BTS is Back.
Are you ready?
In today’s newsletter:
Columnist Stella Solesbee considers the BTS comeback tour
K-Pop Heroes
Back from military service, BTS meets a changed pop culture landscape.
By Stella Solesbee
BTS is back and better than ever. That’s right. They’re back. The long-awaited comeback is here.
The five-year hiatus is now over after all of the bandmates completed their mandatory time in South Korea’s military. And fans are, to put it lightly, overjoyed, with the group’s new album, Arirang, just released and already making history on the Billboard charts.
A tour is coming very soon, a comeback that may challenge Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour, which grossed more than $2 billion dollars, as the new standard-setting worldwide phenomenon. The BTS tour will cover 82 dates and 34 cities; according to The Nightly, it will start in Seoul and include stops in Japan, Mexico, the US, Spain, France, the UK, Belgium, Canada, Colombia, Peru, Chile, Argentina, Brazil, Taiwan, Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, Hong Kong, Indonesia, the Philippines, and Australia.
To announce the comeback, Netflix dropped BTS: The Return, a 90-minute documentary film that tracked the band’s reunion and the process of recording their album in Los Angeles. And although there was nothing truly unique that stood out about this documentary, fans were just happy to see BTS reunited and spending time with one another again.
Although the group is becoming a pop sensation once again due to their old ARMY, as loyal BTS fans are known, they have a new generation of fans as well. This comes in part from the new awareness and appreciation for K-pop music from the iconic K-Pop Demon Hunters film. The movie set multiple records, bringing the genre to a huge audience; not only is it the most-watched animated film in Netflix’s history, but it also spawned the hit song “Golden,” written by HUNTR/X, which topped the Billboard Hot 100 and become the first K-pop song to win a Grammy.
Keeping all of this in mind, we can only wonder what new records BTS will set for the history books and if this will be the year for the group to regain its spot at the top of pop culture.
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