NRG

NRG, acronym for New Radiancy Group (Hangul: 엔알지), was a South Korean pop music group. Originally a five-member boy band consisting of Chun Myung-hoon, Lee Sung-jin, Noh Yoo-min, Moon Sung-hoon, and Kim Hwan-sung, NRG debuted in 1997 to instant success with their first two albums New Radiancy Group and Race. After members Myunghoon and Sungjin departed the group in 1999, the group released their third album, NRG 003, which struggled in popularity after the group's lineup changes. Member Hwansung died on June 15, 2000, which led Myunghoon and Sungjin to return to the group, and to the creation of the group's 4th album Sorrow in 2001. In 2003 and 2004, the group was propelled into the mainstream after the release of their albums Hit Song and New Radiancy 6 Group, which both contained high charting lead singles that led to the group securing their first music show wins and performing at Olympic related events. After the departure of member Moon Sunghoon in October of 2005, the group released their seventh album, One of Five: Apart & Together before unofficially disbanding in 2006. In 2017 they regrouped as a trio to celebrate the 20th anniversary of their debut and released an extended play before splitting again in 2018 due to personal conflicts amongst the group. A new single "Never Going Back" was released in 2022, with Myunghoon referring to it as his "final single as NRG." NRG is considered to be the pioneers of dance pop in the K-pop industry and their repertoire has been described as "high energy dance music". Their songs notably sample elements of Eurobeat and electronic music. They are also the earliest known K-pop group to incorporate acrobatic stunts into their choreography. Today, NRG is widely credited as one of the pioneers of the Korean Wave (Korean Hallyu) that first swept through Asia in the late 1990s, with the group reported to have sold over 200,000 albums in the country by 2001.