This is much more prominent among Ifans admittedly because GsD have a pretty small international fandom, but I so often see GsD's name being left out when discussing the top girl groups (like top 10 for example) of 2nd gen or top girl groups year by year. I'm not saying they were SNSD or WG or 2NE1's level, but to discuss 4Minute or AOA or Apink without including GsD or thinking that GsD is below those groups is criminal. They have:
- 5 songs that sold 1M+ digitals (including one that hit 2M+) (for context, that's more than AOA and EXID, and only two less than miss A, who had the huge popularity of Suzy propping up their digitals)
- Hyeri is literally one of the most well-known idols in Korea + a huge CF queen (in Korea, Reply 1988 is literally one of the biggest KDrama of the past decade at least). The rest of their members are actually all individually known to certain levels among the Korean GP, literally one of the few girl groups ever to have this (no, just having smash hits don't mean all your members are known among the GP. As an example, I'm 100% sure that most Americans can not name a member of Maroon 5 outside of Adam Levine and Maroon 5 has been at the top since the early 2000s).
- "Something" was so iconic that SM had a bunch of their boy idols covered it at the 2014's SM Town Concert.
I could name more but it'll get too long. Most Ifans for some reason assumed GsD was some sort of nugu groups before Expectations or that even after Expectations they were just mid-tier finally (hell, some of them don't even know about Expectations and only know Something), but they actually had 2 1M+ digitals before Expectations, so they were solidly mid-tiered in Korea and it's just Expectations that kickstarted them to the top 5 GGs in Korea. I don't know how many people know this, but circa 2013/2014 it was generally thought that it would be a 3-way battle between them, Apink, and Sistar for the GG throne after SNSD and 2NE1 leave/go on a hiatus. That didn't happen due to a multitude of reasons, but that doesn't take away the fact that at their peak, they were one of the biggest and most-recognizable girl groups in South Korea. I would argue even that for second gen, based on peak/peak length, popularity, sales, and career length, they can be included for top 10 GGs.
