KATSEYE’s “WILD” just posted the biggest sales week for an all-woman act since Billboard started counting by units. Two of the six members who built the group weren’t there for it — both on hiatus for their health, the second inside six months of the first.
On August 23, KATSEYE learned that “WILD” had done something no all-woman group had done in over three years: sold enough physical copies in one week to lead the Billboard 200 outright. Five members posted about it on Instagram. A sixth — the group’s leader — was fifteen days into a hiatus she announced days before the album even came out. A seventh moment, easy to miss in the celebration: this was already the second time in six months that KATSEYE had gone to press one member short.
The Record
The numbers are not in dispute. “WILD” earned 170,000 equivalent album units in its first week, 145,000 of them pure album sales — the largest week for an all-woman group since the Billboard 200 began ranking by units in December 2014, and the largest pure-sales week for one in more than three years. It’s KATSEYE’s first career No. 1, and the fourth by an all-woman act this decade, after BLACKPINK, NewJeans, and TWICE.
What’s easy to miss in the coverage of the record is who wasn’t on stage to help build it. KATSEYE promoted “WILD” — the Tonight Show debut, the Head in the Clouds Festival set, the release rollout itself — as a four-member act: Daniela Avanzini, Lara Raj, Megan Skiendiel, and Yoonchae Jeung. Manon Bannerman and Sophia Laforteza, two of the group’s six original members, were both absent, both on hiatus, both citing their health.
KATSEYE announces Megan Skiendiel will step back to recover from a worsening back injury — the group’s first hiatus, roughly a month after its debut EP.
In a BBC interview, members describe the volume of online hostility directed at the group, with Laforteza noting “no human is supposed to receive that much feedback.”
Weeks after performing at the Grammys, where KATSEYE was nominated for two awards, Manon Bannerman announces a hiatus “to focus on her health and wellbeing.” She sits out Coachella two months later.
Group leader Sophia Laforteza announces her own hiatus “to focus on her mental health,” five days before KATSEYE’s Tonight Show debut and a week before “WILD” ships.
The EP ships as scheduled, promoted by four members, and debuts at No. 1 nine days later — KATSEYE’s biggest week on record.
Laforteza: “Making this decision wasn’t easy, but I’m learning that health has to come first.” HYBE, on her behalf: “The health, safety, and long-term well-being of our artists will always remain our highest priority.” The label’s statement on Bannerman in February used nearly identical language: a hiatus “to focus on her health and wellbeing.”
The Methodology Travels Whole
What Traveled With the System
KATSEYE was never pitched as a K-pop group with the serial numbers filed off. HYBE has been explicit that the project exists to test whether K-pop’s training and development system — global auditions, a year of idol-style training, a hybrid pop sound built for the US market — actually works in the world’s largest music market. Eighteen months and one Billboard No. 1 later, the answer on the commercial side is a clear yes.
What’s harder to call a coincidence is the other thing that appears to have traveled intact: the hiatus, and the specific language used to announce it. KpopWave has tracked this exact pattern before, across TWICE, ITZY, SEVENTEEN, ATEEZ, and DAY6 — a member steps back, a label statement cites “health” without further detail, and the group continues its schedule around the gap. KATSEYE’s own hiatus announcements, eighteen months into a project explicitly designed to test K-pop’s export potential, use close to the same words.
Global auditions instead of a single national trainee pipeline; a Western label co-running the project alongside HYBE; six-figure hits built for streaming and physical formats designed for the US market.
Two “health and wellbeing” hiatuses inside six months, near-identical label language to Korea-based groups, and a release calendar that didn’t pause for either one.
— Sophia Laforteza, BBC interview, November 2025
Who the Chart Doesn’t Count
None of this should be read as a claim that overwork alone explains either hiatus — Laforteza and Bannerman cited their health in their own words, and members have separately described the specific toll of online hostility, including death threats, as its own distinct weight. Correlation isn’t the same as a diagnosis, and KpopWave isn’t in a position to name what either woman is going through beyond what she’s said herself.
What’s fair to observe is the shape of the calendar around them. Nothing about “WILD”‘s promotional schedule changed when Laforteza stepped back five days before its release. The Tonight Show booking held. The festival set held. The release date held. The chart, when it posted the following month, made no distinction between a KATSEYE running on six members and a KATSEYE running on four — it simply counted the units.
None of this makes “WILD”‘s success hollow, and it would be unfair to the four members who built it to frame their record as somehow lesser for having been made by four instead of six. But a chart doesn’t have a field for how many people were well enough to be there when the number came in, and neither, it turns out, did the release calendar.
HYBE built KATSEYE explicitly to test whether K-pop’s system could run in the world’s biggest music market. A year and a half in, the answer so far is yes — the hits travel, the training travels, and, unmistakably, so does the hiatus, down to the label’s own choice of words. If the point of exporting the methodology was to prove it works anywhere, it may be proving something else alongside it: a system built to run on six people can still hit No. 1 running on four, and nothing in the machinery requires anyone to slow down and notice.
“WILD” first-week chart data (170,000 units, 145,000 album sales, No. 1 debut, largest all-woman sales week since Dec. 2014) per Billboard’s official chart coverage (Aug. 23–25, 2026).
Sophia Laforteza’s Aug. 7, 2026 hiatus announcement and HYBE’s statement per Rolling Stone, Variety, and Forbes; Manon Bannerman’s Feb. 20, 2026 hiatus announcement and label statement per Yahoo Entertainment/AOL and People.
Megan Skiendiel’s September 2024 hiatus (back injury) per Sportskeeda’s contemporaneous coverage.
November 2025 BBC interview quotes on online hostility and death threats per AOL/Yahoo Entertainment’s reporting on the Bannerman hiatus.
This piece builds on KpopWave’s prior reporting on the K-pop industry’s pattern of “health”-framed hiatus announcements across TWICE, ITZY, SEVENTEEN, ATEEZ, and DAY6.
This is a sensitive topic involving discussion of mental health. If you or someone you know is struggling, KpopWave encourages reaching out to a licensed professional or a crisis support line in your region.