So you wanna get into NCT eh?
Let's do this.
NCT - Neo Culture Technology - is naturally an intimidating group to get into - there's twenty members but there have been members added and people have left and there's another group set to debut and there's subgroups and everything seems all over the place all the time, but if you're willing to jump into it all it's so absolutely incredibly worth it and less complicated than it seems at first! Let me walk you through some basics- I'll do more posts to get deeper into each group later, but this will be a primer for getting you started.
Where to start? NCT officially debuted in April 2016 with fifteen members after promoting for a while as trainees and with other trainees (including future members of Red Velvet) under the SM Rookies banner. Part of the original plan for NCT as announced at their debut was to continuously add members with no end in sight, and to expand into a group with members from all over the world who could promote in different areas at the same time. This... didn't really come to fruition ultimately, tho they do have members from seven(ish) countries. (Taiwan is a free country y'all, that makes seven. Macau is a "special administrative region of China", that's the ish.) There will be one more unit added to NCT soon, the final new set of members, but this post is going to proceed with only the current groups and subunits since The Babies (as I like to call them) aren't officially debuted yet and I don't feel like explaining them here since this is already going to be long enough. Either way, NCT's unlimited expansion has officially ended which hopefully removes that bit of intimidation.
Now on to some music!
The first song and MV that NCT released was under the broad NCT U umbrella, and started with The 7th Sense. (Wait what the heck is NCT U, you ask? I'll get there, trust me, keep reading)
The 7th Sense unit was comprised of Taeyong, Mark, Jaehyun, Doyoung, and Ten, five of the fifteen debut members.
The next day, NCT U released Without You, sung by Doyoung, Taeil, and Jaehyun, so two boys we saw already plus a new one.
The full list of members (that I and no one else expects you to remember at this point) at debut were Taeil, Taeyong, Johnny, Yuta, Ten, Doyoung, Jaehyun, Winwin, Mark, Haechan, Jaemin, Jeno, Renjun, Chenle, and Jisung.
Since debut, members have been added, growing NCT to 23, and then a few left, dropping it back to 20. In 2018, Kun, Jungwoo and Lucas were added; in 2019, Xiaojun, Hendery, and Yangyang were added; in 2020, Shotaro and Sungchan were added. In 2023, Lucas was removed after being on hiatus for almost two years because of a scandal, and then Shotaro and Sungchan were pulled from NCT and re-debuted in SM's new boy group, RIIZE. (No, we're not going to get into my opinions or emotions about any of this right now, yes, I have a lot of opinions about both things and a lot of emotions about SungTaro. Maybe in a different post if people really wanna know.)
So what do I mean when I call NCT U an umbrella? Is that what the U stands for? No, not really, tho it's a handy way to think of things! U stands for United (or Unlimited, depending on who you ask) and is a flexible title that allows them to release songs using any members of the whole group. This lets them pick from a pool of currently 20 different members with different skills to best fit the concept of a song, and has allowed them to do things like release songs with multiple lead vocalists, songs with a collection of rappers, etc. It's super flexible- some U songs have only two members performing, some have nine, etc. (Once you become familiar with all of the members, the U songs become a lot of fun when it comes to seeing who gets mixed and matched for projects!)
Overall, don't worry too much about NCT U yet. Having the basic knowledge that it could be anyone is really enough to get you going and you can come back to all of the NCT U releases later. NCT has released four albums now as a full group (Empathy, Resonance, Universe, and Golden Age) that have both fixed subunit songs and NCT U songs with mixed members so there's a bunch of fun with all that later once you've gotten more of the basics down.
The key to getting into NCT is splitting it into the sub-units, of which there are currently four, including U.
NCT U - flexible subunit of varying combined members
NCT 127 - 9 member fixed unit, concept being that they're focused on Seoul (127 is the longitude of Seoul)
NCT Dream - 7 member fixed unit, original concept involving the fact that they were the seven youngest members at debut
WayV - 6 member fixed unit, releasing music primarily in Mandarin with a focus on promotion in China
The easiest thing to do if you want to take on learning all 20 members (plus the 3 former members which are at least in past MVs and content so you'll come across them either way) is to pick one of the three fixed units (NCT 127, NCT Dream, or WayV) and learn the members of that group before moving on to the next. NCT 127 and NCT Dream also share two members, which gives you a little leg up when you get to going from one to the other!
I'll make posts getting into each group more in depth soon to talk about members and with my fave songs and recommendations etc, so for each of the fixed units, I'll put in here their debut plus a recent song so you can get a grasp of how each group has grown and changed.
NCT 127 was the first of the subunits to debut, releasing Firetruck in July 2016.
127 debuted with Taeil, Taeyong, Yuta, Jaehyun, Winwin, Mark and Haechan. The fashion and hair in this MV is uhhhhhh wild? Yeah we'll go with wild.
127 has gone through some lineup changes over the years as they've changed and grown- they added Johnny, Doyoung, and Jungwoo, and then Winwin went on indefinite 127-hiatus when he joined WayV in 2019.
Their most recent release was in October of this year and is so good that it managed to make it into my top 5 songs of this year on Spotify in slightly over a month so uhhhhh yeah here's Fact Check-
NCT 127 is known for having music that's a little more experimental and sometimes just straight up weird, so you'll see a lot of mixed opinions of them on the internet (I've seen people calling some/all of their songs just noise music) but they're ultimately like most kpop groups and have released stuff in all kinds of styles with different mixed influences, so it's worth listening to at least a few things before forming any kinds of opinions about their music if you don't like the first song or two you hear. I mean. It's worth it EXTRA if you do like thier music obviously. Anyway.
Next up!
NCT Dream debuted not long after NCT 127 in August 2016 as a bunch of ACTUAL BABIES, aged between 14-17 at debut. Yeah that's right, Chenle and Jisung were both 14. They debuted with the now iconic Chewing Gum, that involves some wild hoverboard choreography that isn't shown as much in the MV but was probably more dangerous than a bunch of kids should have been doing on stages all the time (especially one time outdoors in the rain???), but they all survived so I guess it's fine?
WHAT A BUNCH OF ADORABLE BABIES.
NCT Dream debuted with Mark, Haechan, Renjun, Jeno, Jaemin, Chenle, and Jisung. Yes, Mark and Haechan are also in the NCT 127 list! They are workaholics who can't stop won't stop basically. (Yes, we also all worry about their health. It's A Thing.)
The original concept behind Dream was that it would be the youngest members of NCT, and when members grew old enough they would graduate out, and new younger members of NCT would be added in turn as members were added to NCT. The only element of this that was ever put into practice was graduating out Mark in December 2018 as he was the eldest member; no new members were added however, and eventually the whole plan was scrapped and Mark was re-added to Dream in 2020 (back where he BELONGS) and Dream officially became a fixed unit like 127 and WayV.
The boys are now between the ages of 21-24, and their music has grown a lot as they've grown out of their cute concepts and into more mature looks and sounds. Their most recent release was in July of this year, ISTJ.
They're still known for having a more youthful, optimistic vibe, and there's something incredibly uplifting and exuberant about them in general at basically all times. These boys have been together for half of their lives at this point and really grown up together and- yeah I have a lot of emotions about Dream that I'll save for later.
Moving on!
WayV time! WayV officially debuted in 2019 with the Mandarin version of Regular.
(NCT 127 released both Korean and English versions of Regular as well, and they are the last NCT 127 MVs that feature Winwin before he became 127-inactive and became fully active with WayV instead.)
WayV debuted with Winwin, Kun, Ten, Xiaojun, Hendery, Yangyang, and Lucas. Lucas has since been removed from NCT and WayV and the other six members have continued to promote as a six member group.
WayV has hit some snags, especially with things out of their control like the pandemic- they live in Seoul when they're not promoting or touring, and travel into and out of China has been difficult for obvious reasons for the past few years, which has made it harder for them to be pushing into the Chinese music industry when they haven't been able to travel in China as freely as they could have under other circumstances and couldn't do things like concerts or fanmeets. They have started touring and promoting more heavily in Southeast Asia more recently, and some of the members like Winwin and Ten have spent time in China over the past few years working on things like acting in dramas, participating in variety shows, or judging on Chinese dance competition shows as well. Xiaojun is also currently a host on one of the the Korean weekly music shows, SBS's The Show.
WayV's most recent comeback was actually last month but I'm gonna use their comeback from the VERY end of last year (Dec 28) in this post because I'm still obsessed with this song-
WayV mix a lot of different elements into their music and are the most multilingual of the groups- since they're based in Seoul, they've often performed on the weekly Korean music shows with English versions of their songs, and they have the NCT member who speaks the most languages in Ten, who is Thai, and speaks Thai, Mandarin, Korean, English, and Japanese, as well as multiple members who speak four (Hendery and Xiaojun both speak Cantonese, Mandarin, Korean, and English; Yangyang speaks Mandarin, English, Korean and German). They also have Kun, who is both a licensed airplane pilot and licensed sky diver (who promoted Phantom by skydiving with a banner for it) as well as being a music producer AND the only member of NCT to have a university degree. Basically WayV is a bunch of overachievers who deserve the whole world.
So..... that's all the subunits! I hope this breakdown gave you a place to start with. Feel free to use this as a base to go look up more information about each subunit, or watch the videos I included here and the ones I linked throughout in the text in various places to get started. I will also make some more posts about each subunit to get into more about the members and more songs by each so you can hang out and wait for those too!
Related things to come from this? More NCT posts, possibly more kpop posts in general like this? I've talked to a few people about how to get into NCT in basics, and this post is dedicated to @catatonicrainbow most specifically as being the most recent internet pal to want to get into NCT and being the one who finally got me to make some kind of thing like this. Meanwhile, @poetry-protest-pornography and I have been discussing starting a kpop podcast where I teach her about different groups as my knowledge is vast and deep and has been accumulating in my brain since around 2008 and she's MUCH newer to kpop than me, and I often infodump at her already about various groups. So like. Now that we're both talking about that publicly I guess we really gotta do it. Maybe I'll make companion posts on here to go with the podcast? Or something. We'll see. But there will be more of this stuff coming! So hopefully if you've read this far and enjoyed this content, you'll be excited for more? Whee!
Also like yes obviously I know other people have probably made these kinds of posts and there's videos and podcasts and etc out about this kind of stuff already, but I figure since everyone processes information differently, having multiple sources for this kind of information and different ways it's presented will probably be helpful to SOMEONE so I'm gonna make the content I feel like making either way. :) Cheers!
[So you wanna get into NCT eh? 1 | 2 | 3]