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K-POP LEXICON Design Desk
This week's Lexicon word: who hands out the leader title, why it so often goes to the oldest member, and where the word turned up this year.
When In Review Online reviewed the documentary KATSEYE: Wild Hearts on Aug. 14, it used one word to describe Sophia Laforteza's place in the global girl group: leader. In K-pop, the leader is the member who heads the group, speaks for it in public and keeps everyone else on the same page.
The word sounds obvious. The job behind it involves more than the word suggests.
Nolae starts with the dictionary sense: a leader heads a group or organization, and in K-pop the leader of a band leads its members. Keens Academy's guide to group positions boils the role down to four words, "Team coordination and communication."
The public side of the job is the one fans see first. At award shows and other events, Nolae says, the leader is often the member who does the talking and gets the others fired up.
The private side takes more work. Nolae describes a leader who protects the members, listens to them and looks for middle ground when they disagree. When the band runs into problems, Nolae adds, the leader is often the one who takes it up with the agency.
Keens Academy says the leader speaks for the group, keeps the members in sync and steadies the team. The qualities evaluators look for, per Keens Academy, are reliability, maturity and staying calm under pressure.
Leader is one title in a larger set. Nolae lists it alongside Maknae, Main Vocal, Lead Vocal, Main Dancer and Visual, and notes that members are often given several positions at once. So the leader can also be a vocalist or a dancer.
The leader's opposite number, in age at least, is the maknae. Keens Academy defines the maknae as the youngest member and calls it "Not a skill position." Nolae says the leader is often the oldest, which puts the two titles at opposite ends of the lineup in many groups.
The word itself is plain English. Nolae says K-pop uses it in its everyday sense of whoever heads a group.
The title arrives through the training system. Keens Academy says companies decide positions based on what trainees show during training: monthly evaluations, how they hold up under pressure, how members fit together and the group's concept. Those positions can change before debut, Keens Academy says, and even from one song to the next.
For the leader spot in particular, Keens Academy says, what matters is reliability and communication, "shown over time, not in one tape." In other words, nobody wins the job with a single audition video.
The system that hands out the title sits inside a genre with its own history. Wikipedia says K-pop, short for "Korean popular music," emerged in the 1990s as a youth subculture and commonly refers to teen idol acts, mostly girl groups and boy bands, built on visual appeal and performance. The Los Angeles Film School's history calls Seo Taiji and Boys the first band that looks like today's K-pop and its huge fandoms. The sources here trace that system and that genre rather than naming the first group to have a leader.
Aug. 14, In Review Online: The site's review of KATSEYE: Wild Hearts names Sophia Laforteza as KATSEYE's leader and says she announced a "temporary" hiatus to focus on her mental health in the gap between filming and release. The same review says Manon is also on a "temporary" leave, so the six-member group is down to four for now. The review shows the leader title being applied to a global group, and it shows what is at stake when a group's leader steps back.
The word got a fresh round of attention this summer. Keens Academy published its position guide for trainees on June 18, and In Review Online's August review put a group leader's hiatus at the center of a documentary's story. The title also never really goes away: Nolae says new fans run into position titles quickly because longtime fans know who holds which role and talk about it all the time.
A few lines a fan might actually say:
"Wait, who's the leader of this group?"
"The leader gave the acceptance speech again."
"She's the leader and one of the main vocals."
The etiquette rests on one point from Keens Academy: position labels describe what a member does inside a particular team, not a universal ranking. "Leader" does not mean "best member," and it is not a stat for comparing groups.
Because Keens Academy says positions can shift by song or concept, it is safer to describe a member's role in a given era than to treat it as permanent.
When a leader steps away for health reasons, as In Review Online reported about Laforteza, the word stays a job title. Keep it out of the jokes.
Is this word in your vocabulary?
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Often, but not always, according to Nolae. Its examples of leaders include SHINee's Onew, Red Velvet's Irene, Stray Kids' Bangchan, Monsta X's Shownu, ITZY's Yeji and aespa's Karina.
The company does, Keens Academy says, based on what it sees in trainees during training, from monthly evaluations to how members work together.
Yes. Nolae says members often hold several positions, so a leader can also carry a vocal or dance title.
Media use position titles as identifiers, Nolae says, giving "SHINee's Main Dancer Taemin" and "Stray Kids Leader Bangchan" as examples.
Keens Academy says the maknae is simply the youngest member, an age label rather than a skill. The leader, by its account, is a role built on reliability and communication.
First Read lands Monday at 7 a.m. ET with the week's biggest stories. The Weekend Lexicon rounds it all up on Saturday.
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