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NEW YORK, NEW YORK – FEBRUARY 21: (LR) Jimin, Jungkook, RM, J-Hope, V, Jin and SUGA from K-pop … [+]
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The Grammys today unveiled their 2021 nominees, and while the full roster contained many of the usual twists and missteps, it also contained some incredible news for BTS ARMY: the South Korean pop septet had won his first ever nomination for the BTS ARMY. Grammy Awards, nodding for best duo / group pop performance with their top single “Dynamite”.
In case you weren’t on Twitter this afternoon, here’s the general sentiment:
In three years, BTS has gone from being the first Korean presenter at the Grammys, to the first Korean performer, to the first Korean group nominated in a major category. It’s fitting that BTS received their first Grammy nomination for “Dynamite,” their first No. 1 hit on the Billboard Hot 100, and their first song performed entirely in English. Contagious disco-pop anthem broke YouTube audience records, surpassed BillboardDigital Song Sales Chart for months and has already sold over 2 million units in the United States. The song catapulted the world’s biggest band to the next level of global stardom and shattered the ceiling of what an all-Korean band could achieve in the United States.
Depending on who you ask, the success of “Dynamite” is also a double-edged sword. While the song’s success is astounding, it also reinforces the Western music industry’s resistance to progress and the refusal to embrace artists who don’t fit a specific mold – i.e. white. Example: In their 62-year history, the Grammys have awarded Album of the Year to only 10 black artists, while frequently awarding the highest accolades to mediocre work by white artists. and relegating artists of color to gender-specific categories. These decisions are culturally disconnected at best, racist and xenophobic at worst – and they explain why it took an all-English-designed radio-pop smash for BTS to earn its first Grammy nomination.
It’s not particularly controversial to say that “Dynamite” lacks the musical undertone and lyrical introspection of BTS’s best songs. Its lyrics are algorithmically designed, and the song itself is a linear nu-disco bop optimized for TikTok videos and sweaty clubs, despite the coronavirus pandemic. Some fans lamented that “Dynamite” had reached a level of success that eluded old BTS mini-epics such as “Black Swan” and “ON”; these complaints imply that “Dynamite” lacks integrity or is directed at Western listeners. But it’s important to frame “Dynamite” not as a song that BTS had play in English to be successful in the US, but as a song selected perform in English to demolish all barriers in the Western music industry.
Assigning “Dynamite” to a simple ploy to earn a No.1 hit undoes the years of meticulous career planning and artistic growth that BTS has gone through to reach this point. It also hugely underestimates how difficult (and impressive) it is for a Korean band to score a No.1 hit on the Hot 100, whether or not it is performed in English. Over the past seven years, BTS has grown from a non-entity in the United States to the largest group in the world, selling stadiums across the globe and racking up a slew of # 1 albums and Top singles. 10. With each release, BTS grew in the US and overseas: the tours kept getting bigger, the albums still selling more than their predecessors, and the videos kept racking up more views.
Earlier this year, BTS reached # 4 on the Hot 100 with “ON,” a Korean-language track that hardly ever aired but still skyrocketed thanks to its strong digital sales. It marked a career high at the time, surpassing the Halsey 2019 ‘Boy with Luv’ collaboration, which peaked at No.8. By sheer force of will, BTS ARMY pushed the group to unprecedented heights on the Hot 100; If BTS followed the rules of the Western music industry just once, they could harness that momentum to cross the last frontier of pop superstar.
That’s what they did – but only after years of honing their craft, mapping their careers, and growing their fan base. If BTS had released “Dynamite” as a blatant board capture before they were ready, all of the streaming games and download sprees around the world wouldn’t have earned them a # 1 hit. Instead, they spent years conquering the music industry and strategically ditched song to help them overcome the final hurdle. When they were finally ready to play, they beat all their peers. Seems familiar?
Looking back, a # 1 hit on the Hot 100 wasn’t actually the last hurdle. BTS made history once again with its Grammy nomination “Dynamite”; it remains to be seen if they will do it again in January by winning. In the meantime, BTS has already expressed bigger ambitions and achieved arguably more impressive feats than “Dynamite”. Last month, they scored their second consecutive No.1 hit on the Hot 100 – and their first featuring Korean lyrics – with the remix of Jawsh685 and Jason Derulo’s “Savage Love (Laxed – Siren Beat)” and their all-new album BE could spawn the No. 1 group’s first solo hit in Korean (while also becoming their No. 1 fifth album in the US).
BTS used “Dynamite” as a Trojan horse to fully conquer the Western music industry, and their Grammy nomination had been brewing for years. Ultimately, Grammy nominations are a vanity metric for a band as incredibly successful as BTS, and the Recording Academy has made many glaring mistakes again with this year’s nominees, including the bewildering shutout of The Weeknd and the exclusion of the universally adored Fiona Apple. Collect the bolt cutters in the Album of the Year category. But BTS ARMY can take comfort in the fact that for a year, in one category, the Recording Academy made the right decision. Better late than never.
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