Higher and higher: Seventeen reaches new heavens each year [GOLDEN 2023]

K-pop

Published: 15 Nov. 2023, 17:17

Higher and higher: Seventeen reaches new heavens each year [GOLDEN 2023]

Boy band Seventeen [PLEDIS ENTERTAINMENT]

Nicknamed the “Korean Grammys,” the 38th Golden Disc Awards will take place on Jan. 6 in Jakarta, Indonesia, to honor the passion and talent that shone bright in the world of K-pop during the year of 2023.

Organized by the JoongAng Group, the Golden Disc Awards is considered one of the most prestigious awards in Korea with its unique format where dozens of nominees and multiple winners are chosen for three main categories — music, album and rookie of the year.

In this series, Golden 2023, the Korea JoongAng Daily’s entertainment arm Celeb Confirmed looks at K-pop’s biggest and brightest stars who are potential nominees, and their achievements this year.

Higher and higher: It’s rare to see a band stay strong several years after its debut, so much so that there’s a “seven-year curse” in K-pop — but not for Seventeen, one of the biggest names in the market and one that just keeps on growing and growing to reach new highs.

The 13-member boy band released two albums this year: its 10th EP “FML” on April 24 and the 11th EP “Seventeenth Heaven” on Oct. 23. With the former, the band sold a jaw-dropping 4.55 million copies within the first week. The latter, however, exceeded that number and sold 5.09 million copies during the same period.

Seventeen had already sold over 10 million copies of its albums even before “Seventeenth Heaven” came out, bringing the number to 15 million in this year alone as of November.

Rare it is to see a long-running group see its fandom grow over the years in K-pop, but an exclusive contract with the agency Pledis Entertainment renewed prematurely in 2021 only signals better days to come for the ever-growing band.

Read the full story here at Celeb Confirmed.

BY YOON SO-YEON [yoon.soyeon@joongang.co.kr]