BTS (Hangul: 방탄소년단; RR: Bangtan Sonyeondan), also known as the Bangtan Boys, is a seven-member South Korean boy band formed by Big Hit Entertainment. The name subsequently became a backronym for Beyond the Scene in July 2017. On June 12, 2013, they performed the song “No More Dream” from their initial album 2 Cool 4 Skool [3] to commemorate their debut on June 13, 2013.[4] They won several New Artist of the Year awards for the track “No More Dream”, including at the 2013 Melon Music Awards and Golden Disc Awards and the 2014 Seoul Music Awards. The band continued to gain prominence with their subsequent albums Dark & Wild (2014), The Most Beautiful Moment in Life, Part 2 (2015) and The Most Beautiful Moment in Life: Young Forever (2016), with the latter two entering the U.S. Billboard 200.[5] The Most Beautiful Moment in Life: Young Forever went on to win the Album of the Year award at the 2016 Melon Music Awards.[6]
Their second full album, Wings (2016),[7] peaked at #26 on the Billboard 200, which marked the highest chart ranking for a K-pop album ever.[8] In South Korea, Wings became the best-selling album in the Gaon Album Chart history at the time.[9] It sold more than 1.5 million copies, making it BTS’s first “million seller”,[10] and the group was subsequently awarded Artist of the Year at the 2016 Mnet Asian Music Awards.[11] The group’s next release, Love Yourself: Her (2017),[12] debuted at #7 on the Billboard 200,[13] the highest rank for an Asian artist in history. The group also managed to debut on the Billboard Hot 100 for the first time with the album’s title track, “DNA”, which entered at #85 and peaked at #67.[14] Another track from the album, “Mic Drop”, was remixed by Steve Aoki with a feature by Desiigner and peaked at #28 on the Billboard Hot 100. Both tracks are certified Gold by the Recording Industry Association of America, a first for any Korean group and the second Korean act overall after PSY.[15] The album sold over 1.2 million copies on South Korea’s Gaon Album Chart in its first month, achieving the highest monthly album sales in the chart’s history and the highest on any Korean chart in 16 years, second to g.o.d’s Chapter 4 album in 2001.[16] BTS was awarded the Mnet Asian Music Award for Artist of the Year for the second year in a row in 2017.[17] Their third full album, Love Yourself: Tear (2018), debuted at #1 on the Billboard 200,[18] making them the only K-Pop act to achieve this feat so far. The album’s title track, “Fake Love”, is the group’s third song to reach Gold certification.[19] Love Yourself: Answer, the repackage of that album, also debuted at #1 on the Billboard 200.[20] The repackage sold over 1.9 million copies on Gaon Album Chart in August 2018, breaking the chart’s all-time monthly record once again.[21] On November 9, 2018 Love Yourself: Answer became the first Korean album to be certified Gold (500,000+ units), and BTS became the first Korean group to get a Platinum (1,000,000+ units) certification with the single “MIC Drop” in the United States.[22] They have sold over ten million albums in Korea, with five million being sold in 2018 alone.[23]
Known for their large social media presence, BTS were listed by Forbes as the most retweeted artist on Twitter in March 2016.[24] In May, Twitter launched its first ever K-pop emoji, featuring BTS.[25] In October, Billboard placed BTS #1 on their Social 50 chart, making them the first Korean group to top the chart.[26] To date they have spent 106 weeks at #1 on the Social 50 chart.[27] Also in 2016 they charted on YouTube’s Music Global Top 100: 17th on the video chart, 6th on the artist chart and 14th on the tracks chart.[28] In May 2017, they won the Top Social Artist Award at the Billboard Music Awards, becoming the first Korean group to win a BBMA.[29][30] On November 20, 2017, Guinness World Records revealed that BTS had earned a spot in their 2018 edition for “having the world’s most Twitter engagements for a music group”.[31] That December, they were revealed to be the most tweeted about celebrity in 2017, being “liked or retweeted over half a billion times (502 million)” worldwide.[32] Their chart success and popularity in numerous countries has prompted many Western media outlets to nickname them as ‘the biggest boyband in the world’.[33][34]
In 2018, BTS became #1 on the Forbes Korea Power Celebrity list, which ranks South Korea’s most powerful and influential celebrities, as well as #1 on Korea’s most loved artists of 2018 by a poll conducted by Gallup. They also became the youngest ever recipients to be awarded the Order of Cultural Merit from the South Korean government.[35][36][37] In September 2018, BTS gave a speech at the United Nations as ambassadors for UNICEF, as well as were featured on the cover of Time Magazine’s International cover, with Time referring to them as ‘Next Generation Leaders’.[38]