In an actual attempt to resurrect the blog for the time being, I'm talking about the discography of a KPOP boy group who I've bought physical albums of...from their last two releases but the first time they were made available in big name retailers in the United States, Zerobaseone.
What makes this particular set of releases significant? They charted in the United States. Rollouts of each era will be discussed and my inner Little Manager will be coming out to play. For those who don't know, "Little Manager" is in reference to a singular Lady Gaga fan (most of her fans are the Little Monsters, paws up) who takes fascination with the commercial performance side of their favorite [basically the stats and chart whore and mental businessperson realness.]
January 20th, 2025 saw the Korean pre-release single of ZB1, "Doctor! Doctor!". "Wait, you mean five days after the Japanese release of 'Now or Never' and nine days before the Prezent EP, ZB1's label decided to release something in Korean?" YUP. And now let's get into who the group is under since commercial expansion in the West is being brought up in this post.
In South Korea, Zerobaseone is under contract of 2 years and 6 months with Wakeone Entertainment ["WK1" as a shorthand]. WK1 is under CJ ENM Entertainment Division, who owns and operates MNET. Yes, as in that very paid subscription network channel Boys Planet aired on and that airs the music program M Countdown. In Japan, they're managed by Lapone Entertainment that if you let Wikipedia tell the story is 70% owned by CJ ENM co. (the parent company of the aforementioned Entertainment Division). Lapone answers to Ariola Japan which is under Sony Music Entertainment Japan.
Technically, this does not quite make ZB1 Sony Music artists. Lapone secures distribution for the group in Japan with their connections to Ariola Japan who just so happens to be under the Sony Music Entertainment umbrella. This especially will be important to remember come time when WK1 decides to release albums of ZB1 in the United States, so put a pin in this.
Anyway, "Doctor! Doctor!" as a pre-release does better than "SWEAT" from last year by being able to chart but peaks at #107. Yikes on bikes, it's like pre-release single fatigue was setting in, especially with a short run-time. Here's hoping that doesn't happen again, you say not knowing what comes next...*sighs*. But despite the music video being unnecessarily dramatic at 4 minutes for a song with a runtime of 2:31, "Doctor! Doctor!" is warmly embraced by the fans despite the music video not having an actual dance scene until a separate end credits/post credits dance sequence is uploaded to the group's YouTube! christ, what a messy rollout.
Then comes February 24th, 2025 and the release of the group's fifth Korean EP, Blue Paradise and its title track "BLUE" written by Kenzie. Yeah she appears again and is going to appear again later in the post. "BLUE" fares better than the pre-release but somewhat underperforms at a modest #57 in South Korea. Thankfully the EP Blue Paradise pulls another 1.2 million in the first week and debuts at #1 (meaning that at the time of this post, Melting Point is the only release to not go #1 in South Korea, as it peaked at #2).
The EP pulls an absolute plot twist on me with all six songs being good! No fooling! Seriously, it was such a pleasant surprise that a fully Korean language release from a KPOP group I liked could deliver all good songs...even if there are two major red flags to address with Blue Paradise.
First of all, this is the EP that formally introduced me to the concept of "unit songs". "Unit songs" are songs on KPOP group releases performed by a select grouping of members in the group. Blue Paradise has six songs, THREE OF WHICH are unit songs. The absolute fucking cop-out toward fairer line distribution, this move is. "Out of Love" is made up of Jiwoong, Gyuvin and Hao, "Step Back" is made up of Ricky, Gunwook and Yujin and "Cruel" is made up of Hanbin, Matthew and Taerae. These pairings don't make that much sense and I know which member I'd switch out for the other, but I'll explain later.
"Out of Love" has the same anime opening/BL energy that I like from the group even if Jiwoong's vocals sound muffled or weirdly mixed. Gyuvin actually has more than 8-11 seconds on a song and Hao brings it home. This was nearly the song that could've made the EP a 5/6, so close yet so far away...if it weren't for what happens over a month later. We'll get there.
"Cruel" is as Avril Lavigne/Hot Topic level pop-rock as good KPOP goes. Hanbin per usual slays on this (and Boys Planet fans whose Roman Empire is the "Tomboy" stage will know why), Matthew successfully delivers Avril energy and meets the vibe of the song (even if there's a distinct possibility that either Avril Lavigne or even other Canadian pop rock royalty Fefe Dobson is before his time given he was born in 2002...oh god, I think my back pain kicked in typing that) and Taerae succeeds on a song that's seemingly out of his wheelhouse (in that he was labeled the "church boy"/"innocent oppa" by the fans).
"Step Back" is a groovy "not really R&B but pop flavored with some idea of R&B smooth track" and would be the career highlight if it weren't a fucking unit track. Especially when line distribution videos all call this and note it as the BEST line distribution to the ZB1 name...a unit track...with three members, iCannot. Still, it's about the edgiest a KPOP group can go and it's worth noting the vocal growth of the members here.
Ricky delivers some of his most well-rounded vocals yet (and he's this kind of "honey-voiced" singer where it's not thin or grating, just subtle), Yujin, with a surprising amount of depth to his voice despite being 17 here (and if he keeps up singing give or take the group's future, he'll be unstoppable in his own right someday) and Gunwook who emerged as a vocalist despite the weirdly nebulous labeling of "all-rounder"/"dancer"/"singer" the group has had since the jump. But "Checkmate" fans knew Gunwook had it in him all along. Flashback time!
November 26th, 2024 saw a surprise release of a song for the MNET competition show Stage Fighter and the sixth volume of its soundtrack. This is "Checkmate", a song that could've and should've honestly made Blue Paradise, that way we would've had more than three songs by the original lineup here.
"Checkmate" takes a Mozart sample...yes a sample of Mozart's "Symphony #40" ["Molto Allegro" for the gurls who want to get specific] is flipped into a banger of a track that has some of the best line distribution to the group. "Has it always been this skewed?" yup, but there's something to note here. Gunwook came to life on this song and showed off a notably improved sense of melody. It's toward the end of the song, but when Gunwook sings "a checkmate, unmyeong gateun this love", the way he sings "this love", is exactly the melody it should've been throughout.
Make no mistake, "Doctor! Doctor!" is great, especially with Gunwook again coming correct when he does his "slightly rap but still sings" moment of "top of the world". The highlight of the song is Jiwoong and his syrupy vocals singing "neon nae mam molla" complimenting the "Ghost Choir" meets "doo-wop by way of JYP loving retro 1950s joints" realness the song has going for it [and anything even remotely close to doo-wop adjacent can be under 2:40, most of those songs were that short.]
However, the true career highlight I'm recommending is "Devil Game". It's the sexiest a group can go...OK the edgiest the group can go while evoking something adjacent to sexy. That and the live performance on M Countdown showed that Ricky owned this song and era, right with Jiwoong but it mainly is Ricky's power hour.
Yet there's one other huge red flag I'm not holding back on: the sequencing of Blue Paradise is fucking horrible. Unit songs closing the album is bad enough, but "BLUE" not being the closer and "Cruel" was the closer? There are several people that need to be fired for that kind of idiocy, truly. Here's how I've sequenced the EP to make it make more sense:
"Checkmate"
"Step Back"
"Devil Game"
"Cruel"
"Doctor! Doctor!"
"Out of Love"
"BLUE"
And then comes the fact that the unit song pairings don't make total sense and I know which member to replace with who: Get Jiwoong out of "Out of Love" and onto "Step Back" so his sexy could've mixed with Ricky's sexy. Get Yujin out of "Step Back" and onto "Cruel" so he can play up some pop rock to match his adorable chaotic energy. Get Taerae out of "Cruel" and onto "Out of Love" so it plays into his bright on stage wheelhouse better.
This is especially driven home when it was announced that Blue Paradise would become the first ZB1 album to be released physically in the United States. This was a huge step toward international expansion that I never thought this group would take. However, the album wouldn't hit shelves until April 4th, 2025...over a month after it was released in South Korea. It's the first time WK1 assumed outright ambition to release in the United States, since their newly formed label KLAP Entertainment handled the Kep1er released Tipi-tap EP on November 1, 2024 [KLAP is brand new and didn't have access to much, but did get Kep1er a distribution deal to sell CDs in the U.S. through independent label Graff Records. Tipi-tap peaked and debuted at #147 on the Billboard 200.]
Why don't we circle back to ZB1 distribution, as mentioned earlier: remember, the group answers to WK1 in South Korea, who does business with Lapone in Japan who answers to Ariola Japan and they're under Sony Music Entertainment Japan. For the U.S. distribution of the ZB1's Blue Paradise, WK1 scored a distribution deal with Virgin Music Group; not Virgin Records, even though they both answer to Universal Music Group...wait what the fuck? Sony in East Asia and Universal in North America, how the fuck does that make sense?
Here's how: Wakeone moves like an independent label outside of South Korea. Perhaps maybe not an independent label, but they're clearly free agent level here. SM Entertainment moves the same way, as Aespa had a distribution deal with Warner Music Group up until their Armageddon full length album and Whiplash EP when they switched to Virgin Music Group who again answers to Universal [their latest release, the EP Rich Man is now under Capitol Records; Capitol answers to Universal as well. Rich Man peaked at #12 on the Billboard 200]
Cut to April 4th, 2025 and the week of release give or take on April 10th. I buy the SEEK ver. of Blue Paradise. I begin observing patterns between stores that have the album and by the end of release week I noticed something in particular: out of the 11 units sold that week, HIDE ver. outsold SEEK ver. 5 to 1 [flowery vs. edgy, the public is still largely sold by flowery aesthetics.] But everything worked out and Blue Paradise peaked and debuted at #28 on the Billboard 200 with an estimated 20k [20,000] sold in the first week. [it released on a Friday, when tracking stops, couldn't debut on the 12th chart wise it had to be the 19th, it's a mess.]
Who knows how much more it could've sold had a shoddy gamble of a release not been the direction chosen for this? Maybe if you were going to release their album for the first time, perhaps a companion disc of either Prezent or a select assortment of singles from their FOUR OTHER KOREAN EPs. Maybe even a "HIDE ver. companion disc" and "SEEK ver. companion disc" with exclusive tracks on each version of the goddamn EP of the group you're just now physically introducing to your U.S. audience. Then again, I'm merely a "fan" and they're the label. 😒
Cut to July 23rd, 2025, and a pre-release single...goddamnit...is released. This time, the track was "SLAM DUNK" and...even if it's decent once there's actual singing on it, I'm gonna admit it, I don't like it and have not streamed it fully once. But this go round, "SLAM DUNK" became the first pre-release since "SWEAT" to not chart in South Korea and its view count video wise in two months is the lowest to date. Maybe stop trying to butch up force a "masculine" image when the music isn't there.
Then cut to September 1st, 2025. The single release "ICONIK" would go on to become the group's most viral video, attaining 50 million views that week. It even attained new commercial success for ZB1 in South Korea, peaking at #17, becoming the group's highest charting song to date and their first Top 20. Additionally, the group attained a "grand slam" by winning 1st place on all 6 of the music programs in the country (winning The Show, Show Champion, M Countdown, Music Bank, Show Music Core for the first time and Inkigayo).
Then, news about the album, Never Say Never, being available for the U.S. and hitting shelves on September 5th became known. The album being released in a timely manner? Discounts greater than last time? Things looked to be coming together for the group! That would've been great, if it weren't for an August 26th album sampler and a horrifying revelation to be made within context of the album. Sure there were three more Kenzie songs that WK1 had money for, and that's great. ZB1 can say they got five songs written by her in their initial time as a group. That's not the horrifying [read as "eye-rolling"] moment.
While fans pointed to tracks such as "Lovesick Game", "Star Eyes" and one of the Kenzie co-writes "Long Way Back" as potential highlights from an admittedly shoddy as fuck album sampler...we find out two of the tracks and two of those Kenzie co-writes, "EXTRA" and "Long Way Back" are unit songs. Unit songs...on what could potentially be the only full length album this temporary boy group that should be renewing under a better label but aren't as of yet?
GIRL. FIRE THE WHOLE MANAGEMENT AND MARKETING TEAM.
Incompetence of that magnitude needs to be studied. But the takeaway of Never Say Never? DO NOT let snippets or a highlight reel fool you.
Out of the 10 tracks, 7 are good even if there's UNIT songs on a full length debut, like come on. Throughout their journey as a group, two things became apparent: one, they were always going to shine on the uptempo tracks the best, especially if the production could match their vocals. Two, they needed ballads or slow songs at some point in Korean that truly drove home that they're singers. While "HANA" fulfilled that on Prezent, there is some good news about their ballads present here.
"ICONIK" has all the mall punk/pop rock energy a group this vibrant needs. "Lovesick Game" is ear candy, if you can get past the fact there's no guitar or anything to make the chorus bigger. However, it's just torchy enough to make the highlight reel and be proof the album highlight video wasn't just some bullshit. "Goosebumps" ended up being the biggest surprise and I think some commenter on YouTube or IG said "this is for those who loved Doctor Doctor" and they were right! "Goosebumps" is retro 50s length with just enough bubblegum from the late 80s that can be the sugary sweet stuff that is incredibly tough to pull off in pop music.
Then we get to "EXTRA" and "Long Way Back", two of the Kenzie co-writes and the unit tracks. The split is 5 to 4, with Hanbin, Matthew, Gyuvin, Gunwook and Yujin on "EXTRA" and Jiwoong, Hao, Ricky and Taerae on "Long Way Back". Hey, at least Jiwoong and Ricky are together on a unit song for a change, so that's awesome. "EXTRA" has the pop rock energy mixed with about as much sultriness as KPOP allows its acts to convey. Matthew has been underrated as a vocalist, but on this song, that man came alive and sounds fresh and like a solo act the West deserves.
And then there's "Long Way Back", THEE best song on the album but a moment that presents a double edged sword: yes, it's the one time a ballad shows off VOCALbaseone in Korean. However, it's also a fucking unit track. Thankfully Jiwoong, Ricky, Hao and Taerae nailed this song. It's R&B flavored pop balladry not executed this well since "Ride For You" by Danity Kane and both Namie Amuro's songs "Baby, Don't Cry" and "Love Story".
The closing tracks also bring this album home. "Star Eyes" is exactly the dance-y uptempo banger this group should've always been utilized for. It's basically a gift for those who stanned and lived for the Boys Planet Signal Song (theme song) "Here I Am", as "Star Eyes" is basically that with a proper commercial release. Finally, the third and last Kenzie co-write "I Know U Know" does bring OT9 together on a ballad that does end up playing to the group's strengths vocally and the key change does show its craftsmanship fabulously. It's not "Long Way Back" but close enough. For the highlight here, they were in this together, so "Star Eyes" it is.
Success came again as Never Say Never went #1 in South Korea with 1.5 million in sales and charted in the U.S. at #23 on the Billboard 200 with an estimated sales of almost 21k in the first week. This is astounding as I ended up being the only version of the ICON ver. box being sold throughout the release week [sure it was 6 vs. BP's 11 but this was the same week as South Korea's release. Not to mention this is when NSN was made available at more retailers than Target and Barnes & Noble.]
Overall, this is a group whose potential was finally met across all aspects of pop music. Sure some commercial rollout aspects were fucking messy and lacking any thought behind them. However, there's something beautifully endearing of a group who despite not being underdogs in the slightest, still work at it because it's what they love to do and in 2025 make some of their best music to date. Please for the love of god, stick together and let a different and better...than WK1 label scoop up Zerobaseone.
Highlights:
"Checkmate" 🥇
"Devil Game" 🏆
"BLUE" 🥇
"Long Way Back" but I still hate that it's just a unit track but it slays 🏆🏆🏆🏆
"ICONIK" 🏆🏆🏆🏆🏆🏆 (because "grand slam")
"Star Eyes" 🥇🥇🥇
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