ITZY's Mini Album, ‘Checkmate’ Reaches No. 8 On Billboard 200

JAKARTA - The South Korean girl group ITZY won their first top 10 position on the US Billboard main album chart with its fifth mini album (EP) entitled Checkmate.

“ITZY's Checkmate debuts at No. 8 on the Billboard 200, making the South Korean quintet group their first top 10," Billboard said on Sunday, July 24.

For information, the Billboard 200 publishes a weekly ranking of the most popular albums in the US as measured by equivalent album units (EAU) consisting of physical album sales and other digital sales records.

Yonhap reported Monday that Checkmate has earned 33.000 EAU since its release on July 15, with physical album sales reaching 31.000 copies. Billboard said 98 percent of first-week album sales were on CD, while the other 2 percent for digital sales.

ITZY's album which previously ranked the highest was their first studio album entitled Crazy in Love which reached 11th position after being released in September last year.

Quoted from ANTARA, Checkmate itself consists of seven songs, including the main single Sneakers with lyrics that encourage and invite listeners to run as far as possible without hesitation like wearing sneakers.

Starting next month, the K-pop quintet will be touring American cities for the first time. After embarking on a tour in Seoul, South Korea, on August 6-7, the group will fly to the US for concerts in Los Angeles, Phoenix, Dallas, Houston, Atlanta, Chicago, Boston, and New York until November 13. According to the agency, the concert tickets in the US were sold out as soon as the sales period opened.

Debuting in 2019, this girl group is actively traveling between South Korea and Japan. They are known through songs like Dalla Dalla, ICY, Wannabe, Not Shy, In the Morning, and other hit songs.

Prior to Checkmate, ITZY had also achieved popularity in the US with their studio album Crazy in Love reaching eleventh on the Billboard 200 and their fourth EP Guess Who debuting at number 148 in April last year.