Exclusive Report on NewJeans Japan Debut Album Classified as ‘J-pop’

It was confirmed on the 3rd that NewJeans’ Japanese debut album “Supernatural,” released on the 21st of last month, is classified as “J-Pop” on major music streaming platforms including Naver Vibe and Apple Music.

The genre of an album or song is determined based on requests from the artist’s agency to the album/music distributor to label it as a specific genre. In other words, ADOR designated it as J-Pop. There are some cases where K-pop artists classify their albums as J-Pop when releasing in Japan. However, this typically only applies when the lyrics are entirely in Japanese.

In contrast, NewJeans’ album includes Korean lyrics not only in the title track “Supernatural” but also in the B-side track “Right Now.” While there is some Japanese and English in the lyrics, the proportion of Korean (more than one-fifth) is not insignificant.

For this reason, critics are pointing out that the songs and album should have been registered as “K-Pop” rather than “J-Pop.”

One pop music critic said, “Since it’s a Japanese debut album, it seems like they released it as J-Pop to target the Japanese market, but I wonder if they lowered their stance too much. NewJeans’ fandom exists not only in Korea but all around the world, and K-pop’s status is recognized globally. There was no need to label songs containing Korean as J-Pop.”

Another critic stated, “This is more of an issue with the company managing NewJeans than with the artists themselves. Japan is the world’s second-largest music market, and with NewJeans holding fan meetings at Tokyo Dome, Japan is where the immediate money is. But it seems they didn’t consider K-pop’s status or Korean fans.”

Seo Kyoung-duk, a professor at Sungshin Women’s University and an expert on Korean public relations, said, “No matter how popular they are worldwide, NewJeans is a girl group that represents Korea. In that sense, they should be introducing K-pop to the world, but labeling it as J-Pop could cause misunderstandings among fans from other countries.”