Dear Gossips,
We are living in Bennifer Summer. At the same time, we are also living in BTS Summer. For the last nine weeks, so basically the ENTIRE summer, and even before, if we’re counting from the solstice, BTS has been on top of the Billboard Hot 100. Their smash hit “Butter” was #1 for seven weeks until they knocked themselves out of the top spot with their new hit “Permission To Dance”, and now they’ve toppled themselves again by returning “Butter” to #1, tying Olivia Rodrigo’s “Drivers Licence” for most weeks at #1 in 2021. And also making history as “the first act to displace itself at #1 with a new leader and then send the previous #1 back to the summit with no other acts holding up the top spot in between”.
It’s been an extraordinary run, a testament to their popularity, and also to the engagement of their ARMY, which was a force even before 2020 and with how dominant the band has been over the last year in western mainstream, ARMY is only growing, in tandem with the band’s unprecedented reach. Which is why RM, Jin, Suga, j-hope, Jimin, V, and Jungkook dedicated their cover of Diddy and Faith Evans’ “I'll Be Missing You” to their fans during their performance on BBC Radio 1’s Live Lounge today, the people who keep buying and streaming and crusading for them, even during never f-cking ending pandemic that’s been so hard for everyone worldwide.
This is the second time BTS has covered an English song this year – for MTV Unplugged it was Coldplay’s “Fix You”, here’s their version of “I’ll Be Missing You”, with RM doing the opening rap in English like the original and Suga and j-hope substituting Korean lyrics for their parts:
Not sure exactly of the legalities of live performance broadcast on radio, but given that the performance was on BBC Radio 1, which is a pretty big heatscore, and there are typically ads that run, I’m assuming that they would have secured a licence for the song, which means that Diddy or at least his label, would have seen the request, and signed off on it. If that’s the case, I wonder if he’ll have a response. There’s been nothing yet at the time of this post but then again, it’s still very early in LA, he’s probably not up yet. Even if he was in Miami he might not be up yet, LOL. If I were Diddy I wouldn’t be up yet either.
Going back to BTS Summer, well, this is obviously a streak of dominance that I’m not sure even they can quite believe – and until Kanye West finally releases Donda, it may well continue.
Yours in gossip,
Lainey
