BTS
In a year when live musicwent quiet, they became thebiggest band in the worldBy Raisa BrunerIt’s late OctOber, and suga Is sIttIng On a cOuch strum-
ming a guitar. His feet are bare, his long hair falling over his eyes. He
noodles around, testing out chords and muttering softly to himself,
silver hoop earrings glinting in the light. “I just started learning a few
months ago,” he says. It’s an intimate moment, the kind you’d spend
with a new crush in a college dorm room while they confess rock-star
ambitions. But Suga is one-seventh of the Korean pop band BTS, which
means I’m just one of millions of fans watching, savoring the moment.
BTS isn’t just the biggest K-pop act on the charts. They’ve be-
come the biggest band in the world—full stop. Between releasing
multiple albums, breaking every type of record and appearing in
these extemporaneous livestreams in 2020, BTS ascended to the
zenith of pop stardom. And they did it in a year defined by setbacks,
one in which the world hit pause and everyone struggled to main-
tain their connections. Other celebrities tried to leverage this year’s
challenges; most failed. (Remember that star-studded “Imagine”
video?) But BTS’s bonds to their international fan base, called
ARMY, deepened amid the pandemic, a global racial reckoning and
worldwide shutdowns. “There are times when I’m still taken aback
by all the unimaginable things that are happening,” Suga tells TIME
later. “But I ask myself, Who’s going to do this, if not us?”
Today, K-pop is a multibillion-dollar business, but for decades
the gatekeepers of the music world—the Western radio moguls,
media outlets and number crunchers—treated it as a novelty. BTS
hits the expected high notes of traditional K-pop: sharp outfits,OF THE YEAR
Entertainer