Congratulations GFRIEND! ‘The Awakening’ Is First Top 5 Entry On World Albums

Back in 2015, Source Music debuted their new K-pop act, a girl group consisting of six members — Sowon, Yerin, Eunha, Yuju, SinB, and Umji — called GFriend. They made an impact with their debut extended play (EP) or mini-album, Season of Glass, which featured their debut title track, “Glass Bead.” However, it is believed they became international stars during post-release promotions of their second EP or mini-album, Flower Bud, with the featured title track, “Me Gustas Tu.” During one of their performances outside, the stage was slippery, and Yuju slipped eight times while SinB had one hard fall near the beginning. Still, the members got back up and finished their performance.

Since then, GFriend has become one of the most popular girl groups in the K-pop industry today. They released one more mini-album, Snowflake, and their first long play (LP) or full-length studio album, LOL, in 2016.

This year, GFriend recently made their K-pop comeback, and they made a huge impact with The Awakening as their concept was a lot more mature than their previous work. To many K-pop fans, the girls look sexier, and some think it might have violated the claims of Source Music’s president that GFriend would never do a sexy concept. Nevertheless, The Awakening is very popular, and it is the first album by GFriend to reach the top five on Billboard’s World Albums.

Billboard themselves would be the ones to reveal the news of GFriend’s The Awakening breaking the top five of their World Albums chart. According to their report, it is the girl group’s best-ever showing and scores the biggest K-pop album in the United States this week. Take note that GFriend was competing with other prominent K-pop boy bands, which historically do better, including B.A.P. with Rose and BtoB with Feel’eM.

GFriend reaching the top five of the Billboard World Albums chart with The Awakening is the result of all the hard work they put in starting back in 2016 with Snowflake, which debuted at number ten on the chart. They debuted LOL three spots higher on the chart at number seven.

As for The Awakening‘s title track,”Fingertip,” it too made an impact on Billboard’s charts as it started out at number 13 on Billboard’s World Digital Song Sales chart. That was just below GFriend’s best showing with “Navillera,” which peaked at number 12.

GFriend truly deserves all the accolades they earned with The Awakening and its featured song, “Fingertip.” As mentioned earlier, it is a unique and different concept as the girls have a more mature look for it. However, their music also evolved as well. With their first three mini-albums, they utilized bubblegum pop sound that was very fitting of their high school girl persona. Even LOL had the high school girl vibe but during summer vacation. “Fingertip” sounds like a supersonic dance track with guitar chords, funk horns, and synth pop beats. Overall, it shows that GFriend is not pigeon-holed into their past work, and they can do any concept they like, much to the delight of K-pop fans, especially those who are Buddies (official fan club of GFriend).

Right now, GFriend is working on post-release promotions for The Awakening. They are performing “Fingertip” on music competition variety shows hoping to get as many number one trophies or even surpass their previous record with “Rough.”

[Featured Image by Source Music/GFriend’s Official Daum Cafe]