generasia:Featured article for 2018 week 45

BTS promoting "FAKE LOVE / Airplane pt. 2" (2018)

BTS

BTS (방탄소년단, 防弾少年团) (also known as Bulletproof Boy Scouts or Bangtan Boys) is a Korean pop/Hip-Hop 7-member boy group that debuted in 2013 under Big Hit Entertainment. Currently, the group has six albums that have ranked on the U.S. Billboard 200 chart, with two reaching the #1 spot. They are the first Korean act to achieve the feat as well as have songs certified Gold by the Recording Industry Association of America. The group has four million selling albums, having sold an estimated 9 million albums worldwide since their debut, with the album Love Yourself Gyeol 'Answer' currently holding the Gaon Album Chart all-time monthly record, the biggest selling Korean album by month in 16 years. BTS has also won several New Artist of the Year awards and multiple daesang awards for Album of the Year and Artist of the Year.

In March 2016, BTS were listed by Forbes as the most retweeted artist on Twitter. In October, Billboard placed BTS #1 on their Social 50 chart, making them the first Korean group to top the chart, where they have spent 94 weeks at #1 to date. They also charted on YouTube's Music Global Top 100 that year: 17th on the video chart, 6th on the artist chart and 14th on the tracks chart. In May 2017, they won the Top Social Artist Award at the Billboard Music Awards, becoming the first Korean group to win a BBMA. In June 2017, Time magazine named the group one of the 25 most influential people on the internet. On November 20, 2017, BTS earned a spot in the 2018 edition of the Guinness World Records for "having the world's most Twitter engagements for a music group". That December, they were revealed to be the most tweeted about celebrity in 2017, being "liked or retweeted over half a billion times (502 million)" worldwide. BTS is also #1 on the 2018 Forbes Korea Power Celebrity list.

Their ninth Japanese single, "FAKE LOVE / Airplane pt. 2", is released this week on November 7th.