A photo of my brother and I listening to “Magnetic” by ILLIT on Spotify.
Get to Know the Group
IILIT (eye-lit) or (I’ll-lit), the new K-pop group that debuted March 25, 2024, is already going viral.
The group consists of 5 members:
- Iroha- She is 16 years old and from Japan. Iroha is the youngest member of ILLIT and has been exposed to music since the age of 3. According to Kbizoom, a K-pop news website, “Before coming to HYBE, Iroha was a trainee under JYP Entertainment, having trained alongside NiziU and NMIXX.”
- Minju- She is 19 years old and from South Korea. Kbizoom has stated she trained under YG Entertainment and was a promising face in the project to debut the BLACKPINK’s little sister – BABYMONSTER.” She later joined BELIFT LAB. She is considered a vocalist of the group.
- Wonhee- She is 16 years old and from South Korea. Wonhee was actually first scouted at a subway station due to her visual. She only trained for 1 month!
- Yunah- She is 20 years old and from South Korea. She began her trainee journey in 2018 at Stardium Entertainment before moving to Source Music.
- Moka- She is 19 years old and from Japan. Moka first started out joining HYBE’s label in Japan back in 2020 which later led to her joining the “R U Next?” reality show.
There was a 6th member, Youngseo, who was a pre-debut member, but ended up leaving before the actual debut.
Wikipedia explains ILLIT was “formed by Belift Lab, a sub-label of Hybe through the JTBC 2023 survival competition show ‘R U Next?’” This is Hybe’s third girl group debuting but Belift Lab’s first.
The group’s debut album is called “SUPER REAL ME”, which includes 4 tracks. The song “Magnetic” has been the focus of this release and the K-pop fans are loving it. This was announced as the lead single. The song has currently around 3.94 million streams since release date.
My brother is a huge fan of K-pop who likes Stray Kids and NewJeans. He has listened to the song Magnetic many times and has said that “Magnetic by ILLIT has a nice beat! The song has a bubbly feeling to it which I love.”
Controversy
Many fans compare ILLIT’s songs to the popular girl K-pop group, NewJeans. Both groups are owned by Hybe so it is no surprise that their songs sound the same. It gets even crazier when you compare ILLIT’s style to NewJeans’. Many fans had commented things like “I thought they were NewJeans.” and “NewJeans?” Allegedly, ILLIT took all of NewJeans’ makeup staff in the process of them debuting. As the group continues to make music, it will be interesting to see if features will remain similar to NewJeans.
