Emily
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September 5, 2025
Title: The rise of ILLIT: Magnetic
ILLIT is a South Korean K-pop girl group that debuted on March 25, 2024, formed by the Belift Lab sub-label of HYBE. The group has five members: Yunah, Wonhee, Minju, Moka, and Iroha. For starters, I’ll talk about the group members; I'll give a complete introduction to every one of them.
First, we have Yunah, who is from South Korea and is 20 years old. Next is Minju, who is from South Korea and is 19 years old. For the other three members, we will start with Moka, who is from Japan and is 19 years old, and Wonhee, who is from South Korea and is 16. Last is Iroha, who is 16 years old and from Japan. The group members were supposed to have stage positions, but it wasn’t decided yet.
Next, I'll talk about the group itself, including its members and the concept of a Y2K aesthetic. The music has bright-sounding music that sounds like it’s from a good K-drama. Along with their song Magnetic, the song blew up quickly, which was expected since the song had a catchy rhythm, and in my opinion, it’s a great song. I'm not surprised that the song blew up; the song was originally from an EP called Super Real Me. As for the next thing, I’ll be talking about the song Magnetic since it’s blowing up in popularity, and the song reflects the irresistible pull or attraction of newfound romance. So, seeing the song's meaning, I guess it’s great, but honestly, I thought it was like someone a lot or being a soulmate, and having a close connection. So, for the song, in summary, Wonhee starts singing, and then a few girls from the group will begin singing. After singing, the whole group starts dancing to the chorus, and one or a bunch of girls start singing. Continuing with the summary, the song has a part that pauses and pauses for a few seconds with a small middle part, but it’s trendy, and until it starts playing again, it’s the chorus plus some different lines. The song's choreography is challenging to dance to because of the part where you have to count in between, and in my opinion, watching everyone online trying to dance was a struggle.
Continuing with the song's meaning, it has more than a basic newfound romance meaning because some of the small details in the lyrics are very unexpected, as they decided to put U instead of you. So basically, the U meant like a magnet sign, which is creative and magnetic, telling people in the song that the girls are opposites but are attracted to each other’s minds. Along with that, the genre of the EP is pluggnb/R&B, which makes the music video sound like a video game. I think it’s a creative idea because I thought NewJeans would be the group with that type of music. Next is the group members' vocals. After the group sang live, there was a lot of hate. Only one member was Minju, who carried the whole song. So it’s heard that the group uses a lot of autotune for their songs because not everyone can sing. I think the group itself was formed from a survival show based on voting, including the audience’s choice, because that affects the audience significantly. And I think when the audience voted, they only focused on the looks, so it made the effort of every girl go to waste while their looks were the only thing that could guarantee their place.
Continuing with the vocals of the group members, everyone except Minju had bad vocals and was very off-beat when they sang live, and it didn’t impress the fans.
In conclusion, ILLIT is a K-pop group that is doing well in their music, even if the vocals of some members are wrong. The group may have been rumored to be copying NewJeans, but in my opinion, it’s not that bad because this was the company’s choice, not the group members.
Citations: https://kpopping.com/profiles/group/ILLIT
