NewJeans takes first place on Billboard 200’

The girl group NewJeans reached the top of the US Billboard's main album chart on the 2nd (local time). This is a feat achieved only about a year after their debut in July of last year.

NewJeans' 2nd mini album "Get Up" released on July 21 rose to No. 1 on the Billboard 200 on that day. Billboard said on the same day, “The only two Korean girl groups that have topped the ‘Billboard 200’ chart for the past 15 years are BLACKPINK and NewJeans.” BLACKPINK became the first K-pop girl group to top the Billboard 200 with their 2nd regular album “Born Pink” released last year.

'Billboard 200' is the sum of traditional album sales such as physical albums and the number of streams converted to album sales (Streaming Equivalent Albums: SEA) combined with the number of digital music downloads converted to album sales (Track Equivalent Albums: TEA), all of which is contributed to calculating the album consumption ranking. NewJeans' album “Get Up” sold 101,500 copies in the U.S., with SEA and TEA at 24,500 and 500 each.

NewJeans put all three songs on the Billboard main single chart “Hot 100”, including “Super Shy,” the title song of this new album. ‘Super Shy’ ranked 48th on the ‘Hot 100’, while “ETA” ranked 81st and “Cool with You” ranked 93rd. This is the first time that a K-pop girl group has had three or more songs on the Hot 100 simultaneously. Of the K-pop singers, the group BTS has been the only one to pull this off so far.

NewJeans will be on stage at Lollapalooza, a music festival held in Chicago, the U.S. at 5 p.m. on Thursday (local time). NewJeans is the first K-pop girl group to perform at the festival. Their performances will be broadcast live on Weverse Live and YouTube channels.


beborn@donga.com