LOONA Just Hit An Impressive Billboard Milestone That Only BLACKPINK Has Achieved Before

They’re the only two K-Pop girl groups to have ever reached this!

LOONA made history recently when their breakout hit, “Star”, first made its appearance on the Billboard Pop Airplay chart.

There’s a reason that K-Pop artists have difficulty getting on this particular chart. The songs that rank on this weekly chart are those that have been getting the most airplay on American radio, which has been notoriously difficult for Korean artists to achieve.

To date, only one other girl group, BLACKPINK, and two other Korean artists, BTS and MONSTA X, have even made it onto this chart before. This makes LOONA the second girl group and fourth overall K-Pop artist to rank on the Pop Airplay chart, but that’s only the beginning of their achievements.

“Star” first debuted on the chart on February 6, ranked at #40 on the 40 song list. While it seemed that it would likely dip off of the chart after a week since it was at the end of the chart, it actually rose the following week, and eventually peaked at #31 during its time on it.

This week, the song dropped from #33 to #38, but even though it appears to be slowly making its way off of the list, the fact that it stayed on it again this week has led the group to making history.

Billboard Pop Airplay chart for the week of March 27, 2021

“Star” has now spent 8 weeks total on the Pop Airplay list, which is the same number of weeks that BLACKPINK and Selena Gomez‘s “Ice Cream” charted, which means that the two girl groups are now tied for having the longest-charting K-Pop song by a girl group on the Pop Airplay list!

While it seems likely that “Star” will drop off of the list next week, there’s always the possibility that it won’t, and if it manages to make even one more time on the chart, it will surpass BLACKPINK’s “Ice Cream” and make a new record for K-Pop girl groups to reach!

LOONA’s Chuu

Either way, it’s certainly something to celebrate for LOONA and Orbit! It’s wonderful to see K-Pop becoming more mainstream in the U.S., and here’s to hoping that more artists from the music genre are able to make these kinds of accomplishments too.