One Hit Wonders: Why Brave Girls Chooses to Keep “Rollin’”

A reality show, an obsession with rankings, and the South Korean military have all redefined Brave Girls as a born-again viral hit in the quicksilver world of K-Pop ensembles.

Written by Raymond Lam

Images courtesy of Brave Entertainment

Virality is never an unwelcome phenomenona in the hyper-competitive K-Pop industry, though it’s a feat usually not achieved with a fair bit of intent, at least as of recent. Cast away your memories of the early aughts’ fixation on 15-seconds-of-famers and occasional K-POP hits that entered the global limelight; through the eyes of the global industry, modern K-Pop has exploded to foster staple ensembles that compete with household names on an international stage and fandoms that will go to the ends of the Earth to defend their faves. It isn’t 2012 anymore: Out-of-touch parents have shifted their stratagem to fitting in with the kids by professing their familiarity with BTS and BlackPink instead of Bieber.

So it’s a bit strange to see a new sort of meme-fueled virality take center stage, independent of the usual careful planning behind modern viral hits: “Rollin,’” a four-year-old single from a last-ditch comeback effort of a largely-forgotten, ten-year-old K-Pop girl group, suddenly found itself at the top of the 2021 music charts in South Korea. It became the song with the sixth most Perfect-All-Kills (a ranking metric for simultaneous #1 charting) of all time, and the highest for any female-led K-Pop group. Previously near disbandment, the ensemble of four non-original members were suddenly back on with a series of new performances, a new EP titled Thank You, and a rare US tour. Everyone loves a good redemption arc, but where did all the success come from?

The popular folklore explaining their sudden return stems from a particular YouTube edit of their performances, though not in the colorful, ornate stages most perform on. Rather, all of the performances featured were taped on gigs at 80 or so South Korean military bases in the time between their debut and big blow-up. Brave Girls acquired quite the reputation for their frequent gigs at the military’s “K-Force Special Shows” for conscripts, a rare form of entertainment on the often-remote bases where mobile phone use was only recently sanctioned. The poor compensation for appearances on Special Shows (about $900 USD for each) leaves little incentive for any known acts to make the trek to the often remote and desolate stations where the country’s mandatory male conscripts are stationed. Yet it seems Brave Girls’s persistence to show up for these (and their rather devoted military fans) was enough to achieve internet virality, if only for just a moment.

And so the story goes for all viral hits seizing onto their 10 seconds of revived fame: talk show and variety show interviews, fresh award show performances and wins, the first of which occurred 1,854 days past the initial release of ”Rollin’,” the aforementioned gratuitously-titled EP (“I've been waiting so long (so long)”), a rebranded album cover, brand deals and brand songs, and the like. Just like that, Brave Girls has taken a new title as the country’s “military favorite” — not that one existed before — and have become the underdogs that could. The group’s past decline wasn’t exactly unusual for the K-Pop industry; the four remaining members (Minyoung, Yujeong, Eunji, and Yuna) are outnumbered by the six original members and recruits who’ve all left, and the average age of the group is in the 30s, much older than increasingly teenage-dominated new ensembles with younger and younger recruits. So-called ‘comebacks’ that are usually frequent for active groups only came every couple of years for Brave Girls, save for a well-executed appeal for an indie audience with city-pop track "We Ride.” Members feared their planned 2021 disbandment prior to their sudden surge in popularity. Instead, we now get a fandom that makes military-style shovel lightstick mockups and whose album-buying cohort is 88.7% male, higher than any other major female-led K-Pop ensemble.

To be clear, “Rollin’“ itself isn’t exactly a prophetic or revolutionary moment in K-Pop history. It’s a fairly standard synth-pop beat with your usual 2017 charms, right with the times of the era, though some of the lyrics appear a bit prescient (“All day long / I'm locked up with thoughts of you / I'm waiting like this”). A far cry from the oftentimes jagged influences contemporary K-Pop hits will sample — hyperpop, R&B, and Bollywood, to name a few — “Rollin’“ is a very straightforward, summertime pop song built for mainstream appeal and loved by all that came to hear of Brave Girl’s newfound success. Their male-dominated fanbase is so diametrically distinct from most K-Pop fanbases that the sheer incredulity of Brave Girls’s virality seems like it was enough to drive the wave of fame they’ve been on for a while now.

It’s not clear if Brave Girls’s inevitable steep fall from grace is due anytime soon. For now, the band has turned its full attention to the TV competition Queendom 2, a sort of X-Factor for rookie groups (and those who have only managed to attain moderate success). It’s a complex strategy-reality competition where new and veteran girl groups alike compete for fan votes and views for an album release “comeback stage,” with fans coordinating their votes carefully to ensure the success of their favorites. Unlike most other current groups on Queendom 2, though, Brave Girls’s older, mostly male fans are hardly comparable to the younger, ranking-savvy fandoms of ensembles like LOONA or WJSN, leading to unusually low rankings on the show’s latest screenings despite having the highest mainstream recognition (though they have been able to win some recent competitions with a fan-led rebound in voting). K-Pop fame rewards intense fandom and ‘wins,’ but as recently-viral hits, Brave Girl’s committed fanbase is only just beginning to form sans the military of course).

The recent resurgence of Brave Girls comes at a time where virality and mainstream hits just don’t break through as often. A committed fanbase of popularity-savvy K-Pop stans has largely replaced the viral fame most acts aspiring for 15 seconds of fame used to shoot for, yet Brave Girls seems to be seeking the best of both worlds with their recent promotions. The number of Fearless out there (the neologism for Brave Girls fans) is still fairly small even after their viral fame, let alone many willing to engage with the demands of chart-watching and voting that comes along with being a modern K-Pop fan. A more nontraditional viral-spawned audience is bound to have some level of ephmerality to it, be it the general public’s inevitable drift to new acts or frictional bristles with a country-wide anti-feminist movement sweeping South Korean politics and elections (“Actually I’ve never thought about feminism. I’m not really interested,” stated member Yuna in response to criticism for wearing a shirt with the phrase ‘girl power’ on it.) Like other viral success stories before them, Brave Girls’s “Rollin’” will be the highest peak they’ll ever reach in the general public, and it’s unknown how their unconventional audience will translate to stan-demanding K-Pop artistry moving forward. But at its heart, Brave Girls’s serendipitous success and hard-work fable is hardly one that will leave K-Pop’s cultural memory or its record books anytime soon.