S.E.S.
S.E.S. — Bada, Eugene, and Shoo — debuted in 1997 as SM Entertainment's first girl group, fusing the vocal-forward, hip-hop-inflected R&B-pop of contemporaneous American acts with the idol-industry choreography and image-making that would define K-pop's first generation. Their run of hits through the early 2000s, including '(’Cause) I'm Your Girl' and 'Dreams Come True,' established a girl-group blueprint that critics have pointed to as a touchstone for NewJeans' own 90s-K-pop, R&B-leaning sound decades later.
A K-pop critic reviewing S.E.S.'s 'Dreams Come True' wrote that its rapped bridge 'sounds like a robotic pixy mimicking TLC's Lisa "Left Eye" Lopes' flow' — a direct echo of the rap-and-sing hybrid TLC had popularized in the US a few years earlier.
listen forCue up TLC's 'Creep' next to S.E.S.'s 'Dreams Come True' — listen for that same clipped, half-rapped cadence dropped into an otherwise smooth R&B-pop chorus.
S.E.S. came up during the mid-90s contemporary-R&B boom Mariah Carey helped define worldwide, and the group's layered, softly stacked harmonies on ballads and midtempo cuts sit within that broader vocal-pop style Korean labels were drawing from at the time.
listen forPlay Mariah Carey's 'Fantasy' next to S.E.S.'s 'Be Natural' — both ride a bright, hip-hop-tinged pop-R&B groove with layered backing vocals rather than one lead voice carrying the whole song.
The sustained, powerhouse ballad singing Whitney Houston popularized on American radio in the early 1990s fed into the vocal-forward ballad style Korean labels leaned on for idol vocalists' emotional peaks, audible on S.E.S.'s slower singles.
listen forCompare Whitney Houston's 'I Will Always Love You' with S.E.S.'s 'Just a Feeling' — both build from a hushed verse into a sustained vocal climax that the arrangement clears space for.