EXO's Baekhyun Scores Highest Entry For a Solo K-Pop Act on the Artist 100

The singer-songwriter recently released a new solo song "Young."

With excitement swelling around not only his solo work but also his group's upcoming activities, Baekhyun of EXO makes major gains on the Billboard charts this week and sets a new record while doing so.

The singer-songwriter-actor debuts at No. 84 on Billboard's Artist 100 chart making him the highest charting solo K-pop act to date. The Artist 100, which launched in July 2014, measures artist activity across key metrics of music consumption, blending album and track sales, radio airplay, streaming and social media fan interaction to provide a weekly multi-dimensional ranking of artist popularity. 

In the week ending Sept. 28, 2018, Baekhyun notably earned a huge spike in social engagement with a 1,343 percent increase in overall activity on the Social 50 chart where he matches his best ranking of No. 2. As Billboard previously noted, the singer also returns to the top 5 of the Emerging Artist chart to a new peak of No. 3. 

So far, the only other Korean artists to enter the Artist 100 chart have been PSY, who peaked at No. 88 in 2015 to become the first K-pop entry, and J-Hope of BTS, who peaked at No. 91 around the release of his Hope World mixtape album. To date, EXO has peaked at No. 18 on the chart as the second-highest Korean act to land on the Artist 100.

Baekhyun recently released a new solo collaboration "Young" with rapper Loco, which peaked at No. 4 on Billboard's World Digital Song Sales chart. Now, his best-selling song in America is a tie between "Young" and 2017's "Take You Home," both of which have sold 2,000 copies to date in the U.S. since their release. Meanwhile, EXO recently announced their impending K-pop comeback at the top of the month marking their first release since last year's Billboard 200 chart entry,The War.