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Tightly choreographed and peppered with costume changes, the 2½-hour concert moved quickly through the group’s best-known songs, from oldies like the growly “Dope” and the throbbing “Burning Up” to the Motown-ish “Permission to Dance” and “Boy With Luv,” BTS’ exuberant electro-pop collaboration with Halsey.įor the folky “Life Goes On,” whose Korean lyrics ponder the loneliness of the pandemic era, the band members flopped around on a giant bed and an oversize sofa for “Telepathy,” they boarded motorized platforms that traveled the perimeter of the stadium’s floor to get closer to the fans they call Army. The band’s minders needn’t have worried: To the delight of the young, racially diverse crowd - Asian, Latino, Black, white fans - Sunday’s show was polished as though BTS had been performing every night for weeks. Reviewers weren’t invited to the group’s SoFi opener on Saturday presumably to ensure that the members - the others are Jungkook, Jin, Suga, Jimin and V - had an opportunity to regain their footing after such a long break. The demand for excellence is intense, and only more so now that additional Korean exports, including Netflix’s smash “Squid Game” and the Oscar-winning “Parasite,” have extended BTS’ cultural gains. Yet BTS still lives by the customs of the highly regimented K-pop industry, which positions its superstars as ambassadors of South Korean culture last year, the country’s government even revised a law permitting top K-pop artists to postpone their required military service so they might continue spreading South Korea’s soft power around the world (as BTS did in September with a visit to the United Nations). 1 hits, are throwback disco-soul jams with echoes of Bruno Mars and Michael Jackson - and lyrics sung in English.
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To some extent, BTS exploded by smoothing (and perhaps Westernizing) the unrulier edges of its sound, which early on typified K-pop’s rowdy and futuristic blend of EDM, rock and hip-hop “Dynamite” and “Butter,” the biggest of the band’s No. This month, the band was named artist of the year at the American Music Awards - a flimsy appellation, but still - and earned its second nomination for a more respectable Grammy (though some would argue the group deserved more than one nod).
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Already big enough in 2019 to play the Rose Bowl twice, the group went truly global during the pandemic, topping Billboard’s Hot 100 six times in 13 months and setting all kinds of records with its digital and livestream offerings. Like any of its boy-band predecessors, though - from ’N Sync all the way back to the Beatles - BTS also has the weight of its own success to consider. Hearing the tens of thousands inside SoFi squeal later that night as BTS writhed behind a set of bars, you could safely conclude that his plan worked. In an old-school news conference before the performance, the band’s leader, RM, said that seeing the stadium filled with people the night before “got me emotional beyond words.” His bandmate J-Hope added that he hoped the show would enable fans to “release some of the sadness and depressing thoughts” of the COVID-19 era.