Bannerman is Swiss Ghanian. An aspiring artist with a notable following even before joining the group, she was scouted on social media to join the competition midway for a spot in Katseye.<\/p>\n
The nearly three-year-old group was born out of a cutthroat competition orchestrated by Hybe\u2014the multibillion-dollar South Korean powerhouse behind the biggest boy band on the planet, BTS\u2014and the American label Geffen Records. Their objective: build an international girl group in the K-pop mold that could conquer the Western mainstream.<\/p>\n
Only 20 of the 120,000 young contestants from around the world who auditioned for Katseye were chosen to battle it out in a grueling, tear-inducing 12-week boot camp. They were ruthlessly ranked and judged by a panel of industry experts ahead of each elimination round as Netflix documented the entire journey.<\/p>\n
\u201cNow, when I think about it, I\u2019m like, \u2018How did I do this?\u2019\u201d says Jeung, who was just 15 when she moved to LA to join the competition. \u201cBut that journey also made me more mature.\u201d<\/p>\n
Since then, the grind hasn\u2019t slowed down. Together, the women of Katseye have accumulated 34 million collective followers on Instagram and nearly 37 million on TikTok. Their rabid fan base, nicknamed the \u201ceyekons,\u201d have propelled songs from two of their EPs onto the Billboard Hot 100. They starred in a Super Bowl ad<\/a> for State Farm and a hypnotizing Gap campaign choreographed to Kelis\u2019s \u201cMilkshake.\u201d Erewhon has sold a $22 smoothie named for their viral hit \u201cGabriela.\u201d Even more impressive, they\u2019ve accomplished all this before even releasing a debut album.<\/p>\n It would be easy to dismiss Katseye as a corporate experiment. Yet the band isn\u2019t a carbon copy of any groups that came before them. Instead, Katseye is a collage: They\u2019ve got the Spice Girls\u2019<\/a> feminism, Destiny\u2019s Child\u2019s<\/a> artistry, the Pussycat Dolls\u2019<\/a> sex appeal, and Blackpink\u2019s<\/a> discipline.<\/p>\n \u201cI think Katseye could have easily been very artificial,\u201d says Raj, who quickly emerges as the spokeswoman of the group. \u201cWe got really lucky with who was chosen to be in Katseye, because all of us are very authentically ourselves.\u201d<\/p>\n Thus far, Katseye has been defined by and criticized for its hyper-pop internet anthems like \u201cGnarly\u201d and \u201cInternet Girl.\u201d But with more than 30 million monthly listeners on Spotify, it\u2019s clear their music, which they perform in English, translates to fans around the world. Come August, Katseye will release a new EP, Wild. \u201cIt\u2019s a more mature evolution from our last era. I think there\u2019s definitely a lot more vocals,\u201d says Raj. Consider it an older sister to their earlier work.<\/p>\n \u201cI do everything for the little girl inside of me,\u201d says Raj.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re still kids,\u201d Avanzini adds. \u201cLike, low-key I feel like I\u2019m still 14 years old.\u201d<\/p>\n What they\u2019re feeling\u2014caught between being a girl and a woman\u2014is a classic pop conundrum. \u201cWe\u2019re forced to grow up fast,\u201d says Laforteza. \u201cBut at the same time we\u2019re like, I want to go out, I want to have fun. But we have these big-girl jobs.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Bannerman is Swiss Ghanian. An aspiring artist with a notable following even before joining the group, she was…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":525979,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[321,20831,269,93,1934,61,60,6522,278,223947,223946],"class_list":["post-525978","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-celebrities","tag-coachella","tag-culture","tag-entertainment","tag-from-the-magazine","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-kpop","tag-music","tag-vanities-opener","tag-vanitites"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/525978","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=525978"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/525978\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/525979"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=525978"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=525978"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=525978"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}