21 K-pop bands breaking the internet that you should know about
From BTS to NewJeans…
Thanks to toe-tapping techno beats, crazy-colourful aesthetic, trend-defining fashion and perfectly choreographed videos, K-pop bands have become something of a global phenomenon, and its stars are smashing records (BTS made history with their AMA win in 2021). The group has been at the forefront of pushing K-pop into the mainstream music scene for years, and their efforts were recognised at the 2021 American Music Awards when they won Artist of the Year - the biggest award of the night. But it wasn’t just any old win, it’s one to go down in history as BTS are now the first Asian act to win in the category at the AMAs. It also marked their third consecutive year winning Favourite Pop Duo or Group—one of many other milestones they’ve reached in the past couple of years. Impressive.
K-pop is part of what is called ‘Hallyu’—literally meaning ‘Korean wave’—used to refer to the colossal and ever-growing impact of South Korean culture, shown in the popularity of everything from K-dramas on Netflix to the meteoric rise of K-beauty.
Yet K-pop is one cultural export you may not know as much about, despite the fact it’s an industry worth $5 billion. In fact, one of K-pop’s most successful bands, BTS, sold more albums than Taylor Swift, Billie Eilish and Ariana Grande back in 2020. The same year BTS became the first K-pop musicians to receive a Grammy nomination, with ‘Dynamite’ up for ‘Best Pop Duo/Group Performance’.
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But while BTS have achieved inevitable success, they are all currently enlisted in the military, as all able-bodied South Korean men between the ages of 18 and 28 are required to serve in the military for 18-21 months, as the country is still at war with the North.
The band are aiming to reconvene this year following their service—and while fans will obviously welcome them back with open arms, there is a whole host of established and emerging K-pop groups that can keep them occupied in the meantime.
Sadly, it’s impossible to learn about K-pop without being met with stories of tragedy. There have been several suicides by high-profile K-pop icons, including 25-year-old Sulli in 2019, a former member of the girl group f(x). A month later, Sulli’s friend Goo Hara, 28, who used to perform in the group Kara, also took her own life. In 2017, 27-year-old Kim Jong-hyun took his own life after revealing the immense pressure that came with the success of his group SHINee. It seems that with the fame of K-pop comes an impossible standard; that of being perfectly polished, perfectly synchronised and simply perpetually perfect.
