Katseye Might Disband. That's Probably a Good Thing.

Katseye at the 2026 Grammys (From Left to Right: Yoonchae, Megan, Lara, Manon, Sophia, Daniela). Image Credit: Getty

The future looks uncertain for Katseye. Perhaps we should let them disband.

On 20 February 2026, K-pop conglomerate HYBE announced that Katseye member Manon Bannerman would be going on a temporary hiatus due to health reasons. An hour later, Manon herself posted that she was doing well and was healthy, leading to a month of media speculation and serious accusations of racism and discrimination. Clearly, though, something is very wrong behind the scenes, and Katseye might not even make it to the end of the year. That might be for the best.

The fundamental problem with Katseye as a group is a lack of artistic intent. The idea of an American K-pop group was always going to be difficult to execute; the two descriptors result in an oxymoronic mess that cancels itself out, leaving only the vague suggestion of a group. “Group” is an adequate description for Katseye, given that it is surprisingly difficult to say anything substantive about them. Adjectives like “international,” “talented,” and “popular” certainly apply, but they do nothing to bring us closer to understanding the essence of the group beyond the people it is composed of. Some girl groups are empowering, some are cute, and others are downright weird. Katseye tries to be all of these and somehow fails at being any of them.

The issue was apparent from the start. “Debut,” their creatively titled debut single, is a certainly a song and not really much else. It has a hook, albeit a basic one and it’s pleasant enough to here looped a dozen times in a row while scrolling through Instagram reels but not interesting enough to engage with much beyond that. Their second single, “Touch,” leaned more into the Korean side of the group’s DNA by emulating the cutesy, UK garage-influenced pop of fellow HYBE group NewJeans. The problem is that if I wanted to listen to that kind of music, I would rather listen to NewJeans. Even “Gnarly,” released the following year, and probably the closest Katseye has come to making any sort of artistic statement, ultimately cannot escape its origins as an Alice Longyu Gao outtake, who was already a BTEC version of SOPHIE. But at least Joni Mitchell was able to hear it live. The song gestures towards some kind of ironic critique of the vapidness of Gen-Z culture with our obsession with consumerism and brain rot but fails actually develop a thesis based on these observations. So, of course, the natural follow-up, “Gabriela,” threw all of that in the bin in favour of a vaguely Latin sonic palette, seemingly chosen because an executive saw Charli XCX’s name attached to the demo and did not realise this was back in the era when her label was forcing her to write songs for Camila Cabello in order to fund the actually good music she was making for herself.

Image Credit: Getty

“Great artists steal” may be a cliché, but it is true. K-pop as a genre is probably the greatest example of this; indeed, the very system of idols upon which it runs was taken from J-pop, which itself borrowed the idea from Motown. The industry functions as a kind of musical fast fashion, taking whatever is trending and making it accessible to the masses by wrapping it in a shiny package of choreography and parasocialism. This is not a bad thing; I am not immune to the simple pleasure of shopping at Uniqlo and a guilty pleasure of mine will always be DIA’s “WooWoo,” despite its legally actionable similarities to Tinashe’s “Superlove”. It may not be the most cutting-edge thing ever, but it is usually nice to look at. In fact, the genre is at its best when it leans into and winks at its own hyper-manufactured sheen. See Orange Caramel’s masterpiece “Catallena,” which samples a Punjabi folk song over a disco beat while the members are portrayed as human sushi in the music video. PinkPantheress probably put it best when she advised aspiring artists to listen to K-pop due to the sheer variety of genres it pulls influence from.

Katseye represent a corrupted final form of the K-pop industry as a whole. Not satisfied with borrowing from other musical scenes HYBE decided to cannibalise itself, not unlike an ouroboros devouring itself into nothingness. American K-pop is just a whole lot of nothing. In trying to bridge the gap between K-pop and the music it seeks to emulate, quickly ends up at an artistic dead end. Like an AI model trained solely on other AI-generated media, things can only really get worse. Katseye cannot iterate or grow; their latest offering, “Internet Girl,” is a flanderised version of “Gnarly” that amplifies everything annoying about the original and none of its charm.

The truth is Katseye’s music will always be secondary to Katseye the brand. It is as if HYBE realised they could make more money by skimping on the music and instead doubled down on the K-pop industry’s most predatory tactics, encouraging and monetising unhealthy parasocial relationships between fans and idols, excessive brand deals, and marketing eating disorders to teenage girls. Katseye are a group of influencers who just so happen to make music on the side, which makes sense given that the members were originally cast through their social media presence. Their viral GAP advert foregoes using the group’s songs or voices for a reason. All of this is to say that if the whole Manon fiasco proves fatal, not much would be lost.