GOT the Beat, a new seven-member supergroup made up of BoA, Girls’ Generation‘s Taeyeon and Hyoyeon, Red Velvet’s Seulgi and Wendy and Aespa’s Karina and Winter, rang in 2022 with their debut single, “Step Back.”
The group brought the song, which has Yoo Young Jin and Dem Jointz among its producers, to the stage for a special performance at SMTOWN Live 2022 on New Year’s Eve. “Step Back” was officially released as a single on Jan. 3.
GOT the Beat is the “first unit” of a new SM Entertainment project known as Girls on Top, set to bring together and highlight the company’s female artists in various groups.
SMTOWN Live 2022, a free event for fans around the world that took place at the “SMCU Express Station” in a virtual space known as “KWANGYA,” featured a big lineup from SM Entertainment’s roster. A 40-song setlist featured “Step Back” and had a number of other collaborative performances, like “Ordinary Day” by Super Junior’s Kyuhyun, SHINee’s Onew and NCT’s Taeil, and “Zoo” by NCT’s Taeyong, Jeno, Hendery and Yangyang and Aespa’s Giselle.
SM Entertainment reports the concert set a new record with the highest number of views for a Korean concert online, with 51 million global streams, surpassing their own record for last year’s SMTOWN concert.
Soo-Man Lee, the event’s chief producer, gave an opening speech that explained, “SMCU [SM Culture Universe] shares stories of each artist across the virtual space and reality. In other words, it is a concept that encompasses the worldview and the universe containing the identity of each team. KWANGYA, therefore, represents a new world that transcends and coexists without boundaries. This worldview is being newly named and developed as ‘Metaversal Origin Story’ and each artist’s ‘Metaversal Origin Story’ comes together, intersects and coexists with each other in KWANGYA, which will unfold a new world.”
Watch GOT the Beat perform “Step Back” below.
