The NMIXX Saga: From the "O.O" Debate to a Music Show Grand Slam
If you only started paying attention after “Blue Valentine,” you may not know that a hit like that once looked unlikely for this group. Most K-pop stories in our taxonomy of idol narratives are about groups nobody noticed. NMIXX had the opposite problem. From their first day, everyone was watching, and plenty of them made it loudly clear that they didn’t like what they heard.
Act 1: The loudest debut of 2022
NMIXX were JYP Entertainment’s first Korea-based girl group since ITZY in 2019 (the company’s Japanese group NiziU debuted in between, in December 2020). JYP spent the second half of 2021 introducing the members through a series of dance and cover videos. By the time NMIXX debuted on February 22, 2022, with the single album Ad Mare, expectations were enormous.
The lead single, “O.O,” introduced what JYP called “Mixx pop”: a song that switches genres partway through, in this case from baile funk to teen pop rock. The reaction was immediate and loud. Writing for Dazed that October, Taylor Glasby said “O.O” had arguably created “the biggest ruckus of 2022 thus far”. Complaints poured in from K-pop fans across social media about its choppy arrangement, its mix, the lyrics, its ten credited songwriters and even a soft-drink product placement in the video.
The same article is worth reading in full, because it doesn’t stop at the backlash. Glasby noted that much of the anger was aimed at the label rather than the group. Glasby also called NMIXX “already commanding performers and vocalists,” and gave a personal verdict on the song: “‘O.O’ isn’t a good song. It’s great.” Member Lily admitted that the reactions were sometimes “sad and hard to read about,” then added a line that could serve as the group’s motto: “mixed opinions are better than no opinions.”
Act 2: Six members, and the long climb
That first year also brought a lineup change. On December 9, 2022, JYP announced that Jinni was leaving the group and the company, citing personal circumstances. NMIXX continued as six: Lily, Haewon, Sullyoon, Bae, Jiwoo and Kyujin.
At their first anniversary in February 2023, the members described their fans, NSWER, as people whose presence alone gave them strength and comfort. About five weeks later, on March 29, 2023, “Love Me Like This” won their first music show trophy, on Show Champion, 13 months after debut, and the members were in tears on stage. (If the trophy system is new to you, our music show guide explains how these wins work.) By mid-April, the song had climbed to No. 4 on Melon, Korea’s biggest streaming service.
They kept building from there. In January 2024, “DASH” (released January 15) won four music show trophies within two weeks of release, and the experiments kept coming with “See that?” that August and “KNOW ABOUT ME” in March 2025.
In September 2024, Tiny Desk Korea released NMIXX’s set: six members singing with a live band. In January 2025, NPR Music put it on its main YouTube channel, making NMIXX the first K-pop girl group to appear there. NPR’s description noted that they performed the 26-minute set in one take, without the monitor wedges that musicians usually rely on to hear themselves. If you still think NMIXX are only about the genre switches, start here.
What NMIXX still didn’t have was a No. 1 on Melon.
Act 3: “Blue Valentine”
On October 13, 2025, NMIXX released their first full-length album, Blue Valentine. The title track was still Mixx pop at heart, built on melancholy synths and guitar riffs over boom-bap rhythms that slow down and speed up. This time, the general public embraced it.
The results came on two fronts. On TV, “Blue Valentine” won five music shows in a single week, from October 22 to October 26: Show Champion, M Countdown, Music Bank, Show! Music Core and Inkigayo. Korean press called it the group’s first music show grand slam, and the run included NMIXX’s first-ever trophy on Show! Music Core. On the charts, it first reached No. 1 on the Top 100 of the Korean streaming service Melon on October 20, then held the top spot from October 21 to November 22. It became the group’s first No. 1 on Melon’s monthly chart, for November 2025, and topped the Circle Chart’s digital chart for the week of November 2–8.
Topping the Top 100 was their first Melon No. 1, three years and eight months after debut. In a statement released through JYP and reported by Yonhap, the members said they remembered the comments that promised “the NMIXX boom is coming,” left by people who sincerely wanted them to do well. When they saw the song at No. 1, they said, their fans were the first people who came to mind.
Reviewing the album on the CUL;PI YouTube talk show K-pop Chamcham, music critic Kim Do-heon called it the point where NMIXX moved beyond technique into emotion and storytelling. He added that the group can hold an audience through the music alone, even without choreography. On the same show, dance creator Luda Chris (루다크리스) said the choreography carries less energy than “O.O,” “DICE” or “Love Me Like This” but still has JYP’s signature detail, and he called the hand choreography built around Jiwoo excellent. The music, he added, now holds listeners’ attention more.
One more detail ties the story together. The last two tracks on Blue Valentine are “O.O Part 1 (Baila)” and “O.O Part 2 (Superhero)”. The debut song that started the argument came back, reworked in two parts, on the album that finally reached a wider audience. That is the heart of this saga, as we read it. NMIXX never walked away from Mixx pop or from “O.O.” When the wider public finally arrived, a Mixx pop song brought them there. In the same Yonhap report, a JYP representative listed a more natural take on Mixx pop among the reasons the song succeeded.
Where they are now
Since then, NMIXX have taken that confidence on tour and overseas. Their first world tour, Episode 1: Zero Frontier, opened with their first solo concerts in Incheon on November 29 and 30, 2025. On February 16, 2026, they joined Brazilian star Pabllo Vittar’s block party at the São Paulo Carnival, billed as the first K-pop group to take part, and gave the first live performance of their new collaboration “TIC TIC” there. NMIXX and Pabllo Vittar had first teamed up on “MEXE” in August 2025.
In March 2026, the tour took NMIXX to Europe for their first solo concerts there, and in April it sold out all six North American dates. Their fifth EP, Heavy Serenade, came out in May. By mid-August, after a summer run through Asia, the tour had visited 17 cities for 21 shows. On September 19, 2026, at the 2026 The Fact Music Awards, they won the Sound of the Year grand prize, their first grand prize at any Korean music awards show.
The members’ own names have been showing up in the credits, too. On Blue Valentine, Lily helped write the lyrics of “Reality Hurts,” the group’s first all-English song, and Haewon contributed lyrics to “PODIUM.” On Heavy Serenade, Lily helped write “Crescendo” and “LOUD,” and Bae worked on the lyrics of “Different Girl.”
For teasers and release-day updates, the group’s official X account is @NMIXX_official, and our comeback calendar tracks every scheduled release. In 2022, people argued about whether this sound could work at all. Now the more interesting question is what NMIXX, with members writing their own lyrics, will do with it next.