There’s something almost unsettling about watching five girls wander through an empty parking lot clutching laundry and groceries, insisting over minimal percussion that none of this, the cuteness, the labels, the nicknames, is really them.
ILLIT’s “NOT ME” music video, released February 6, 2026 for their November 24, 2025 single, asks you to believe in spontaneity while operating under the weight of dozens of credited writers and a director, Yunah Sheep, who framed every “casual” moment.
The result isn’t dishonest. It’s just revealing about what K-pop thinks authenticity looks like in 2026.
Released as the B-side to November 2025’s Not Cute Anymore and built around an interpolation of The Ting Tings’ “That’s Not My Name,” “NOT ME” turns identity into a hook before the video ever tries to humanise it.
The visual language is deliberately anti-spectacular: fluorescent lighting, mundane objects, no choreography to speak of.
It reads as a conscious retreat from the high-gloss aesthetic that defined their early releases, a pivot toward relatability as brand strategy.
The song itself, produced by Pebbles&TamTam, VITALS, and Boston & Pat, is less interested in depth than in becoming the kind of sound that burrows into short-form video culture.
At barely two minutes, structured around a borrowed hook from The Ting Tings’ “That’s Not My Name,” a reference that predates most of their audience, it functions more as memetic material than music.
The members list every identity projected onto them, “LIT,” “princess,” “jelly,” “king,” only to reject each one, but the repetition makes the labels stick harder.
What’s actually happening here isn’t self-definition. It’s the performance of refusing definition, which is a very different kind of control.
The parking lot isn’t an escape from image management; it’s where image management goes when it needs to look like it isn’t trying.
It’s just a softer stage.
ILLIT are stuck in the impossible position of proving they’re unfiltered while being filtered through every layer of contemporary pop production and the video’s mundane setting only emphasizes the gap.
The message is “this isn’t me,” but the medium keeps insisting otherwise.
You might also like:
- ILLIT “NOT CUTE ANYMORE” Music Video Review
- ILLIT Makes Magnetic Debut With Pluggnb/House Hybrid Title Track
- How TikTok Viral Songs Dominated Charts in 2025
- Robyn’s Dopamine Review, Meaning & Video Breakdown
- Mitski Where’s My Phone Review & Lyrics Meaning
- KPop Demon Hunters: Netflix’s Most Watched Film of 2025