Seventeen has been rocking the stage for years, but this year it really seems like they’ve blown up even more with audiences worldwide.
The boy group under Pledis Entertainment debuted in 2015 with the mini-album ‘17 Carat’ and the title track ‘Adore U’. It was the longest charting album by a K-pop group of that year according to Billboard. It’s safe to say that they’ve been doing well since their debut.
Seventeen’s magic formula comes from the chemistry and charisma of the thirteen members S.Coups, Wonwoo, Mingyu, Vernon, Woozi, Jeonghan, Joshua, DK, Seungkwan, Hoshi, Jun, The8, and Dino. The big variety of members makes sure that each fan can find someone they relate to.
From 2017 the group has created their own variety series ‘Going Seventeen’ where they play games and generally have a good time. Member Seungkwan really worked hard on the presence of the members in variety shows that were not in-house productions. In the very beginning he used to call up producers to see if they had a spot so he could promote the group. Nowadays, I don’t think he has to call them himself anymore.
There’s also the in-house producing. Woozi produces most of the group’s music, which is a very intense burden to put on him but he’s always delivered fantastically. Woozi works closely together with Bumzu who is a soloist and is also signed with Pledis. Members Vernon, S.Coups and even Hoshi also have quite a few writing credits.
The quality in the music, the chemistry of the members and the incredible choreos have created the Seventeen X-factor that millions of fans have responded to.
This year though, they stepped it up a notch.
Their first mini-album of the year ‘Face The Sun’ had 1.7 million in sales on the very first day of release according to the Hanteo chart. It debuted at number seven on the Top 200 of the Billboard charts. ‘Face The Sun’ contains nine songs including their very first English single ‘Darl+ing’. This was a pre-released and the title track ‘Hot’.
In April they released their first documentary film ‘Seventeen Power of Love: The Movie’ which showed stage footage and behind the scenes clips.
World Tour
They started their world tour ‘Be The Sun’ in June in Seoul. It made over 19 million USD with almost half a million tickets sold as of now. The tour has twenty-nine shows across Asia, North America and ending with a Dome tour in Japan. December 28th will be the last date of the tour in Jakarta, Indonesia. The whole thing is beyond impressive.
It didn’t stop there.
In July they released the repackage of their previous album with ‘Sector 17’. The full-length album contains four new tracks with ‘_World’ as the new title track. The album was beautiful, well-balanced and the new tracks were amazing.
Then in November, Seventeen came out with their Japanese EP ‘Dream’ which contains 4 singles including the Japanese versions of ‘Rock with you’, ‘All my love’ and ‘Darl+ing’.
There were also the solo tracks some members released this year. There was Woozi with his solo track ‘Ruby’, Jun with ‘Limbo’, Dino with ‘High Five’, The8 released ‘Hai Cheng’, Hoshi fulfilled his tiger fantasies in ‘Tiger’ featuring rap icon Tiger JK. The quality on these tracks were insane and really portrayed their individual characters.
It’s definitely safe to say that Seventeen has had one busy year. They’ve delighted fans with their content, their music and their presence. They were busy on TikTok creating personalized content for fans and delighted everyone with their fan interactions.
We’ll be very curious to see how they’re going to top this next year.
This article was originally published in our annual magazine. Read more here.
