On February 13, BTS — also known as the Bangtan Boys, Bulletproof Boy Scouts, and Bangtan Sonyeondan — re-released their second full-length studio album WINGS and titled it You Never Walk Alone . It has proven to be a very successful K-pop comeback for the Big Hit Entertainment K-pop boy band consisting Jin, Suga, J-Hope, Rap Monster, Jimin, V, and Jungkook. You Never Walk Alone added an extra 156,000 copies sold to WINGS and the number is still growing. We don’t even know how many copies of the re-release were sold in South Korea and other countries yet.
However, if we were to link the potential number of You Never Walk Alone copies sold to the popularity of its first single, “Spring Day,” then the numbers might surpass the first release of WINGS . “Spring Day” broke records across the board and achieved an “All-Kill” and “Perfect All-Kill” on the Korean music charts. However, it achieved an even bigger accomplishment by breaking into the top 10 of the iTunes U.S. songs chart . With the exception of Psy with “Gangnam Style,” no other K-pop act has ever had a song that broke into the top 10 of that chart.
“Spring Day” continues to dominate the music charts and break records. It also recently broke records for its music video on YouTube. It officially holds the record of reaching 10 million views in the fastest time for a K-pop music videos by a group. This means it dethroned “TT” by Twice, which earned that record about four months ago.
On February 14, the music video for “Spring Day” on YouTube updated its view count to 10,219,692, as reported by Soompi . This means the music video reached 10 million views in less than 26 hours and 40 minutes since it was first uploaded. As a result, it smashed the former record of 40 hours and 31 minutes which was done with “TT” by Twice.
It should also be noted that the “Spring Day” music video has also earned other records, including having the most views for a K-pop group song within the first 24 hours of its release. It earned over 9.4 million views within that time, soaring over the previous record which they owned held with “Blood, Sweat & Tears,” which earned 6.3 million views within 24 hours.
In about four days after its release, “Spring Day” broke its latest record by becoming the fastest music video by a K-pop group to earn 20 million views , as reported by AllKpop . This record was also previously held by Twice with “TT.”
BTS has achieved a major success and they should definitely earn every congratulations they deserve. However, it is possible they might not hold onto those YouTube records for long. Twice was the previous record holder of having a music video by a K-pop group reach both 10 and 20 million views in the fastest time with “TT,” and they overtook BTS, who had the record with “Blood, Sweat & Tears.” Twice released “TT” just 14 days after BTS released “Blood, Sweat & Tears” too.
History might repeat itself because Twice is about to release their first K-pop comeback for 2017, a re-release of TWICECoaster: LANE 1 called TWICECoaster: LANE 2 . On February 20, Twice’s first track, “Knock Knock,” might, just might, overtake “Spring Day,” just like “TT” overtook “Blood, Sweat & Tears.” A.R.M.Y., the BTS fan club, will have to stay on top of things if they want BTS to hold their recently earned records.
[Featured Image by Big Hit Entertainment/Official BTS Daum Cafe]