Music / Girls' Generation

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Formed in 2007 by SM Entertainment, the group's current members are Taeyeon (the leader of the group during their rise to fame), Sunny, Yuri, Hyoyeon, Yoona (the current leader of the group), Sooyoung, Tiffany and Seohyun (the "maknae" or youngest member). It is important to note that while some group members^note Tiffany, Sooyoung, Seohyun and Sunny have left SM Entertainment, they remain members of the group. Member Jessica Jung, who had been with the group since its inception, departed in September 2014.^note On September 29, 2014, Jessica announced via her Weibo that she had been kicked out of the group, claiming the company and "eight others" had banded together to get her removed. SM Entertainment later released their own statement confirming Jessica's departure but saying she had actually been fired due to her allegedly neglecting her group duties in favor of her own ventures. Jessica replied with another statement denying this, but in 2016 she gave an interview saying "It was a choice that had to be made. Our interests were very different. We would've gone separate ways in the future anyways, my departure just came sooner." To this day, nobody outside of the members and the company knows for sure exactly what happened, and probably never will. In the years since, Jessica has pursued endeavors including a solo music career, a fashion line, and novel writing.

Some of the group members^note Taeyeon, Tiffany, Yuri, Hyoyeon, and Seohyun have started solo music careers^note although each member has released at least one solo song, be it for soundtracks or otherwise, and everyone except Hyoyeon has some form of an acting career, whether it be musicals, voice acting, films or TV dramas. Several subgroups within the main group have also been made — Girls' Generation-TTS (Taeyeon, Tiffany, and Seohyun), active from 2012 to 2017, and Girls' Generation-Oh!GG (Sunny, Taeyeon, Yoona, Yuri and Hyoyeon), which debuted in 2018 and resumed activity in 2021.

SNSD began to achieve widespread fame in 2009 after the release of their first EP (referred to as a "mini album") and its namesake leading single "Gee", which has since become a Signature Song for the group. "Gee" became the best-selling South Korean single of 2009, and held the distinction of being the longest-running #1 ranked song on Music Bank, one of Korea's most popular music chart shows, before it was eventually passed by Psy's record-shattering hit "Gangnam Style". Its music video also became the first by a girl group to reach 100 million views on YouTube. In more recent years, the song has been hailed as a K-pop classic, making (and often topping) numerous lists of the greatest songs ever made in the genre, being credited for shaping the sound that became associated with modern K-pop, and being christened as the "K-Pop Song of the Decade" by Melon (a Korean music website and award-giving body).

Following several more releases and an inaugural tour that sold out in three minutes, the group signed with a division of Universal Music Japan to venture into making releases in the Japanese language, where they found further success. They eventually expanded into American releases in 2011 with The Boys, but the group was really pushed into the international spotlight after the title track of their fourth Korean album I Got a Boy won Video of the Year at the inaugural YouTube Music Awards in 2013. Considering the group was up against nominees like Psy and Justin Bieber, and they were considered relatively lesser-known, their victory was something of an upset and made headlines in media outlets all over the world.

The girls are especially beloved among their fans (dubbed "Sones"^note pronounced "so-ones") due to reasons including their dorky natures when not performing and the copious amounts of Fanservice that they dish out. They are also well-known for the Homoerotic Subtext that they often indulge in; in turn, the fans do a little indulging of their own in the form of the sheer amount of Slash Fic that gets churned out featuring the girls.

On October 9, 2017, SM announced that members Sooyoung, Seohyun and Tiffany had chosen not to re-sign with the company — Tiffany because she would be going overseas to study and work on solo activities, while Sooyoung and Seohyun wanted to focus on their acting careers. The company stated, "Girls’ Generation is a group that is precious and meaningful to SM and their fans. The members also have no thoughts at all about disbanding. Simply, as there are members whose contracts have ended, a careful decision will be made after discussions with the members about Girls’ Generation’s direction for activities in the future." From this point onward, the group was considered to be on indefinite hiatus, with all members focusing primarily on their solo careers.

In May 2022, SM announced the group would be reuniting for their 15-year anniversary in August of that year, and that month saw the release of Forever 1, their seventh Korean album. It was also revealed that they had decided to change the leader role in the group, with it now being on a rotating monthly basis to take the stress off Taeyeon, who had served as the sole leader since the group's early days. The members reportedly agreed that as Yoona, Tiffany and Sooyoung had done the best job, they would ask Yoona (who is also the leader of Oh!GG) to be the leader for Forever 1 promotions, with Tiffany and Sooyoung acting as second in command.

On August 8, 2023, Sunny also announced her departure from SM, saying that while she was "now trying to take courage to see [herself] in a new environment from a different perspective", she would remain "Girls' Generation's Sunny".

In September of 2025, Hyoyeon announced on her YouTube channel that she, Sooyoung and Yuri would finally be releasing a song as "HyoRiSoo", which was announced to be titled "Skibidi", on August 31, 2026..

In July of 2026 Yuri announced that she had made the decision to leave SM after 19 years (although she would continue participating in future Girls' Generation activities), leaving Taeyeon, Hyoyeon and Yoona as the sole members still signed under SM Entertainment.

Not to be confused with the ruling party of the Republika Srpska!^note Who share the abbreviation of SNSD

Tropes related to SNSD:

• Animate Inanimate Object: The video for Gee! has them portray a display of clothing store mannequins that come to life after closing time to adore the store clerk from afar.
• Call-Back: "Forever 1," released on their 15th anniversary, contains an interpolation of their first single "Into The New World" during the bridge.
• Chronological Album Title: Their Japanese albums.
  1. Girls' Generation
  2. Girls' Generation II: Girls & Peace
• Cliffhanger: At the end of the "Oh!" music video, the girls return home to find that their apartment has been ransacked by their evil counterparts. The second part of the story is in the "Run Devil Run" music video.
• Costume Porn: The outfits worn in the promotional material for "The Boys" are extremely elaborate. Basically every member has something (most prominently their dresses) adorned with copious amounts of frills, lace, glitter, and other extravagant garnishments. The music video, while toned down for the performance scenes, doesn't miss out on the extravagance, either; Sunny's fur hoodie and Hyoyeon's glittery shoulder embellishments are especially apparent examples.
• Dark Is Evil: The Black SoShi, SNSD's evil parallel-universe counterparts that appear in the videos for "Oh!" and "Run Devil Run", who are decked out in black.
• Design Student's Orgasm:
  • The video for Visual Dreams has the girls green-screened over lots of artsy, abstract flourishes.
  • The design philosophy for TaeTiSeo's Twinkle mini-album was maximalism through and through; the album cover is the three elaborately-dressed members coming out of Tiffany's head, backdropped by a barrage of hand-drawn natural and floral imagery. The inclusions follow similar theming.
• Distaff Counterpart: Originally Girls' Generation was going to called "Super Girls", based off their label mates Super Junior, and were marketed as a female answer to Super Junior early into debut.
• The End... Or Is It?: Although the "Run Devil Run" music video (which is a continuation of the "Oh!" video) involves the Black SoShi being defeated (by Yuri unplugging the computer monitor that they came from), the video ends with the monitor being tapped, displaying the Black SoShi.
• Epic Instrumental Opener: The music video for The Boys has an instrumental piece at the beginning of the video, running for about a minute before the song part starts.
• Evil Counterpart: The Black SoShi, their dark-clad selves in the "Oh!" video and the story version of the "Run Devil Run" video, are meant to be this. However, it's mostly Felony Misdemeanors - for all the attention they drummed up, they do little more than trash the apartment belonging to the girls' cheerleader personas in "Oh!", and whatever damage they do is fixed in a Fast-Forward Gag.
• Fanservice: All the time:
  • The costumes Hyoyeon wore during her appearances on Dancing with the Stars.
  • Interestingly, their midriff-baring costumes are mostly associated with their more cutesy acts like Gee◊ and Oh!◊ rather than their Hotter and Sexier performances like in Run Devil Run.
• Genre Mashup: "I Got a Boy" not only combines the group signature electropop sounds, but also mixed progressive pop, electro hop, boogie rock, Dutch house, EDM trap, and dubstep.
• Genre Roulette: They've recorded songs in various genres throughout the years, but the Lion Heart album alone has doo-wop, hip hop, bossa nova, quiet storm, and new jack swing among the standard pop fare.
• Girl Group: One of the most notable Korean examples, and easily the most popular throughout their heyday.
• God in Human Form: Taeyeon and Hyoyeon's solo works have them as incarnations of Artemis and Arachne, respectively.
• Gratuitous English:
  • Most of their album-leading singles have at least a couple of English words peppered here and there; sometimes it works, and sometimes it doesn't. Perhaps the worst offender would have to be Genie, with the line "I'm Genie for your wish/dream/world" being repeated in the chorus. This was unfortunately still not corrected in the Japanese Translated Cover Version.
  • Mostly averted with their single "The Boys". The Korean version has the typical English sprinkled in with the girls rapping. Then there's an English version. The English itself is quite impressive, when you look at the lines individually anyway. The song as whole doesn't actually make sense.
• Hotter and Sexier:
  • Run Devil Run kicked off a change in style that saw the girls gradually become more and more like this in most of their succeeding releases, until it came to a head during...
  • Their 1st Japan Arena Tour. Honorable mentions go to Yoona's "pole dancing" and Sooyoung's "lap dance" intro for her performance of "Sway" (and the performance itself), but the cake has to go to Taeyeon and Tiffany's absolutely Stripperiffic outfits in their performance of Lady Marmalade.
  • Their concept photos◊ for the Mr. Taxi repackage album.
  • Their Japanese single "Flower Power" contained their first overtly "sexual" line: "Do you wanna be my lover?" and has them wearing◊ leather-esque outfits that have been described as "bondage-influenced".
  • Seohyun, who was usually a little more conservative than her fellow members even in sexier concepts, jumped headfirst into this territory with her teaser◊ pics◊ from their fourth album, I Got a Boy. Then there's her infamous split◊ during the music video for "You Think", which surprised everyone.
• Internal Homage: "Forever 1" references the opening of "Into the New World" during the bridge.
• Just the Introduction to the Opposites: The "Oh!" music video shows the girl's locker room having windows so they can gawk at the hunky football players passing by, instead of the other way around.
• Kiddie Angst:
  • "Oh!" is about a girl who insists to her beloved that she's grown, and wants to stop being treated like his little sister.
  • The chief line of "Girls' Generation" is "don't make fun of me because I'm young". The lyrics itself center on the narrator suddenly getting a confession from a boy who'd previously made fun of her for her youth.
• Living Mannequin: The members are presented as mannequins in a window display in "Gee". After closing, they come to life to do as they please. They all have a crush on the window dresser. At dawn, they leave the store and the window dresser finds no trace of them but a lip print on his "employee of the month" photo.
• Kids Rock: A part of the song "My Child" was sung by a children's choir. However, it was revealed that the members of said "children's choir" were SNSD themselves.
• Lyrical Cold Open: "I Got A Boy" begins with Sooyoung shouting "A-yo, GG!", before the instrumental comes in.
• Lyrical Dissonance: "I Got A Boy" has a hip-hop/dance beat that would usually call for "harder" lyrics, but the actual content is glorified girl talk not too different from their other Silly Love Songs.
• Mars and Venus Gender Contrast: The lyrics of "Boys & Girls" center around boys and girls not being able to understand each other's feelings, sung from the perspective of a woman fussing over a man who keeps his true feelings secret. At one point, Mars and Venus contrasts are invoked directly.
  You're talking like you came from Mars
  (I think you came from Venus)
• Merchandise-Driven:
  • Their single "Chocolate Love" is a promotion for the LG Cyon Chocolate Phone. There's also their other CFs for water coolers, the LG Cookie and various other items.
  • The single Visual Dreams was made in promotion of Intel.
• New Sound Album: Their 2011 Self-Titled Album (not to be confused with the 2007 release of the same name) turned out to be this. Aside from the songs being recorded in Japanese, the album strays from the bubblegum dance-pop style common in previous releases and instead, has a generally more pronounced electronic and Synth-Pop sound.
• Not Quite Dead: After Black SoShi is defeated when Yuri unplugs them, the girls start cleaning up their ransacked apartment, only for someone to tap on the computer, which brings up a screen showing Black SoShi.
• Out-of-Genre Experience:
  • Their "Girls' Generation" cover is shifting more towards pop rock.
  • "Catch Me If You Can" is a straightforward EDM song, complete with synth progressions and a drop.
  • "I Got a Boy"'s first part is already extremely Genre-Busting (pop, dance, drum & bass, hard rock)...then the beat drops.
  • Taeyeon's solo song "Devil's Cry" is heavy metal complete with Incredibly Long Notes bordering on Metal Screams. And if you think that's crazy, try hearing it live.
• Performance Video: Practically all of the videos to their album-leading singles feature cuts of the girls in full costume, performing the steps to their given song on a soundstage. On some singles, they digitally release videos composed solely of them performing the dance without any interruptions.
• Pistol Pose: The promotional posters for "Hoot" feature the girls posing sleekly with guns, whether it be holding them up, down, or straight to the camera. Seohyun's poster is the only one not to feature a gun; instead, she holds a bow and arrow.
• Product Placement:
  • The start of the "I Got a Boy" video features a random shot of GiRL De Provence Perfume. The members can also be seen wearing Casio Baby G watches, which they were models for at the time.
  • The girls are seen eating a box of ''Mr. Pizza'' pizza, the logo prominently shown, at the beginning of "Lion Heart."
• Protest Song: Their song "Into the New World" became one, when students at Ewha Women's University sang this song during a protest, while surrounded by riot police. The song is also popular at pride parades in Korea.
• Self-Titled Album: Their debut album is titled Girls' Generation.
• Shout-Out: During their Marchen Fantasy concert in December 2013, various members of the group paid tribute by performing various songs done by their Girl Group peers in the industry.
• Spy Catsuit: For their "Hoot" promotions, the girls often wore 60s-style PVC bodysuits to match with the James Bond pastiche spy theme.
• Solo Side Project: All members except for Sooyoung and Sunny have released at least one solo album.
• Song Style Shift: "I Got a Boy" begins as reggae-tinged hip-hop, but midway through the tempo speeds up and the electronic elements are pumped up a notch. During the bridge, it briefly returns to its original tempo before quickly returning to the faster beat.
• Stage Names: Tiffany for Stephanie Hwang (or Hwang Miyoung), Sunny for Lee Soonkyu (or Susan Lee), and Seohyun for Seo Juhyun could count as well.
• Stop and Go: In several songs, the music stops abruptly before someone orders it to continue.
  • "Genie": "DJ, put it back on." (Sometimes during live performances, Tiffany swaps out "DJ" for whatever city or venue they are performing in.)
  • "I Got a Boy": There's two, in fact:
    • Tiffany says, "Ayo, stop - let me put it down another way" before the first beat drop.
    • Jessica says, "Stop - let's bring it back to 1:40" after the musical interlude.
• Title Track:
  • The albums Gee, Genie, Oh!, Hoot, The Boys, Twinkle (by TaeTiSeo), and I Got A Boy are all named after their respective lead singles.
  • In another sense, they actually have a song called "Girls' Generation"—which was the lead single of their debut album, called Girls' Generation.
• Translated Cover Version:
  • Their first two forays into the J-Pop market were covers of the Korean songs "Genie" and "Gee". Partially averted in Mr. Taxi/Run Devil Run, with Mr. Taxi being an original song. Further averted in their 2011 Self-Titled Album; of the 8 tracks on the album which weren't released as singles, only the Japanese version of "Hoot!" is a cover.
  • "Talk Talk" from I Got a Boy was originally recorded in Korean in 2008, but got released after the Japanese cover version, "Boomerang", was released on the girls' second Japanese album in 2012.
• Tuxedo and Martini: Fitting with the "bond girl" concept the release took on, Siwon of Super Junior appears in the "Hoot" music video as a tuxedo-clad, handgun-brandishing spy.
• Unfinished Business: Jessica plays a ghost in labelmate SHINee's music video for "Sherlock", who can't pass on until the boys resolve the mystery behind her death. She can't talk, but can only leave behind clues to help them.