ITZY's 'Checkmate' takes 8th place on Billboard 200 albums chart

Promotional image for ITZY's lead track "Sneakers" from the EP "Checkmate" (2022) [JYP ENTERTAINMENT]

Girl group ITZY’s fifth EP “Checkmate” entered the Billboard 200 albums chart at 8th place on Sunday.

This is the girl group’s third time making it on the chart and first time entering the top 10. ITZY’s previous album “Crazy in Love,” which dropped in September 2021, peaked at No. 11 on the Billboard 200.

The Billboard 200 takes into account physical CD sales as well as the number of online streams and downloads converted to count as CD sales. One-thousand-five-hundred on-demand streams are counted as one streaming equivalent album (SEA), and 10 track downloads are counted as one track equivalent album (TEA).

According to Billboard, “Checkmate” sold 33,000 copies in the United States; 31,000 of them were actual albums sold, approximately 2,000 were SEAs and the rest were TEAs. It added that physical copies made up 98 percent of the album sales, with the remaining 2 percent being digital album purchases.

“Checkmate” and its lead track “Sneakers” contain the girl group’s positive message to fans that they can go anywhere they want.

ITZY debuted in February 2019 with “Dalla Dalla.” The group has five members — Yeji, Lia, Ryujin, Chaeryeong and Yuna. It is known for hit songs “Icy” (2019), “Wannabe” (2020), “Not Shy” (2020), “Mafia in the Morning” (2021) and “Loco” (2021).

BY HALEY YANG [yang.hyunjoo@joongang.co.kr]