BTS nominated for American Music Awards
SEOUL: Boy band Bangtan Boys, also known as BTS, has added another feather in their cap. The boys have become the first Korean act to be nominated for the annual American Music Awards.
The AMAs announced the nominees for this year’s awards on Wednesday.
BTS were nominated in the Favorite Social Artist category along with famous names like Ariana Grande, Cardi B, Demi Lovato and Shawn Mendes.
BTS performed at the awards show last year, although they were not included on the nominee list.
They are believed to have a strong chance of winning an award, as they won the Top Social Artist award at two consecutive Billboard Music Awards in 2017 and 2018.
BTS have seen a rapid rise to global pop stardom over the last couple of years.
The music awards will take place at the Microsoft Theater in Los Angeles on Oct. 9.
Meanwhile, on Wednesday evening, RM, Jimin, Suga, Jungkook, V and Jin slay America’s Got Talent semi-finals with an energetic and colourful performance of their latest single IDOL, after AGT host Tyra Banks begged the band to come on the show.
All suited and booted, BTS totally slayed their performance as per usual, unleashing their slick vocals and dancing in front of colourful visuals from the IDOL video.
For the end of the performance, the seven-piece group were joined on stage by a huge crowd of dancers to carry out the choreography that has everyone doing the #IDOLCHALLENGE.
Unsurprisingly, the crowd went wild, with AGT judge Howie Mandel declaring: ‘I’m the BTS army.’
Japanese single album
Fellow judge Heidi Klum was lucky enough to film video selfie with the boys, tweeting: ‘Look who I’m here with – I’m here with BTS! Very exciting!’; while Victoria’s Secret model Lily Alridge tweeted before the performance: ‘Can’t wait.’
And while the devoted ARMY were loving the performance, BTS gained a bunch of new fans in the form of AGT viewers who were unfamiliar with them – and a whole load of people fell in love with Jimin, aka ‘the guy in the red suit’.
In other development, news sources claim BTS will be dropping a brand new Japanese single album in November. The album is said to contain the Japanese versions of “FAKE LOVE”, “Airplane pt.2”, and a brand new title track titled “Bird”.
To make the album even more special, Japanese producer Yasushi Akimoto has written the lyrics for “Bird”. He’s most famous for his work as the ‘global producer’ of AKB48.
The collaboration with Yasushi Akimoto came to be thanks to Bang Shi Hyuk‘s connection with the producer. They’ve been in contact for a while and finally decided to work together on “Bird”.
The new album is set to drop on Nov 7. Not much else has been released about the details of their new album.
Earlier this month also, BTS teamed with Nicki Minaj in their colourful music video for a different version of “Idol.” Love Yourself: Answer follows the history-making success of "Love Yourself: Tear", which also hit Number One earlier this year and was the first K-pop album to achieve this status.
BTS declined to do interviews in Los Angeles due to their crazy busy schedules, but did sit down with Grammy Museum director Scott Goldman for ‘A Conversation With BTS’.