Celeb Crushin’: Girls’ Generation

The list of best-selling artists in Korea (including overseas sales) does not contain a lot of female groups, but you can bet that Girls’ Generation is certainly in there. Not only that, they’re also the highest-ranking girl band – ahead of even the iconic SES and Fin.K.L – with over 6.8 million albums, singles and DVDs sold (and that number is continuing to grow).

Although 2015 was a rocky time for them (what with the controversial departure of Jessica as well as the emergence of countless other competitors), they managed to rise about it all and be crowned the Gaon Music Chart’s (similar to the Billboard charts in the US) number one girl group thanks to the overwhelming sales of singles ‘Catch Me If You Can’ and ‘Party’, as well as album Lion Heart.

Photo: SM Entertainment

Ever since their very first music show triumph with debut single ‘Into the New World’ on Mnet’s M! Countdown all the way back in 2007, SNSD has continued to amass a steady and ever-growing stream of accolades from other popular countdown programmes. In July last year, they became the Hallyu world’s very first group to hit a hundred weekly music show award wins when ‘Party’ was crowned on KBS’ Music Bank. Besides that, two of their songs, ‘Gee’ and ‘Lion Heart’, are also tied with EXO’s ‘Growl’ in the fifth position for the most-awarded songs with 14 victories each.

Oh, and in case you’re wondering, BIGBANG is currently at number two with 70 wins, while EXO is at number three with about 60.

Photo: KBS

As part of an effort to bring themselves to a more global audience, SNSD jetted off to New York to perform an English version of ‘The Boys’ and be interviewed on The Late Show with David Letterman and LIVE! with Kelly, making them the first South Korean artistes to make an appearance on both widely-watched programmes, and one of the few who has actually made it onto American television. They also took a picture with veteran actor Bill Murray, which caused a stir when it was uploaded onto the internet.

While not everyone had nice things to say about the appearance (then again, it’s pretty much impossible to please everyone on the World Wide Web), many were impressed with the girls. “I’m not sure who those girls are on Letterman but I think I’m a fan,” tweeted a viewer. Others also praised the catchiness of ‘The Boys’ and, of course, the attractiveness of the members (but we think that one goes without saying).

Photo: Twitter

When SNSD launched their Phantasia tour in November last year, they became the first Korean girl group to headline four concert series. To no one’s surprise, tickets to the opening two-day gig in Seoul were completely snapped up within just two minutes, and their shows in Japan and Thailand were met with similarly fervent reception.

Of course, the girls are far from strangers to such success: their very first headlining tour in 2009 sold out within three minutes, and in 2012, they broke a record in Thailand for the fastest-selling concert in history with their Bangkok stop.

It’s no secret that SNSD is huge in the land of the rising sun, which is evident from the many pioneering feats they’ve attained ever since their Japanese debut, which include becoming the first Korean girl group to: enter Oricon’s top five DVD chart, become a “million seller” in the country, reach number one of the Oricon weekly album chart, become the first non-Japanese girl group in Asia to have three number one albums on the Oricon Albums Chart and many more.

How do you say “Wow, that’s amazing” in Japanese?

The Golden Disk Awards have been dubbed the “Korean Grammys”, and the Disk Daesang (Album of the Year) and Digital Daesang (Song of the Year) accolades are the crème de la crème of all the trophies distributed during the prestigious event. SNSD had the honour of nabbing either one of these prizes three years in a row from 2009 to 2012 (there was no show in 2011), making them the first – and so far, only – girl group to do so.

Photo: SM Entertainment

Other massively popular acts such as Justin Bieber, Lady Gaga and One Direction may have also been in the running for Video of the Year at YouTube’s inaugural Music Awards in 2013, but in the end, it was Tiffany who represented her groupmates to pick up the gong. Nominees were decided by factors such as the number of views, likes, comments and channel subscriptions, and the winner was determined by fans’ social media activity.

Needless to say, SNSD’s fandom took things very seriously, and by the time voting closed, the idols had racked up over 3.3 million shares, likes and tweets – a full 3 million more than runner-up Demi Lovato, who clocked in just 308,962. SONEs are clearly not to be trifled with.

Photo: SM Town Facebook

In a ranking that’s dominated by male idols, leader Taeyeon stands out as being the proverbial rose among the thorns when it comes to the number of followers on her Instagram account, which she created three years ago. At the moment, she and EXO’s Chanyeol are tied with 6.4 million followers each, just behind K-pop’s current reigning Instagram king G-Dragon and his virtual squad of 8.2 million.

The other Instagram-active members aren’t doing too shabbily in the followers department either: Yuri, Sunny, Tiffany, Hyoyeon and Sooyoung all have at least 3 million fans on their personal accounts while Seohyun and Yoona, the last of the bunch to come on board in 2014 and 2015 respectively, have already racked up 2.7 million followers.