The world is crumbling, so here's a nice video of BTS rocking out to Dolly Parton at the Grammys
Aux Features UnknownThe Grammy Awards tend to be an annual amalgam of moments ranging from genuinely cool victories (Cardi B, anyone?) to reminders of just how off base the Recording Academy and show producers can be. If we’re lucky, we’re gifted with one unifying nugget of joy that is just objectively good, and this year, that moment was encapsulated by the sight of the Korean pop megastars BTS jamming out to Dolly Parton. So yes, there is still good left to experience in this world.
BTS made its Grammys debut last night, which included a presenting gig for Best R&B Album. And when its members weren’t handing off trophies, they were busy being the kind of fun supporters that have been missing from award shows for a few years. During her own tribute, Dolly Parton joined Miley Cyrus for a duet rendition of “Jolene;” mid-performance, the camera panned to the men as they joyfully sang along, which is exactly what you’re supposed to do whenever “Jolene” plays anywhere in your vicinity.
They could also be seen thoroughly enjoying H.E.R.’s performance, of whom they’ve been vocal fans in the past. H.E.R. was quick to let everyone know that the feeling was mutual on Twitter, just ahead of the show.
The group has managed to craft a barrier-breaking career, and last night was no different: they became the first K-pop group to ever present at the Grammys. Maybe next year will bring us a gilded shot of Dolly shoulder-bopping to a BTS song, if we’re even remotely fortunate enough.
[Via Billboard]
53 Comments
I always thought BTS was Korean for Burning “Shit” Sensation.
That would be BSS my friend. Nice try, though
My korean buddies used to call it BTS after bad food. Burning Tongg Sensation or something like that. I don’t remember how to pronounce the middle word.
I couldn’t edit on time. I figured it out, Burning Thongomong Sensation.
Were they kidnapped from the set of “The Whitest Kids U Know”?American imperialism, still bearing fruit after all these years.
Um they’re not white. I don’t know what this joke means….
Weird, weird little comment. Firstly American imperialism is still happening around the world. South Korea itself is still suffering from American occupation in many ways. Secondly, what does this have to do with a kpop group jamming out to dolly parton?
… Are you seriously attributing the success of a group of young Korean men who write & produce their own music and have risen from complete obscurity (even within their own country) to massive international fame over the last 5 years through the grassroots power of their steadily growing fanbase to ‘American Imperialism’?
You’ll find it very different from the whitest kids you know. They are so very, very Korean. That clean cut, white kid blah you see is actually something way more beautiful. In Korean and other places, respecting others is Paramount, especially those who are older or have seniority in the field you work in. Also BTS is just plain kind. They are warm and sincere and have a humility and gratitude that comes from an awareness of the community and team. They see and understand the hard work of the makeup artist, Camera operators, managers, press, fans just everyone. They understand the hard work behind the show. They are just really lovely people who have struggled through many hardships including anxiety, depression, health problems, poverty, family strife, loss and much more and have worked to let it make the stronger and more compassionate and kinder. The Grammy’s were huge for them but they have attended around twenty award shows the last 12 months and sported tons of different looks. This is their most formal. You should look u some of their performances. They ruled the Asian award shows this year. I recommend Idol from the MMA’s (epic traditional Korean remix) and the Fake Love performance at the MAMA awards.
And their music geeks. They love all sorts of music. Like RM jamming out to Earth Wind and Fire’s September in a Vlive last year to V singing opera or chatting with 1940 crooners in the background of his to Jungkook rocking out to early Linkin Park in a Bangtan Bomb to J Hope grooving to Chance the Rapper before he won any Grammy’s, or Jungkook enjoying covering some choreo over some Christian rapper’s track.
Cardi B and BTS are not cool. Because that’s not what that word means.
Whatever its origins or specific meaning once where you have to be a special kind of pedantic to think it’s anything more than a slang term these days
“Cool” still means “Cool.” BTS might be the next-big-thing or of-the-moment. But cool is cool. And it’s never going to point to a prefabricated music corporation created to sell product.
Learn who your dismissing, other wise it shows your lacking.
I disagree because when I first became a bts fan back in 2013 they were like the alternative choice back then. They had a very tiny fanbase and were like the cooler choice of kpop compared to groups formulated by the big three companies. Labelling something as cool or uncool is entirely dependent on the individuals perceptions, not stone cold reality.
They really were one of the more shining points of the whole ceremony. The whole event had it’s ups and downs but they definitely raised the mood. Hoping for a performance next year, they’re a talented bunch of performers and would raise the roof of the whole venue for sure.
One of the things that captured my heart in the past is how BTS genuinely show kindness and respect to real artists. They value music so much that they appreciate performances that bless their eyes and ears. I wasn’t into kpop, I’m still not into it. But BTS’ music is different from what I thought it would be. Prejudice and stereotyping hindered me to check their music for so long. When I finally knew, I fell deeply in love with music and artistry once more. Poetic lyrics, their leader Namjoon might be one of the best lyricists of this generation. The members that write, compose and produce their own songs, top it off with their message and their genuine intention, gives music – more life and meaning. I’m glad I see passed beyond their good looks and great dancing. Because they are and their music is much more than that.
That’s really cute, and yeah I liked them well enough (my sis adores them and I like how they’re building bridges and defying expectations) but I really like them after they showed appreciation to Miss Parton <3
As if these K-pop singers (they certainly are not musicians) know who Dolly Parton is… Uh-huh, sure.
They write and produce their own songs, and in the video you can actively singing the song, so what have you got to be negative about? By the way, their lyrics are very inspirational so I’d recommend giving them a chance.
Okay, but heavy on the makeup boy bands…hmm… kinda for tween girls, right? I’m middle-aged.
fyi they only wear makeup under their eyes and moles ok.and they have naturall beautiful skin
So am I(42). And so is my husband(44). We’re both huge fans. A surprisingly large percentage of BTS’ fanbase is 35+. And only about 15% of the fandom are under 20.
Hold on, grandpa, there’s a call on the landline for you from the 70s. Something about glam rock?
You mean the 60s. Haha.
They really write and produce their own songs? Is that true? If so, I’m not impressed but I’ll give them credit. Because, like, nobody does that anymore.
Yeah, they do. They actually have this sort of insane super creative universe that they’ve built. They do really long and involved storylines and use a lot of literary and philosophical references. The last project they did was a four-part thing- one short film and three albums- dropped over the course of a year. They’re very weird/interesting in that they’re doing straight up pop but putting all this dense stuff into it. It’s why people get so crazy about them. They’re basically using the framework of K-pop to make art and kinda broke the genre.
They’re also sort of weird in k-pop (although not as weird as you’d think- there are a lot more groups that write their own stuff these days) in that they were built around the dudes who do the writing. So they’ve always been something of a collaborative creative project rather than a boy band backed by a producer who’s driving everything.
Have you actually tried listening to their albums and reading the translated lyrics? As a total ‘music snob’ myself who’s more at home with prog rock, jazz and alternative electro, BTS are one of the few modern ‘pop’ acts included in my regular playlist (though they are more hip-hop / R&B) along with the likes of Janelle Monae and St. Vincent. Highly recommend the albums ‘Wings’, ‘Tear’ and ‘Young Forever’, as well as the members’ solo projects like RM, Mono, Agust D and Hope World.As one of the members, Min Yoongi, said: “if people listen to our music without prejudice, I think they will enjoy it.”
Musically, it’s pretty much all surface. It’s slick and indistinguishable from a dozen other internationally-skewing pop acts. The translations I found online are rather on-the-nose. Upbeat and positive affirmations well suited to sullen teenagers. Nothing wrong with that but not my cup of tea. Your mileage may vary.
Musically, it’s pretty much all surface. It’s slick and indistinguishable from a dozen other internationally-skewing pop acts. The translations I found online are rather on-the-nose. Upbeat and positive affirmations well suited to sullen teenagers. Nothing wrong with that but not my cup of tea. Your mileage may vary.
Try listening to Jimin “Lie” when you get a chance. Has heavy organs and background choir. Complete with a total key change to emphasize the lyrics. Not sure if it would be called a pop song. Maybe.
It’s a pop song. It’s a mass produced musical composition designed and marketed to appeal to as big an audience as possible.
If you don’t like pop music just move on. I think there’s good and bad pop music out there like any other genre and the bias against pop music in many music circled is slightly boring. Many of Janelle Monae’s songs, for example, can be classified as pop music in sound but nobody could call her music boring or mass produced. Same logic applies to kpop. Lie is a pop song but also has interesting lyrical themes, pretty slick production, unique vocal delivery and interesting structure. It’s good pop music. If that’s not your thing more power to you but disparaging it as mass produced is a judgement that is fairly baseless, especially when it was written by the singer Jimin in question, not a board of executives.
Pop music’s fine. Monae’s “Pynk” has eight credited writers. Eight.
Sure, but my point still stands. Her album was very well received by critics and commended for its thematic arc. And it’s just well crafted. The number of writers doesn’t necessarily determine whether a song is enjoyable or not unless you just value songs that have one writer, in which case I’ve recommended you some songs by BTS members that fit that bill
Other than music from independent artists or very, very small labels, all music is designed to appeal to as many people as possible for that type of music. That’s the point of selling music for a profit and this works across genres. An indie artist in an indie label will design and put an indie song on an album because it’s a choice made by them to create a product that will be enjoyed by others. This does not necessarily mean the song is worthless or has no other purpose or specific meaning. I think no matter what type of song from BTS you hear you’ll hate it and write the same comment out about it being mass produced because as I can tell from your other comments you consider them uncool and soulless. You’re entitled to this opinion but I just don’t think it’s fair or even particularly accurate.If you want a taste of why people like BTS even when they’re self professed music snobs like people in above comments I suggest the mixtapes some of the members have released outside of the group and thus outside of the structure of their label. Suga released a mixtape called Agust D in 2015 that is self composed and produced, it was released for free and is probably an insight into the type of artist he’d be if he wasn’t in a boy band. The song ‘the last’ is definitely worth checking out if you want an insight into very raw, personal lyrics about mental health. Other members have released mixtapes and self composed solo songs outside of the group’s official discography but I think agust d is a solid place to begin to understand the individual talents of the members and what makes them tick.
Why would someone need to be a different “type of artist if he wasn’t in a boy band.”? Anyway, glad you like it.
I mean he was an underground rapper prior to joining BTS and this mixtape indicates to me the musical route he would have taken if he wasn’t a BTS member, considering its his personal style and influenced heavily by rap music. That’s why I recommended it to you.
Hmm. Undisdisquishable from other….. I am not sure what you are listening to. Maybe just Fake Love, Save Me and DNA? These guys have alot going on musically and lot of poetry in their lyrics, alot of double meaning and word play (playing on the Chinese and Hangul characters roots) Try songs like Spring Day, Rain, Sea, Dope, and 134340…..actually I could go on and on. They have tons of great songs. They do make an effort to make the singles easier for the worldwide listener to access. Some simpler lyrics and Bang is well known for predicting a pop music trend before it even starts because he is constantly listening to vast genres of music. BTS has ao lot of depth. I like reading Muish’s in depth translation blog that get’s into the cultural references and language play. But a warning, some of the bilingual commentators have said that there is a beauty and romanticism in the Korean lyrics that doesn’t translate and translations can instead feel corny or overly simple when you don’t have an understanding not just of the way it sounds and flows but even the way it looks in Hangul. I love listening with lyrics then researching then just listening to the flow. Songs like Rain have delicious flow in the raps and Hobo’s bridges are always refreshing and addictive. You just need to look harder and stop seeing what you expect. It’s sad when we have already decided what we will see and miss what’s there. BTS has plenty of fans more in it for the cute boys and trend, but you will find millions who are in it because it’s great music and the lyrics speak to their soul. The boys, if you actually go beyond fluffy English interviews on ET to some good content like their blogs and letters and speeches and Vlives, are hilarious, loveable dorks who care desperately for their fans and each other and do what they do because they love music and, for the members who write like RM and Sugar, as a way of helping and healing themselves, as all artists do.
Autocorrect sucks. I thought I caught them all but then saw Hobi (JHope) changed to Hobo. WTH!
And Suga (Yoongi) not Sugar.
They do. All of them have writing/ccomposing and some producing credits, but Kim Namjoon (RM, formerly Rap Monster) Min Yoongi (Suga) and Jung Hoseok (j-hope) take the bulk of the writing credits. The attached pictures are a a year and change out of date and are missing the three most recent albums, but it shows how involved they’ve been in their music since the begining of their careers.
Your comment sounds like those pretentious old music snobs who think their music taste is superior to everyone else and only listens to ‘ReAl MuSIC’ and not pop music like the rest of us plebs. Bts members do play instruments actually, and are producers and composers too. Also, are Americans this unaware of other cultures that they think these wacky orientals have no idea about famous cultural icons like dolly? Do you think they just sit around listening to Buddhist chants? Get a grip man.
Nope. Not pretentious, just well aware of how Korean pop groups are created, and sold to mass audiences of screaming girls. The only difference being that nowadays these boy bands are also promoted outside of Korea. Everything is very carefully rehearsed and prepared. It’s being going on in Japan for decades, but the Japanese still don’t promote much outside of Japan.
BTS is literally famous for not being that, tho. Yes, they’re K-pop but they’re known for creating their own music, being political and autobiographical, and using intricate and highly involved story lines with philosophical and literary references. (I will cop to liking them a lot because they are doing a very weird, interesting and, frankly, new thing.)
Also, damn. Didn’t know everything girls like was shit. Gotta go back and tell teen me that she’s sucks. Oh and god forbid men wear make-up. You must think David Bowie was a terrible mistake. (Sorry but I’m a grown-ass woman and even if I personally spent my teen years listening to punk b-sides, I’m really kind of over saying “girls like it” means that something is bad.)
They were invited to speak at the UN, for pete’s sake.
It’s hard to believe you’re not pretentious when you’re generalising millions of fans as ‘screaming girls’ and then implying nothing valued by said teenage girls has any inherent musical value. I probably don’t need to remind you the Beatles were sold to masses of screaming teenage girls in their heyday. Though I see roughly where you’re coming from because from first glance I’d probably have written BTS off like that too (I never liked boy bands before discovering their stuff) but it does them a massive disservice to just write them off as another Korean pop group and thus not real musicians or soulless. The CEO of their label (a once indie label in heavy debt) said in an interview back in 2013 ‘I was one of the people who participated in ‘new artist development’ when it was first formed in Korea, and I encountered a lot of ‘know-hows’ from my period at JYP as well. But even with that, that methodology and the talent that Bang Shi-hyuk wants to develop is a different problem. And even organizing those thoughts took many years. Actually you can say that my philosophy and worldview is instilled in BTS. First if you hate music you are unconditionally disqualified, and BTS are kids who do music relentlessly.For reference, we don’t control the kids at the company. We don’t take away their phones or create a curfew. Do everything you want, but if you don’t develop and grow, leave. We don’t coercively give lessons either. If they bring their homework, we only critique based on that. If these kids [the word here again is friend, it’s a way to refer to someone younger than you] bring choreography that they created, then we talk about what’s good or bad about it. Locking up someone who doesn’t have the will to do it voluntarily and teaching them for 12 hours, I hate that sort of thing.’Here is the name of the full interview if you are interested and I hope my comment was interesting or insightful to you, because I truly do not think it’s factually accurate to assume bts are not musicians based on generalisations and pre-conceived notions of Asian pop music: ‘Bang Shi-hyuk CEO | A company that has ‘meaning’ as an enterprise, idols that are ‘different’ than idols’ you can Google this and read the whole article if you wish, it’s quite insightful.
You are correct on this. Kpop in general is very controlled, pouring out plastic b-grade pop for pre-teens. I personally can’t stand it.However, I would urge you to learn a bit more about BTS and why they are very, very different from any other kpop group out there, to the extent that many critics have begun to systematically separate them from the “kpop” label. BTS came from a unique company with very different views. From the beginning, BTS were encouraged to tell their own stories and imbue their songs with their own thoughts. Two members were already established in the Seoul underground rap scene, producing and composing before joining, and received, along with several other members, further training and mentorship in composition, writing and production. One of those members has already received industry awards for his production work outside BTS and was inducted into the Korean Music Copyright Association as a full member.Unlike other kpop “idols” they have been allowed to be themselves. They’ve foregone crafted personas in favor of building a bond with fans and showing their authentic selves to the world via social media, often taking time to chatter with fans on livestreams and popping into random chats.These young men demonstrated early that in addition to addressing social and political issues in their music, they are willing to put words into actions, quietly doing service work for local charities for the elderly and helping financially support a local orphanage. They have donated food to feed the hungry. All without public fanfare, and most of the time undiscovered until months or even years later. They risked governmental blacklisting under the Park regime for supporting a charity dedicated to providing support for the families of the victims of the 2014 Sewol Ferry disaster, which could have ended their career. They have partnered with Unicef in the last 18 months on the #LoveMyself campaign, seeking to end violence against children and teens. They have also partnered with the UN on the Generation Unlimited initiative as Goodwill Ambassadors, even helping to launch the initiative by addressing the UN General Assembly.Please don’t assume BTS are your average kpop band; they are one of the most interesting and unique groups you’ll ever see-talented, charming, humble, intelligent and socially aware. Please, take some time to find out who they are and what they are about. Thanks!
Wow. That you took so much time to inform me about BTS is a good thing, I guess. I will heed your advice and learn more about them. I live in Hong Kong, and K-Pop and Korean soap operas and Korean food have become huge, surpassing their Japanese counterparts (which were big in the 90s). I do admit that to me they “look” like the typical K-Pop band, you know, dyed hair and makeup on guys in their 20s, very prepackaged… but that’s my assumption. Like I said, I’m middle-aged, approaching 60, and my playlists are mostly 80s hits. In any case, thank you for your reply.
Wow these comments are seriously weird. Seems a lot of Americans have problems with people from other countries.
Shannon Miller, you are lovely. Reading these comments was kinda depressing. Quite a few people who think they know BTS because they read somewhere about Kpop music industry as very factory. If they took a moment to look into BTS and truthfully quite a few Kpop artist nowadays, they would know these boys are an amazing family of very talented artists who were picked and trained started with Namjoon the leader because of their talant and heart. Namjoon so impressed famous songwriter and producer PD Bang with his rap and lyrics form the underground scene in soul that at 16 he sought him out and was determined to share his voice with the world. BTS is Bang and Namjoon and the rest of the members heart and message for the world and it’s unapologetically positive but real and feel like a life line for people all over the world