Here's What You Should Know About GOT7, The K-Pop Band That's Slaying On Every Level
The 2019 Billboard Music Awards are quickly approaching, and one genre of music is having a particularly great year, to the delight of its various fandoms. K-Pop music is slowly but surely becoming wildly popular in the United States, giving groups like BTS, GOT7, and EXO global networks of fans. With all of these K-Pop groups starting to appear on the Billboard charts and in the various BBMAs categories, those new to the genre might be wondering, Who is GOT7? The talented group is among one of the K-Pop artists nominated in the Top Social category at this year's BBMAs.
Let's start with the basics. GOT7 is one of South Korea's most popular K-Pop groups. Like BTS (and made pretty obvious by their group name), the group consists of seven members: Jackson Wang, Park Jinyoung, Kim Yugyeom, Jae Bum (JB), BamBam, Mark Tuan, and Choi Yungjae. Their ages range from 20 to 24 years old. The group follows the typical K-Pop group structure, in that there are members who rap (Jackson, BamBam, and Mark) and some who sing (JB, Jinyoung, Yungjae, and Yugyeom), in order to give their songs good variety.
The group's formulation was complete in 2014. The same year, their first single, "Girls, Girls, Girls," was released.
Their first EP, Got It?, ended up ranking on the Billboard World Album Chart, impressively peaking at No. 1 in February 2014.
In typical K-Pop fashion (aka, they're always grinding), GOT7's second EP, Got Love, dropped in June 2014. It wasn't until November 2014, however, that GOT7's first official album, Identify, released. Since then, the group has released around nine albums, which is a wicked high number of albums to churn out (but their fans certainly aren't complaining).
These days, the boys are working on solo and sub-unit projects. For example, Jackson just dropped his solo song, "Oxygen," JB and Yugyeom are busy doing their sub-unit thang as Jus2, and Jinyoung is starring in the K-Drama, He Is Psychometric. But if you're worried the boys are going their separate ways, don't. Solo projects are a totally normal thing in the K-Pop world, which is honestly super refreshing.
The next thing on the horizon for this seven-member group is the Billboard Music Awards on May 1. GOT7 was nominated in the Top Social Artist category in this year's roundup of nominees. This mark's their first time being nominated for a Billboard Music Award, so it's definitely an exciting moment for them and their fans.
GOT7 is up against four other artists in the Top Social Artist category. Two of them are K-Pop sensations BTS and EXO. The other two are Ariana Grande and One Direction's Louis Tomlinson. There's no word on whether GOT7 will attend the awards show, but considering BTS are frontrunners for the category (they've been No. 1 on Billboard's Social 50 for the past 94 weeks) chances are slim they'll be in attendance. Still, this nomination is a monumental achievement and my fingers are still crossed that they'll surprise us on the red carpet!
