BTS Is Now the First Ever K-Pop Act to Top Billboard's Album Chart
With their new album, "Love Yourself: Tear," Korean boy band BTS has made K-Pop history by opening at No. 1 on the Billboard album chart. This is the first time the Korean genre has claimed the top spot in an American mainstream records tally.
Along the way towards earning the distinction as the first ever K-pop set to lead the Billboard 200 albums chart, "Love Yourself: Tear" was released through BitHit Entertainment on May 18, when it was expected to debut somewhere under 100,000 album units, according to Billboard.
By May 21, industry forecasters were starting to pay attention to the album as predictions shifted to more than 100,000 units. By Thursday last week, the album was forecasted to over 120,000 unit earned.
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As of last week, the album has already come out with 135,000 album units earned in the U.S., the vast majority of which was from traditional album sales. 100,000 of these were equivalent to copies sold as a full album, according to data from Nielsen.
Out of the rest, 26,000 units were contributed by streaming equivalent albums, which equal 39.1 million on-demand spins for the album's songs on audio streaming services.
The fact that the seven-member grouped was tapped to perform at the 2018 Billboard Music Awards certainly helped, as well. In the awards ceremony itself, BTS eventually took home the top social artist award.
As an album that is mainly sung in Korean with just the occasional sprinkling of English here and there, "Love Yourself: Tear" is also the first foreign language album to nab the top spot of the Billboards 200 since 2006, as the New York Times noted.
Before the K-Pop group, the last foreign language set to reach No. 1 was the classic crossover album "Ancora," which was a blend of songs in Spanish, Italian, French and English by Il Divo. It claimed the No. 1 spot about 12 years ago.
"Love Yourself: Tear" is also just the second Korean album to make it to the Billboard top 10. The first Korean genre set to make it was still by BTS, with their "Love Yourself: Her" peaking at No. 7 in early October of last year.
The K-pop boy band took to social media to express their gratitude for the fans.
"Billboard 200 First place .. Thank you so much for letting me see this good news as soon as I wake up. Thank you for listening to my song! I will be working hard in the future!" one of the members posted via the official BTS Twitter handle on Sunday, May 27.
"Love Yourself: Tear" has been available since its May 18 album launch, along with the music video for "Fake Love," the first single off the set. The album has received "Universal acclaim" from user reviews and a Metacritic score of 75 from critics.
