With nearly 2 dozen entries on World Digital Song Sales, ATEEZ are no strangers to the Billboard chart -- but their latest feat shows how fans are taking their support to the charts.
. Sung by chart-topping solo star Zico and hip-hop trio Homies, “New Thing” has been rising up Korea’s local charts mainly due to the viral #NewThingChallenge dance. Soon, fans noticed one part felt similar to a key move from “Say My Name.” episode, the “New Thing” choreography was created and sequenced by We Dem Boyz leader Vata.
Since the episode airing, Vata began facing online plagiarism accusations over the sequence for “New Thing” that made its way to the original “Say My Name” choreographer, Anze Skrube. album as the “Say My Name” choreographer, spoke up about the claims on his Instagram. “I want to be very quick regarding the allegations of somebody copying our moves,” he said in a video posted on Oct. 11. “Please stop harassing each other and fighting about it. To clarify, from my experience, there is a difference between ‘biting’ a move or being inspired by a move, or biting a whole sequence of moves—this is what happened here in this case. This particular sequence was choreographed by Josh Smith at the end of 2018 and it came out at the beginning of 2019.
Fans noted the eight-member boy band incorporating the driving dance into some of their latest performances and using what looks like the “biting” dance sign where a dancer smacks one’s forearms together horizontally to physically indicate someone has stolen or copied a move.