TaeTiSeo perform “Twinkle” on M! Countdown, crack the Billboard 200!
The divine ladies of Girls’ Generation‘s TaeTiSeo made their live debut tonight with a double performance on M! Countdown.
Um, shaking and crying!
The heavenly trio opened with their R&B midtempo “Baby Steps”, which has been the second highest-selling song from their recent mini-album after the title track “Twinkle”. Despite the many haters, I’ve always believed that Girls’ Generation is a talented group (or at least, have grown to become one over the years), but I was feeling a little cautious as to how they’d pull off the TaeTiSeo songs live. They sure put my fears to rest though, nailing “Baby Steps” so perfectly that you’d almost think they were miming. Taeyeon was everything, and Tiffany totally held her own when I was expecting her to disappoint in the vocal department.
The same can be said about their “Twinkle” performance. The choreography was kept simple so the girls could focus on their vocals, and they slayed the whole thing live, with Taeyeon easily matching the studio version note for note. I used to think that Taeyeon was a little overrated as a singer, but now I’ve seen the light!
Check out both performances below.
So far, the Twinkle project is shaping up to be pretty huge. The song already achieved an all-kill on the Korean charts and will likely dethrone SISTAR’s “Alone” as the No. 1 single on GAON, while the Twinkle mini-album has done big things on iTunes internationally, reaching the top five in the US and spending almost three days in the top 10. Thanks to the digital sales, the album managed to debut at No. 126 on the US Billboard charts, making TaeTiSeo (or should I say, Girls’ Generation) the second Korean artist ever to chart on the Billboard 200 with a Korean album. The first was BIGBANG, who reached No. 150 with their Alive EP this past March.
Pretty good for a Korean-language album from a sub-unit with zero promotion in the States!
K-Pop has really come a huge way in such a short amount of time. It was only a few years ago in 2009 when BoA‘s English-language album debuted at No. 127 on the same chart, and now we’ve got artists like Girls’ Generation doing music in Korean that hasn’t even been Westernized charting around the same position off of iTunes’ sales alone.
With the odd exception of a couple of artists like 2NE1 and Girls’ Generation, K-Pop will always be a very niche genre outside of Asia, but as the awareness and popularity for it continues to grow, we’ll most likely see more Korean artists charting on the Billboard charts in higher positions and for longer periods of time over the next few years.
Global Generation!
