BTS’s ‘Dynamite’ Could Upend the Music Industry
When a record is broken, or a new one is set, it can say as much about the institution or industry in question as it does the talent of the winner. This is especially true in American entertainment. Halle Berry becoming the first (and only) Black woman to win a Best Actress Oscar, in 2002, was both an affirmation of her excellence and a testament to Hollywood’s racist history. America Ferrera becoming the first Latina to win a Lead Actress Emmy was a celebration of her work and a reflection of TV’s problems with representation. The corollary to an individual’s historic win is often a system’s historic failure.
On Monday, BTS became the first entirely South Korean act to have a No. 1 single on Hot 100 with their new funk-inflected, disco-pop song “Dynamite”—the latest evidence of the group’s superstardom. They’ve been everywhere this year. If you didn’t see the septet ringing in 2020 with a confetti-filled concert in Times Square, you may have seen them onstage with Lil Nas X at the Grammys. You may have caught them joking with James Corden on “Carpool Karaoke,” or when they shut down Grand Central Station for , or when they performed while coiffed to the nines at Sunday’s MTV Video Music Awards. (Or maybe you heard about BTS when they donated this summer, around the time that K-pop fans were the subject of constant for their .)
