K-Pop Pulse

Two Straight Weeks of K-pop at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 Has Never Happened Before Photo: 티비텐(@_TV10) / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 3.0) For the first time in Billboard 200 history, K-pop albums have held the No. 1 position for two consecutive weeks — on two different albums, from two different agencies. Stray Kids' "This & That" opened September's chart cycle the way it ended August: inside the top three, at No. 3 with 82,000 units, per chart data reported by Newsis — one week after KATSEYE's "WILD" took the crown Stray Kids themselves had held. The Streak, Decoded The sequence matters. Stray Kids debuted "This & That" at No. 1 on August 22 with 369,000 equivalent units — 357,000 of them pure sales, their biggest sales week ever, per Variety. Seven days later, KATSEYE's "WILD" displaced it with 170,000 units. Then Stray Kids held at No. 3. Two K-pop albums occupying the chart's top three simultaneously, across ...

KATSEYE's "WILD" Just Made History on the Billboard 200 — and It Is a New K-pop Model Photo: K-POPIT / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 3.0) KATSEYE's third EP "WILD" entered the Billboard 200 at No. 1 on the chart dated August 29, 2026, per Billboard data reported by Korean media — and the details behind the number matter more than the ranking itself. The EP, released August 14, recorded 170,000 album units in the U.S. during its tracking week: 145,000 in pure album sales, 24,500 in streaming-equivalent units, and roughly 500 in track-equivalent units. Per Billboard, that is the biggest weekly performance by a female group since the chart converted to album-equivalent units in December 2015. Why This No. 1 Is Different KATSEYE became the fourth K-pop girl group to top the Billboard 200 in the 2020s, following BLACKPINK (2022), NewJeans (2023), and TWICE (2025) — and the tenth K-pop project overall to reach the summit, a list that now spans 26 albums. But t...

KATSEYE's "Animal" Is Climbing the Hot 100 — and It Is Doing It the Slow, Real Way Photo: the CwE / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 4.0) While most K-pop Billboard stories this month have been about debuts at the top of charts, KATSEYE is quietly running a different play. According to Billboard data reported by The Korea Herald, the group's pre-release single "Animal" climbed five places to No. 30 on the Billboard Hot 100 dated August 22, 2026 — not a splashy entry, but a genuine upward move weeks after release. "Animal" was released in July ahead of the group's third EP, "Wild," which dropped on August 14. On the same chart week, the single ranked No. 16 on the Billboard Global 200 and No. 19 on the Global Excl. U.S. chart, while reaching as high as No. 5 on Spotify's Daily Top Songs Global — its best placement there to date. The pattern matters more than any single number. Songs that enter the Hot 100 high and fall fast are us...