BTS is the only competitor of BTS

It is proved once again that BTS is the only competitor of BTS. One week after the boy band’s new song “Permission to Dance” pushed out its another song “Butter” from the top of the Billboard’s main single chart, the two songs exchanged their rank again.

The Billboard announced on Monday (local time) that “Butter” ranked first in its Hot 100 singles chart. The song went up to the top once again a week after it went down to 7th as “Permission to Dance” ranked first since its release on July 9. The new song ranked 7th this week, which means the song replaced its place with “Butter.” “BTS’ ‘Butter’ Returns to No. 1 Spot,” announced the Billboard. “BTS is the first act to displace itself at No. 1 with a new leader and then send the previous No. 1 back to the summit with no other acts holding the top spot in between.”

“Butter” added an eighth week on top and tied for the longest command of 2021, first logged by Olivia Rodrigo’s “Drivers License.” With “Butter” and “Permission to Dance” combined, BTS stayed on the top spot for nine consecutive weeks.

The Hot 100 chart determines the ranking of the most popular songs in the U.S. by adding up music downloads, album sales, the number of official audio and video streaming and radio broadcasting. The Billboard analyzed that “Butter” returned to the top spot thanks to its album sales from July 16 to 22, the ninth week after releasing the song, that reached 115,600. It increased by 132 percent from the previous week (49,800). The number of listeners of the song on the radio in the U.S. was 30.7 million, which was the first time that went above 30 million.

The band’s member Suga seemed to be deeply moved. “Thank you, ARMI (BTS’ fanclub),” he said in a post on BTS’ fan community Weverse. Rodrigo’s “Good 4 U” ranked 2nd for the ninth week after BTS’ two new songs.


Hyo-Ju Son hjson@donga.com