LE SSERAFIM

K-pop act LE SSERAFIM crafts assertive, low-end-driven dance-pop across several tongues and consequently commands rankings throughout numerous nations. Source Music joined forces with HYBE Corporation to assemble the outfit during the first years of the 2020s. Fronted by KIM CHAEWON and SAKURA, both formerly of the Korean-Japanese ensemble Iz*One, the newcomers entered the Top Three on domestic and Japanese lists with their opening 2022 EP Fearless before seizing the summit months afterward via Antifragile. Their inaugural studio album, the 2023 collection Unforgiven, again led tallies across Asia and the United States. Further triumphs arrived that same year in the shape of the EPs Easy and Crazy, whose tracks veered from propulsive rock numbers to soul-inflected dance cuts.

Formed as a lexical rearrangement of the clause “I’m fearless,” LE SSERAFIM made its entrance in the first half of 2022 once Japanese vocalist SAKURA (Sakura Miyawaki) and Korean singer KIM CHAEWON were confirmed as members. The pair had first met as contestants on the 2018 survival program Produce 48, an experience that placed them inside the hit-making girl group Iz*One. That twelve-member unit issued four platinum-certified EPs from 2018 through 2020, while its 2020 debut album Bloom*iz also reached the Top Three in both Korea and Japan. KIM CHAEWON and SAKURA recreated the same chart placement with Fearless, LE SSERAFIM’s May 2022 introductory EP, which introduced additional vocalists KAZUHA, HUH YUNJIN, KIM GA-RAM, and HONG EUNCHAE. The project’s lead single opened at number nine on the Billboard Japan Hot 100. Seven days after the EP’s arrival, KIM GA-RAM departed, leaving LE SSERAFIM a five-piece. In October the reduced lineup delivered its follow-up EP Antifragile, a stylistically eclectic set incorporating electronic, reggaeton, and stadium-rock elements that topped charts in both Japan and the United States. The same achievement was repeated in 2023 with the group’s first proper long-player, Unforgiven. That album combined earlier material from Fearless and Antifragile (now labeled “2023 Versions”) with newly recorded songs, among them the title track featuring Nile Rodgers. Two further EPs appeared in 2024. Easy arrived in February and became another million-selling chart-topper inside Korea; Crazy followed three months later and debuted at number two on the Korean ranking.