generasia:Featured article for 2022 week 27
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".
The group made their debut on November 17, 2020 with the single, "Black Mamba". They made their broadcast debut on KBS2's Music Bank on November 20th to perform the song. 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.
aespa released their second single, titled "NEXT LEVEL", on May 17th. It debuted at #9 on the Gaon Digital Chart and peaked at #2, 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.
On October 5, 2021, aespa released their first mini-album, Savage. The mini-album marked aespa's first and highest entry on the US Billboard 200, peaking at #20, and debuted atop the Gaon Album Chart. Within 15 days of release, it was reported that the mini-album sold 513,292 copies. 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 November 4th, it was announced that aespa would be releasing a remake of S.E.S.'s "Dreams Come True", to release on December 20th. The music video for the song was directed by Lucid colour, choreographed by BoA, and featured original holographic butterflies and wings seen in S.E.S' video.[32] The song peaked at #17 on the Gaon Digital Chart and at #7 on the Billboard World Digital Songs chart.
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.
Their second mini-album, Girls, is released this week on July 8th.
