South Korean girl group Girls’ Generation, also known as SNSD or SoShi is an eight-member girl group under SM Entertainment.
Previously started off as nine members, the group debuted on August 5, 2007 with their first single, Into the New World.
The girls are often referred to as “The Nation’s Girl Group”. Before their official debut, the group was known as “Super Girls”, a fan-made name that reflected how SM Entertainment touted the group as the female version of Super Junior.
Girls’ Generation was announced to include members with diverse talents and language skills for future expansion into international markets.
The group saw many lineup changes throughout its pre-debut period.
However, perhaps its best-known pre-debut lineup consisted of 12 members: Soyeon, Taeyeon, Jessica, Tiffany, Hyoyeon, Yuri, Sooyoung, Yoona, Hajin, Seohyun, Hwanhee, and Chanmi.
However, Soyeon, Hwanhee, and Chanmi all left or were cut from the group. A final trainee, Sunny, was added to the group shortly before its debut.
In September 2014, main vocalist Jessica left Girls’ Generation. In 2009, the group rose to prominence with their single Gee, which topped the KBS’s Music Bank for a record-breaking nine consecutive weeks. It was also Melon’s most popular song of the 2000s decade.
Furthermore, their singles Genie, Oh! and Run Devil Run were also equally popular and they were released between mid-2009 to early 2010.
Oh! (2010), their second Korean studio album won the Golden Disc award for Album of the Year (Disk Daesang), making the group the first and only female act to win the Album Daesang.
In 2011, the group ventured into the Japanese music scene with their eponymous Japanese album. It became the first album by a non-Japanese girl group to be certified million by the RIAJ.
The Boys, which is Girls’ Generation’s third Korean studio album was the best-selling album of 2011 in South Korea.
As an attempt to expand the group’s endeavour to the global music scene, an English version of the single The Boys was released.
I Got a Boy (2013) is the group’s fourth Korean studio album and it was supported by the title track which won Video of the Year at the inaugural YouTube Music Awards. They continue to soar in popularity with their fifth and sixth Korean studio albums, Lion Heart (2015) and Holiday Night (2017).
The group returned with their seventh Korean studio album Forever 1 (2022) after a five-year hiatus to focus on their individual careers.
Girls’ Generation’s genre is categorised as electropop and bubblegum pop. Their sound has varied widely including hip hop, R&B and EDM. Billboard honoured the group in 2017 as the Top K-pop Girl Group of the Past Decade.
They are the first Asian girl group to achieve five music videos with over 100 million views on YouTube with “Gee”, “I Got a Boy”, “The Boys”, “Mr. Taxi”, and “Oh!”.
In Japan, they became the first non-Japanese girl group to have three number-one albums on the Oricon Albums Chart, and their three Japanese concert tours attracted a record-breaking 550,000 spectators.
Read More News:
Will Smith may not have liked kissing Eva Mendez on Hitch due to her ‘stank breath special’ sandwich