K-pop’s BTS become crossover music stars without selling out – and don’t plan on changing their identity
K-pop giants have become one of the biggest bands in the world without having to compromise – and don’t believe their fans would want them to ditch Korean lyrics, even as they play to ever bigger audiences
Clearly, some members of BTS were more interested in the puppies than others.
In a fifth-floor meeting room at the sleek InterContinental hotel in downtown Los Angeles, the seven young men who make up this South Korean boy band – RM, Suga, J-Hope, Jimin, V, Jin and Jungkook, each as handsome and stylishly dressed as the next – were gathered on a recent afternoon to shoot a video for Buzzfeed’s meant-to-go-viral “plays with puppies” series, in which an entertainer answers questions submitted by fans as he or she … well, you can put it together.
RM, the group’s unofficial frontman, knelt eagerly to scoop up one of the fuzzy creatures, while J-Hope showed his excitement by singing the chorus from Justin Bieber’s Baby, albeit with a key lyrical adjustment: “Puppy, puppy, puppy / Oh!”
Yet Suga, glued to his phone during a break near the end of a long day of interviews, appeared less smitten – at least until Buzzfeed’s cameras started rolling. Then he put down the phone and cranked up the enthusiasm required of an international pop group determined to break America.
Fortunately for Suga and his band mates, work like this is paying off. BTS’ latest album, Love Yourself: Tear, entered the Billboard albums 200 chart at No 1 – a first for an act from the busy K-pop scene brought to the attention of many American listeners when Psy’s song Gangnam Style took off on YouTube in 2012.