BTS is Time’s entertainer of the year for 2020

Time magazine picked Korean boy group BTS as their 2020 entertainer of year.

Time, which made the announcement late Thursday, December 10, pointed out what fans and even casual listeners have known all along: “BTS isn’t just the biggest K-pop act on the charts. They’ve become the biggest band in the world – full stop.”

The year 2020 has been a huge year for the septet.

Their first all-English song, “Dynamite,” topped the Billboard charts – the first song by a Korean group to achieve the feat. Their next single, “Life Goes On,” achieved the same feat, this time as the first mainly-Korean song to top the charts. Be, their latest album, topped the charts that same week.

It was in 2020, too, that BTS got their first Grammy nomination for “Dynamite.”

“Today, K-pop is a multibillion-dollar business, but for decades the gatekeepers of the music world – the Western radio moguls, media outlets, and number-crunchers – treated it as a novelty. BTS hits the expected high notes of traditional K-pop: sharp outfits, crisp choreography, and dazzling videos. But they’ve matched that superstar shine with a surprising level of honesty about the hard work that goes into it,” read their Time profile.

Photo courtesy of Time magazine

“BTS meets the demands of Top 40’s authenticity era without sacrificing any of the gloss that’s made K-pop a cultural force. It doesn’t hurt that their songs are irresistible: polished confections that are dense with hooks and sit comfortably on any mainstream playlist,” the profile added.

BTS’s big year wasn’t just about their music, Time pointed out.

In October, they staged “perhaps the biggest virtual ticketed show of all time” during a two-night event. Big Hit, which manages BTS, went public in South Korea this year, “turning Bang into a billionaire and each of the members into millionaires, a rarity in an industry where the spoils often go to the distributors, not the creators,” noted Time.

Big Hit is also among the most subscribed music accounts on YouTube, with BTS music videos breaking records set previously by other BTS music videos.

BTS debuted in 2013 and is composed of RM, Jin, V, Suga, J-Hope, Jimin, and Jungkook. – Rappler.com