Boy Band BTS have made history by becoming the first South Korean group to headline Wembley Stadium.
The boy band blasted through 24 songs on Saturday (01.05.19), assisted by quirky props, glitter cannons, jet sprays and 60,000 fans screaming their approval, BBC reported.
The septet, who said they “grew up watching videos of Live Aid,” even paid tribute to Freddie Mercury. During the encore, lavender-haired singer Jin led the crowd in a version of the Queen frontman’s “ay-oh” chant.
“You guys always had the greatest artists, historically, in the music industry, The Beatles, Coldplay, Ed Sheeran, Adele. We don’t even have to make a list,” added his band-mate Kim Nam-joon, who is known to fans as RM. “So the UK was like the big, big wall to me. But tonight we, and you guys, just broke the wall,” he added.
The gig was the first of two sold-out nights at Wembley Stadium and just the third UK show of BTS’s career. It capped off an extremely successful year for the band, who topped the UK album charts in April with Map Of The Soul: Persona, played Saturday Night Live and Britain’s Got Talent, and scored their biggest hit single to date when Boy With Luv entered the UK top 20.
Unlike previous Wembley headliners, they’re not quite household names yet (and many people would be hard-pressed to name one of their songs) but their fanbase, dubbed the “Army”, is unusually devoted, highly mobilised, and growing daily.
They even attempted English accents, with Jungkook declaring, “easy peasy, lemon squeezy,” for no particular reason during the intro to Dope. Never has the phrase “Wembley, make some noise,” been more redundant.
Indeed, BTS’s sold-out stadium debut comes just eight months after they played the smaller, 20,000-capacity O2 Arena on the other side of London, and the significance of their achievement did not go unnoticed at home.
“Everyone in Korea is so excited,” said Sungmi Ahn, a K-pop reporter for the Korean Herald. “They’re doing a live broadcast of the show so everyone can watch it.
“The Freddie Mercury film Bohemian Rhapsody was huge in Korea, so when people think of Wembley Stadium, they know how important it is, and BTS are getting a lot of hype and excitement as a result.”
In August 2018 as reported by The Sauce, BTS’ official music video for ‘IDOL’ broke the record for biggest music video debut in YouTube history, earning over 45 million views in its first 24 hours. The previous record holder is Taylor Swift’s official music video for ‘Look What You Made Me Do’ which had 43.2 million views in 24 hours after its debut on 24 August 2017.
