BTS Is the First K-Pop Band With a Number 1 Album in America

K-pop boy band Bangtan Sonyeondan, or BTS, have made history as the first Korean band to hit number 1 on the Billboard Top 200 with their new album Love Yourself: Tear. Well, they will be tomorrow, May 30th, when the chart is actually posted.

The band was on The Ellen Degeneres Show last week to promote their album and you would have thought they were The Beatles. I mean, they basically are.

They’re cute, right? All Korean bands seem to have that same baby-face, clean-cut look and carefully managed image. They’re basically the opposite of One Direction.

While on Ellen, they also performed the lead single from their new album, “Fake Love.”

Man, that audience looks just like The Beatles on The Ed Sullivan Show. “Fake Love” is launching at number 10 on the Billboard Hot 100, the ranking for singles, which makes it the first K-pop song in the top 10.

.@BTS_twt's "Fake Love" launches to No. 10, marking the first #Hot100 top 10 EVER for a K-pop group https://t.co/mn5So99x4Q pic.twitter.com/wQ8cyOoAGm

— billboard (@billboard) May 29, 2018

K-pop fans have kind of been ignored or treated like a novelty by the public, with Psy’s “Gangnam Style” being the only example of a Korean song most people could name. But BTS having the number 1 album in America really marks the moment K-pop became mainstream. And I would way rather listen to these guys than even one second of another Taylor Swift song like her “September” cover.