Red Velvet - How it all began (and how it continued).

Wendy, Irene, Seulgi and Joy - the latter was the only one not part of the “SM Rookies” - debuted on August 1, 2014 under the name Red Velvet with the single “ Happiness ”. The name “Red Velvet” stands for the duality of the group; “Red” represents the happy, lively energy of pop, while “Velvet” stands for their charming and sensual mood, which is mainly embodied by R&B. The concept of duality is evident in their albums, some of which clearly represent one of the two sides. For example, “The Red Summer” with the dancepop title song “ The Red Flavor ” or “The Velvet” with the midtempo R&B song “ One Of These Nights ” as the title track.

“Happiness” was the first debut song by a K-Pop girl group to make it into the “Billboard World Digital Song Charts” and even reached number 4 there. The music video was viewed over two million times on YouTube in the first 24 hours, but then due to controversial scenes that alluded to the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and the terrorist attack on September 11th. SM Entertainment apologized for the misunderstanding - the producer used a collage from an image source and thought nothing of it. Shortly after, a remastered version of the music video was uploaded.

In October, the digital single "Be Natural" was released, a remake of the original by S.E.S, for which Irene and Seulgi as SM Rookies released a performance video before their debut, as we mentioned above. The remake was recorded together with NCT's Taeyong, who was still an SM rookie at the time.