Taylor Swift was, as expected, the highest-grossing artist worldwide in 2017. However, recent data from the recording industry indicate that Western artists have experienced a decline in their dominance on the charts.
South Korea produced four of the ten best-selling acts of 2023, with Stray Kids and Seventeen surpassing the sales of Drake and The Weeknd.
The international sales figures were collated by the global music industry’s representative organisation, the IFPI. Lana Del Rey and Bad Bunny both appeared in the top ten.
Despite the fact that none of the South Korean groups on the list have dethroned the UK Top 40, their contributions to the exponential development of K-Pop worldwide have accumulated millions of streams.
Over the past decade and a half, since the release of Psy’s Gangnam Style, the genre has consistently broadened its influence, even impacting the music industry in America, which is typically resistant to change.
The charge was spearheaded by the boy band phenomenon BTS, whose high-concept anthems (incorporating allusions to Carl Jung and Herman Hesse) propelled them to the top of international listings before their foray into English-language pop with singles such as Butter and Dynamite.
They made history as the inaugural K-Pop act to perform at Wembley Stadium in 2019. Within two years, they were performing at the Grammys and collaborating with Coldplay.
Blackpink, their female counterparts, have attained comparable levels of success, headlining both the Coachella festival in California and London’s BST Hyde Park in the past year.
Prominent pop singles such as Whistle, Ddu-du Ddu-du, and Shut Down, the latter of which features an excerpt from Paganini’s second violin concerto, contributed to their success.
However, both Blackpink and BTS were absent from the IFPI’s best-seller list in 2023. BTS is currently on hiatus as its members fulfil mandatory military service. In contrast, Blackpink spent the latter part of 2023 renegotiating contracts with YG Entertainment, the media conglomerate that formed the group in 2016.
The primary drivers of K-Pop’s success are entertainment companies such as YG and Big Hit, which represents BTS. These companies subject their acts to rigorous audition processes and years of training before their public debut.
“We see no difference if you were to train to be on an Olympic team,” Chris Lee, the head of SM Entertainment, told The Guardian in 2022.
“Being the best in the world requires a tremendous amount of effort.” They are trained in media. Languages are studied to facilitate communication with a wide variety of audiences. We instruct them on how to develop positive dispositions.”
Rosé, a member of Blackpink, described to James Corden the difficulty of the K-Pop regime a year ago.
The 26-year-old stated of the band’s six-year traineeship, during which the then-teenage members were separated from their families, “We wake up at about 9 to get ready, then we commute at 11 am and practise until 2 am; we all return home at 2 am, even on weekends.”
“We weren’t exactly gazing back at our residences or doing anything.” Our mentality was simply, “Let’s survive this.”
However, military-grade boot camps alone do not account for K-Pop’s success.
Divergences in style
Particularly, Stray Kids’ dark and experimental albums, which fuse elements of heavy metal, dubstep, hip-hop, electro-clash, and restless dance pop, have garnered them a devoted fan base.
Felix, Changbin, Lee Know, Han, Seungmin, I.N, Bang Chan, and Hyunjin comprise the eight-piece, which is distinctive in that they compose the majority of their own material. They also derive satisfaction from the fact that their tracks frequently deviate significantly in terms of style and time.
“Our objective is to consistently introduce groundbreaking themes in music and establish our sound as a “Stray Kids” genre,” Changbin told Time Magazine, which last year recognised the band as one of its “Next Generation Leaders.”
The group achieved two number-one albums in the United States and ranked third globally in terms of sales by the end of 2023, as reported by the IFPI, an organisation that represents the global music industry.
The boy band Seventeen, which has an astounding thirteen members, ranked one spot above Swift and one spot below her. Each member of Seventeen actively engages in the writing and production processes.
The group’s eleventh EP, Seventeen’s Heaven, was the most pre-ordered K-pop album in history, having garnered 5.2 million pre-orders before its release last year.
Additional successful releases from the previous year included Tomorrow X Together, a boy band formed by the same company that produced BTS, and NewJeans, a cohort of teenage females who blend the retro R&B aesthetics of TLC with upbeat, catchy melodies.
These bands generate enormous CD sales, which is unusual in the age of streaming, in part because they include exclusive and collectible posters, decals, and lyric cards with their CDs.
In addition to being available in a variety of formats, numerous albums feature unique cover art and, at times, additional tracks that are exclusive to particular members. Devoted fans attempt to amass them all.
However, this does not mean that NewJeans’ success is solely attributable to marketing: by the end of 2023, their breakthrough single SuperShy had appeared on numerous “best of the year” lists, including those compiled by Rolling Stone, NME, and Billboard.
Moreover, with the anticipated return of both BTS and Blackpink with new music in 2024, K-Pop’s global dominance can only increase.
