Retrospective: UAU Carries Spirit Of Dreamcatcher Forward With A New And Fresh Debut

On their own, K-Pop subunit debuts can be of great interest to fans of a group. The prospect of music from a subset of a group's members and what that might entail, the chance for subunit members to thrive in a setting where they are inevitably expected to shoulder a larger load of vocals, choreography, and performance, and more, are all items of curiosity.

Every subunit's situation and context, however, is different, and for UAU, consisting of Dreamcatcher's Leader JiU, Main Dancer SuA, and Lead Vocal Yoohyeon, a subunit debut had with it further things to consider. The group as a whole had entered their non-exclusive contract era just three short months ago, and for those remaining with the company, this was the first glimpse of music and content. Fans were not only curious about the music but about the idea of a subunit that had less than half of the original group's members, none of which was the group's Main Vocal or Rapper. Additionally, in an increasingly competitive K-Pop industry, how would UAU fare and what kind of content could we expect? Combine this with a dash of nervousness from both fans and artists, and you had a recipe for uncertainty but also of great intrigue.

I've done a ton of comeback retrospectives over the years on here about Dreamcatcher's work, but this is the first time I've had to do it for a debut. Here's what I noticed from UAU's much-watched starting effort.

The debut was far from "Dreamcatcher style", but the spirit of the main group's work was carried onward by the UAU subunit in a bold and new direction.

The most obvious question since the official confirmation of UAU's upcoming activities was, simply, "what would the music be like?". As fans know, Dreamcatcher built their identity over the last eight years on a foundation of rock, layered on top with pop-style elements from many genres to create a unique sound. Additionally, the concept was decidedly dark or at the very least, heavy, focusing on multi-album storylines undercut with elements of horror, post-apocalyptic elements, heroes and villains, and more. The group's appeal also landed because of their "something different in K-Pop" nature. So how would UAU preserve this identity moving into their debut?

The answer, it seems, was to not preserve this identity at all, and instead move in a bold, new direction on all levels - concept, music, and choreography. This was signaled in members' comments prior to the debut (with JiU in particular talking on the Fromm platform about no set concepts and new and fresh music) but was made more obvious by the subunit's highlight medley. On release, dual title tracks "2 Months" and "Attitude" showcased an afrobeat and experimental pop style not seen before, an impressive feat given Dreamcatcher's vast and expansive discography.

And it wasn't just the music that was different. With long-time performance director Hwang Sooyeon reinforced by Street Woman Fighter's Redlic on choreography, UAU's stage presentation took a more traditional-for-current-gen-K-Pop, but also aggressive, direction. This had to be the case, as the concept itself focused on a more mature Dreamcatcher subunit, trading fantasy for a new reality. B-side "Sacrifice", with its cane-and-chairs driven stage and provocative dance moves, appeared to be the crown jewel of this new work.

Doing this, of course, carried a high degree of risk. With some fans into Dreamcatcher because of their very specific musical style and alt-K-Pop vibe, would a more mainstream presentation remove too much of the core identity of the members of the subunit? Would music that was, for the most part, bereft of rock elements be music that would appeal to enough fans? Many of these questions, all legitimate ones, were the subject of a great amount of debate in the fandom as the promotions began and continued.

I'll be the first one to tell you that the music in the title tracks in this album are not necessarily the music that makes my own "Playlist". I'm cut from the rock and hybrid pop cloth - that's most of what I have in my music as a whole - and may not quite fit with what was shown. But I'd like to also point out that this album, despite it's departure of the main group's presentation, still carries with it what I call the "spirit" of Dreamcatcher. And I'd rather we have that than an attempt at creating the Dreamcatcher sound with less than half of its members.

The group's non-UAU members were very supportive of this debut, even to the point that Handong flew back from China to visit, Siyeon and Dami served as the debut showcase's MCs, and Gahyun dropped in as an attendee. They knew that Dreamcatcher was built on fearless and new direction, a dedication to the group's presentation regardless of how the general public might receive it, and music that was intimately tied to the group because its members bought into it completely. All of these things are present in UAU's debut, even if the wrapping might seem to be on the surface a more wide-ranging appeal to modern K-Pop. For just that alone, and for the fact that both "Sacrifice" and fun light rock track "Good Luck" are decidedly more comfy tunes that resonate with me, I was more than happy to support UAU carrying on the attitude (I know, I know, I'm here all week) Dreamcatcher was built on.

UAU's identity and presentation were pushed forward with new (and more internally-created) content.

Any debut is going to need to establish the core identity of the performers, and this is also true for subunits. For the most part, UAU follows the formula of having their music be distinctly different from the main group's, following in the footsteps of other such efforts from subunits such as WJSN Chocome (WJSN), Odd Eye Circle (LOONA), VIVIZ (GFriend), and more. That means that an aggressive push to show off what the subunit is about is needed and necessary.

Mature was certainly the name of the game for this subunit. Embracing the fact that they are older artists from 3rd generation K-Pop, UAU presented themselves as adults comfortable in their own skins, with a relaxing drink part of how that manifested itself. Dreamcatcher Company even went so far as to collab with a beer company, producing a UAU-branded brew that several lucky local fans got to partake of.

The secondary and variety content we see during K-Pop promotions often reflects how and what the artists are pushing insofar as identity and presentation. We saw a lot of new types of videos come up with UAU, from an ASMR fun flirting video to a fun pajama party to moving cam versions of all of the new style choreography and more. A veritable bounty of this type of content augmented what fans normally expect to see for promotions (like an MV reaction video, behind the scenes promotions, fanchant guide and more). When you add near-equal treatment of video content for all four of UAU's debut tracks (each one got its own MVs, individual fancams, dance videos, and showcase performances), this had to have been the most aggressive (and frankly necessary) push for a subunit debut that I've seen, and that's not a bad thing. The content was also for the most part homegrown, native to official Dreamcatcher channels - a reflection of the industry's general move away for the most part on appearing on external variety content shows and channels in favor of internally-produced content.

The main driver that drove this shift home for UAU was the three-part, 111-minute-plus documentary on the creation of UAU's debut album. Chock-full of never-before-seen elements of music production as well as input from the members and more, we hadn't seen anything like this since the paywalled-Wonderwall x Dreamcatcher collaboration of 2022, which focused on Apocalypse: Save Us production. This was very insightful, and I highly recommend it to anyone curious about how everything was put together. More importantly, it showed how invested the members of UAU were in this project and their work moving forward.

I've seen some mild criticism that this kind of content was likely needed for the main group in hindsight, but I would respond to that by saying that it's more important that this happen for a debuting subunit with a brand new direction, where inquiries have been made about how UAU arrived at where they did for debut. More practically, doing a huge documentary for every Dreamcatcher release would likely have been a difficult lift for a small company from a logistical and budgetary standpoint. In the end, I'm not too concerned with the particulars - only that we see content commensurate with a subunit debut - and that's what we got here.

Despite nervousness, happiness and joy seemed to suffused much of UAU's debut.

Cynics will tell you that what you see shown to you publicly or in content for K-Pop artists is mostly a facade, an illusion placed in front of audiences for the purpose of increasing appeal. I've always never been in this camp - for one thing, in general people go about their lives with a public presentation that belies perception and hides private thought. More importantly, in my prior work seeing musical artists behind the scenes versus what you see on stage, I've seen that in many cases, the stage "identity" of an artist is in part very reflective of their desire to perform and entertain. This may backfire if people perceive something negative about a K-Pop artist's stage presence, but honestly, the idol life is hard and I feel any artist who is consistently in the business and sustainable is there because they want to be.

I say this because I really felt that whether in their content, in their videos, or in their stage performances, I got the sense that UAU was thoroughly enjoying themselves. Though like any artist who is going through a debut there was a sense of nerves about how things would be received, the members of UAU really seemed to relish being, as the said in the press showcase, closer to who they actually are in terms of music preferences and performance aspirations. That's not to say the subunit don't enjoy or love being a part of Dreamcatcher, only to say that it is nice for artists in a long-term career to be able to do more of what they want to do. Seeing this in moments like a hilarious ending fairy to a performance shows this fun and joy UAU appeared to be having, and that's big for dispelling anxiety about how things play out.

Speaking of how things played out, while UAU didn't take home any music show wins for their debut, they did win a couple of fan voted awards, with Stage Champion awards for both title tracks and the ENA Rising Star award for the ENA K POP UP CHART SHOW making their way home to the group. It's a testament to the fact that despite this being a subunit, that the voting power of the fandom is still relatively strong enough to grant UAU a couple of small accolades for their work.

That work also seems to be translating decently well to physical sales. We've yet to see the Circle numbers, but the Hanteo comparison of roughly 100k sales for Dreamcatcher's "JUSTICE" group comeback to the nearly-70k sales for UAU's Playlist debut isn't too bad. In a K-Pop world where subunits and soloists from a main group for the most part only garner a fraction of the numbers, seeing things be relatively close is reassuring, offsetting the somewhat more humble YouTube MV view numbers (as of this writing "2 Months" sits at nearly 5 million and the other performance videos close to 200k views each). Some of this is due to the overall dip in YouTube views due to anti-botting/automation detection, but also the fact that subunits don't usually get the views of the main group's, just by nature.

Yet I believe support will show up in other ways, as UAU sets out on their Grand America tour of North and Latin America this month. There's a great deal of interest in what we might see for a fancon, though usually they are shorter affairs, and with this being the first non-Dreamcatcher tour, curiosity about what was planned. But if the recent Taiwan version of the UAU fancon is any indication, there will be plenty for the subunit to show fans, from covers to solos to fun ments and more.

Most of all, as I said at the beginning of this section, UAU seem to be genuinely happy about continuing their work and doing something new and fresh for fans. The perseverance and passion that comes from having to continue in what seems to have always been to me one of the toughest schedules insofar as the "idol life" isn't easy to maintain, especially when you don't come from a Big 4 company, but Dreamcatcher, and now UAU, continue to carry on. As long as they do that and love what they do, I'm feeling good for the future of the subunit, if not the main group, for future activities.