On May 16, girl group aespa attended the Hongdae University festival as performing artists.
As one of the most famous idol groups today, aespa's live performances are always anticipated, because of the audience's enthusiastic reaction to the group's songs.
At Hongdae University, aespa performed many hit songs, including Spicy - the title track of the album My World released in 2023.
This is a vibrant song, especially suitable for the summer atmosphere and university festivals. However, aespa's performance this time has been embroiled in controversy.
In a section of the chorus that needed to feature many high notes, the aespa members were criticized for singing off-key. While this is the highlight of the song.
In response, aespa fans defended the girls, saying the group seemed to be having a technical problem. In some clips, fans said that Winter and Giselle were trying to communicate with the behind-the-scenes staff, pointing to their microphones to suggest a solution to the problem.
After the show ended, Winter and Karina of aespa mentioned this issue on the fan messaging app.
Winter apologized to the audience at the Hongdae University Festival. The female singer thought that she had "sabotaged" the performance.
Karina said that she and the group members were very saddened by this incident. Karina hinted at a technical problem that had occurred and said that she could have cried if it weren't for the cheering crowd and the members by her side.
The group's fans shared many posts to comfort their idols. They also posted other performance segments and explained that aespa only had a small incident, the rest was still an energetic and great performance.
Currently, aespa is preparing to return with a new music product. On May 15, a representative of SM Entertainment shared with the media: "The aespa members are busy preparing for their comeback, with the goal of releasing music products in June".
This will be the girl group's first return to Korea in about 8 months, since releasing their 5th mini album "Whiplash".
