BTS – “Dynamite”

BTS – “Dynamite”

One of the strangest, coolest things about the rise of BTS, the massively popular South Korean boy band, is that they’ve managed to become one of the world’s biggest groups without doing much to Westernize themselves. BTS, like most K-pop groups, sing the occasional English phrase. But before the pandemic, they were able to fill American football stadiums, singing mostly in Korean to thousands of diverse fans. BTS don’t need to sing in English to be huge. So it’s interesting that they’ve just dropped their first-ever English-language single. Be warned: It’s probably going to be massive.

“Dynamite,” the new BTS track, is not a Taio Cruz cover. Instead, it’s a big, juicy disco-pop song about being happy and hitting the town. The Jonas Brothers/Hailee Steinfeld collaborator David Stewart — not the Eurythmics one — co-wrote and co-produced “Dynamite” with Jessica Agombar, and the lyrics are the sort of spirited nonsense that probably mean the same thing in every language: “Disco overload, I’m into that, I’m good to go.” This is classic boy-band pop, and it’s not too hard to imagine the versions of the song that New Kids On The Block or the Backstreet Boys or One Direction might’ve made.

Yong Seok Choi directed the video, which went up online last night and which already, as I’m typing this, has 53 million views. It’s a wholesome spectacle with sunny cinematography and a whole lot of dancing. BTS are good at dancing. Check it out below.

“Dynamite” is out now on BitHit Entertainment. BTS released the album Map Of The Soul: 7 in February, and the absolute maniac Chris DeVille wrote that it was their White Album.

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