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The Korea Times

By Jung Hae-myoung
Many lifelong Beatles fans would reject the comparison, but for the millions of members of BTS’ Army fan club, the K-pop group are even bigger than the Fab Four, despite their decades-long legacy.
Many music industry observers say the achievements of the South Korean boy band have much in common with the cultural phenomenon of the 1960s dubbed the “British Invasion”, led by The Beatles.
Before BTS, various K-pop groups had attempted to crack the mainstream United States market for several years, starting with JYP Entertainment’s Wonder Girls and SM Entertainment’s Shinee, Girls’ Generation and Exo. Psy had a big hit with his witty 2012 Gangnam Style music video which made him a global star, albeit a short-lived one.

But BTS were a game changer and achieved what no other K-pop group had been able to do.
Their success is a result of their huge international following; while The Beatles created Beatlemania, BTS have the Army, a truly global fan club.
BTS members Jimin and Jungkook are most powerful K-pop brands
And it was social media that brought BTS closer to its fans – history might have turned out differently if Twitter had existed in the 1960s when The Beatles arrived in the States.
“BTS’ success [wouldn’t] have happened without the support of the Army,” the Korean idol columnist known as Mimyo wrote. “Army members are loosely connected, but as a group they are passionate because of their solidarity with their idols. And they all use the same online [social media] platform – Twitter.”
According to Next Big Sound, a New York-based company which provides online music analytics, BTS fans on Twitter greatly exceed the number of current Beatles followers, with 36.79 million tweets mentioning BTS compared to 23,331 mentioning The Beatles.
However, tweets alone can’t be used as a measure of an artist’s success. Popularity may be an important factor in assessing musicians’ cultural impact on other countries, but it’s equally important to see how a style of music percolates in other countries’ cultures.

In terms of accolades, BTS have a long way to go to be compared to The Beatles. The British band had 21 songs that topped the Billboard Chart, far outstripping BTS so far.
It should be noted, however, that The Beatles achieved this over their 10 active years as a group after starting out performing in small venues. The members of BTS had years of auditioning and training before making their debut in 2013, and the group’s time in the global music spotlight has so far been much shorter than that of The Beatles.
In a recent one-week period, songs by The Beatles were streamed 550,485,535 times compared to 1.42 million streams for BTS. While this shows BTS are bigger today, it also indicates The Beatles continue to enjoy enduring popularity despite not releasing any new music since breaking up in 1970.
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Another factor in BTS’ success is said to be their lyrics, which appeal to their global fans because they are based on personal experiences.
Unlike other K-pop groups, BTS started out as a hip-hop outfit. Rather than singing about love or relationships, BTS often address social issues in their lyrics, such as problems at school, individuality and even mental health.
“For a long time, K-pop groups did not offer much realism [like] BTS do. From 2009 to 2015, they sang about love, sadness, friendship and emotions. However, BTS have talked about the hardship and struggles in life that resonate with young people,” Tamar Herman, a Billboard columnist, says.

This is something BTS and The Beatles have in common. During the mid-1960s, The Beatles started to write more controversial and thought-provoking lyrics, singing about world peace and politics, and condemning the Vietnam war.
Now the hot topics have changed to unemployment, discrimination, failure and identity. The people of this century can relate to BTS’ lyrics, and even more so if they hear about the group’s own struggles and how they rose from the bottom to the top in the competitive world of show business.
However, the achievements of K-pop groups generally win more praise in South Korea than overseas.
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BTS have only won one award for their music – picking up top duo/group at this month’s Billboard Music Awards – compared to the plethora of Grammys and other accolades that The Beatles picked up over their decade in the spotlight.
BTS critics point to language barrier as another obstacle to their fame – something The Beatles didn’t have to deal with.
“[BTS frontman] RM can speak English … but as a group they are redundant in interviews. The language barrier is an important issue,” Herman says.

Overall, critics agree it is too early to say whether BTS can be The Beatles of the 21st century, or whether K-pop will be the next British Invasion.
“The audience at K-Con, a US K-pop concert, dramatically increased from 20,000 to 80,000 [visitors in one year] after BTS became famous in the States. The demographics of the audience is widely distributed, different in race, nationality and socio-economic class,” says Kim Young-dae, a music expert who has watched the rise and fall of K-pop while living in the US for a decade. “Even white middle-class children buy plane tickets to go to BTS concerts.”
“But the number of K-Con attendees increased because people went to see BTS, not because they love K-pop.”
Read the full story at the Korea Times.


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Korea Times

Are BTS the next Beatles? The K-pop kings are climbing the charts, but need to do more to be compared with the British legends

BTS is known to be one of the pioneers of making K-pop popular in the West. Photo: BTS Official Facebook 

Members of South Korean K-Pop group BTS attend a press conference to introduce their new album "Map of the Soul: Persona" in Seoul, South Korea, Wednesday, April 17, 2019. (Lee Jae-hee/Yonhap via AP)

BTS Concert as part of their Love Yourself World Tour. Photo: HANDOUT [FEATURES 2019]

NEW YORK, NY - APRIL 12: (EXCLUSIVE COVERAGE) V, Suga, RM, Jungkook, Jin, Jimin, J-Hope of BTS visit The Elvis Duran Z100 Morning Show at Z100 Studio on April 12, 2019 in New York City. Steven Ferdman/Getty Images/AFP == FOR NEWSPAPERS, INTERNET, TELCOS & TELEVISION USE ONLY ==

BTS: K-pop stardom gives us fear, pressure, but Army fans’ love gets us through

BTS’s newest album, “Map of the Soul: Persona”, has topped music charts in the US, UK and Japan.

Map of the Soul: Persona cover

Lifestyle

Entertainment


BTS should not be compared to The Beatles. The British band had 21 songs that topped the Billboard Chart, far outstripping BTS so far.
While The Beatles created Beatlemania, BTS have the Army, a truly global fan club



BTS have a long way to go to be compared to The Beatles. The British band had 21 songs that topped the Billboard Chart, far outstripping BTS so far. While The Beatles created Beatlemania, BTS have the Army, a truly global fan club.


Music

K-pop, Mandopop and other Asian pop

Fame and celebrity

Are BTS the next Beatles? The K-pop kings are climbing the charts, but need to do more to be compared with the British legends

BTS should not be compared to The Beatles. The British band had 21 songs that topped the Billboard Chart, far outstripping BTS so far. While The Beatles created Beatlemania, BTS have the Army, a truly global fan club

BTS should not be compared to The Beatles. The British band had 21 songs that topped the Billboard Chart, far outstripping BTS so far.

While The Beatles created Beatlemania, BTS have the Army, a truly global fan club