Red Velvet reflects on 10 years in the industry

[RussianRoulette]

Red Velvet was recently interviewed on a youtube channel for their 10 year anniversary:




The interview has sparked a lot of discussion online due to various topics they discussed, a few of them are:

• Red Velvet was in fact originally supposed to be only 4 members. Yeri was supposed to debut in Red Velvet's younger sister group (the group that we now know as Aespa). Yeri was thrown into Red Velvet last minute and was supposed to be their center.
• Yeri said she felt a lot of guilt leaving the other trainee's she was supposed to debut with and debuting earlier than them. She almost didn't want to debut with RV and leave them.
• At one point SM wanted Yeri to stop being an idol and train to be an actress instead.
• Yeri was complaining that they were allowed cell phones as trainee's but lost them after they debuted, and Joy chimed in that she should blame their seniors for that (shade )
• They were worried about Red Flavor not winning many awards and Zimzalabim was almost their disbandment song. Seulgi said they really threw their all into smiling for that comeback because they all honestly thought it would be their last.
• Yeri was saying she feels a bit uneasy about the future since being an idol is not a stable career.
• Overall they are very grateful they lasted 10 years and hope fans can feel their sincerity.

 

[Seunghee's Eyebrows]

Red Velvet was recently interviewed on a youtube channel for their 10 year anniversary:

• Yeri was saying she feels a bit uneasy about the future since being an idol is not a stable career.
• Overall they are very grateful they lasted 10 years and hope fans can feel their sincerity.

It definitely isn't a stable career but I hope RV will come back every now and then. I don't care if there isn't any promotions. Just seeing all 5 of them together warms my heart. Even an LUP will do. Their chaos when they play games is so entertaining

 

[mimenet]

I feel it was more or less obvious Yeri was not originally meant to be in the group and I've never understood why that theory became so popular (her cameo in Happiness really feels like a cameo and this was tje sm rookie era where they were very concentrated on building hype for their next group via these rookies "promos") but I still feel like we got no answers for why SM decided to add her to the group.

When the younger sister group was scrapped, somebody at SM just really liked her and thought she should debut? The other rookies girls were still at the company for a while after this and it's not like she was especially older than them, so there was clearly still some idea of a more recent girl group debut than 2020. Was the age theory really true (that SM felt the group was skewing too old and needed a younger girl in it) or the "no jams" theory (that Reve were not doing all that well in variety and Yeri was added to be the "variety" member)? Was it because of Sulli leaving f(x) and SM just really not wanting two girl groups of the same number on their roster at the same time?

I feel like the age old mystery of Yeri was just reignited only to still have no answers lmao

 

[RussianRoulette]

I feel it was more or less obvious Yeri was not originally meant to be in the group and I've never understood why that theory became so popular (her cameo in Happiness really feels like a cameo and this was tje sm rookie era where they were very concentrated on building hype for their next group via these rookies "promos") but I still feel like we got no answers for why SM decided to add her to the group.

When the younger sister group was scrapped, somebody at SM just really liked her and thought she should debut? The other rookies girls were still at the company for a while after this and it's not like she was especially older than them, so there was clearly still some idea of a more recent girl group debut than 2020. Was the age theory really true (that SM felt the group was skewing too old and needed a younger girl in it) or the "no jams" theory (that Reve were not doing all that well in variety and Yeri was added to be the "variety" member)? Was it because of Sulli leaving f(x) and SM just really not wanting two girl groups of the same number on their roster at the same time?

I feel like the age old mystery of Yeri was just reignited only to still have no answers lmao

I feel like maybe they just had no idea what to do with her and threw her into RV just because.

Of what I understand of the timeline it went
- Yeri training with the other SM rookies
- SM isn’t too keen on Yeri debuting at all/with the other rookies. They try to talk her out of being an idol and into becoming an actress.
- Yeri still wants to debut as an idol and doesn’t want to be an actress, they don’t want her with the rookies so she’s thrown into RV.

Could it be that Yeri was no longer in the age range that they wanted the next group to be in and considered her too old? I remember there was a guy born in 1996 who was supposed to join NCT with Shotaro and Sungchan and wanted to be a singer, but suddenly he was removed from debut and now is “training to be an actor”. It reminds me of Yeri’s story.

 

[mimenet]

I feel like maybe they just had no idea what to do with her and threw her into RV just because.

Of what I understand of the timeline it went
- Yeri training with the other SM rookies
- SM isn’t too keen on Yeri debuting at all/with the other rookies. They try to talk her out of being an idol and into becoming an actress.
- Yeri still wants to debut as an idol and doesn’t want to be an actress, they don’t want her with the rookies so she’s thrown into RV.

Could it be that Yeri was no longer in the age range that they wanted the next group to be in and considered her too old? I remember there was a guy born in 1996 who was supposed to join NCT with Shotaro and Sungchan and wanted to be a singer, but suddenly he was removed from debut and now is “training to be an actor”. It reminds me of Yeri’s story.

The team Yeri was in (they used to be called "white fox" by kpop fans around 2016ish, but they're all the girls who were revealed through sm rookies and that one animated show) were all very close in age to her. Koeun was almost the exact same age and didn't leave SM until 2019. Hina was 1 year younger and didn't leave until like a month before aespa debuted. There was also Yiyang who joined the company and got announced as a rookie in 2016 despite being two years older than Yeri and the other known rookies. I don't think SM has a very low bar for "too old" and I don't think they do en masse age gate cullings like we know JYP did in 2018 and probably still does.

 

[pinkieolivia]

The team Yeri was in (they used to be called "white fox" by kpop fans around 2016ish, but they're all the girls who were revealed through sm rookies and that one animated show) were all very close in age to her. Koeun was almost the exact same age and didn't leave SM until 2019. Hina was 1 year younger and didn't leave until like a month before aespa debuted. There was also Yiyang who joined the company and got announced as a rookie in 2016 despite being two years older than Yeri and the other known rookies. I don't think SM has a very low bar for "too old" and I don't think they do en masse age gate cullings like we know JYP did in 2018 and probably still does.

Why was yeri called a whitefox?

 

[BianTwo]

6 years between RV and Aespa, that's a long time for a Big 4 group. I think about those rookies who stayed for a long time at SM without never debuting, spending your teen age and early adult years for nothing.

They didn't give me the impression to be that passionate about being idols but when you are still active 10 years later you are at least okay and satisfied with that path.

It's obviously not a stable career, most of the time it's only a step in order to gain attention, to be known, to have fans, and use this for your future projects : soloist, acting, modeling, etc.

 

[RussianRoulette]

Something else I want to add:

Red Velvet is better than me because if I was given Zimzalabim as a disbandment song and given these hideous outfits as by goodbye, I would be throwing hands

This was supposed to be their goodbye song and Wendy was given a literal bag to wear???

 

[mimenet]

Why was yeri called a whitefox?

It was a fan given name for the hypothetical group of sm rookie girls around 2015-2016. Hina, Koeun, Lami, theoretically Yeri, etc. I don't know where the name originated.