Music

You can bracket phases in dearALICE’s early career by their hairstyles and outfit choices. When the British K-pop boy band – comprising Blaise Noon, Dexter Greenwood, Olly Quinn, James Sharp and Reese Carter – first appeared on screens last year as part of the BBC documentary Made in Korea: The K-Pop Experience, the members each had next to no knowledge of the dizzying world of K-pop idol training they were about to step into.
We meet the boys at the start of episode one of the series, all baggy, neutral-colored clothing and skin fades; by the end of the six-part series, they’re sporting bleached buzzcuts, curtain bangs, and gravity-defying curls, visibly more confident in themselves and their image. The stylishly shot show follows the group as the five members undergo 100 days of dance and vocal bootcamp in Seoul, South Korea, with the public given a selective peek at the rigours and rewards of this process. Viewers watch the boys, who all grew up in England, also enjoy the country’s nightlife offerings and its diverse cuisine (their moniker was chosen after visiting a restaurant in Itaewon). 

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Having been selected from a nationwide casting call, the five-piece trained under a world-beating management team led by Hee Jun Yoon, a director at SM Entertainment, the agency responsible for fostering the careers of many K-pop superstars including Aespa and Red Velvet. To sign dearALICE, they partnered with Kakao Entertainment, US label Gamma and British production company Moon&Back Media with the intention of showing “how cultural diversity drives artistic evolution and creative exchanges,” as the latter’s CAO, Chris Sungsu Lee, tells Billboard U.K.

In the past, achieving fame as a K-pop star has involved years of intensive fitness programmes, with a number of managers previously coming under fire for being exploitative of talent. Such practices led to the widespread strengthening of labour protections for performers last year, according to a report from Yonhap News Agency. SM’s own website makes a subtle nod to previous critique of the industry’s methods by stating its commitment to “setting the gold standard for responsible management in the industry.”

What Made in Korea sought to do, however, was to not offer analysis into the improvements made in the sector, but rather pique the curiosity of an international audience around a model that has generated dozens of influential acts. Previously, non-Korean hopefuls have faced the training machine – BLACKPINK, for example, features members born in New Zealand and Thailand – but the series brought a British group to the forefront for the first time. 

“What we’re doing has never previously been done before,” says Noon, speaking over Zoom from a south London rehearsal space. “There’s no rulebook to follow, so we’re discovering all of this ourselves. We’ve been given such a wide exposure, so that we can grasp and take in what we need to help create what dearALICE is becoming, which is a fusion of cultures.” 

By taking the super-slick choreography and marketing elements from K-Pop and mashing it with early-‘00s British sounds, dearALICE are arguably creating one of the most compelling fantasy worlds in contemporary pop music. They are fortifying this approach by blowing up their respective lives in order to be the group: diving headfirst into an entirely new way of life and invigorating the boy band model by injecting each calculated move they make with a dose of genuine-seeming curiosity.

They arrive at a time where the prominence of K-pop continues to grow rapidly in the U.K. market. In July, Stray Kids will take over the 65,000-capacity Tottenham Stadium, while SM Entertainment is bringing 14 acts to Twickenham Stadium, on the other side of the British capital, for a mega show in celebration of the firm’s 30th anniversary the month prior (including dearALICE). Last year, Seventeen became the first-ever K-pop act to perform on the Pyramid Stage at Glastonbury.

dearALICE have quickly whipped up a fervent following of their own, having recently hosted a meet and greet event at K-lifestyle hotspot at Sokollab in central London. Fans in Atlanta have rallied together to fund electronic billboards in support of the group, while it is also garnering hundreds of thousands of followers across platforms like TikTok and WeVerse.

The question of whether a homegrown act with a major K-pop influence can cross over, and truly take root, in the notoriously discerning British mainstream is more complex. At present, country music and Stateside stars such as Sabrina Carpenter and Chappell Roan continue to rule the roost on the U.K. charts. Not that the boys are too phased by the pressures that lay ahead just yet: “We want to show the world that there is space for a different sort of boy band,” affirms Quinn.

Last month, dearALICE launched on the global stage with “Ariana,” a feisty, neon-hued number that depicts “a guy in a relationship with a girl who’s totally in love with social media,” explains Greenwood. Though their listenership does not belong to any one age group or gender, boy bands have historically loved very specifically, with songs about gently pursuing a girl. With a titular nod to a modern pop icon, “Ariana” flips this precedent, posing questions about all-consuming celebrity obsession and the omnipresence of stan culture in the online world.“The decision to debut dearALICE with this track was a strategic choice to effectively showcase the group’s identity and establish a distinctive presence in the competitive global K-pop market,” explains Sungsu Lee. Its accompanying music video sees the group “showcase their British roots proudly, echoing aesthetics that have been so successful in taking Brit music global,” adds Ben Cook, President of Gamma (UK & Europe). 

Union Jack paraphernalia, expansive city vistas, the Tube: Any studious pop fan would be quick to make comparisons between the “Ariana” video and One Direction’s Up All Night era, which was characterized by images of vintage Routemasters and tonal red and white palettes. In the case of dearALICE, images of London are being used to “define them as a Western act,” says Cook, rather than emulate the one-time aesthetic of their most obvious comparison point.  

There’s an element, perhaps, to dearALICE’s story about what it means to get boxed in by outside perceptions, and the tenacity needed to flourish in the face of misunderstanding. A cursory scroll through pop-adjacent Reddit forums will bring up lengthy discourse related to the lack of successful boy bands in the past decade. Recent auditions for Simon Cowell’s planned Netflix series were met with a poor turnout, while the passing of One Direction’s Liam Payne last October has brought questions around the mental health and safety of young performers into a renewed focus.

Beyond the wider cultural conversations around the future of the boy band, dearALICE and their team have chosen to reckon with taking a slow burn approach to their output. There was a six-month gap between the broadcast of Made In Korea and “Ariana” being unveiled – although the show’s OST landed in November, topping the U.K.’s Soundtrack Album Chart – leaving some fans wondering if their momentum was at risk of faltering. 

Cook says that this was an intentional move, in order to break away from the typically rapid release schedule in K-pop, which can involve frequent comebacks for ‘rookie’ acts, often with new EPs or singles released every few months. “dearALICE are just starting their journey,” he says. “To make amazing music, they need to do things the right way, be true to themselves, really love what they’re doing, and be taken care of. That’s how great art is created.”

He continues: “I appreciate that in the K-pop world, people might expect a new group to follow a certain format or plan. But dearALICE are a bit different. Even though they had incredible K-pop training from the expert SM team in Seoul, they are a Western group. So, we’re helping them grow like Western artists do, which means we’re trying new things and making their own path. They love K-pop and are very influenced by the artform, but don’t purport to be a K-pop band.”

In January, dearALICE took to the stage at SMTown Live in Seoul, alongside scene-leading names including RIIZE and Hyoyeon of Girls’ Generation. Performing in front of 25,000 ticketholders, the set saw the group tightly finesse the relentless choreography it had previously struggled with in the early days of Made In Korea, offering a glimpse of the pristine pop phenomenon they are striving towards becoming in the future.

“The biggest breakthrough we’ve had was proving to ourselves that we could perform on that stage,” Quinn recalls. “It was the ultimate test for us. We felt a lot of responsibility to not mess up in front of that many people, but it really showed [the synergy] we have as a team.”For dearALICE, more new music and spontaneous fan events await in the pipeline as they continue to forge their own unique path in the pop arena. What they’ll make of their mission is an open, vastly exciting question, and it won’t have a simple answer.