74 TIME May 23/May 30, 2022
GISELLE, KARINA, NINGNING, AND WINTER
should be tired. They just arrived in California
after a long-haul flight from Seoul, after all. But
the four stars of the K-pop girl group aespa have
an important job to do—and they know the stakes.
For one of the first times in their short career, they
are performing for a live audience. And not just
on any stage: the much hyped Coachella. Having
launched in the thick of the pandemic in Novem-
ber 2020, aespa has only existed in a world in cri-
sis. But there’s something that sets them apart:
aespa also exists as four virtual avatars, each care-
fully crafted to match their human counterpart,
in a fantastical metaverse, Now, they’re ready to
prove they’re more than just what fans
have seen on screens.
Quiet and focused, the four
women of aespa sit lined up on
a couch in a small hotel room
where they have congregated
for a pre- Coachella photo
shoot. It can be disconcerting
to see them without their av-
atars, which appear in photos
and videos alongside their real-
life inspirations. The uninitiated
viewer might do a double take.
Aespa is an experiment, but it may
also be the inevitable next step for the
music industry: a fresh way to bridge the vir-
tual and the real. So far, aespa has released only a
few singles and one six-song EP—but that EP broke
records, debuting on the Billboard 200 album chart
higher than any previous K-pop girl group. Their
first music video, “Black Mamba,” had YouTube’s
fastest climb to 100 million views for a K-pop debut.
But the members of aespa are keen to be seen
as more than just another group. Their “meta-
versal origin story,” as Karina calls it, is meantto capture the imagination. The story of aespa,
designed and launched by their Korean talent-
management agency, SM Entertainment, is an
ambitious new piece of the SM Culture Universe.
Like Marvel or DC Comics, the company is cre-
ating an interconnected world in which all of its
artists will exist—with complex backstories, nar-
rative arcs, villain threats, and more. It is still
something of a sketch. “Truthfully, we were wor-
ried in the beginning, because this concept of
ours is something new to our company as well,”
says Ningning. “But our fans really loved it and
are even creating memes out of it.”
The result: aespa is learning the concept of
metaverse- native artistry at the same
time as its fans—each song and video
another piece in the puzzle. The
goal is to “normalize metaverse
concepts and have our fans and
other people be a little more
comfortable with the whole
idea of it,” Giselle says. It’s a
journey that fans can go on by
taking the time to watch aes-
pa’s videos and consume their
content, beyond just enjoying
the songs. They want to make
people think—about the selves we
present online, and about the ways we
interact with our virtual identities.
A few days later, Giselle, Karina, Winter, and
Ningning climbed the Coachella stage in combat
boots and miniskirts, with 10 minutes’ worth of
music and choreography. Their avatars flashed
on the screen behind them, but the focus was
on the performers. The metaverse may be part
of our inevitable collective future, but aespa is
working on conquering this world first. —With
reporting by SOO JIN KIM/SEOULSOUTHKOREAaespa
A K-pop group that bridges
the real and virtual
BY RAISA BRUNER‘Truthfully,
we w ried
in ng,
co rs
is s ing
new.’
NINGNING, AESPAPHOTOGRAPH BY LINDSAY ELLARY FOR TIMENEXT GENERATION LEADERS