Dear Gossips, 

I don’t think it’s news that with the way algorithms work on social media, sometimes our feeds can make us believe that the thing we care about is the thing that everyone else cares about. Yesterday I heard someone say that the Oscar producers’ decision to end the show on the Best Actor award, in a way, might have been the right one because it was all anyone could talk about. Maybe for those of us who work in media but outside of that industry bubble… did anyone actually care? The Oscar ratings don’t support that argument and we’ll get to the ratings later but to go back to social media bubbles and feeds, Oscar Monday, yesterday, at least on my feeds, had nothing to do with the Oscars, even though I do care a lot about the Oscars, as evidenced by the content on the site yesterday. 

 

Still, my algorithm, hilariously, has done the math. And though I may spend much of my energy on the Oscars, the math says that I spend most of my energy on BTS. Because that’s what actually dominated my feed yesterday. Was it more dominant on my feed than it was on yours? Probably, unless you’re ARMY, in which case same, same. But if not, I get it – my bubble only extends so far. That said, I don’t know that any tweet or thread or social media post about the Oscars got this much action:

Over a million likes, almost half a million retweets, and almost 40 million comments, and counting. Standard operation procedure when it’s time for a BTS comeback. “Butter” is their second English-language single, so essentially a follow-up to the smash hit “Dynamite”, one of the biggest songs of 2020. At the moment, it’s unclear whether or not “Butter” will be part of a new album, apart from the Japanese compilation album, BTS, The Best, that’s dropping in June. 

 

What we can assume, however, is that with “Butter”, RM, Jin, SUGA, j-hope, Jimin, V, and Jungkook will be bringing…

New choreo!

“Butter” has been described in a press release as a “dance pop track” which makes sense, since we’re heading into summer. Dance pop means DANCE. And given that they’re hyping it almost a month before release, it means that they’re coming in swinging: of course there will be a new video, of course there will be new looks, new hairstyles, maybe even a new Louis Vuitton wardrobe, and most importantly to me, new moves. 

As I have said time and again, the BTS choreography, the dance practice videos, that’s what started it all for me. When “Dynamite” came out, some of the members, I think Jungkook was one of them, described the choreo for that song as “easier” than their past routines. First of all, OK JK, lol. Your definition of “easy” is not my definition of “easy”, but sure. I wonder if the “Butter” choreo is on the same “easy” scale – or if they go back to whatever it is they consider difficult. Difficult for them would be the choreo for their song “ON”, which is stupid hard and impressive as f-ck. Not that I don’t think the “Dynamite” choreo is cute, but I vote for stupid hard and impressive as f-ck every single time. 

 

Anyway, be ready. May 21. BTS + “Butter”. What a fortunate coincidence that that’s a long weekend in Canada and I happened to take the day off work which only means, since I live in Toronto where we’ll still be in some form of COVID restriction by then, I’ll be hitting replay non-stop on the video to appreciate the choreo. So if you have never been down a BTS dance practice black hole on YouTube, let me be your pusher. One of my favourite BTS dance practice videos is for a song they never even released an official video for: “Dionysus”. They’ve performed it live several times though, peaking near the end of 2019 at the Melon Music Awards at the conclusion of a nearly 40 minute set which means that what you’re about to see comes at the very end of a performance that already included SO MUCH CHOREO. Here’s the dance practice: 

 

 

And if you want to see how they went from dance practice to live performance, fast forward to the 30:40 mark of this video below. Yes, they are so f-cking EXTRA and I love it.

 

This is what the Grammys are missing. 

Yours in gossip,

Lainey