‘Carefree, laid-back and natural’: how K-pop group NewJeans ditched convention and focused on the music to become Spotify, Billboard chart phenomenon
- Since debuting in July, the girl group have racked up hundreds of millions of Spotify streams and are the fastest ever to rank on the Billboard Hot 100 chart
- Observers put their success down to an atypical release plan and rejection of K-pop maximalism to let the music, and the ‘charm of the members’, do the talking
By Dong Sun-hwa
In the short time since their debut last August, K-pop girl group NewJeans have been praised as “game changers” and a “phenomenon”.
The two lead singles from the quintet’s self-titled debut EP, “Attention” and “Hype Boy”, have surpassed 100 million and 200 million streams respectively on Spotify. “Cookie”, another track from the EP, was named on The New York Times’ Best Songs of 2022 list.
Last month, the group’s track “Ditto”, which features on their recently released EP OMG, made the group the fastest ever K-pop act to rank on the American Billboard Hot 100 singles chart – just half a year after they burst onto the music scene. The track debuted at No 96.
A week later, “OMG”, the title track from the same EP, landed at No 91 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart. It had climbed to No 79 by January 31. Such an uptrend is unusual, says Billboard’s K-pop columnist Jeff Benjamin.
