What does the future of music look like? Which artists will be leading the next pop revolution? Looking back at 1998, the alternative pop-rock virtual group Gorillaz had proven to make waves in the real world with virtual and non-virtual members. Fast forward to 2007, Crypton Future Media released what most had thought to then be bizarre: the twin-tailed blue-haired sixteen-year-old J-pop diva, Hatsune Miku.

No strange to the bizarro, Lady Gaga has legitimized the hologram-artist phenomenon, going on tour with Hatsune Miku in 2014, and five years later with the release of her Las Vegas show, Enigma. The show opens up with a fully animated 3D stunt, presenting the Mother Monster as an anime character, following the appearance of Gaga in futuristic clothing and a recognizable teal toned hair.

League of Legends’ k-pop group K/DA picks up the pace of both predecessors in music history. Mixing virtual characters that have broad ranges of personalities, the group is composed of a mixture of artists that come and go, even though at this point, we can consider (G)-IDLE’s Soyeon to be the central piece of this project.

K/DA’s first album is opened by the “pre-release” track THE BADDEST, which in an almost too similar fashion to the group’s first single, Pop/Stars, has a sticky chorus that will get you humming what the baddest do for about five hours straight. Moving on to MORE, their premier track and second release featured a state-of-the-art music video that accompanied the clear glow-up of the group’s music. Bringing in a new artist, Seraphine, the track had divisive reactions on social media, prompting fans to quickly re-mix their own versions of the song without the rookie singer.

Tracks like “Villain”, “Drum Go Dum”, and “I’ll Show You” fit within the band’s theme of powerful female figures that might just also have extraordinary abilities. With Disney Channel musical vibes meet actually well-produced music, the album is a reinvention of what pop music is like for the younger demographics.

K/DA has fiercely taken a step into establishing who they are as a musical group, and the spectrum of the champion's personalities, leaving us wanting MORE.

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