GFriend Ends Promotions for Their Successful ‘Song of the Sirens’ EP
GFriend has officially ended promotions for “Apple,” the lead single from their newest EP Song of the Sirens. Sowon, Yerin, Eunha, Yuju, SinB, and Umji released the album on July 13, and the EP marked the K-pop group’s successful transformation with a “vibrant witch” concept.
‘Song of the Sirens’ was a successful EP
GFriend ended their promotion of “Apple” on Korean music shows on July 26. Their final music show performance for “Apple” took place on SBS Inkigayo. GFriend performed in velvet outfits and showcased a powerful witch aesthetic.
Throughout their album promotions, the group demonstrated their dramatic transformation, which seemed to go over well with fans. GFriend took home first prize at SBS MTV The Show, MBC Music Show Champion, and Mnet M Countdown.
GFriend also achieved high sales with Song of the Sirens. In the first week of the album’s release, Song of the Sirens sold 67,000 copies. In the U.S., the album peaked at No. 6 on the iTunes Top Albums chart.
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Within the first four days of its release, the “Apple” music video achieved a record-breaking 15 million views. To date, the music video has over 19 million views.
GFriend showed a new side of themselves with the EP
Song of the Sirens came five months after GFriend released their EP Labyrinth in February 2020. While Labyrinth told the story of a girl torn up over a choice, Song of the Sirens continued the story and showed the girl questioning her decision.
Temptation was a strong theme of the album, and GFriend showed the girl in the story was tempted by the choice she did not make. To help tell this story, GFriend incorporated a “vibrant witch” concept which differed from their past concepts.
“Of course, we’ve shown how we’ve changed, we’ve shown how we’ve grown. But rather than these sort of incremental or smaller changes, we didn’t want a small change this time, we wanted something that everyone can say ‘Wow, that’s a dramatic transformation,'” Sowon said at the media showcase for Song of the Sirens.
Sowon continued, “So we talked about this change with the members and the people at our label, and we had a lot of open discussions about this, and we all agreed that it was the time we could introduce this sort of change.”
GFriend grew as artists with ‘Song of the Sirens’
Successfully incorporating a “vibrant witch” concept is not the only transformation the members of GFriend underwent for Song of the Sirens. The group also grew as artists as multiple members participated in the album-making process.
Yuju, Eunha, and Umji all wrote lyrics for “Tarot Cards.” Umji and Yuju both worked on “Eye of the Storm” together; Umji wrote lyrics and Yuju played a hand in composing the song. For the lead single “Apple,” both Yuju and Eunha participated in composing and songwriting.
“We’ve always been open to the idea of change. Not only externally in terms of our appearance, but our participation in the music-making process as well. I think that’s the biggest change we’ve gone through,” Yuju said at the media showcase. “Because we’re going through such a big change for this album, we really thought a lot about the details of how to interpret songs and how to express ourselves through our choreography.”
