Stray Kids tops Billboard's top 200 popular albums chart for third time

Courtesy of JYP Entertainment

SEOUL -- Boy band Stray Kids has topped Billboard's top 200 popular albums chart with its album "5-Star." Along with BTS, the eight-member band became the second K-pop group that won first place more than twice on the weekly chart that ranks the 200 most popular albums in the United States.
 
The album, released on June 2, arrived atop the list on Billboard 200 chart with 249,500 equivalent album units sold in the U.S. in the week ending June 8. Group members expressed their unique identity and confidence through the third album. The music video of S-Class, the album's title track featuring hip-hop elements, has gained more than 4.8 million views on YouTube as of June 12.
 
The band topped the Billboard 200 chart in 2022 with "Oddinary" and "Maxident." In 2022, Maxident was one of the best-selling K-pop albums, exceeding 3 million copies. Other K-pop groups that grabbed the top place on Billboard 200 chart are BTS, Black Pink, and SuperM. 
 
Stray Kids garnered worldwide attention before its official debut as the group members were the final survivors of "Stray Kids", a survival audition show aired through TV music channel Mnet in 2017. It is the first boy band to be produced by Park Jin-young, the head of JYP, four years after GOT7, a seven-member dance group that debuted in 2014. The group is set to headline Lollapalooza Paris, a music event to be held in France between July 21 and 23.