NCT WISH's 'BOY MEETS GIRL' Drops June 22: The TRF Remake Reclaiming J-Pop's Retro Soul in 2026

On June 22, 2026, NCT WISH released 'BOY MEETS GIRL' alongside its official music video — the first entry in their double A-side Japanese single 'YO-I-DON! / BOY MEETS GIRL,' and one of K-pop's most intriguing Japan-market moves of the year. The track is a full-throttle retro pop-rock remake of the 1994 TRF hit of the same name, a song that once defined the J-pop sound of the early Avex era. Where TRF's original leaned into Eurobeat-inflected dance production, NCT WISH's 'BOY MEETS GIRL' 2026 interpretation leans harder into its rock instrumentation and the group's instinct for melodic intensity — reframing a nostalgia property for the generation that knows it only as a sample source.

TRF — the Tetsuya Komuro-produced dance act featuring vocalist Yuki and DJ KOO — were among the defining forces of 1990s Japanese pop. 'Boy Meets Girl' was released in August 1994 and became one of the signature tracks of the J-pop bubble era: euphoric, hook-driven, built around an electric guitar riff that has since become instantly recognisable to anyone who grew up watching Japanese variety television in that decade. The song's DNA is nostalgic in the specific way that 1990s J-pop nostalgia operates — not just as a sonic reference but as an emotional shorthand for a particular kind of youthful effervescence.

NCT WISH's approach is neither parody nor straight revival. Their version retains the propulsive energy of the original while grounding it in a more contemporary vocal stack — six distinct voices layering across the track's chorus in a way TRF's two-vocal setup never could. The result is a remake that earns its right to the source material rather than simply borrowing its cultural cachet.

The double A-side structure means 'BOY MEETS GIRL' operates as only one half of the story. The second single, 'YO-I-DON!', will receive its MV premiere on July 13, with the complete physical double A-side album shipping July 15. SM Entertainment has released individual member versions for each of the six members — Sion, Riku, Yushi, Jaehee, Ryo, and Sakuya — continuing the label's strategy of treating Japanese physical releases as collector's-market events rather than simply mass-market product. Teasers released across June 11–13 positioned each member within a school-themed visual framework: uniforms, hallways, and the specific charged stillness of adolescent anticipation.

NCT WISH debuted in February 2024 under SM Entertainment as the seventh generation of the broader NCT universe, designed from the outset to operate across both the Korean and Japanese markets. The group's six members include three Japanese nationals — Riku, Yushi, and Ryo — alongside Korean members Sion and Jaehee, and Sakuya, who was born in South Korea to a Japanese family. That multilingual, multicultural composition makes them uniquely equipped to approach Japanese repertoire with authenticity rather than approximation.

The teaser imagery for 'BOY MEETS GIRL' operates in the long tradition of Japanese youth-culture aesthetics — the school setting is not incidental but rather a deliberate echo of the era in which TRF's original was most culturally alive. It's a visual argument that the song belongs to a specific emotional territory: the sensation of encountering someone for the first time in a charged, ordinary space. NCT WISH's school teasers are clean, warm-lit, and deliberately restrained — a visual palette that lets the emotional stakes of the lyrics carry without melodrama.