The girl group revealed another side of themselves on their new mini-album, AWE.
XG might be embracing a bit of darkness on their new album, but on a recent afternoon in New York, they pop in bright shades of pink. It’s the color of Chisa’s pin-straight hair, the bows on Maya’s braids, the print on Jurin’s jacket and Juria’s sweater, the hoodie under Harvey’s leopard-print jacket, and Cocona’s pants (though her shaved head is dyed light blue with stripes). Hinata wears all black, with hints of purple in her thick, dark bangs, but she still matches with the group.
Despite their playful color palette, and their soft-spoken voices, the seven-member Japanese girl group dives into some bold, nocturnal themes on their new mini-album, AWE. The visuals are marked by a crescent moon, wolf-inspired garb, mythical creatures, and black and white imagery. Songs like “HOWLING” include a literal wolf howl—a known battle cry for their fanbase, the ALPHAZ. Out today, the collection of eight songs carries a range of influences, including pop, R&B, hip-hop, house, and more.
XG (short for Xtraordinary Girls) debuted in 2022 after five years of training under the production company XGALX. They launched with a single “Tippy Toes,” but they went viral for their cypher later that year featuring each of the rappers in the group, stunning people on YouTube and TikTok with their razor-sharp verses. Their song “Left Right,” released the following year, was so successful that Ciara (whose sound seemed to inspire the song) hopped on a remix with Jackson Wang. (The pair even performed it together at Coachella.) Later in 2023, they made their first U.S. performance at the Head in the Clouds music festival, and then dropped their first mini-album, New DNA, in September. But this June, they were back with a confidence boosting rap track, “WOKE UP.” Singles “SOMETHING AIN’T RIGHT” and “IYKYK,” tinged with Y2K pop, followed in the months leading to AWE.
As Billboard noted last year, XG have the makings of a K-pop group, but even though they are based in South Korea, they are Japanese and sing their songs in English. Theirs is a new kind of global pop. Their inspirations are rooted in the music they listened to growing up, i.e. Boyz II Men (for Maya), Michael Jackson (Harvey), and Lady Gaga and Madonna (Chisa). “I would say our influence from our parents is pretty strong,” Harvey says through a Japanese translator. As a whole, they pay tribute to the girl groups they loved that came before them, like Spice Girls, Destiny’s Child, and TLC. “All the music videos, fashion concepts from the ’90s—a lot of respect towards that,” Maya adds in English.
When I meet XG at the iHeartRadio offices, it’s just a week after they ended their first-ever U.S. tour, which concluded in Chicago. “It was amazing,” Maya says. “Also, everyone’s outfits,” Cocona points out. “I think unlike Asia, it was a little more—how do I say—just colorful, more expressive, shiny, a little gaudy. So I think that was something unique to the U.S. tour.” They have shows set in Europe and Japan next. But before then, during a day off in New York, they got to play tourists and explore the city: the Empire State Building, Times Square, Central Park, the Brooklyn Bridge, shopping in SoHo, skate parks, and even a Blue Man Group show.
Here, XG, with a translator, discuss their new album, their unbreakable bond, and aspirations for space travel.
Let’s start with the title. Where did AWE come from?
Chisa: The title looks like “awe,” but it’s [pronounced] “ow.” It’s because it sounds like a wolf howling, but it also has the English word “awe” in it. And the Japanese word that we use as kind of our concept is ikei, which means awe. It describes that feeling of both surprise and shock, but also some curiosity when you see something so new and so foreign. So we’re mixing both of those meanings into the album title.You really thought it through! I want to talk about the howl concept.
You have that in a couple of the songs, “HOWL” and “HOWLING.” What does that theme or phrase mean to you as a group?
Maya: The ALPHAZ [symbolize] being the wolf pack leaders. So just howling together means becoming one with our fans. And that represents how our fans, ALPHAZ, and XG are always connected together, and I think that’s what we wanted to deliver through our songs in this album as well. If we release this album and release the main title “HOWLING,” I feel like the ALPHAZ can be more connected to us and understand the real meaning of why we’re howling all together from the start to the end.
So it’s like an anthem?
Maya: Yeah. It’s like an anthem. During our world tour, we have our encore moments, and while they’re waiting, we allow our ALPHAZ to howl, and they go like, “Awoo!” And they wait until we come out again. That’s this culture that we made throughout this world tour during The First Howl [tour]. So we’re excited. That was a little spoiler that we kind of teased, but they don’t know that the “awoo” is in the song. It’s a big surprise.
“HOWLING” is so cool. It’s a whole experience. You feel that kind of haunting, spooky vibe. Tell me about the concept of the sound and how you made it come together.
Hinata: In “HOWLING,” we have this upright bass and a lot of synths, and I think we’ve really kind of refined and developed XG’s sound over the years. So what you hear in “HOWLING” is actually quite charismatic, almost raw—it’s what we are as XG. Being able to deliver that to our ALPHAZ and everyone is really exciting. And there’s a message in there as well. One of the lines of the lyrics goes, “That’s how we howl.” So no matter what challenges or trials you face as an individual, if you have that resilience and that drive, you can always push through. So we, as XG, also are determined to go higher. It encapsulates all of that.
How did making this album differ from making New DNA last year? Is there anything new that you were excited to try? Did you feel like you had evolved as performers?
Juria: In AWE, there are eight tracks and a variety of genres among them, so you get to see many different sides of XG than you saw in previous albums. Even as we were recording it, it was a lot of fun, and I’m excited to see how the fans are going to react once they hear this. I personally really love the album.
Jurin: New DNA was more about letting the world know that XG has arrived. So a lot of it is to share and show XG’s world setting, the kind of world that we’re building, but AWE goes even deeper, and you get to see a different side, different angle, how the XG world is evolving.
There were a lot of different influences in AWE. “In the Rain” reminded me of an R&B music video, where they’re singing in the rain, heartbroken. Could you tell me about the different influences you wanted to include in this album?
Chisa: You hit the nail on the head with “In the Rain.” You just imagine the ’80s, the R&B that we grew up with, trying to encapsulate that type of feeling in the video. And as for one of the other tracks, “IS THIS LOVE,” we don’t sing about love that often, so I think that is going to sound quite fresh from XG’s perspective and interpretation. “HOWLING” and “WOKE UP” show more of the strength of XG, and that’s a very different sound. And there are also the last two more poppy songs, “IYKYK” and “SOMETHING AIN’T RIGHT.”
I liked how in the “If You Know You Know” video, you had avatars, animated versions of yourselves.
Chisa: There’s a very specific kind of XG lingo or secret language that we have, like [themes of] outer space, paranormal activity, these are stories that our fans are really into. So “If You Know You Know” is actually a message to the fans, that if you know our lingo, then you know what we’re talking about. So oftentimes, we’ll go out into nature and have these meetings and think about what kind of sounds we want to produce, and in some cases, we try to capture that sound, like what outer space might sound like.
When it comes to you as a group, girls’ and women’s empowerment seems very central to who you are, from the name of your band to “GRL GVNG.” Even the name of your label is about celebrating women. What is it like to incorporate that into your music, and why is that important to you?
Harvey: I think because all seven of us are girls, so you get a lot of that female or girl undertone, and it’s going to make its way into the overall concept of our band. But I think, at the core, what we’re trying to say is: People seeing our strength when we perform on stage and in music videos, they can then get some energy and courage to do what they need to do. So it’s not limited to women in any stretch of the imagination. Our job is really to take that energy and deliver it as power, and we hope that reaches our audiences.
How did you guys hype each other up on tour?
Chisa: We get to a circle, put our hands in the middle, and then our leader, Jurin, says, “Hesono-o,” which is Japanese, and it literally translates to the umbilical cord. But what it really means is this very strong bond that we have with each other, that we’re always together, always connected, no matter what happens. So when we do this right before going on stage, it really hypes us up, and we feel this oneness among ourselves.
You had been training for several years before your debut. Do you remember your first time meeting each other? What was your first impression like?
Chisa: Hinata was Cinderella, a princess.
Maya: Wearing her little uniform, sitting by herself.
Jurin: Some of the rest of us, we knew a couple of people from our training or a different dance school, etc. We may not have talked with each other, but we knew of each other. But Hinata just came out of nowhere. She’s Cinderella, completely.
Hinata: I had the opposite feeling when I saw them. They looked really shiny and glamorous. I’m like, “Am I going to be OK in this unit?”
You’ve come such a long way since your debut in 2022. I remember listening to “Tippy Toes” when it first came out and COCONA’s verse going viral on TikTok. How would you describe your journey so far?
Maya: The past two years, I feel like we got to know who we are as a group, what we want to show the world, and I feel like that became [our foundation].
Jurin: I think we’ve been preparing for a very long time. We were trainees for a long time before our debut, and even during that phase, we learned a lot about ourselves and each other. But since our debut, I feel we’ve been constantly evolving, and we are discovering what we really want to do and what we want to show the world and our audiences. So if we look back and listen to “Tippy Toes” now, it seems so different from where we are in this moment. It’s very interesting to see that change. And it goes back to what I think is a core concept of what makes XG, which is that there are no limits, nothing is impossible, as long as you have the willpower and the attitude to challenge the status quo, you can do something new.
Where do you see the future of the group going? What would be your dream for XG?
Harvey: We’d love to become aliens and perform in outer space. I don’t know what that’s going to look like, but a performance in outer space.
I think you’ll be the first ones to do it.
Jurin: And then our end-end game is, when we’re all old and wrinkly, we want to still have this bond that we have together, share laughter, be happy, make music. So those are kind of our long-term goals.
What do you hope your fans and new listeners take away from AWE?
Cocona: As the title implies, it’s really that double meaning of overwhelming or surprising, shocking, moving our audiences. And this is a personal observation, but with every album or mini-album that we release, it shows a new side of XG and represents where XG is in that moment. And for our upcoming album, it’s definitely R&B vibes and two-step, house.
And also, “IYKYK,” it’s got this sort of pop element to it as well. There’s going to be a lot to unpack, and it’s going to be a really fun album. I really feel that this upcoming album has everything that’s now current and new with XG.
Cre: ELLE
