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GFRIEND (ko: 여자친구; rr: yeojachingu; lit: girlfriend) was a six-member South Korean girl group formed by Source Music in 2015. The group consisted of Sowon, Yerin, Eunha, Yuju, SinB and Umji. They made their debut with their first mini-album, Season of Glass on January 16, 2015. They won several 2015 female rookie awards and has garnered momentum since their debut, despite coming from a small company.
In 2016, they continued their success with their third mini-album Snowflake and won first place on many music shows with the title song "Rough". They released their first full-length album LOL in July 2016. In 2017, GFriend made a comeback with a new concept with their fourth EP, The Awakening, and the pre-orders for the album exceeded 100,000 units. GFriend released their fifth EP, Parallel, in August 2017, and the extended play was re-released a month later under the title Rainbow.
In 2018, GFriend held their first concert since debut called Season of GFriend and later their first Asia Tour with the same name. GFriend released their sixth EP, Time for the Moon Night, in April 2018 and the special EP Sunny Summer in July 2018. GFriend made an official Japanese debut with a compilation album, GFriend 1st Best, in May 2018. In January 2019, GFriend released their second full-length album, Time For Us. In July 2019, GFriend released their seventh extended play album, Fever Season.
In February 2020, GFriend released their eighth EP, 回:Labyrinth. They then released their ninth EP, 回:Song of the Sirens, in July of the same year, while November saw them release their third full-length album, 回:Walpurgis Night.
On May 18, 2021, it had been announced from Source and Tenasia that GFRIEND would be departing from the agency and disbanding after all six members decided to not renew their contracts. The group officially disbanded on May 22.
History[]
2015: Season of Glass, Flower Bud, and rise in popularity[]
On January 15, 2015, GFriend released their five-track debut mini-album Season of Glass. The promotional track "Glass Bead", composed by Seo Yong-bae and Iggy, debuted at number twelve on Gaon's weekly chart. The group started promotions for their album on January 16 on KBS's music program Music Bank. According to YouTube, the M/V of "Glass Bead" ranked number nine in top ten "Most Viewed K-Pop Videos Around the World in January 2015". On January 28, 2015, Billboard named GFriend as one of "Top 5 K-Pop Artists to Watch in 2015".
They released their second mini-album, Flower Bud and the music video for title track "Me Gustas Tu" on July 23, 2015. GFriend started their group promotions on the same date as the album release, July 23, 2015 on Mnet's M Countdown.
The group garnered international attention after a fan-taken video of the members continuing and completing a performance of "Me Gustas Tu" despite continuously falling on a slippery stage went viral in September 2015. The group was praised for their professionalism, especially Yuju, who fell a total of eight times and suffered a twisted finger during the performance.
On September 17, 2015, GFriend made headlines again as the only girl group to be nominated in the 2015 MTV Europe Music Awards "Best Korean Act" category alongside boy groups BTS, B1A4, Got7, and VIXX.
"Me Gustas Tu" was named the longest charting song by an idol group on Melon Top 100 with 63 weeks. "Me Gustas Tu" and "Glass Bead" were also ranked 18th and 44th respectively in the 2015 Bugs Year-End Top 100.
2016: Snowflake, first music show wins and LOL[]
On January 25, 2016, GFriend released their third mini-album titled Snowflake with the title track "Rough". "Rough" is the last song to complete GFriend's high school concept trilogy along with "Glass Bead" and "Me Gustas Tu". During their fan-meeting after the album's showcase release, they announced their fandom name to be "Buddy". GFriend started the promotions for Snowflake on January 26 on SBS MTV's music program The Show. The album debuted at number ten on Billboard's World Albums Chart, and the music video of "Rough" on YouTube ranked number three in top ten "Most Viewed K-Pop Videos Around the World in January 2016".
On February 2, GFriend received their first music show win for their song "Rough" on The Show. They subsequently won another fourteen awards on the music shows including winning their first triple crowns on M Countdown, Music Bank, Show Champion, and Inkigayo. With a total of 15 wins, it placed second with the number of wins for girls groups, behind Apink who recorded a total of 17 wins with "Luv". Their song "Rough" was also ranked first in Gaon Chart's First Half of 2016 chart rankings.
On June 15 it was announced that GFriend will star alongside MAMAMOO on a new season of Showtime. On June 29, Source Music started teasing for GFriend first studio album LOL, signifying at the same time "Laughing Out Loud" and "Lots of Love". LOL was released on July 11 with the title track "Navillera", and reportedly had more than 60,000 pre-ordered copies worldwide. On July 19, they earned their first music show win for the album's single "Navillera" on The Show.
Towards the end of the year, YouTube revealed the top 10 K-pop MVs most beloved by South Koreans in 2016. "Rough" and "Navillera" were ranked 2nd and 10th respectively in that list. "Rough" and "Navillera" were also ranked 2nd and 11th respectively in the 2016 Bugs Year-End Top 100. "Rough" was also ranked 13th in Billboard's 20 Best K-Pop Songs of 2016: Critic's Picks. At the end of the year show 2016 KBS Song Festival, the peak viewer ratings for the whole show were recorded during GFriend's "Rough" performance at 10.3%. "Rough" also became the most downloaded song in 2016 according to Gaon Chart's 2016 Year End Download Chart.
2017: The Awakening, Parallel and first repackage []
On February 23, 2017, Source Music announced that GFriend is set to make a comeback on March 6. On February 27, 2017, it was revealed that their fourth mini-album will be titled The Awakening with the title track "Fingertip". The global pre-order for the album exceeded 100,000 copies, which is higher than their past album LOL at 60,000. Additionally, the album also debuted at No. 5 on Billboard's World Album chart.
On 1 August 2017, GFriend released their fifth mini album, Parallel, with the title track "Love Whisper". The music video for Love Whisper had exceeded over 7 million views in 24 hours.
On September 13th, they released the repackage album Rainbow with the title track "Summer Rain".
2018: First solo concert, Time for the Moon Night, Japanese Debut, Sunny Summer and Memoria[]
GFriend started the year with their first solo concert since debut, titled Season of GFriend, on January 6 and 7, 2018. 6,000 tickets for the concert were sold out in three minutes. They are set to hold a concert on February 28th in Taipei, Taiwan, which will be the start of their first ever Asia Tour, Season of GFriend.
On February 23rd 2018, Source Music officially announced that GFriend had signed with King Records and is set to debut in Japan in May 2018. GFriend's debut album for Japan is titled Kyou Kara Watashitachi wa (今日から私達は), with their title being the Japanese version of Me Gustas Tu. The official music video was released on May 6th 2018.
On the 13th of April 2018, Source Music announced a comeback for GFriend with a mini-album set for April 30th. Later on the 16th of April, it was announced that their mini-album was titled Time for the Moon Night. The title track was reviewed by the members themselves, and is the first title track that was not produced by Iggy and Yongbae. The album set a new record for the group, taking the top spot in 10 countries around the world on iTunes, debuting at number #1 on top Download, Album & Social chart on Korea's top chart Gaon, and selling more than 76,000 copies in Korea. The following week, it was reported that the group tied with Girls' Generation and TWICE as the girlgroups with the most entries in the Top 10 of the Billboard World Albums Chart, with 5 entries each. In the second week of album promotion, GFriend won six awards in South Korean music programs, making "Time for the Moon Night" the first song of 2018 to win all the prizes in musical programs.
In late May, the group boarded for Japan to promote their first mini-album "GFriend 1st Best" which was released on May 23, on the first day of promotion they performed for a public of 1,500 people, in addition to debuting in ninth on Japanese most sold albums on that day.
In early July, it was announced that the group would return on July 19th with a special summer mini album for fans entitled Sunny Summer, which would include five new tracks for the group. On August 2, the group announced during their Summer Live in Japan that they were going to release their first Japanese single titled Japan 1st Single - Memoria /夜 (Time for the Moon Night), which includes an original Japanese song "Memoria", a Japanese-language version of "Time for the Moon Night", and is was released on October 10. The single album debut at no. 6 in Oricon weekly singles chart and no. 5 in Billboard Japan weekly top singles sales.
2019: Time For Us, back-to-back Japanese singles, and Fever Season[]
On January 14, GFriend released their second studio album, Time For Us. The album contains thirteen songs, including the single "Sunrise", Korean version of "Memoria" and an instrumental of the title track. A limited version of the album was then released on January 25, 2019. GFriend started their promotions with Mnet's M Countdown on January 17, 2019, where they performed "Sunrise" and "Memoria (Korean ver.)". On January 19, 2019, they performed their side track "A Starry Sky" on MBC's Show! Music Core as part of their comeback stage. During the second week of promotions, GFriend took first place on all music shows, making them the first artist in 2019 to achieve a "grand slam". Time for Us became the group's highest selling Korean album with more than 86,000 copies sold based on the Gaon Chart.
On February 13, GFriend released their second Japanese single album, "Sunrise (JP ver.)/La Pam Pam".[60] On March 13, GFriend released their third Japanese single album, "Flower/Beautiful".
On July 1, GFriend released their seventh EP, Fever Season, with lead single "Fever". The EP consists of eight tracks, including an instrumental version of their lead single. The group also promoted in Japan by collaborating with Japanese pop group Sonar Pocket and released Japanese single album, Oh Difficult – Sonar Pocket×GFriend, on July 3.
On November 13, GFriend released their first Japanese studio album, Fallin' Light, with its lead single of the same name.
2020: 回: Labyrinth, 回:Song of the Sirens, 回:Walpurgis Night[]
GFriend's eighth extended play (EP), 回:Labyrinth, with 6 songs and its title track, "Crossroads", was released on February 3, it being the first comeback of the group since Source Music was acquired by Big Hit Entertainment in July of 2019. The EP was successful, debuting as number one on the Gaon Album Chart and breaking the group's previous record by selling over 54,000 copies in its first week. On January 21, a teaser was released containing clips from GFriend's previous music videos, linking them into a bigger, singular story. The next day, January 22, the track listing for the EP was released, revealing the participation of producers from Big Hit Entertainment, such as "hitman"bang and ADORA. During the promotions, GFriend won 7 awards in various South Korean music programs. The b-side "Labyrinth" was promoted alongside Crossroads for a week, although this was later extended to one more week.
On July 13, their ninth extended play (EP), 回:Song of the Sirens, was released. It consisted of 6 six songs including its title track, "Apple". A teaser was released like in Crossroads which showed the GFriend members running in a forest.
On October 12, it was announced that the group would be making a comeback with their third studio album 回:Walpurgis Night, on November 9. The album was released on the same day, that consisted of 13 songs, featuring the title track, "Mago", their previous two title tracks "Crossroads" and a re-recorded version of "Apple" as well as "Labyrinth" which has also been performed along with the former during their 回:Labyrinth promotions. Their third studio album also marked their first and only album in which in addition to the full group songs, all of the members of the group were breaking up into three sub-unit duos for three songs from the album consisting of different genres: Bubblegum dance ("Secret Diary", performed by SinRin), tropical R&B/Soul ("Better Me", performed by WonJi) and ballad ("Night Drive", performed by YujUna). All three songs were performed exclusively at GFriend C:ON one song at a time (though they were not used during promotions on music shows).
2021: Departure from Source Music and disbandment[]
It was announced on May 18 that GFriend's exclusive contract with their agency, Source Music, would come to an end as all members decided not to renew their contracts. The group officially disbanded on May 22.[1]
On June 17, Yerin signed an exclusive contract with Sublime Artist Agency, making her the first member of GFriend to sign onto a new agency.[2]
On August 2, Sowon signed an exclusive contract with IOK Company as an actress, and will be using her birth name 'Kim So-jung'.[3]
On September 1, Yuju signed an exclusive contract with Kang Daniel's Konnect Entertainment, which is home to Chancellor and handles CL's domestic promotions.[4]
On October 6, Eunha, SinB and Umji signed together with BPM Entertainment and will promote as a 3-member girl group, VIVIZ.[5]
Members[]
| Name | Birth Name | Date of Birth | Position |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sowon (소원) | Kim So-jung (김소정) | December 7, 1995 | Leader, Vocalist, Visual |
| Yerin (예린) | Jung Ye-rin (정예린) | August 19, 1996 | Lead Dancer, Vocalist, Face of the Group |
| Eunha (은하) | Jung Eun-bi (정은비) | May 30, 1997 | Lead Vocalist |
| Yuju (유주) | Choi Yu-na (최유나) | October 4, 1997 | Main Vocalist |
| SinB (신비) | Hwang Eun-bi (황은비) | June 3, 1998 | Main Dancer, Vocalist, Center |
| Umji (엄지) | Kim Ye-won (김예원) | August 19, 1998 | Vocalist, Maknae |
Discography[]
- Main article: GFriend/Discography
Korean albums[]
- LOL (2016)
- Time For Us (2019)
- 回:Walpurgis Night (2020)
OSTs[]
Japanese albums[]
- Fallin' Light (2019)
Videography[]
- Main article: GFriend/Videography
Concerts & Tours[]
Concerts[]
- GFriend the First Mini Concert (2017)
- Season of GFriend (2018)
- Go Go GFriend! (2019)
Awards and nominations[]
- Main article: GFriend/Awards and nominations
Other links[]
- GFriend on Spotify
- GFriend on Discogs
- GFriend on Wikipedia
- GFriend on Namu Wiki
- GFriend on Kpop Wiki
References[]
- ↑ 단독 걸그룹 여자친구 이별, 각자의 길 간다. Tenasia.
- ↑ Sublime Artist Agency official tweet Twitter.
- ↑ 여자친구 소원, 김소정으로 활동명 변경…아이오케이 전속계약(공식) Newsen.
- ↑ 여자친구 유주, 커넥트와 전속계약…강다니엘 CL 한솥밥(공식) Newsen.
- ↑ 단독 前여자친구 은하·신비·엄지, 새 그룹명은 '비비지'였다 MyDaily.
