SEOUL, Oct. 17 (BUS): Korean music group Stray Kids has taken the number one spot on the US Billboard’s main albums chart for the second time in their careers with new EP Maxident.
The eight-track album topped this week’s Billboard 200 chart with 117,000 equivalent album units acquired in the United States, Billboard said in chart preview Sunday (US time). Yonhap reported that the latest chart will be released on Tuesday.
This made the group the second K-pop group to chart more than one number on the chart after BTS. Stray Kids first entered the charts in March with EP Oddinary.
Maxident is the fourth album by a Korean artist to top the chart this year, after Oddinary, BTS ‘Proof’ and BLACKPINK’s Born Pink.
In total, BTS topped the chart six times, Stray Kids twice, and SuperM and BLACKPINK once each.
The Billboard 200 ranks the most popular albums of the week in the United States, which is measured in album equivalent units comprising physical album sales and other digital sales records.
The eight-piece band, which debuted in 2018, has been known for their intense theatrical performances and unique musical style.
Of the 117,000 equivalent album units acquired by Maxident, album sales totaled 110,000, with 97 percent of sales coming from CD sales, Billboard said.
She added that the album’s 110,000 copies represented the fourth-largest week of sales of any album in 2022.
Maxident is mostly in Korean, but includes a fair amount of English lyrics. It is worth noting that it is the sixteenth album, most of which was issued in a non-English language, and ranked first and fourth in 2022.”
The title Maxident combines the words “maximum” and “accident” to mean a major accident, according to the group.
The EP led by “Case 143” was expected to be a huge hit from early on as it crossed 2.18 million copies in its first week of sales.
The song was written and composed by the group’s production unit, 3RACHA, composed by Bang Chan, Han, and Changbin.
Speaking during a press conference in Seoul earlier this month to promote the album, Bang Chan said his bandmates always feel a lot of pressure whenever they work on new songs, but the pressure acts as a catalyst for development.
Stay Kids will start their second world tour titled Stray Kids 2nd World Tour Maniac next month.
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