generasia:Featured article for 2023 week 45
æspa
æspa (에스파) is a Korean pop girl group under SM Entertainment. Their name is a combination of "æ" meaning "Avatar X Experience" and "aspect". Having popularized the metaverse concept and hyperpop music in K-pop, aespa is one of the most successful South Korean girl groups domestically and internationally.
aespa debuted on November 17, 2020 with the single "Black Mamba". The song's music video achieved the highest number of views for a K-pop group's debut video in 24 hours, with 21.4 million views. The song reached #1 on the K-Pop music video charts of China's biggest music-streaming service, QQ Music, for three consecutive weeks and earned aespa their first music show win on SBS's Inkigayo on January 17, 2021.
Their second single, "NEXT LEVEL", was released in May 2021 to widespread commercial success, debuting at #9 and peaking at #2 on the Circle Digital Chart and K-pop Hot 100, becoming their first top five hit in South Korea. "NEXT LEVEL" became aespa's third song to chart on the Billboard World Digital Song Sales chart peaking at #3. It earned multiple accolades and Daesang awards, including Song of the Year at the 19th Korean Music Awards and 2021 Melon Music Awards.
In October 2021, aespa released their first mini-album Savage and its lead single of the same name. It sold 787,600 copies and became the best-selling debut album by an SM Entertainment act at the time; the latter marked aespa's second top-five song in South Korea and their first top-40 entry, peaking at #20, on the Billboard Global 200. The group performed at the 2021 Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade, making them the first Korean girl group to perform at the event. On December 2, aespa won their first Daesang (Stage of the Year) at the Asia Artist Awards. Two days later, on December 4th, the group won their second Daesang at the 2021 Melon Music Awards for Record of the Year.
On April 19, 2022, it was announced that aespa would be performing at Coachella on April 23rd, during the second week of the annual music festival. Their setlist included "Savage", "Next Level", "Black Mamba", and an English version of a then-unreleased song titled "Life's Too Short", which was revealed to be from their upcoming mini-album. In July 2022, they released their second mini-album Girls, which sold 1,850,993 copies and debuted at #3 on the U.S. Billboard 200 chart.
Their third mini-album, MY WORLD was released in May 2023, achieving 2.1 million sales and becoming the second best-selling album by a K-pop girl group.
Their fourth mini-album, Drama, is released this week on November 10th.
