At The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City
By now, if you’ve been reading, you know that I like a solid vocal pop song. Purely electronic production with no live instrumentation isn’t necessarily a bad thing because it highlights the voices of the singers and can still be extremely fun.
Imagine how excited I was when I walked into a gay bar in Tokyo and I heard this song, which I instantly Shazammed, needing to know who it was. The song is in English but didn’t sound the least bit familiar. Tokyo is just full of surprises in the best way, all the time and everywhere you go.
Japanese, South-Korea-based vocal group XG released “Gala” in September 2025, for their debut album The Core - 核, which came out in January 2026, during my trip to Tokyo. XG is definitely a potential “next big thing”—honestly, because they’re really good. Their voices complement each other and they seem to work together well.
What makes “Gala” special, apart from the super fun lyrics manifesting this newer musical group’s future invitation to the Met Gala by exceeding the standard, is that you can listen to the instrumental track alone. In fact, they were so confident in the instrumentation that they released an instrumental version on the single. The sound overall is easily compared to their contemporaries, Blackpink, but it sounds even fresher. The production on this song is just so slick and so clever. By repeating a few sounds throughout the song, it feels like it more than earns its spot on the runway. And, certainly, this song has been played on many runways, and will be played on many more. For a mainstream pop song, it feels avant garde. Like it is a hint of something that has yet to come and that I’m excited to see.
And, lest you think their fashionist braggadocio is undeserved, just watch this music video and I think you will change your mind. It has several cheeky references to “Zoolander” and their fashion is genuinely couture, gorgeous, advanced, the future. And these folks can dance too. I would go to an XG show in a heartbeat. This is a great place to start down that journey!