A Rookie K-Pop Girl Group's Song Is Ranking On U.S. Spotify... But Didn't Even Chart In MelOn's Top 1,000

It can be extremely hard for new K-Pop groups from small labels get any recognition in South Korea, let alone on a global scale. However, a rookie girl group has recently beaten the odds and has been trending like crazy among international K-Pop fans!

Interestingly, however, despite making it onto the U.S. Spotify chart — a chart that’s difficult for any K-Pop group to make it onto, let alone a small-label rookie group — this artist’s trending song hasn’t even broken into the top 1,000 on MelOn‘s chart.

The current top 10 songs on the U.S. Spotify daily chart | *Spotify*

The song in question? “Cupid” by FIFTY FIFTY.

The girl group debuted with four members — Saena, Aran, Keena, and Sio — under label ATTRAKT on November 18, 2022 with the EP The Fifty and title track “Higher”. This first album of theirs sold a little over 4,000 copies, which isn’t terrible for a brand-new girl group, but still isn’t huge.

However, their debut was met with high praise in other ways. Korean critic magazine IZM gave their debut album 4.5 out of 5 stars, the highest they’ve ever given to a girl group album.

[FIFTY FIFTY] is a good example of what happens when great songs and good singers meet. Thanks to them, Korea has one more good girl group.

— Son Seung Geun, writer at IZM

The rookie group was also named one of The Recording Academy‘s K-Pop girl groups to watch in 2023, stating that, “the quartet displays various colors and a vocal maturity that is both hard to find and crucial to have.” They were also given the title of one of the best K-Pop debuts of 2022 by Rolling Stones India.

With so much praise given to them by high-profile names, it seems like the members of FIFTY FIFTY have been able to showcase their impressive talent to a wide audience despite coming from a small label! Hopefully their international success will lead to more Korean fans checking out their music, as they deserve to chart well in their home country as well.

‘Cupid’ (Twin Version) by FIFTY FIFTY rises 25 spots to a new peak of #119 on Global Spotify with over 1.32 million streams.

It also rises 17 spots to a new peak of #110 on US Spotify with 363k streams. pic.twitter.com/SmSE60ijER

— Pop Base (@PopBase) March 16, 2023