Dear Gossips,

Billboard yesterday confirmed the inevitable:

It was inevitable because of BTS and their ARMY, currently the most powerful fandom in pop culture. BTS’s collaboration with Coldplay on “My Universe” represents RM, Jin, Suga, j-hope, Jimin, V, and Jungkook’s sixth #1 hit on the Billboard Hot 100 in 13 months. SIX. In just over a year.

For Coldplay this is their first #1 since “Viva La Vida” in 2008. Per Billboard, “Coldplay ends the longest No. 1 drought [for a group] on the Hot 100 since The Beach Boys took "Kokomo" to the top of the Nov. 5, 1988 chart, a month short of 22 years since they'd last led with "Good Vibrations" in 1966”.

Interesting to me then that certain media outlets in the UK, given that Coldplay is a British band, haven’t really made this a headline, at least not at the time of this post…even though they do have new Coldplay stories posted today. Both the Sun and the Daily Mail have reported on Coldplay’s next collaboration, with Selena Gomez. BTS is briefly mentioned in those articles, almost like an offhand comment. In the Daily Mail’s case, note how they refer to BTS – highlighted in yellow:

“Korean teen sensation…”

What, exactly, does this mean? All seven members of BTS are well out of their teens. The youngest member of the band, Jungkook, turned 24 years old last month (25 on the Korean calendar). Who are the teens here? Do they mean BTS fans? Because I think we’ve long established that BTS fans are from all demographics but even if their fans were all teens, why are we pretending that what teens are into isn’t valuable? TikTok is what it is today because of teens and everyone wants a piece of it now. But also?

When BTS played Wembley, the most iconic of British venues, the show sold out in 90 minutes and they had to add a second. They filled that stadium for two nights and they could have filled it for ten more if they had time on their schedule. BTS is HUGE in the UK – although you wouldn’t know it if you were reading certain publications. That said, considering this is the Daily Mail, a publication that has a tenuous relationship with facts, I suppose it’s not surprising that they either didn’t know this and/or willfully ignored it.

BTS is, without debate, the biggest band in the world. But these are the insidious ways that they continue to be undermined, in spite of their unprecedented success. “My Universe”, again per Billboard, “is the first Hot 100 #1 by two groups each sporting lead billing on a song. The previous best? "I'm Gonna Make You Love Me," by Diana Ross and The Supremes and The Temptations, hit No. 2 in 1969”.

A Korean band and a British band made this history. You’d think it’d be a bigger headline in the UK.

Yours in gossip,

Lainey

Chris Martin Gossip

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