On August 15, SEVENTEEN’s Vernon was featured in an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, where he shared a playlist of favorite songs that have influenced his upbringing, musical tastes, and solo/unit work for his and fellow member The 8’s album, V8. During the interview, the rapper/singer-songwriter revealed his stance on the popular debate over whether K-pop trends have become too Westernized and less focused on differentiating themselves. While his response echoes the sentiment fans have discussed for years, it’s worth questioning how and when the Korean industry went from recontextualizing Western trends with a distinctly Korean twist to simply chasing the trends for global validation, acceptance, and palatability.

“I feel like K-pop sounds more and more like American pop instead of K-pop, and I think a lot of people talk about that too,” Vernon told The Hollywood Reporter. “It makes me want to go back to the 2000s or the early 2010s, when I was in elementary school — like, the Wonder Girls, BIGBANG, 2NE1, and all that.”

The era the SEVENTEEN member refers to is K-pop’s second generation, when we see the industry truly begin to step into its own in terms of remixing and experimenting with Western trends without it feeling so copy-paste. This is the era that many K-pop fans reminisce about and point to as the genre's most creative. But before we could get to what’s referred to as the “Golden Age” of K-pop, we first have to look at where the industry first took off.

The first iteration of modern K-pop in the 1990s introduced a wave of Western genres to the general public, including hip-hop, Europop, EDM, R&B, New Jack Swing, alt-rock, and many others. This era — known as the first-gen — included acts like Seo Taiji and Boys, S.E.S., BoA, Shinhwa, Fin.K.L, and more. One similarity that each of these acts shared is the direct influence of Black American music. Seo Taiji was rap, hip-hop, and contemporary dance music; S.E.S. and Fin.K.L. were R&B and dance-pop, and so on.

While many were able to borrow from these genres and filter them through a Korean lens, the inspirations were never subtle. In BoA’s early days, the singer was often seen as the Korean equivalent of Britney Spears, while Lee Hyori (soloist and member of Fin.K.L.) was clearly influenced by artists like Brandy and Mariah Carey. Regardless, all of these first-gen groups had Korean producers, songwriters, and A&R teams rebuilding these sounds that originated from Black-American culture, but with mostly Korean lyrics and tailored to a Korean audience.

However, in the late 2000s and into the 2010s, we began to see the rise of genre-blending with sounds that were just now seeping into South Korea. Some of these genres included electropop, synth-house, and dubstep, mixed with the hip-hop and R&B influences that already ran deep within the industry. As opposed to Korean producers and songwriters, K-pop’s second-gen is also where we see the rise of European creatives ushering in these newer sounds and reinterpreting them in a Korean context. In terms of major K-pop companies, SM Entertainment became a main player when partnering with European publishers, like DSign Music and Pelle Lidel, who heavily bridged the gap by pitching Western/Swedish pop tracks, and Scandinavian writing teams like Design Music and Equinox, who were pivotal in creating Girls’ Generation’s 2009 hit, “Gee.” 

Meanwhile, according to Rolling Stone, Teddy Riley became the first high-profile American producer to officially cross over and work extensively in K-pop, flying to Seoul in 2009 to produce tracks like Girls' Generation's "The Boys,” alongside prolific Korean songwriter Yoo Youngjin. Even so, the Korean industry, at this point, wasn’t necessarily trying to pander or cater to Western audiences — the target demographic was still Korea, Japan, China, and other Asian countries.

Through other second-gen acts like Super Junior, Infinite, f(x), and SHINee, K-pop agencies had mastered the concept of fusing all these different Western trends and adding quintessentially K-pop elements to their tracks. Some of these elements included unorthodox song structures, unexpected tonal shifts, and blending multiple genres into a song you wouldn’t otherwise think of. And although second-gen included more English lyrics than its predecessor, the main emphasis remained on the Korean language. They didn’t just replicate the trends — they made it their own. 

One example that many fans have brought up in light of this conversation is Block B, a seven-member group that debuted in 2011. While their core sound took influence from hip-hop, they always lived outside the box of what was considered standard K-pop, even for their time. Through blending genres like electro-hop, dance-pop, and even electro-swing, Block B was always playful and imaginative in twisting Western music, specifically through its leader and main producer Zico, fellow member and rapper Park Kyung, and frequent Korean collaborator Poptime.

That brings us to third-gen, which could actually be broken into two waves — 2012 to 2015 and 2016 to 2019. The first half of second-gen included groups like EXO, B.A.P., AOA, VIXX, BTS, and many others. In this era, songs could still be as campy as in the previous era, but also a bit more refined, yet unmistakably K-pop. A few good examples would be EXO and BTS, who debuted in 2012 and 2013, respectively. While EXO’s core sound was defined by R&B, dance-pop, and funk — a seamless blend between a standard K-pop act and an American-style boy band — BTS was all hip-hop, inspired by American rappers such as Kanye West, Eminem, Drake, and J. Cole, and took it more seriously than many of their seniors and peers. But even then, neither of these groups was purposely aiming for Western success — at least not yet.

We also saw the rise of more American and European producers and songwriters entering the scene, including Adrian McKinnon, whose first K-pop credit was EXO’s “December, 2014 (The Winter’s Tale), Recording Academy CEO Harvey Mason Jr., and Erik Lidbom. However, in 2015, the K-pop industry saw a significant influx of new Western listeners, most of whom had come from previous American and European boy- and girl-group fandoms in search of something new and refreshing. This is when the house genre became a cultural mainstay in K-pop, thanks to the British songwriting and producing duo, LDN Noise, who still understood the unique K-pop song structure, despite its Western influences.

By then, other songs like GOT7’s “Just Right,” EXO’s “Call Me Baby,” and BTS’ “I Need U” and “Dope” blew up exponentially, thrusting these groups into more of a global spotlight, although K-pop itself was still considered niche in the Western market.

It wasn’t until the second half of the third generation, 2016 to 2019, that K-pop truly shifted from niche interest to actually being taken seriously in the West, leading to its current mainstream success. Once BTS became the first K-pop group to attend and perform at the American Music Awards and win a Billboard award in 2017, the septet took off, and BigHit Music (formerly known as Big Hit Entertainment) saw this as an opportunity to position BTS as the global representatives of K-pop.

Following their mainstream success, the group began their quest to network and collaborate with American artists, such as Desiigner, Steve Aoki, Nicki Minaj, and Halsey. By 2019, BTS’ music had shifted away from its previous K-pop-centric sound in favor of styles that would be more globally appealing and “radio-friendly” — this was most evident in the group’s 2019 hit “Boy with Luv,” featuring Halsey. In response, early BTS fans argued that the group was losing its core Korean essence just to appease the Western market. 

In their early days, BTS’ music was often gritty and thought-provoking hip-hop, but could also lean into the sentimental and romantic sides of R&B and dance-pop. However, from 2019 onwards, most of their releases became more pop-focused and lighthearted, solidifying their place as the biggest K-pop group to dominate global charts. The group would go on to release their first all-English song, “Dynamite,” in 2020, which led to its successors, “Butter” and “Permission to Dance,” in 2021.

At the same time as their late 2010s breakout, YG Entertainment’s group BLACKPINK debuted in 2016 and also began making a name for themselves abroad, specifically with 2019’s “DDU-DU DDU-DU.” With three of its four members fluent in English, the girl group got a head start in releasing all-English songs, specifically with 2018’s “Kiss and Make Up,” featuring Dua Lipa, and featuring on Lady Gaga’s 2020 track, “Sour Candy.” After breaking multiple records throughout their career and becoming K-pop’s biggest girl group in the Western market, BLACKPINK released their first predominantly English album, Born Pink, in 2022. While fans will also argue that the quartet’s earlier music was more sonically creative, BLACKPINK and its producers already had a particular “YG” sound and have mostly remained true to it, even if some say it’s become redundant.

While K-pop definitely dabbled in English-language singles in the late 2000s and early 2010s (Wonder Girls' "The DJ Is Mine," SNSD's English version of "The Boys," and BoA's self-titled English album, to name a few), the initial attempts at breaking through into the Western market weren't as successful as they are now. However, the difference now is that there's so much more American and European influence – on a production level – than there has ever been before, leading K-pop's fourth- and fifth-gen music to lean further from its Korean lyrical and cultural roots than in previous eras. Following the success of BTS and BLACKPINK, major K-pop labels have increasingly aimed for global charts, festivals, and radio play, narrowing the gap between Western and K-pop to the point where it's not always easy to tell where one begins and the other ends.

Even this year, with BTS' latest album, ARIRANG, one of the main critiques was the disconnect between the album's goal of uplifting traditional Korean culture and folklore and the actual execution, which mostly hinged on "generic" pop and overly trendy hip-hop tracks. Some fans and even journalists have argued over who gets to decide whether a Korean-led project is "Korean enough" – what does it mean for an album to be "rooted in Korea" when its sound draws so heavily from Western music? While some would say a group simply being Korean and making the music they want to make is enough, there's truthfully no right or wrong answer.