Two Danity Kane members open for Day26 and split the group's own fans

Danity Kane spent the weekend back in the conversation, and as usual the argument was about the lineup rather than the music. D. Woods and Aundrea Fimbres, two of the group's original members, turned up at a Day26 show in New York, and That Grape Juice reports the response among the group's followers split hard in both directions.

The warm half of that reaction has a logic to it. Danity Kane and Day26 were both assembled on the same television series, so two of one group opening for the other reads to some fans as a mini reunion of the whole franchise rather than a support slot. Supporters have taken to calling the pair DK2.

The hostile half objected to the billing itself. Posts collected by the outlet ran from a flat judgment that the pair were destroying the group's legacy to an argument that Danity Kane should never be the opening act for Day26 under any circumstances. What is being defended there is a hierarchy from twenty years ago as much as a catalogue.

The context is a lineup that has kept shedding members. Woods and Fimbres are pressing on as a duo after an apparent falling-out with founding member Aubrey O'Day, who has been vocal about her unhappiness with the arrangement. The three of them had spent the previous year touring as the most recent version of the group, and Dawn Richard had already made public that she was not asked back for that run.

So the act that played New York is the fourth or fifth configuration of a group that has never been more than four people, and every version of it has arrived with a public disagreement attached. No tour and no recording has been announced off the back of the weekend.

Groups from that era keep facing the same arithmetic: the name has value, the original lineup does not exist, and touring on a partial roster is the only way to convert one into the other. The Pussycat Dolls have been working through the same problem with their own reconstituted lineup. The man whose television show produced both Danity Kane and Day26 has been dealing with rather different problems, with reports again moving his prison release date. The R&B and soul hub carries the rest of the week.