It was December 14. As a giant on-screen clock at the 2023 Asia Artist Awards flipped over to read midnight, LE SSERAFIM began performing their digital single “Perfect Night.” Their “Perfect Night” starts at the stroke of midnight — the time shown on stage — “Don’t start blowing up my line, I’d care at 11:59 / But nothing counts after midnight”, and from then on, nothing can stop “me and my girlies” having fun together. Whereas Cinderella had to leave the ball by midnight, that’s when LE SSERAFIM’s party is just getting started. And the girl group’s party isn’t about meeting their prince—it’s all about enjoying themselves. “Perfect Night” opens with the members of LE SSERAFIM walking onto the stage, greeting and hugging each other, and wraps up with KIM CHAEWON surrounded by the other members in a circle, just like a group of friends hanging out together. It was like LE SSERAFIM was holding a killer party right in the middle of the AAA stage.

There’s more to “Perfect Night” than the fun time the title seems to suggest. The song’s music video centers around heroes from Overwatch, the first-person shooter game with which LE SSERAFIM collaborated, doing everything in their power to make sure they can see the idols in concert. Heroes D.Va, Kiriko, Brigitte, and Tracer find themselves in gridlock traffic, and once they finally make it to the venue, they find out they brought the wrong tickets. The heroes put their heads together, picking up speed on the shoulder of the road and launching into the sky, and later even travel back in time to make sure they snag the right tickets. In an interview with Weverse Magazine for the group’s UNFORGIVEN comeback, HUH YUNJIN says, “I feel like it’s okay to walk that road, even if it’s a winding one, as long as I’m with LE SSERAFIM, because we’re taking it together,” reminding listeners of the main message behind “Perfect Night”: “Tonight, I don’t care what’s wrong or right”—or what stands in our way. The fact that the members of LE SSERAFIM are together is all it takes to make the night perfect. And that’s why, even when they grapple with feelings of frustration, inadequacy, or dissatisfaction, they happily sing, “we flawless, yeah, we free.”

In a “Perfect Night” dance challenge video called “real 🌟GIRL’s NIGHT💛,” HUH YUNJIN, along with JEON SOMI and aespa members WINTER and GISELLE recreate a girls’ night in comfy clothes. KIM CHAEWON, meanwhile, teamed up with another aespa member, KARINA, for “🐱Perfect #KARINA ænergy🥰,” another “Perfect Night” short. This idea of bringing in other women in K-pop to join in the fun is best captured in the group’s full performance of the song, when they sing, “Come and take a ride with me / I got a credit card and some good company,” complete with come-here finger wagging. While the new generation of K-pop girl groups were practically locked in a battle with one another in 2023, just look at how HUH YUNJIN shot a short video with HANNI from NewJeans recently (“Missed my buddy🫂”) and posted a selfie of the two of them on X (formerly Twitter), reminiscing about their time as trainees together when they used to help each other “put on eyeliner before monthly evaluations.” The year’s rivalries were all good-natured, with some idols, like HUH YUNJIN and HANNI, knowing each other long before ever debuting. Others grow close offstage, like how EUNCHAE’s Star Diary reveals how the LE SSERAFIM member has bonded with members from aespa, IZTY, and (G)I-DLE while hosting Music Bank on KBS. There’s also KIM CHAEWON, who also does the “Perfect Night” challenge in the video “💛Perfect #YENA #KimMinJu energy🤍,” this time with fellow former IZ*ONE members MINJU KIM and YENA. No matter how far you’ve come, memories of good times together never fade. The viral challenge has given the LE SSERAFIM members a chance to invite fellow female artists to spend a “Perfect Night” together, and reminds us all just how much fun that can be.

“Perfect Night” has been number one on Melon’s weekly chart for four weeks straight (as of the period labeled December 11–17), and has also been number one on Music Core (MBC) for two weeks in a row despite the group not performing there. At the time of writing this article (December 4), LE SSERAFIM is the only K-pop artist other than BTS to have held onto a spot near or at the top of Melon’s chart with an English song for so long. The girls bid 2023 adieu with their performance of “Perfect Night,” a song that champions women coming together for some good fun, and shows that “you know nothing else can beat / The way that I feel when I’m dancing with my girls.” Similarly, NewJeans showed how fun dancing together can be throughout 2023 with their “Super Shy” challenge, continuing on the challenge boom they set off the previous year with “Hype Boy.”

While 2023 was a year of heated competition between girl groups, it was also a year of girls doing what they wanted—and having tons of fun doing it. The single most-viewed YouTube Short of 2023 was “This Is Who I AM,” a video posted by Lee Young Ji where she does the dance challenge to “I AM” by IVE with Lee Eun Ji, MIMI, and YUJIN, all of whom are cast members on Earth Arcade (tvN). The video, viewed some 28.5 million times as of December 22, is a reflection of their intimate, upbeat relationship on the show. They’re always having fun on their own terms on Earth Arcade rather than sticking to what the showrunners have planned out, like how they were more interested in just dancing for fun than trying to compete when playing a game of random dance—a scene that took the Internet by storm for the pure fun Gen Z women can have.

“Perfect Night” perfectly encapsulates the trend that swept girl groups, and the field of entertainment as a whole, throughout 2023. The idea that women can get together and just have fun without any pretense has spread across the world of music, performing, YouTube, and variety shows—perfectly in line with the joy “Perfect Night” so expertly captures: “Perfect energy (uh-huh), yeah, we flawless, yeah, we free / There’s no better feeling in the whole wide world.”