Dear Gossips, 

If you’re still using Twitter, you may have noticed yesterday that BTS’s ARMY was dominating most of the trending topics worldwide. For Jimin – and it was a major achievement. 

Billboard Hot 100
 

With “Like Crazy” and its #1 position on the Billboard Hot 100, Jimin has just made history. 

And it’s especially notable because “Like Crazy” did not get much, if any, radio play. Which means that it went to #1 based heavily on sales and streaming. The song “sold 254,000 copies …and CD singles combined and tallied 10 million streams”. Per Billboard, the “sales sum for “Like Crazy” is the highest in a single week since Taylor Swift’s “Anti-Hero” sold 328,000” last November. And remember, the original version of the track is mostly in Korean. 

 

BTS’s fans, then, are still incredibly engaged, motivated, and well organised, not just when it comes to all seven members performing and releasing music as a group, but for each of the band members on their solo projects – which have come one after the other since they announced that they’d be pausing collective activities ahead of their expected respective military enlistments. And they will stay busy, since Suga just announced his upcoming new album last week. D-Day is due on April 21, just a few days before he kicks off his world tour. 

 

Suga’s album will also at some point be accompanied by a documentary that will stream on Disney+ and Weverse. 

 

Tickets to the US leg of Suga’s tour were sold out in the first pre-sale so, presumably, most of those people who are going to the concert(s) will also be supporting the album and its singles. And then that leaves V and Jungkook as the final two BTS members whose solo projects are yet to come but you can pretty much count on the same level of enthusiasm. Which tells you something, again, about BTS’s unprecedented influence. Even on boy band comparisons, one member seeing solo success is one thing. But all seven of them?! 

Yours in gossip,

Lainey