Korean pop stars BTS have announced that they will not enter the 69th edition of the Grammy Awards, expressing clear disdain for the new award the Recording Academy recently unveiled: the Best Asian Pop Music Performance award. This is while the band’s latest album, Arirang, has become the biggest success story of the year in the realm of world music. Instead of participating in another Grammy Award campaign to celebrate their achievement, BTS have chosen not to submit for the awards, citing that they don’t think music should be categorised by its language or region.
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This decision is coming only weeks after the Recording Academy added the Best Asian Pop Music Performance category, among the five newly added categories for the next year’s Grammy Awards. The award is intended to honour music in Korean pop (K-pop), Japanese pop (J-pop), Chinese pop (C-pop) and other Asian pop styles. Nonetheless, many people expressed concerns about the decision, as it divides Asian artists rather than giving them an equal chance at the main awards.
The group was nominated three consecutive times in the Best Pop Duo/Group Performance category for their songs Dynamite, Butter, and My Universe with Coldplay in 2021-2023.
However, BTS have experienced one of their most successful years ever with their album Arirang. This was also their comeback album as a group following their military enlistment in 2022. After its release on March 20, the album debuted at the top of the Billboard 200, with 641,000 equivalent album units in its first week. In addition, it gained 532,000 pure album sales, thus providing the biggest sales week for a group album in over ten years.
Physical sales were crucial for achieving such results. So, BTS sold 516,000 physical copies through 17 vinyl releases and 9 CD versions. In particular, vinyl accounted for 208,000 sales, resulting in the sixth-biggest vinyl sales week in the modern chart era. Only One Direction managed to achieve higher weekly sales when releasing Midnight Memories back in 2013.
Moreover, the album’s lead single, Swim, also debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100, becoming BTS’s seventh chart-topper. At the same time, 13 tracks from the album joined the Hot 100 chart, raising the career total number of chart entries to 39 songs. The first-day streaming numbers on Spotify reached 110 million, and all 14 tracks took the first 14 positions on the Global Daily Top Song chart.
BTS will resume their Arirang World Tour. Following a few weeks’ break, they’re set to return to the stage on August 1st, with two separate concerts at the MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford, followed by appearances in Foxborough, Baltimore, Arlington, Toronto and Chicago, in August.
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According to a recent statement from Korea on Instagram on Wednesday, RM, followed by Jin, SUGA, j-hope, Jimin, V, and Jung Kook, stated that they have decided not to submit their record-breaking new album, Arirang.
“We have decided not to submit our music to the Grammys this year,” the group said in a statement shared through the Instagram stories of all seven members. “We hope music can be heard and loved as music itself, rather than being divided by region or language.” The group has also expressed gratitude towards their official fan group, known as ARMY.
