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BTS World Domination

BTS Signals a Changing of the Guards for Pop Music

by: sherwynphilip | 3:50 PM • 06 July 2020

It was bound to happen, and we all saw it coming: BTS Worldwide Domination.

For BTS, it was 7 years in the making, give or take the 2-3 years it took for all seven members of the band to train under Big Hit Entertainment before debuting in June of 2013. It was one small step at a time, fueled by an unwavering passion for music, and a message that would soon hold millions of people around the world by the heart.

One record, an unprecedented feat -- the very first Korean artist not from "the Big 3" (SM, YG & JYP) to win a daesang. And then another, and yet another, until there were in fact too many records to count that it became a challenge to even keep track of all of them.

Today, BTS has set yet another gargantuan record in Pop Music history. The boy group has just broken Adele's 5-year record on iTunes. And with it, the near impossible task for any unbeliever to refuse to recognize and acknowledge the power that BTS holds.

On July 5, 2020, BTS was poised to stamp their undeniable power on the worldwide charts when the group tied Adele for the song with the most #1's on iTunes at 102 countries each.

Today, July 6, 2020, BTS has just broken that record. "Black Swan," BTS' second single from their album Map of the Soul: 7, has charted #1 on iTunes in 103 countries, surpassing the all-time record previously held by "Hello,' which was the lead single from Adele's album titled "25," released in November of 2015.

BTS and Adele remain to be the only artists in music history to have a song each reach #1 on iTunes in over 100 countries. With BTS Taehyung's single "Sweet Night" now amassing #1 iTunes placements in 96 countries, and in the heels of that, BTS' MOTS 7 lead single "ON" with #1s in 91 countries, BTS is poised to further solidify their hold as the most dominant music artist on the face of the planet.

BTS has been breaking records left and right, thanks in part to their unbelievably dedicated fans called ARMYs. And some of these are records that have remained unbroken in the last 20 to 30 plus years before BTS came along.

Just recently, on June 19, 2020, for example, BTS made their way into the history books of Japan's Oricon Music Charts, when they became the only foreign artist since Michael Jackson to land a #1 album. When BTS' "Map of the Soul: 7" charted as the biggest selling album on Oricon's 2020 mid-year Album Chart, they replicated the great Michael Jackson's feat when his album "Thriller" topped the Japanese charts in 1984. It was a record that took 36 years to replicate.

It was only a year ago, on July 5, 2019, when BTS rewrote a 24-year old record at the Oricon Charts when their Japanese single "Lights" sold over a million copies, surpassing the record previously held by Celine Dion with her 1995 hit "To Love You More."

What's so noteworthy with these records, one might ask. Well, it's noteworthy because Japan is the second largest music market in the world, next only to the US (with the UK and Germany as the 3rd and 4th biggest music markets respectively).

On the Billboard Charts, BTS is the first group since The Beatles to earn three #1 albums in less than a year! This phenomenon last happened between Dec 1995 to Nov 1996, when the iconic British boy band released their archive tracks through the albums Anthology 1, Anthology 2, and Anthology 3. The Beatles' record spanned 11 months and a week. BTS broke that record in under 11 months, when their 'Map of the Soul: Persona' debuted at #1 on the Billboard Albums Chart in April of 2019, following the group's earlier #1 albums: 'Love Yourself: Tear' in June 2018, and 'Love Yourself: Answer' in September 2018.

On the homefront, the Guinness Book of World Record for the biggest-selling album in South Korea was Kim Gun-mo's 1995 release titled "Wrongful Meeting." No other Korean music artist in the last 24 years had come close to challenging that album's record of 3.3 million sales. And then came BTS' Map of the Soul: Persona, which has broken the record with sales of 3.4 million copies.

BTS has since broken their own record when their succeeding album 'Map of the Soul: 7' smashed the record books with certified sales of over 4.2 million copies, making it Koreas biggest selling album of all time. With MOTS 7's sales eclipsing the 4 million mark, BTS has thus become the first and only music artist in Gaon Music Chart history to receive a quadruple-million certification. As of this date, BTS is the first and only artist in Korean music history to surpass 20 million cummulative album sales on the Gaon Music Chart. And with MOTS 7, BTS now joins the ranks of Kim Gun-mo and Seo Taiji as the only artists on the Gaon Chart with the most million-selling albums, each having six.

BTS World Domination? Today, the 7 boys from humble beginnings have just made that phrase unmistakable, undisputable and unequivocal.

Congratulations, BTS. ARMYs are so, so proud of you.

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'Black Swan' iTunes chart: @btsworldwider BTS video edit: @vmjnt

Photo collages: @sherwynphilip