“Rollin” their way to the top? – Brave Girls and their sudden rise in popularity

Rags to riches? It’s always a shocking story but even more so for individuals that least expect it. The members of Brave Girls were seemingly moving out of their apartment and ready to give up their lives as K-pop idols the day gold struck. What’s that about God’s timing and it always being right? I’d say I’m envious but I feel like that phrase would be dismissive of everything they've gone through as an idol group.

Brave Girls debuted in 2011 under Brave Entertainment (formed by pop producer king Brave Brothers; yes, it’s one person, I found out last week). They didn’t hit the jackpot straight away, however. An interesting fact is that they were insanely popular in the army; as far as soldiers went, there weren’t any who didn’t know them. Older soldiers would tell newcomers about Brave Girls, it was almost like a rite of passage?

“Rollin” was initially first released in 2017 to barely any reception. The song flopped, for lack of better words. It suddenly blew up when a YouTube video, which was a collection of comments by men from the Army essentially simping for these girls, went unexpectedly viral.

The song, as of April 2021, has achieved 200 PAKs (200 hours of it being #1 on charts) which is actually record breaking. They are the first girl group in K-Pop history to achieve this many PAKs. At the time of its release, the song barely entered charts and peaked at 60 when it did.

Some of the comments on the viral video were hilarious though; “North Korean soldiers would dance to this song too.” “#1 song in the ‘Korean Military Board Chart’” “I learned this song from my seniors in the military and taught it to my juniors before I was discharged.” BTS may have their Army but Brave Girls have a quite literal army behind their fandom, the ROK (Republic of Korea) army.

In K-Pop, anything that can be recorded is considered a win and one type of record is the ‘highest number of days until their first win from debut’. Brave Girls have the highest number since their debut was almost 10 years ago, that’s ANOTHER broken record (I don't think it was on purpose but neither was their unexpected rise to fame). In comparison, BLACKPINK had their first win 13 days after debut.

Now the girls are booked and busy and I’ve never been this happy for a group of girls that I personally don’t know!