On July 17, Billboard announced that aespa’s second mini-album Girls debuted at number 3 on the Top 200 Album Charts. The chart ranks the most popular album in the United States.
aespa is the fastest and third K-pop female act to reach this milestone. The group has achieved a huge breakthrough merely in less than two years since its debut. The other two albums by a K-pop female act to chart in the top 3 of the Billboard 200 are BLACKPINK’s The Album and TWICE’s Formula Of Love: O+T=<3.
Furthermore, Girls started out strong as the best-selling album of the week in the United States. aespa’s Girls earned a total of 56,000 equivalent album units, of which 53,000 were attributable to album sales. aespa became the fastest K-pop girl group in history to top the chart when the mini-album debuted at number 1 on Billboard’s Top Album Sales chart dated July 23.
On July 8, aespa dropped its second mini-album Girls, and the music video for the title track of the same name. Within the first week of the release, the girl group became a million-seller, recording over 1.4 copies in sales, making them the fastest K-pop girl group to do so.
aespa previously reported 1.61 million stock pre-orders for Girls, and the mini album alone sold 806,891 copies on its first day of sales. As the first female act in Hanteo history to accomplish this amount in sales on the first day, aespa broke a record with this performance.
aespa’s comeback was announced on June 1 at 00:00 KST. The female group then shocked fans by releasing a new song, Illusion, along with a lyric video for the song the same day. Following that, aespa unveiled their pre-release track along with a music video on June 24.
The mini-album comprises nine tracks, including Illusion, an English and Korean version of the track Life’s Too Short, and the title track Girls. The group’s older singles, Black Mamba, Forever, and Dreams Come True, is also a part of the album. Brand new tracks include Lingo and ICU.
Prior to their comeback, aespa participated in the 2022 High-level Political Forum (HLPF) on July 5. The group performed its song, Next Level, and delivered a speech on “Next Generation To The Next Level”. aespa was also the only K-pop act to participate in this year’s Good Morning America’s Summer Concert series and opened it on the day of the release of Girls.
Aespa is a four-membered girl group under SM Entertainment consisting of Karina, Giselle, Winter, and Ningning. The group debuted in November 2020 with the single Black Mamba. According to the agency’s founder, Lee Soo Man, “aespa will project a future world centered on celebrities and avatars, and will be born into a group of completely new and innovative concepts that transcend the boundaries between the real and virtual world.”
The group’s name is a combination of two words – avatar and experience. The name symbolizes the idea of “meeting another self and experiencing the new world”. Every member has an AI version of themselves which also make an appearance in the group’s music videos and sometimes performances. According to aespa’s leader, Karina, “The æs are AI characters based on the members’ real, individual data. They live in a world called FLAT, and just like how we live and continue our daily lives in the real world, the æs also continue their own lives in the FLAT.”
With accomplishing a commendable amount of achievements in such a short span of its debut, and a unique AI concept, aespa seems to have a lot in store for the fans in the future. The wild success of Girls has fans looking forward to what more aespa has to offer in the future.