ITZY Cheshire’s latest comeback album was released amid mixed reactions from netizens who are now questioning whether the group’s popularity has declined over time.
A blog post uploaded to the South Korean online forum Nate titled “But why is ITZY slowly failing?” it was uploaded on December 3, 2022. At the time of this writing, the post already has 359 thumbs up and only 76 thumbs down and 107k views. Many K-netizens seemed to agree that Cheshire is not doing well on the main South Korean music charts.
According to multiple tweets on Twitter, Cheshire was out of the MelOn Top 100, FLO Top 100, and Genie Top 200, three major South Korean music platforms, as of December 2, 2022. The blog post also compared the group’s previous hits. and highlighted the digital “failure” of the new album.
ITZY’s latest comeback with Cheshire has mixed reactions from fans
After dropping UK single Boys Like You ahead of the release in the last week of October, fans have been eagerly anticipating ITZY’s Cheshire. All the more so since the five-member girl group was behind some of K-pop’s iconic dance moves and songs with Dalla Dalla and Wannabe. However, with new girl groups ruling the industry, the popularity of girl group LOCO seems to have taken a back seat.
Cheshire was released on November 30, 2022, but its failure on the main South Korean music charts has become part of an online debate. K-netizens discussed why they thought ITZY’s reputation was declining. The oversaturation of girl groups, the agency’s inability to keep the group on track, and the composition of the members were some of the reasons fans thought led to the downfall of the LOCO singers.
On the other hand, international fans came to the defense of the criticism. They shared that the song did well in the international charts. Cheshire peaked at number 1 on the iTunes Worldwide Album chart on 1 December and at number 6 on the same chart the following day.
The group also achieved the highest first-week sales, with 550,000 album copies already sold. They have two days left in their viewing period.
Meanwhile, ITZY continues to push on Spotify and Billboard, demonstrating its popular reach. The group ranked 74th with CHECKMATE on Billboard’s Best-Selling Albums chart and 49th on the Best-Selling Current Albums chart.
On Spotify, the girl group was ranked eighth in the Most-Streamed K-pop Artists Globally, while their song LOCO was ranked 33rd in the Top 50 K-pop Songs of 2022 Globally.
The main issue that keeps coming up among fans is the promotion of the members in South Korea. Fans continue to raise their voice for more promotions such as various performances, photo shoots and more for the members.