(Produce 101 커버)

There is something quietly radical about this performance: the Produce 101 theme, a song built entirely around aspiration and the brutal public arithmetic of survival shows, delivered by NewJeans with a certain knowing lightness that reframes everything. Min Hee-jin's presence gives the moment additional weight — the creative architect of NewJeans and a figure deeply embedded in the industry that Produce 101 helped shape, now sharing this stage with the girls she built her artistic vision around. The performance strips the original's desperate urgency and replaces it with something more playful, almost nostalgic, the way a childhood song sounds different once you've grown past the feelings that made it matter. NewJeans' vocal style — breathy, casual, deceptively simple — lands in particular contrast to the song's original competitive context. The result is less a cover than a quiet commentary: on idol-making, on the gap between industry machinery and genuine artistry, on what survives when the competition infrastructure falls away. For anyone who watched the original broadcasts, this carries layers of bittersweet recognition. For those discovering it fresh, it simply sounds like confident young artists doing exactly what they want.