[Today’s K-pop] Stray Kids extends stay on Billboard 200 to 6th week

Stray Kids added another week to its streak on Billboard 200 as EP “Oddinary” ranked No. 126 on the chart for the week of May 7.

The EP from March debuted on the chart as No. 1, and the eight-piece act became the third K-pop artist to top it following BTS and SuperM. The EP has reigned on the publication’s world albums chart for six consecutive weeks. The album generated 100 million streams on Spotify as of last month and the music video for main track “Maniac” amassed about 76 million views on YouTube as of Wednesday.

Meanwhile, the band held concerts for three days until May 1 in Seoul, for the first time in almost 2 1/2 years. In June, it will fly to Japan and then to the US, to perform 18 times in nine cities.

Brave Girls to tour 9 US cities in July

Brave Girls will tour nine cities in the US this summer, agency Brave Entertainment said Wednesday.

The quartet will be performing in the US for the first time and is set to charm and dazzle fans there onstage, added the company.

The band will begin the tour in Philadelphia on July 9 and wrap up the tour in Los Angeles on July 23.

Brave Girls debuted in 2011 and despite a relaunch after reshuffling members, was on the brink of disbandment when a performance clip of “Rollin’,” a song from 2017, went viral last year.

GFriend’s Yerin to drop 1st solo album

Yerin of the disbanded group GFriend will debut as a solo musician on May 18, agency Sublime Artist Agency announced Wednesday.

The EP “Aria” is her first solo gig since she debuted in 2015 as a member of the girl group. The six-member act disbanded in May last year. Former bandmates Sowon branched out into acting while Yuju went solo in January, putting out her first album “REC.” Eunha, SinB and Eomji teamed up as a new group, Viviz, and released their first EP “Beam of Prism” in February.

Yerin has also appeared in a series of variety shows and has been hosting a recruitment show on cable television since February.

Class:y debuts, eyes set on Billboard

Girl group Class:y held a media showcase on Wednesday to bring out its debut EP “Class Is Over.”

The seven bandmates are the finalists from survival show “My Teen Girl” and as the EP’s title suggests, are ready to jump into reality.

Since the program wrapped up about two months ago, they were worried that viewers might have forgotten them, they said.

“But after the first performance, I am so looking forward to what will come,” said Hong Hye-ju.

The band put on focus track “Shutdown” on stage for the first time and is confident that the dance number, which combines addictive K-pop elements and a Bollywood-inspired melody, is just the right song to demonstrate its strength in both performance and singing.

“When I first listened to the song, I thought ‘Ah, this is it,’” said Won Ji-min.

The rookies are not afraid to voice their ambitions. Myung Hyung-seo said the group wants to be “unbeatable” in terms of singing while Hong said they have set their sights on entering the Billboard charts.

By Hwang You-mee
(glamazon@heraldcorp.com)