Once upon a time, NCT Wish were an idea met with skepticism, if not hostility. In the lead up to six-member group’s 2024 debut, there were questions about why NCT needed a final unit, whether SM was overloading themselves with young boy groups, and what exactly NCT Wish could bring to NCT, their company, and K-pop as a whole.
These days, those doubts feel like a distant hallucination. NCT Wish have emerged as one of the fifth generation’s strongest success stories. A lot of credit goes to their consistent concept — unabashedly cute, upbeat, and cheeky — which sets them apart from their peers. There’s also their visual style, which is delightfully playful and unafraid of big swings. But what gets mentioned less frequently is their ongoing, generational run of quality bubblegum pop songs.
Bubblegum pop is a tough genre to call home (and not only because it’s frequently derided in the way things gendered as ‘girly’ tend to be). It’s really hard to make one good bubblegum pop song, much less a string of them. Earworm hooks easily become one-note nuisances, familiar pop song structures invite mediocrity, and upbeat energy too often curdles into something sickly sweet. But with big risks come big rewards: if a group can capture bubblegum magic in a bottle, there is always a dedicated audience waiting for them. Because when bubblegum is good, like any treat, it is downright irresistible.
NCT Wish seem to have cracked the code, and their newest title track “I Spy” is a good example of their winning formula: dense and detailed production, an unforgettable melodic touchtone or two, visual panache, and a touch of something unexpected to balance out the sweetness. That latter point is something NCT Wish have particularly excelled at, whether bringing a splash of melancholy (“Steady”), doing some unique genre-melds (“Sticky”) getting bombastic with beats (and choreography) so fast, you think you’re going to achieve lift off into the sky just by tuning in (‘Poppop”).
“I Spy” opts for a particularly interesting leavening agent: eeriness. It’s an intuitive fit for a song about spotting a crush near or far. But if executed poorly, the members could come off as, well, creepy. Instead, the MV cleverly positions NCT Wish as digital avatars stuck in a technicolor world. They seem cheerful enough, popping into a green grass star perfectly on-beat, but the MV’s loose storyline makes it clear: if anyone is in trouble, it’s these nice guys trapped in a computer.
The contrasting moods come to a head in the song’s stunning bridge. As each member freezes and glitches in the MV, the tempo slows to a crawl and previously hinted-at minor key melodies take charge, then slip like silk into a final refrain. “I Spy” does overplay its hand in its beat-heavy outro. It hits you over the head with the song’s push-and-pull, instead of maintaining the subtle dance of the rest of the track. But taken as a whole, “I Spy” another gold-star creation from a group that’s compiling quite the collection of bubblegum hits.
It’s a bold comparison to make, but NCT Wish are potentially on their way to an early Twice-like era of bubblegum pop dominance. The parallel between the two groups is strengthened by NCT Wish’s final ace in the hole: every member’s commitment to their concept and performance.
Bubblegum pop is visibly, intensively manufactured. That can lead to a misconception that the key to this genre’s success is purely conceptual and behind the scenes, aka that the performers themselves could be interchangeable. That couldn’t be further from the truth. For instance, “I Spy” is full of great ideas, like a Where’s Waldo-style set with stickers and hidden members, striking alignment between the song’s beats and the MV’s editing, and an endless array of charming and quick-as-lightning glamour shots. But these scenes could easily be cringe in the hands of performers unwilling to dive head-first into the business of embracing whimsy.
Bubblegum, maybe even more than other styles, requires talent, commitment, and an easygoing self-awareness. The same goes for musical execution. Strong performers are the final ingredient to pull bubblegum’s fantastical delights into the real world. And that, more than anything, is NCT Wish’s magic.
(YouTube. Images via SM Entertainment.)
