KATSEYE is one of the most fascinating groups in pop right now, but that’s not because of their music. I’m slowly becoming convinced they are less an actual girl group than a 24-month sociological study conducted by Harvard: what happens when a handful of talented, ridiculously beautiful girls are perpetually donned in various Y2K trinkets and almost no clothing (despite half of them not being old enough to drink) while shaking ass to some of the most brainrot music known to man in front of hordes upon hordes of tweenage girls? The jury is still out, but it’s not exactly trending positive. I don’t blame the members themselves so much as the companies propping them up: these women have talent and potential, but HYBE UMG and Geffen Records seem almost viciously eager to squander it. Imagine spending over a year in—and subsequently winning—a hellish, publicly televised competitive girl group bootcamp, only to be awarded the dubious prize of being forced to chant about zucchinis and emojis mid-twerk to an audience of 12-year-olds. If I were Manon Bannerman (and now, apparently, Sophia Laforteza), I’d be “taking a mental health break,” too. It’s not like every hit has been a miss. “Debut” was okay, albeit bland. It was most notable for the controversy surrounding its music video (in which Manon, the group’s only Black member, was consistently blocked by other members in every dance formation). The sweet, girly “Touch” showed real promise, setting up KATSEYE to follow in the footsteps of other renowned K-Pop girl groups, though the rest of SIS (Soft Is Strong) had much less to offer (see: Daniela’s much memed-upon word-vomit verse in “Tonight I Might,” or the Target aisle-core tracks “I’m Pretty” and “My Way”). BEAUTIFUL CHAOS launched KATSEYE into the mainstream with “Gnarly,” an abrasive, bizarro number that admittedly grew on me and everyone else like a particularly incorrigible and surprisingly enjoyable rash. That EP as a whole—with the prominent exception of the abjectly cringe “Mean Girls”—was actually pretty fun: “Game Boy” was silly but fine, “Gabriela” was cheesy but catchy, and “M.I.A.” legitimately eats, no “but” necessary. What has been lacking from KATSEYE’s discography, perhaps more than anything else, is an identity. It’s pretty evident that the group—or, really, HYBE and Geffen—have been throwing shit at the wall, hoping desperately that something, anything, would stick. For a group seemingly grounded in the personalities of their individual members—again, each member was voted into the group by an international audience after their skills and personalities were broadcast on YouTube for eight episodes—their music has shockingly little to do with any of them. WILD, their third EP, promised to end the identity search and finally establish KATSEYE as a legitimate, focused force. In interviews and press statements prior to its release, WILD was dubbed a “big departure, both sonically and aesthetically.” “If you look at the SIS era and see how we were then,” said group leader Sophia, “we were not us at all.” WILD, however, is them—or at least it’s supposed to be. As all-rounder Megan Skendiel declared, “With every release that we put out, the more authentic and raw it gets to us.” Which makes me ask: Really? Listening to WILD, “authentic” and “raw” are the last two adjectives in the English language that come to mind. It’s almost laughable to think back on Megan’s statement after hearing songs like “PINKY UP!” and “Hootie Frutti,” both of which—alongside the especially egregious single “Internet Girl”—seem to be failed, less charmingly obnoxious imitations of “Gnarly.” They’re soulless “baddie anthems” dominated primarily by the repetition of their utterly nonsensical titles; songs that must be to insecure TikTok tweens dreaming of nose jobs and booty shorts what Cocomelon is to toddlers. Most frustratingly, they suggest that the people behind KATSEYE still haven’t figured out what made “Gnarly” work. It’s frustrating to watch HYBE and Geffen seem determined to triple down on the hyper-slop combo, while failing to realize that the song’s appeal came from its intentional idiocy and meaninglessness. “PINKY UP” at least comes closer to the indefinable appeal of “Gnarly.” It pinballs between shouts of its silly title phrase, crooned nothingburgers like “No one can touch us if they tried / It’s a state of mind,” and—of course—baddie-isms galore (“Us against the world, shaking ass in the parking lot / If we get arrested, ha ha, baby, laugh it off”). But after the 20th listen, it’s hard not to feel Stockholm Syndrome-ed into liking it, or at least not hating it. This is largely due to the genuinely addictive production: all thumping, gut-punching bass and rips from Da Hool’s 1997 hit “Meet Her at the Love Parade.” The “message” is something about the bridging of high-end (pinkies up, tea parties) with low-end (parking lot ass-shaking). The fact that KATSEYE is trying to justify this song with a purpose at all is more than deserving of an eye-roll, but the fact that they do so with a reference to Socrates, of all things—complete with a horrendous half-spoken declaration of “the only true wisdom is knowing you know nothing”—is just maddeningly camp enough to work. “Hootie Frutti,” on the other hand, reminds me less of “Gnarly” than it does “Prickly Muffin,” the BoJack Horseman parody of music made by child stars in their “trying to prove I have sex appeal via gibberish innuendo” phase. KATSEYE’s attempt is much the same, albeit above Anitta-imitating Brazilian phonk: “Hootie frutti, nice and juicy,” Megan downright moans. “Yeah, you crave it and you’re not even a foodie!” The girls also inform us that “hootie frutti” will be “put on [our] tongue” in both the verse and chorus. But for a song trading on sex, “Hootie Frutti” plays it ridiculously safe (aside from the forced, vaguely Brazilian accent each member adopts). There’s no sensuality in KATSEYE’s sexiness here; it doesn’t feel honest but hollow, a shallow and commercialized cash-grab. A solid ninety percent of the music video is spent zooming in on the members’ gyrating, barely-legal bodies, dripping with water like participants in a frat-organized wet T-shirt contest, and the other ten percent is blink-and-you-miss-it product placement (shoutout Tic Tacs and Gui Gui slime, I guess). It’s a fitting ratio, seeing as each line is either a phoned-in, nonsensical euphemism or a complete non sequitur aimed at raking views from the Labubu/Dubai chocolate-obsessed tween crowd: “Carry my matcha, Mount Valley water,” sighs Yoonchae Jeong. “I like my mochi drenched in chocolata!” But even if these songs are about as far from “authentic” and “raw” representations of the members’ identities as humanly possible, at least they have something to do with the image KATSEYE has curated thus far. The rest of the WILD could be performed by virtually any artist and sound mostly the same. “Animal” feels like a paint-by-numbers Britney Spears knockoff about dating someone hot and suuuper crazy, except it’s co-written by Ed Sheeran, which is its own kind of indictment. Lara Raj’s voice sounds incredible when it’s descending through lines like “You make the light and the shadows collide,” but not incredible enough to make you forget how hard you cringed when Daniela Avanzini whispered “Be careful what you’re wishing for ‘cause I get freaky” seconds before. “Bel Air” manages to make even a Charli xcx demo sound bland, filled with monotonous clichés of heartbreak and, naturally, even more bass. And although “That Way” finally lets the group’s main vocalists shine in a song that plays to their talents, it feels like someone set five Rihanna wannabes to a discarded Pharrell Girl beat. All three tracks are utterly forgettable, their hooks dissipating into thin air the second you hit pause. At least “Hootie Frutti” is an earworm. I’m starting to wonder if maybe we’re giving HYBE and Geffen too much credit in saying they’re simply “putting off” KATSEYE’s self-definition. Maybe this EP is a statement of identity; maybe the lack of identity is itself the point. No one has a commercial incentive to let these girls become anything specific. If anything, a real self might narrow the addressable market. Claims of authenticity and rawness make for good soundbites, but for massive companies in the age of TikTok and mass commercialization, that’s all they can be. The more KATSEYE insists that it is finally showing us its “real” self, the more obvious it becomes that the real product may be the illusion of authenticity itself. The real money lies in 15-second clips of girls dancing to thumping bass, and while I’d love to be proven wrong, it’s starting to feel like that’s all KATSEYE will ever be. [HYBE/Geffen] Casey Epstein-Gross is Features Editor at Paste and is based in New York City. Follow her on X (@epsteingross) or email her at [email protected].