AT HEART to remake RULA's '3! 4!' as K-pop's remake wave hits new high

AT HEART will release a remake of RULA's 1996 hit 3! 4! on the 19th. It's the latest move in a remake wave that sent an 18-year-old song to its first-ever music broadcast number one.

That milestone belongs to LISENNE. Her remake of KARA's Pretty Girl finally got the 2008 track to the top of music broadcast charts — something the original run never managed. Eighteen years. One remake. Done.

TAEYEON moved first in this cycle, dropping a Korean-language version of Japanese singer-songwriter TSUKI's Bansan-ka (만찬가) on the 29th of last month as part of a J-pop Remake project. TSUKI's original came out in 2023 and sparked a global short-form challenge trend, which makes the algorithm math on a remake fairly obvious.

Cultural critic Ha Jae-geun sees the pattern clearly: "Recent remakes by new artists are a strategic weapon that intuitively imprints the team's identity." They "lower the entry barrier through the familiarity of the original song while becoming an opportunity to capture both fandom and public appeal."

Why it keeps working: "The current remake trend is a structure where the original and remake songs maximize each other's vitality through algorithms and short-form content." A feedback loop that pulls older listeners in while pushing the original back onto discovery feeds at the same time.

For AT HEART, a track with RULA's nostalgia weight is a calculated first move. The 19th release will show whether the formula holds.