“Electric Boy” placed second on the Oricon Weekly Singles Chart, and I thought that maybe it would have staying power, but so far it has sold around 70k units, which is about half of what they pushed during their last release.
I bring this up because KARA and SNSD are neck and neck in the Japan market, and both are showing downturns in popularity with their latest releases. However, while SNSD released a remake of one of their old Korean songs, KARA came out with a new single, which is arguably even more concerning for them.
I guess the litmus test of all this will be how SNSD’s new album fares. Groups like SNSD/KARA will be fine if their hype in Japan gets turned down a notch, but I do wonder what this would mean for newer K-pop groups trying to debut in Japan and for the groups already struggling there.