Everyone’s Talking About Aespa’s Extended Hiatus, But Two Popular Fourth-Generation K-Pop Girl Groups Have Been Gone Much Longer
With the recent GOT the Beat comeback and the announcement that aespa‘s AI Nævis will soon be making her debut, fans of the SM Entertainment group have been getting increasingly frustrated with aespa’s lack of their own group comeback.
Though they’ve released some collaboration songs, such as “Beautiful Christmas” with Red Velvet and various tracks on the highly collaborative 2022 Winter SM Town: SMCU Palace album, it has now been 207 days since aespa came out with their most recent group release, Girls.
The mini-album, released on July 8, 2022, was also underwhelming to some fans to begin with, given its inclusion of already-released songs like “Black Mamba” and “Life’s Too Short” so that there were only a few actually new tracks. Fans are understandably anticipating any new music released from aespa as a group and not a collaboration, but at this time, there haven’t been any updates to their musical goals for 2023.
With all the recent talk about aespa’s hiatus, however, some people have forgotten that there are two quite popular fourth-generation K-Pop girl groups that have been on hiatus for much longer.
One of these groups is Weeekly. Despite their breakthrough hit with “After School” in 2021 and their following releases that also did well, there hasn’t been any new music released from the IST Entertainment girl group since they came out with single album Play Game: Awake and its title track “Ven Para” on March 7, 2022. This means it has been 330 days since their last comeback, nearly a year ago.
With Jiyoon‘s departure from the group in June last year, it’s possible they’ve had to take extra time to readjust from being a seven-member group to a six-member one. But fans are still hoping for new music from the talented K-Pop group before too much longer!
A fourth-generation K-Pop girl group that has been on hiatus for even longer, though, is EVERGLOW. Apart from a collaboration with producer TheFatRat released in November 2022, they haven’t had a comeback since they came out with Return of the Girl and its title track “Pirate” on December 1, 2021. That means 426 days have passed since their last release, or over a year.
Yiren‘s hiatus to return to China was undoubtedly a major factor in EVERGLOW’s lack of musical releases, but now that she has officially returned as of December 2022, there’s hope that the girl group is working on new releases rather than bracing themselves for disbandment!
Of course, the last thing that fans want is for their idols to be overworked. But with some other fourth-generation and rookie girl groups making 2-3 comebacks in 2022, it’s understandable why the need for more music from these girl groups has been growing! Hopefully new songs from aespa, Weeekly, EVERGLOW, and other groups that have been on hiatus for a while will be coming soon.
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