BTS’ Life Goes On hits No1 on US Billboard chart
TRAILBLAZING South Korean boy band BTS became the first group to have a foreign-language song enter the US Billboard chart at number one in the latest musical record to be re-written by the K-pop sensation.
Life Goes On, sung predominantly in Korean, topped the US Hot 100 in its debut week, Billboard said Monday, the first foreign-language song to do so in the chart’s 62-year history.
BTS – or Bangtan Sonyeondan, which translates as Bulletproof Boy Scouts – have become one of the biggest
acts in the world since they launched seven years ago – and made a billionaire of their managing agency’s founder.
Their latest single is also the first mainly-Korean song ever to top the chart. The band’s success marks the growing appeal of the South’s popular culture in the US, after the subtitled Korean movie Parasite won four Oscar awards in February, including Best Picture.
BTS’ earlier track Dynamite debuted atop the chart in September but it was sung entirely in English, making it radio-friendly in Anglophone countries.
Dynamite is still on the chart at number three and they have another five tracks in the Top 100.
Life Goes On is the band’s third number one song in three months, after Dynamite and a BTS remix of Savage Love by Jawsh 685 and Jason Derulo.
The band achieved the feat “more quickly than any musical act since The Beatles,” Billboard said.
The Beatles’I Want to Hold Your Hand, She Loves You and Can’t Buy Me Love all topped the chart in just over two months in 1964.