BTS: From Nobodies to Legends
BTS, known as Beyond the Scene in English and Bangtan Sonyadean in Korea, is one of the most popular bands in the world today. The members of BTS are RM (Kim Namjoon), Jin (Kim Seokjin), Suga (Min Yoongi), j-hope (Jung Hoseok), Jimin (Park Jimin), V (Kim Taehyung), and Jungkook (Jung Jungkook). Debuting seven years ago in a small company called Big Hit Entertainment, they were like most of the other k-pop groups, but their popularity grew due to their different styles of music and ability to utilize social media to communicate with their fans. Today, they are well known all around the world, being the first K-pop artists to sell the highest number of albums, charting the top of the Billboard Charts, and recently breaking Youtube music video views in 24 hours.
BTS debuted in 2013 with the song, “No More Dream,” and released an EP called 2 Cool 4 Skool, though it was received with a lot of negativity by the Korean Industry. BTS were barely able to perform on stage, being that they were in a small company and not popular. Their first full-length album, Dark & Wild released in 2014, led to a large growth in their fanbase and BTS began selling out their international tours. However, their label company was going through a financial crisis, making it harder for the boys to get enough resources to produce music. The band released “The Most Beautiful Moment in Life, Pt.1” and “The Most Beautiful Moment in Life, Pt.2” in mid-2015, which topped six international music charts, including Billboard’s World Albums chart. They became the first k-pop group to achieve such a feat and continued to impress with the release of their LP, Wings, in late 2016, becoming the first k-pop artists to have three albums in the Billboard World Album Charts. They received their first Artist of the Year recognition from MAMA, an award show in Korea, and after that, the whole world started to recognize the talents of BTS. Their presence grew so large in the US that they won the Top Social Artist Award at the 2017 Billboard Music Awards.
They continued their success by releasing their next trilogy: Love Yourself. Their fifth EP, Love Yourself: Her in late 2017 became the first K-pop album to debut in the Billboard 200’s Top Ten, entering the chart at number seven. They released their full-length album, Love Yourself: Tear and performed “Fake Love” at the Billboard Music Awards for the second time in a row and in mid-2018, repackaged both the Her and Tear albums into Love Yourself: Answer, concluding the trilogy. At the end of the year, they sold-out a global stadium tour and started their next trilogy of albums: Map of the Soul.
Map of the Soul: Persona mini-album was released in early 2019 with the title-track “Boy with Luv” climbing into the Top Ten of the Hot 100 and Billboard 200, becoming their third number one in a year. This year, they got to perform with Lil Nas X on the Grammy Awards stage with the song “Seoul Town Road” RM’s version. They released their fourth LP, Map of Soul: 7 with the title-track “ON,” and the album produced 4 million album sales in over a week. Last month, they released their first English Single Dynamite that broke the Youtube MV video record of 101 million views and debuted Number 1 on the 100 Hot Billboard Chart. They are indeed monster record breakers as ARMY works hard for every BTS comeback release.
BTS’ path to global fame hasn’t been an easy road. They started from the bottom in a small company and moved their way up as every album they have put out shows their growth as musicians and the hard work they put in each release. BTS have thanked ARMY for their continued support and love they have received, knowing they are the reason that they are successful. BigHit Entertainment last year made a revenue of 587.2 billion won ($507.9 million) which is no doubt thanks to BTS.
However, the fate of the band is unknown with the oldest member, Jin, being forced to enlist in the Korean military, which every Korean male must do after the age 30, at the end of 2021. No matter what happens to BTS, they have made their mark in the world as one of the biggest boy groups worldwide, demonstrating their growth as artists.
