Rainbow are a South Korean girl group formed in 2009 by DSP Media. The group is composed of seven members: Woori, Seungah, Jaekyung, Noeul, Yoonhye, Jisook and Hyunyoung. During late October and early November 2009, DSP Media released daily teasers in the form of pictures of Rainbow, and then a music video for “Gossip Girl” in November 2009. A week later, the five-song EP Gossip Girl was released.
In August 2010, Rainbow released the single “A”. Rainbow topped Recochoku’s weekly download rankings for the Japanese release of their “A” music video. In September 2011, Rainbow released their debut single in the Japanese market, “A”, and reached No. 3 on Oricon’s daily single chart, selling 10,141 copies. The single release included a Japanese remake of their debut single “Gossip Girl”, as well as an exclusive DVD. Rainbow made their Japanese TV debut on the show Sukkiri, performing “A”.
A second single, “Mach”, was released in October 2010. In December 2011, the group released their second Japanese single, a Japanese version of the song “Mach” and reached No. 9 on Oricon’s weekly chart.
In April 2011, Rainbow released their second EP, So Girls. One song from the EP, “To Me”, was released as a single. It would become their highest placed single, reaching no. 5 on the Gaon Music Chart.
In January 2012, DSP Media announced that a section of the group will be formed as a trio. On the same day, DSP drops a teaser image with revealing “Rainbow Pixie” as the trio’s name. A few days later another image revealed the members of the group as SeungAh, Jisook and Hyunyoung. The group released their debut song, “Hoi Hoi”, the following week and held their first performance on Show! Music Core.
A second subunit named Rainbow Blaxx, was formed in January 2014 consisting of Jaekyung, Woori, Seungah and Hyunyoung. Their special album, RB Blaxx, was released on January 20, 2014. The music video for the title track, “Cha Cha”, was directed by Digipedi and was the fourth-most viewed K-pop music video globally in January 2014. The music video, as well as the song’s choreography, drew controversy for being “too sexual”.
Rainbow’s third EP, Innocent, with the title track “Black Swan” were released in February 2015. Their fourth EP Prism and the music video for its title track “Whoo” was released in February 2016. They also held their commemorative showcase at the Yes24 Muv Hall in Seoul’s Mapo-gu, which was broadcast through the Naver V App on the same day as the album release. Rainbow held their first comeback stage with “Whoo” through SBS MTV’s The Show in February. In October 2016, it was confirmed that Rainbow would be disbanded in November as the member contracts were set to end.
