Adele Roberts, who hosts BBC Radio 1’s Early Breakfast Show, thrilled UK K-pop followers and BTS Army members on 2 October 2017 when she played BTS for the first time on the BBC as part of a Best New Pop feature. That track, DNA, along with Mic Drop, have featured several times on the BBC since then.
Roberts has followed up that initial foray into K-pop with a half-hour video documentary on the K-pop industry which includes time spent with BTS themselves. The fun and informative piece landed on the BBC website two days ago. (Available for the next 12 months – until 19 January 2019). From the BBC website:
Adele Roberts tracks the rise of Korean Pop, and meets BTS, the biggest band in the scene
Adele Roberts tracks the rise of Korean Pop – the lifestyle, the fashion and the fans – and meets BTS, the biggest band in the scene. Is K-Pop about to take the world by storm?
Adele investigates the secrets behind the genre, delving in to the lifestyle, the fashion, and looking at the fans and the politics that make up the scene…before meeting the K-Pop band who are taking the world by storm. BTS are the first Korean group to break into the US Top 30 and the UK Top 50 charts. So how is a music genre from a country with a different language, different culture and one of the world’s most heavily militarised borders, becoming so successful around the world?
I love the Union Jack socks Roberts gives the band members as a gift.
It should be remembered, in passing, that BTS is not in fact the first Korean band to make it into the US top 30: The Kim Sisters beat them to it by 55 years, reaching no. 7 with their version of The Coasters’ Charlie Brown in 1962 (thanks to 앤서방 for the detail).
Anyway, here’s hoping that BTS makes it to the UK soon, as they say they want to.
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