Lee Mujin’s “Traffic Light” tops the Billboard K-Pop 100 chart (dated Oct. 23) for a seventh consecutive week, boasting the highest streaming count for the past seven weeks.
The song, along with IU’s “Celebrity,” achieves the second-longest No. 1 record in K-Pop 100 chart history. “Celebrity” had first topped the chart on Feb. 6 and reigned until March 20. BTS’ “Dynamite” — the longest-ever No. 1 song in the chart’s history — dominated for a total of 22 weeks from the chart dated Sept. 5, 2020, to Jan. 30.
It was a bit of a sluggish start for Lee Mujin and “Traffic Light.” His first No. 1 song was released May 14 and debuted at No. 93 on June 12 only to drop off the chart the following week. But it managed to re-enter and gradually climb up the chart, finally hitting first place on Sept. 11. The 14-week journey breaks the record of the longest time to reach No. 1 on the K-Pop 100 chart. Before “Traffic Light,” the record was held by Gaho’s “Beginning,” which took six weeks to rank No. 1 on March 21.
Lee Mujin is a singer-songwriter who first appeared in public on a Korean competition show last December. He rose to fame when some of the songs he sang on the show — including “Is There Anybody,” “Whistle” and “Dream” — became very popular and hit the K-Pop 100 chart. Other than his No. 1 hit “Traffic Light,” subsequent releases of “Fall in Fall” and “Rain and You” have also made to the chart, at Nos. 22 and 25, respectively, making his presence stronger than ever.
The Billboard K-Pop 100 measures multimetric consumption including streaming, digital sales, radio and television data to present the most popular K-pop songs in South Korea every week.
–Story by Minhyeong Lee