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Post by Admin on Nov 22, 2020 0:30:19 GMT
BTS grapple with the COVID-19 pandemic taking away live concerts, especially their own Map of the Soul world tour, in the "Life Goes On" music video, released Friday (Nov. 20) along with the group's latest album BE. Jungkook, the youngest member of BTS at age 23, directed the nearly four-minute sentimental visual, which brings the ARMY along their favorites' reflective journey about how the world around them has evolved. V peers out the window while driving in their native South Korea and longingly stares at the Seoul Olympic Stadium, which would've been the first stop for their Map of the Soul world tour in April. Like most people coming up with indoor quarantine activities, V and his bandmates throw themselves a pajama party replete with pizza, video games and movies while the cozy alt-pop jam surrounds them. But it doesn't compare to the thrill of being onstage again, where they ultimately envision themselves sitting in a semi-circle with stage lights shining down on them for the black-and-white closing scene. "The emotion I wanted to express is the sadness and the longing that was felt because the tour was canceled due to COVID-19 and because we couldn’t see ARMY much,” Jungkook said at a global press conference for their new album BE. "It’s amazing that the video I took and worked hard on is released as a music video." He's directed and edited plenty of short clips as part of their Golden Closet Film (G.C.F.) travel vlog series that show BTS all over the world. BTS rescheduled the rest of their Map of the Soul world tour due to COVID back in April. The international jaunt was originally scheduled to begin on April 11 in Seoul before it was canceled in late February. Then in March, the K-pop boy band announced its North American tour dates, which were scheduled to kick off April 25 in Clara, Calif., would be postponed.
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Post by Admin on Nov 22, 2020 6:39:30 GMT
BTS, the seven-member, all-male South Korean pop supergroup, forged a new path to being an international musical sensation long before Lil Nas X crashed the Billboard charts off the basis of his TikTok following for “Old Town Road.” A worldwide contingent of primarily Gen Z fans propelled the band into superstardom through discovering them and sharing their music on social media, reducing the influence of the omnipresent gatekeepers, particularly in the United States, that previously determined older generations’ listening habits.
And now they’ve done it again, with a new album recorded entirely during a global pandemic.
RM, Jungkook, Jimin, V, SUGA, Jin and J-Hope officially formed BTS in 2012 — around the same time that One Direction began to redefine the “boy band” aesthetic away from its previous asexual tween-pop roots. BTS’ first Korean studio album (following three single albums or EPs in 2013 and 2014), “Dark & Wild,” dropped in 2014, and showcased a heavier rap sound on songs like “힙합성애지 (Hip Hop Phile)” that has carried through the rest of their later work; their first Japanese studio album dropped later that same year.
Despite never recording a song entirely in English until August of 2020, their 2015 shift in musical style away from straight hip hop into pop, combined with a world tour with stops in the United States and growing influence on YouTube, helped them break into the U.S. market; in 2016, their Korean compilation album cracked the Billboard top 200, and their second Japanese studio album received effusive praise from American critics after it debuted at number 26 on the same chart.
The following year, they attended the Billboard Music Awards, winning “Top Social Artist” because of their devoted American fan base (despite the fact that they had garnered little or no air play in the U.S.); their EP release in September 2017 debuted at number five on Billboard’s top 200 albums, while the two main singles off it, “DNA” and “Mic Drop Remix,” peaked on Billboard’s Hot 100 at 67 and 28, respectively. That garnered them a performance slot at the American Music Awards and on “Dick Clark’s New Year’s Rockin’ Eve” in 2017.
BTS has continued to rack up massive commercial success around the world and on American award show stages over the following three years; eventually their work included collaborations with Western artists like 2019’s “Boy With Luv (feat. Halsey)” and “Dream Glow (feat. Charli XCX).” But a 2019 Washington Post article critiqued the decision by MTV’s Video Music Awards to create a new category for “Best K-Pop” instead of including BTS and other increasingly popular South Korean groups in the regular categories with their English language peers.
And it wasn’t until 2020, when they released their catchy new disco-influenced single “Dynamite” — the band’s first song performed entirely in English — that they made number 1 on Billboard’s top 100.
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Post by Admin on Nov 30, 2020 21:20:25 GMT
BTS' "Life Goes On" soars onto the Billboard Hot 100 songs chart at No. 1.
The song is the South Korean septet's third Hot 100 No. 1, all in a span of three months, following "Dynamite" and Jawsh 685 and Jason Derulo's "Savage Love (Laxed – Siren Beat)," the latter of which led aided by BTS remixes.
"Life Goes On" is also the first Hot 100 No. 1 in the chart's 62-year history sung predominantly in Korean.
Plus, Shawn Mendes and Justin Bieber's "Monster" bounds onto the Hot 100 at No. 8.
The Hot 100 blends all-genre U.S. streaming (official audio and official video), radio airplay and sales data. All charts (dated Dec. 5) will update on Billboard.com tomorrow (Dec. 1). For all chart news, you can follow @billboard and @billboardcharts on both Twitter and Instagram.
Here's a deeper look at the coronation of "Life Goes On," released Nov. 20 on BigHit Entertainment/Columbia Records as part of BTS' new album Be, which opens at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 chart. The song is the 1,114th No. 1 in the Hot 100's history.
Streams, sales & airplay: "Life Goes On" drew 14.9 million U.S. streams and sold 150,000 in the week ending Nov. 26, according to Nielsen Music/MRC Data. It also earned 410,000 radio airplay audience impressions in the week ending Nov. 29 (with KJYO Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, the lone reporter to play it double-digit times: 13).
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Post by Admin on Dec 1, 2020 4:53:07 GMT
BTS joins Taylor Swift as the sole members of an exclusive Billboard chart club.
Dating to the launch of the Billboard 200 albums chart on March 24, 1956, and the Billboard Hot 100 songs chart dated Aug. 4, 1958, BTS and Swift are the only acts to have debuted a song and album at No. 1 on each ranking in the same week.
Swift first achieved the feat on the charts dated Aug. 8, 2020, after the release of her LP Folklore. The album debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 with 846,000 equivalent album units (still the biggest week of 2020), according to Nielsen Music/MRC Data, while the set's "Cardigan" blasted atop the Hot 100 with 34 million U.S. streams, 12.7 million in all-format radio airplay audience and 71,000 downloads sold.
The album earned Swift her seventh Billboard 200 No. 1, while "Cardigan" became her sixth Hot 100 leader.
Swift welcomes BTS into the elite guild with the South Korean septet's album Be and the release's track "Life Goes On." The album launches atop the Billboard 200 with 242,000 equivalent album units, while the song soars in at No. 1 on the Hot 100 with 14.9 million U.S. streams, 410,000 in radio reach and 150,000 sold (digital and physical singles combined).
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Post by Admin on Dec 11, 2020 3:25:19 GMT
It’s late October, and Suga is sitting on a couch strumming a guitar. His feet are bare, his long hair falling over his eyes. He noodles around, testing out chords and muttering softly to himself, silver hoop earrings glinting in the light. “I just started learning a few months ago,” he says. It’s an intimate moment, the kind you’d spend with a new crush in a college dorm room while they confess rock-star ambitions. But Suga is one-seventh of the Korean pop band BTS, which means I’m just one of millions of fans watching, savoring the moment. BTS isn’t just the biggest K-pop act on the charts. They’ve become the biggest band in the world—full stop. Between releasing multiple albums, breaking every type of record and appearing in these extemporaneous livestreams in 2020, BTS ascended to the zenith of pop stardom. And they did it in a year defined by setbacks, one in which the world hit pause and everyone struggled to maintain their connections. Other celebrities tried to leverage this year’s challenges; most failed. (Remember that star-studded “Imagine” video?) But BTS’s bonds to their international fan base, called ARMY, deepened amid the pandemic, a global racial reckoning and worldwide shutdowns. “There are times when I’m still taken aback by all the unimaginable things that are happening,” Suga tells TIME later. “But I ask myself, Who’s going to do this, if not us?” Today, K-pop is a multibillion-dollar business, but for decades the gatekeepers of the music world—the Western radio moguls, media outlets and number-crunchers—treated it as a novelty. BTS hits the expected high notes of traditional K-pop: sharp outfits, crisp choreography and dazzling videos. But they’ve matched that superstar shine with a surprising level of honesty about the hard work that goes into it. BTS meets the demands of Top 40’s authenticity era without sacrificing any of the gloss that’s made K-pop a cultural force. It doesn’t hurt that their songs are irresistible: polished confections that are dense with hooks and sit comfortably on any mainstream playlist. BTS is not the first Korean act to establish a secure foothold in the West, yet their outsize success today is indicative of a sea change in the inner workings of fandom and how music is consumed. From propelling their label to a $7.5 billion IPO valuation to inspiring fans to match their $1 million donation to Black Lives Matter, BTS is a case study in music-industry dominance through human connection. Once Suga masters the guitar, there won’t be much left for them to conquer. In an alternate universe where COVID-19 didn’t exist, BTS’s 2020 would likely have looked much like the years that came before. The group got its start in 2010, after K-pop mastermind and Big Hit Entertainment founder Bang Si-hyuk recruited RM, 26, from Seoul’s underground rap scene. He was soon joined by Jin, 28; Suga, 27; J-Hope, 26; Jimin, 25; V, 24; and Jung Kook, 23, selected for their dancing, rapping and singing talents. But unlike their peers, BTS had an antiestablishment streak, both in their activism and in the way they contributed to their songwriting and production—which was then rare in K-pop, although that’s started to change. In BTS’s debut 2013 single, “No More Dream,” they critiqued Korean social pressures, like the high expectations placed on schoolkids. They have been open about their own challenges with mental health and spoken publicly about their support for LGBTQ+ rights. (Same-sex marriage is still not legally recognized in South Korea.) And they’ve modeled a form of gentler, more neutral masculinity, whether dyeing their hair pastel shades or draping their arms lovingly over one another. All this has made them unique not just in K-pop but also in the global pop marketplace. In March, BTS was prepping for a global tour. Instead, they stayed in Seoul to wait out the pandemic. For the group, life didn’t feel too different: “We always spend 30 days a month together, 10 hours a day,” Jin says. But with their plans upended, they had to pivot. In August, BTS dropped an English-language single, “Dynamite,” that topped the charts in the U.S.—a first for an all-Korean act. With their latest album this year, Be, they’ve become the first band in history to debut a song and album at No. 1 on Billboard’s charts in the same week. “We never expected that we would release another album,” says RM. “Life is a trade-off.” Their triumphs this year weren’t just about the music. In October, they put on perhaps the biggest virtual ticketed show of all time, selling nearly a million tickets to the two-night event. Their management company went public in Korea, turning Bang into a billionaire and each of the members into millionaires, a rarity in an industry where the spoils often go to the distributors, not the creators. And they were finally rewarded with a Grammy nomination. On YouTube, where their Big Hit Labels is one of the top 10 most subscribed music accounts (with over 13 billion views by this year), their only real competition is themselves, says YouTube’s music-trends manager Kevin Meenan. The “Dynamite” video racked up 101 million views in under 24 hours, a first for the platform. “They’ve beaten all their own records,” he says. Not that the glory comes without drawbacks: namely, lack of free time. It’s nearing midnight in Seoul in late November, and BTS, sans Suga, who’s recovering from shoulder surgery, are fitting in another interview—this time, just with me. V, Jimin and J-Hope spontaneously burst into song as they discuss Jin’s upcoming birthday. “Love, love, love,” they harmonize, making good use of the Beatles’ chorus, turning to their bandmate and crossing their fingers in the Korean version of the heart symbol.
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