Amid the popularity of NewJeans, IVE and LE SSERAFIM, this 4th-gen girl group is earning attention for its reverse-driving popularity in Korea. Will they follow footsteps of Brave Girls?

H1-KEY Is Achieving Significant Rise in Korean Music Charts– Are They Next Brave Girls?

Among fourth-gen K-pop girl groups, K-pop fans were focused on H1-KEY, who's continuously climbing back up the music charts after going viral on SNS.

On February 27, the music industry announced that H1-KEY's first mini album, "Rose Blossom" and its title track with the same name released on January 5, ranked 84th on the MelOn "Top 100" chart.

This is 14 notches higher than its rankings on February 24, to which "Rose Blossom" entered the chart in 98th place. Since then, the team experienced an upward trend on the chart. In fact, on the 27th, it went as high as 54th place on the MelOn Real-Time Chart.

The REASON this is such a huge achievement for H1-KEY was that it is such a rare case for an "underrated" group from small and medium-sized companies to enter the MelOn Top 100, the nation's largest music platform.

In girl group history, teams such as EXID's "Up and Down" as well as Brave Girls' "Rollin" were among few cases where they were able to succeed in turning the tables upside down and belatedly hit the charts months or even years after its release.

In a tight fourth-gen competition, H1-KEY is rather doing great on the charts given that their rivals were popular teams such as NewJeans, IVE, aespa, LE SSERAFIM, ITZY, more who all came from "BIG4" K-pop agencies.

Meanwhile, "Rose Blossom" has been gaining the love of music fans since the release became a hot topic in various online communities. Koreans lauded its addictive melodies and comforting lyrics such as:

"I'm a rose blooming between buildings/ Until this desolate city is beautifully colored / I'll hold my head up, stand my ground until the end / Until everyone drowns in my scent and smiles."

In context, the song compares the hopes and dreams held in a cold and difficult world to roses. It leads to the will to "never break or wither and bloom beautifully." Pop Punk's code line and analog synth blend over the hip-hop-based rhythm that combines trap and boom bap. Young K of the band DAY6 wrote the lyrics. Composer Hong Ji Sang, who worked with DAY6's hit songs, participated in the composition and compilation.

H1-KEY 'Rose Blossom' Reigns in Music Charts

Aside from their status on MelOn, "Rose Blossom) also settled at 22nd on the Genie Chart, 7th on the Bugs Chart, 29th on the Flo Chart, and 78th on the YouTube Music Chart. It also did well on overseas music platform K-pop charts, ranking 56th in Apple Music, 156th in Spotify, and 21st in Shazam.

In particular, H1-KEY continued to break its own record by ranking first in the physical album chart category of "Real-time Hanteo Chart" provided by the domestic album sales aggregation site Hanteo Chart in the sixth week of its release, not the first week.

It also topped the Rookie chart women's category on the January chart released by the KM Chart organized by the Korea Management Association. The album "Rose Blossom" topped the Turkish and Bahrain iTunes Top Albums chart, followed by iTunes and Apple Top Albums in seven countries, including Singapore, Mexico, Australia and Thailand.

It is also doing well in domestic music broadcasting in Korea. The team ranked 7th on Mnet's "M Countdown," 13th place on KBS 2TV's "Music Bank" and ranked 19th on "Show! Music Core".

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Written by Eunice Dawson.