Former FIESTAR Member Yezi Confesses That The Group Made No Money

Former FIESTAR member Yezi sat down with Recent Olympics on YouTube to talk about her life as a former girl group member. One of the topics that Yezi discussed was the group’s lack of popularity compared to their fellow girl groups, which led to people’s inability to recognize them in public.

People didn’t know that Cao Lu unnie, me, and the other members were in one group. They would often say, ‘is that her?’ Even when we would do music shows, we would on our way to the broadcast and people would often say I resembled the ‘crazy dog’ (her nickname from ‘Unpretty Rapstar.’)

— Yezi

Yezi also discussed the group’s overall regrets, as they believed they never got to show off their full potential.

We were unable to show off our potential as a team so we had a lot of regrets.

— Yezi

The former girl group member then shared the truth behind FIESTAR’s disbandment and how it wasn’t as shocking as it seemed.

Honestly, we knew deep down that our label was going through a tough time. We also knew that we were failing to garner a positive response whenever we would promote. So when our contracts expired, we just decided to part ways beautifully….

— Yezi

She continued to touch on the group’s disbandment by discussing how she felt about those who blamed the members on their unpopularity.

There were times when people would blame us saying ‘you guys didn’t make it because you guys didn’t work hard enough.’ But we worked really hard. We poured our youth into it, but we needed to achieve results and we weren’t able to. During those times, when we would hear ‘it’s because you guys didn’t work for it,’ it made us really sad.

— Yezi

With this topic, the discussion of the group’s salary came up, to which Yezi had a heartbreaking confession.

Since we didn’t have any popularity, we weren’t able to make any money. We didn’t make any money. Zero.

— Yezi

FIESTAR was a 6-member girl group that was formed by IU‘s label, Kakao M (formerly known as LOEN Entertainment.) The girls made their debut on August 31, 2012 with their single album titled, Vista, which led to some commercial success. And while members Cao Lu and Yezi saw some individual success, with Cao Lu gaining attention for her bubbly personality on variety programs and Yezi for her appearance on Unpretty Rapstar, the rest of FIESTAR was unable to follow suit.

After 6 years of constant promotions and the departure of one of their members, the girl group disbanded in 2018 following their contract expirations.