It involves artists outside of K-Pop as well.
Koreaboo
SEVENTEEN recently returned with “Thunder” from their 10th anniversary album, Happy Burstday.
As part of the promotions, the group were recently featured by the American publication Hollywood Reporter. The article highlighted their ten years as a group, and their new album.
While many fans of the group praised the article it has also been harshly criticized over alleged inaccuracies regarding SEVENTEEN’s achievements both in K-Pop and outside.
The tagline of the article, “Summer of SEVENTEEN: They fill more stadiums than Springsteen and sell as many albums as Taylor Swift, but the world’s most successful K-Pop band still faces one last hurdle: growing up,” has been questioned over multiple aspects.
In particular, the claims about album sales and stadiums, as well as the statement about SEVENTEEN being the “world’s most successful K-Pop band,” were called into question, with the metrics of other groups and artist mentioned.
BB200 no 1s NO ENTRY⛔️ HOT 100⛔️
SPTF GLOBAL 1 song
before writing such material, did the author check the sources for publication? Unfortunately, this group has nothing to do with world records and titles, but to put Taylor on the same level, simply disrespecting her work. https://t.co/D8kgyh99Ne pic.twitter.com/hHnNH536aC— Don’tBeMad🖤 (@_Dnt_CRY_) May 29, 2025
Lies on lies on lies on delusions!
they DONT sell more seats then BS
they DONT sell more albums then TS
they ARE NOT the no 1 K-pop band
they are just BACKING LIES with stolen money from HYBE https://t.co/G2yEQRPxKY— ……yup 👍 (@starleefelix) May 29, 2025
Would’ve angled it differently considering seventeen has zero tour dates scheduled. Also what are the metrics for “the world’s most successful k-pop band” Sales? Streams? Touring? Kind of crazy considering another K-pop group is selling out SoFi and touring here all summer 🤔 https://t.co/CTvvpHySVr
— emilykmm (@emilykmm) May 28, 2025
Hybe’s media play is alarming🤡
1. Taylor Swift album sold – 114M
——— Great wall of China—–
Svt album sold – 40M
2. Stray Kids “dominATE” attendance – 2.2M live audience (Most attended Tour in kpop history)
——— Great wall of China——
Svt attendance – 865k https://t.co/TagrpQ1Udn pic.twitter.com/FznlHdmbm2
— Love & light (@criminalngda) May 29, 2025
When looking at these complaints, there are some that have different aspects to consider. While Taylor Swift has sold more albums overall (over 110 million) than SEVENTEEN (around 60 million), it is true that SEVENTEEN have outpaced Swift.
In 2023, SEVENTEEN’s FML sold 6.4 million while 1986 (Taylor’s Version) sold around 2.8 million copies, technically making the statement true.
The statement about filling more stadiums than Bruce Springsteen, an artist who has been active since 1964, is inaccurate — the stars 2023-2025 tour, which ranked in the highest grossing tours ever, included more stadium dates than SEVENTEEN has performed throughout their entire careers.
SEVENTEEN have sold an impressive amount of tickets, however, and performed in an amount of stadiums comparable to other K-Pop groups.
Ultimately, the title of “world’s most successful K-Pop band” can be debated in numerous ways and fans seem to simply want the efforts of their favorite artists to not be disregarded.
