If you’re not a fan of K-pop yet, what are you doing? The genre continues to make waves in the music world, and these following K-pop groups are currently reigning supreme. From BTS, a.k.a. the biggest boy band in the world, to the rising girl group NewJeans, we made a list of some of the Korean pop acts you should have already been listening to!
Keep reading for the most popular K-pop groups of 2024 (so far).
We’ll start with BTS, because without them, there wouldn’t even be a list. The Korean band was formed in 2013, and since then they’ve seriously been taking the world by storm. Over the years they’ve sold millions of copies of their albums, completely slayed the charts, released their very own movie , won a ton of awards, and sold out multiple world tours. Yeah, the list is seriously impressive.
The group started off with little success within the K-pop industry when they first debuted, as they came from a smaller music company in South Korea called Big Hit Entertainment (also now known as HYBE), which made it difficult to compete against K-Pop groups from bigger music companies with more money and resources.
Despite that, they grew a steady and loyal fanbase (known as ARMY) due to numerous reasons: the group wrote their own music, which was unheard of at the time of their debut, they wrote about societal issues in South Korea and also spread messages about the importance of loving yourself — oh, and also, their music and performances rocked.
“We came together with a common dream to write, dance and produce music that reflects our musical backgrounds as well as our life values of acceptance, vulnerability and being successful,” said BTS’s leader, RM, in a 2017 interview with Time.
And despite their humble beginnings, the group soon became internationally loved after they were nominated and won a Billboard Music Award for Top Social Artist in 2017 — the first K-Pop group to ever be nominated for such an award. They soon crossed into the global music market, leading the Korean Wave into the United States and have continued to break numerous sales records.
While they’re currently on hiatus until 2025 due to their South Korean military enlistments (yeah, read about that here), they’re still very much the biggest band in the world and we don’t see that changing any time soon.
Scroll through our gallery below for a guide to all of the most popular K-pop groups right now.
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