BTS (Image Courtesy of Big Hit Entertainment)
SEOUL, Sept. 3 (Korea Bizwire) — K-pop boy band BTS left for the United States on Monday on its world tour as it scored its second No. 1 title on the Billboard 200 Albums chart with its latest work, “Love Yourself: Answer.”
The seven-member K-pop sensation is set to perform at Staples Center in Los Angeles on Wednesday, Thursday, Saturday and Sunday.
The boy band is also scheduled to perform at New York City’s Citi Field Stadium on Oct. 6 as part of its world tour of 16 countries, including Canada, Britain, Germany and France. The band began the tour with local concerts in Seoul late last month.
The members waved their hands as they entered the departure hall at Incheon International Airport west of Seoul without making any comments.
Still, BTS said on Twitter that it is honored to have scored its second No. 1 title on the Billboard 200 Albums chart with “Love Yourself: Answer” and expressed its gratitude for public support.
It is the K-pop sensation’s second achievement on the American music chart after its “Love Yourself: Tear” rose to the top in May, rewriting K-pop music history.
Billboard on Sunday said, citing Nielsen Music, the last one of the group’s “Love Yourself” trilogy earned 185,000 equivalent album units in the week ending last Thursday, a result that combines the sales of physical albums and those of track equivalent and streaming equivalent albums.
The chart “ranks the most popular albums of the week in the U.S. based on multi-metric consumption as measured in equivalent album units.”
Billboard said on its website, “BTS is the only K-pop act with a No. 1 album and obviously the first with two leaders. They were also the first with a top 10 set, when Love Yourself: Her — the first of the Love Yourself trilogy — debuted and peaked at No. 7.”
The weekly performance marks the “third-largest” feat for a pop album on the Billboard for 2018 after Justin Timberlake’s “Man of the Woods” and Ariana Grande’s “Sweetener,” which recorded weekly figures of 293,000 and 231,000 units, respectively.
“Sales of Love Yourself: Answer were likely enhanced by how the album was issued in four collectible editions of the set — each with alternative artwork and ephemera — where devoted fans likely bought all four copies,” Billboard noted.
BTS also reset Billboard history as the first non-English album topping the key album chart since February 2006, when Il Divo’s “Ancora,” a collection of songs in Spanish, Italian and French was No. 1.
BTS is also the first act to have scored a double victory on the Billboard 200 in a single year since British boy band One Direction topped the list twice between December 2013 and December 2014.
With the weekly update of the Billboard 200, former No. 1 Travis Scott slipped to the second spot with “Astroworld,” followed by Drake’s “Scorpion” and Ariana Grande’s “Sweetener.”
The updated chart will be posted on the Billboard websites Wednesday, one day later than usual due to the Labor Day holiday Monday in the U.S., according to Billboard.
The American magazine Forbes said the latest BTS album chart victory is “not just immense for BTS and the Korean music world, but also for the more general state of pop music in the 2010s.”
It went on, “Answer’s success is even more so impressive because it occurred in just three swift months (after the previous album topped the same chart).”
The album’s lead track “Idol” landed in the 21st spot on the Official U.K. Singles Chart on Friday, higher than the 42nd place achieved by its previous song, “Fake Love,” in May.
The album itself landed at 14th in the U.S. Official Chart for popular albums.
(Yonhap)
