London Korean Links

Covering things Korean in London and beyond since 2006

BTS tops the UK album charts

BTS is the first Korean band to top the UK album charts, according to the Official Charts Company. Their new EP, Map of The Soul: Persona, released on 12 April, came straight in at number 1, while its lead single Boy With Luv (ft Halsey) narrowly missed a top 10 entry, coming in at number 13.

Here’s what the Official Charts homepage looked like this morning:

BTS Official Album Charts

While LKL has been taking the ideas behind BTS’s universe seriously for some time (see Colette Balmain’s series of articles), the BBC is now taking notice, with an article explaining the Jungian concepts behind the latest album.

Although Boy with Luv missed out on a UK top 10 listing, it made news in another way. According to Youtube, the single clocked up the highest ever number of views in a 24-hour period (74.6 million) in the day following its release, and was the fastest music video to reach 100 million views. The previous 24-hour and 100 million record was set only a few days earlier by BLACKPINK’s Kill this Love. According to Forbes,

K-pop is thoroughly dominating YouTube’s 24-hour debut list. Now, Korean acts take up seven of the top 10 spots. BTS has three songs on the chart: “Boy With Luv,” “Fake Love” and “IDOL.” Their songs are flanked by BLACKPINK (“Kill This Love” and “DDU-DU DDU-DU”), Psy (“Gentleman”) and TWICE (“Yes or Yes”).

https://twitter.com/youtubemusic/status/1117219875179466752

According to the Official Charts Company, Map of The Soul is BTS’s fourth collection to chart in the UK Top 40, following their three part Love Yourself album series, and it is the first Korean album to make it into the UK top 10 chart. Last year’s track Idol was the first Korean single to make it into the top 40 singles chart.

Across the pond, Map of the Soul: Persona also came straight in at the top of the Billboard 200 album list, and BTS thus became the first band since the Beatles to get three albums to the top of the charts in the space of a 12 month period – the previous #1s being Love Yourself: Tear (2 June 2018) and Love Yourself: Answer (8 September 2018)

BLACKPINK will be playing Wembley Arena later this month, while BTS have back-to-back shows in Wembley Stadium at the beginning of June.

Links:

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.