K-pop girl group aespa have addressed the public management dispute within their agency SM Entertainment.
Earlier this year, SM Entertainment found itself in a management dispute between its founder Lee So-man and SM’s top executives, including its CEO Chris Lee. At the time, HYBE had planned to acquire Lee So-man’s stake in the K-pop agency, while Chris Lee and his team described it as a ““hostile takeover”.
During the saga, Chris Lee had claimed in a now-deleted video that new music from aespa had been delayed due to Lee Soo-man’s insistence on lyrics about sustainability. Chris Lee also alleged that those songs were later scrapped in favour of a new project.
aespa has since touched on SM Entertainment’s public management dispute and how it impacted the girl group, during a press conference for their new mini-album ‘MY WORLD‘. “The restructured company actually didn’t affect us directly, but it feels like we now have a team that is fully dedicated to us,” Winter said, per Korea JoongAng Daily.
“To be honest, we were more worried about the confusion and misunderstandings that the fans experienced,” she added. “We always remain unchanged, and we’re always thinking about our next music.”
Meanwhile, Karina touched on the group’s 10-month break, saying that it “gave us time to restructure ourselves, by things like working out, practicing or talking to the members for improvements”.
Elsewhere, during the interview, aespa also spoke about new music from the group soon, including four solo songs that the members had performed during their ‘SYNK: Hyper Line’ concert in February.
“The solo songs may be in included in our full-length album in the future. Or maybe not,” Karina said. “But we do want to include them in the album.”
Meanwhile, Giselle and Winter confirmed that “there indeed is a full-length album in the works, and we filled the album with songs that we’ve been saving for a full-length album, which we’ve been preparing for a long time”.
aespa’s new project ‘MY WORLD’ came out yesterday (May 8) and features the title track ‘Spicy’. The record also features the pre-release single ‘Welcome to MY World’, as well as the songs ‘Salty & Sweet’, ‘Thirsty’, ‘Till We Meet Again’ and ‘I’m Unhappy’.
