, being homeschooled, I didn’t get to experience normal teenage life,” Megan says. Born in Honolulu, the 17-year-old moved to LA with her family when she was just 10 to pursue music. “Sometimes I wonder what my life would have looked like if I wasn’t homeschooled, but I don’t regret it at all. That’s definitely a big sacrifice I made at a young age to pursue my dreams, but it has paid off!” The baby of the girlband, 15-year-old Yoonchae, was training in K-pop in Seoul alongside her schooling before moving to LA for the programme. “Sometimes I’m jealous of my friends and their high school experiences, but I find this job rewarding and meaningful and I’m having fun!” she says in Korean.
Though she has a strong understanding of English, Yoonchae is currently learning to speak it fluently so she can communicate easier with her team and fans, but that hasn’t stopped her from becoming close with the girls, particularly Daniela, who says Yoonchae quickly became her closest friend during the programme despite the language barrier. “Now I have five big sisters who I can count on,” Yoonchae adds, referring to herself as the maknae of the group, which is Korean for youngest sibling. Living together over the years has strengthened their bonds, as well as with the other competitors who didn’t make the final group. The older girls take on a protective role over the younger girls — providing everything from advice to deep late night chats and a shoulder to lean on as they collectively find their way in the LA music industry. “I’m very caring and loving, so I find myself always helping the other girls,” Daniela says. “Especially when we’re at the house, I’m always reminding the girls to clean up after themselves. They also like to borrow my clothes!”
For all members, performing seems to be as innate to them as walking, having started singing and dancing when they were toddlers. Manon, who grew up in Switzerland with her Ghanaian family, says there was always music playing at home and remembers her dad calling her Beyoncé, recognising her star power from early on. The singer has since become a major influence on Manon as an artist. Some of the other girls come from families of performers. Sophia, who was raised in Manila, was heavily influenced by her mum, who recently played the lead role in the musical Miss Saigon on the West End. Daniela, meanwhile, grew up learning Latin ballroom in Atlanta and Miami before taking part on shows like So You Think You Can Dance and America’s Got Talent. That innate performer talent runs through her veins too, with an uncle who was in a Venezuelan pop group in the 80s, grandparents who were in a Cuban jazz band in the 60s, and a world championship dancer mother who has choreographed for Will Smith, Ricky Martin and Gloria Estefan. Having grown up in New York and LA, as well as being exposed to her mother’s Bharatanatyam dancing, both Lara and her popstar sister, Rhea Raj, had musical dreams. “My sister started taking singing lessons and I wanted to be just like her — she was my idol! — and, so, I did too, and fell in love with music. It’s the biggest way we connect and I can’t wait for our journeys to unfold next to each other.”
While many of the girls loved performing but weren’t sure of their artistry prior to the show, Lara was set on starting a solo career. “I started making my own music when I was 10 or 11,” she says. “There was no plan B for me; my life feels like nothing without music. I was ready to release a couple of songs and then I got scouted for the show. These huge labels coming together and being in this space with other girls is what I’ve always wanted, so it was perfect.” Lara couldn’t be more sure that she and the other girls were destined to be in this band. “We’ve had years of coming into the studio and training together every day to decide if this is what we want, with these specific girls and these amazing labels, and we’ve never been more assured that this is the path for our careers and these are the people we want to do it with.”
“Lara is the first Indian girl to be signed under HYBE, I’m the first Black woman, Sophia the first Filipino, Daniela the first Latina. So this is a huge responsibility but we also get to influence young girls with the same dream in some small country somewhere out there.” Manon
Surprisingly, one thing that was new to many of the girls when they started the K-pop training programme was K-pop. Aside from Yoonchae, whose popstar dreams were born from a love of watching BTS perform, Daniela claims Sophia was the one who got most of the girls into the genre. Though she, too, only discovered it a couple months prior to auditioning. “The reason I saw this audition was because I had recently subscribed to the HYBE YouTube account as I was trying to follow up with BTS, Seventeen, TXT and Enhypen,” she says, noting that this insight into Korean entertainment also helped her during the competition. “I’ve seen the survival shows and I was like, ‘okay, I think The Dream Academy is going to go this way’ and we’d create our own theories together, as a lot of the things the audience were seeing, we were seeing for the first time too.”
The nature of the online audition programme meant the fans saw the finalised performances and a few behind the scenes moments, but little of the journey, experiences and personal stories of the 20 girls competing. While the mix of LA and Korean labels behind the band seemingly means the rules and regulations on the girls are less strict than other K-pop bands face, an upcoming documentary directed by Nadia Hallgren — who was behind the Michelle Obama documentary Becoming (2020) — is set to shed more light on the hard work, sweat, tears and joy of the girls. “It’s a whole different side and people don’t really know the hard part of it all,” Daniela says. “Our monthly evaluations and super, super long rehearsals. The way our teachers would train and discipline us, I think people really need to see that.”
The girls are already gearing up to begin work on their debut album, also set for release in 2024. Though they don’t think it will be possible for the first record, many of them want to be as creatively involved in the production of their music as possible. Manon and Lara want to write songs, with the latter also wanting to bring the music production skills she learnt from her sister to the studio. Having trained as a dancer before becoming a singer, Megan wants to choreograph some of the girls’ dances for music videos and performances too. She reports having already grown in her artistry and her own identity alongside the girls. “The biggest thing we all want to convey is confidence and unity, and I really hope it shows and that we inspire through everything we do.”
Naturally, KATSEYE has big dreams of world-domination. There’s the obvious: “Coachella! A Grammy!” Daniela exclaims excitedly. Sophia dreams of doing a Superbowl Halftime Show. Manon would be happy with the “smallest, rookie award, like the smallest award ever. If we’re performing in front of like 30 people that’s fine… but the Grammys would be big,” she says, perhaps forgetting the labels they’re signed to and the hundreds of thousands of people already following the band just days into its formation.
The Spice Girls, The Pussycat Dolls, BLACKPINK – only a handful of girl bands have become global household names. While the platform KATSEYE already has gives them a hefty head start, the girls see their true advantage as the sisterhood they’ve formed from two years of living together, and the shared memories of supporting each other through training. To them, that’s what will keep them united and driven towards superstardom. “Two years ago, I was sitting in my bedroom in the Philippines listening to music; we were all in our own homes doing our own thing,” Sophia says. The other girls smile affectionately, nodding along. “Now we’re going to be a global girl group! We all have the same burning passion. It’s what’s going to keep us going and make us legendary.”
Credits
Photography Jeannie Sui Wonders