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BTS (방탄소년단) Official Thread: 2nd Chapter [#2025OT7 #2024Jin&HobiReturning #HopeOnTheStreetVol1 #JinD77 #DDayTheMovie #FRI(END)S #NEURONIsComing]


YongZura⁷

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My conferences ended early and I jump online to find the performance. Ahhh another great Dynamite performance - they all look great, sound great and it was a solid performance. Hobi and Jin in orange!!! JK and Tae in white suits!!! Wonder how the stylist chose their color scheme. Love Tae’s live audio check moment too (he knowssssss!!! Lol)

 

Hope my fellow Army are not too disappointed! I felt we were used too but at the same time BTS and us fans did all we can do to our best abilities so it’s time to move on and set new goals instead of wasting it mad at the G/RA for 1 award. Also - I feel like it didn’t go to waste - BTS has gained so much more fans from all of this. 
 

So friends- what you think is coming next??? New single? A mixtape from V or JK? Also Round 3 of BTS March Madness is opened; may the best song win!!

 


 

^Joon def knew and Tae’s moods is us all...

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BTS’s Endless Grammys Generosity

Lainey
POSTED BY LAINEY
 

If you’ve been paying attention to the Grammys, especially this past week, as noise about the Grammys’ lack of transparency and glacial rate of change were dominating the headlines, it shouldn’t have been a shock that BTS did not win on their first Grammy nomination. For the Recording Academy, BTS’s nomination was their win, almost as though they were saying to the biggest band in the world that they should have just been happy to be invited, the first Korean act ever to be nominated. It’s a bullsh-t, western-superior attitude, but this is how the western artistic community is like. Their sh-t is the best sh-t. And if outside art happens to disrupt their game, they behave like feudal landowners, lending out pieces of property, or nominations, like charity. 

 

What’s ironic then is that in the end, not too long from now, when the bigger picture becomes clear, the reality might be the reverse – that it might be BTS being generous to the Recording Academy by gracing them with their performance quality and all-round professionalism. 

 

During interviews, in the days leading up to the Grammys, BTS members RM, Jin, Suga, j-hope, Jimin, V, and Jungkook were pretty realistic about their chances. For them, their goal was to actually have their own performance stage, not as guests of other artists but to hold court with their own song and their own choreography. Because it’s not like they don’t know about the Grammys’ historical f-ckery, and it’s not like they don’t know they’re outsiders. How could they not know? They’re reminded of it all the time. That said, what’s so wonderful about them is that even though they’re well aware of how this business works, it hasn’t taken away their grace and the qualities that have endeared them to an entire ARMY – no matter what, they’re still hopeful, and they’re never too jaded to SHOW their hope. Which is why they posted, for their fans, a video of the moment when the winner of their category was announced:

 

 I don’t know how you can watch this and not be charmed. There’s no artifice here: what you’re seeing is seven young men balancing their nervousness and their realism with hope…and then not being able to contain their disappointment. RM’s “told you” is particularly telling, because again, as per what I just wrote above, they have no illusions about how the system is gamed. And I wish we could hear more of the conversations that would have happened before this, in private, with their team, and what they really think of the Recording Academy. But still, they didn’t have to put themselves on blast. They didn’t have to share this. And you don’t have to understand Korean to know what this is – artists who WANT recognition and are undeniably disheartened when it doesn’t come, but who bounce back by embracing each other, and by being honest about what exactly they’re feeling: a complicated combination of wanting to believe in spite of themselves, maybe a little mad at themselves for letting themselves believe, and laughing at themselves for both, and then the comfort of not having to go through it alone. Also… a reset. The Grammys are certainly not the end-all and be-all of BTS.

 

Before we get to the MORE of BTS though, over and above the Grammys, let’s talk about the “scammys”, which is what was trending after the Grammys as ARMYs around world reacted to the one-two punch of BTS losing in the Best Pop Duo or Group Performance category to Lady Gaga and Ariana Grande’s “Rain on Me”. Which is a good song, no doubt. And it was definitely a big song in 2020…but I don’t know if it was the biggest song, or had the cultural impact of “Dynamite”. “Dynamite” was everywhere – they played it on reality shows, in competitions, they played it during football games, they played all over the place, and they even had award season contenders do a reading of it for W Magazine. George Clooney gave a dramatic rendition of “Dynamite”. LaKeith Stanfield, who just received his first Oscar nomination, actually sang it, mostly on-key (LOL). Leslie Odom Jr was grooving to it. “Dynamite” was international, from Korea to North America, and everywhere in between, a song in English sung by artists who don’t speak English as a first language. So it’s more than just a song; you could argue for its value as a movement, as a piece of music that transcends notes and bars, which is exactly the spirit of what music should be. So, even though the chances were slim to minuscule, the Recording Academy may have indeed missed out on relevance, and criticism from that perspective, by fans and culture analysts, is valid. 

 

But ARMY wasn’t just mad about that. “Scammys” was also trending because BTS did not win a Grammy but were held to almost the very end of the show, making their fans wait over three hours before seeing them perform, arguably helping to sustain the show’s ratings. For ARMYs, then, it understandably felt like BTS was being used. They’re not good enough to win awards but you’ll exploit them to draw interest and viewership? 

Well…. 

At the risk of getting doxed by BTS’s massive fanbase, I’m not entirely sure that’s totally what happened here. If you work in television, specifically LIVE television, the most volatile elements are the live elements, the performances that were taking place at the venue in LA. As someone who works in live television, I can tell you that if you have a taped performance (and we know that BTS’s performance was indeed pre-recorded in Seoul, impressively constructed to be exactly like the set in Los Angeles), it’s your safest show element. You’ve timed that segment to the exact minutes and seconds. It’s not going to change. It won’t surprise you. As soon as you hit play on it, you know how long it will run for, and you can prepare for what happens next, without any unpredictable factors. 

 

Everything else, however, is up for grabs. Because it’s LIVE. So if you’re lining up your show, and you have a whole crew in place in LA, moving set pieces around, wrangling artists from various parts of the building, repositioning cameras for different shots, you want to frontload that work as much as you can. It’s like in figure skating, right? Higher degree of difficulty, your triple and quad jump combinations, for example, happen early in the program. There’s also the issue of timing. That show was already scheduled for three and a half hours, and your live elements will always push it longer. If you leave too many live elements towards the end of a show, it doesn’t give you much room to trim on the fly and cut sh-t out. Based on the producing realities alone, I can see why show producers opted to slot BTS’s performance later because it was their most predictable, in the sense that it was locked in and loaded. BTS would not give them any headaches in the last few blocks of the show. 

This is especially critical because there’s a pandemic happening and there were already requirements for safety and how many people could be in the venue at a given time. They were rotating artists out in 45 minute blocks for live performances. So when you count band members and dancers etc and whatever, those are the live elements that are in play that make it much more complicated when you’re lining up and timing the show and anyone coordinating that would want to get that out of the way as early as possible. 

 

And then, on top of that, there’s closing with what Sasha calls the “jizz” (haha). It’s not uncommon to save the orgasm to the end. Given what BTS delivered to the show producers, ending up on a f-cking helipad on top of a skyscraper in Seoul, that’s the bang you want to make people wait for. Of course it’s not an honour to f-ck them over by telling them they’re not good enough to win awards but they’re useful for ratings, but at the same time, I’m not sure any television producers would have made a different call, both from a technical standpoint and from a creative standpoint. 

I’m not here to defend the Recording Academy. But what I’m here to do is at least provide another perspective on television production. The Academy and the show producers are, for sure, connected. But the team of professionals who were hired to simply make a good show don’t have a lot to do with the inner workings and the f-cksh-t of the Academy. Their job was to line up the best show they could with the talent they had on hand. And they held BTS to the end because they knew the band would deliver a banger of a finish and, yes, keep the audience around, but also because you want to spend the most energy on executing the live elements as early in the program as you can. 

 

Imagine what the ratings would have been if there was no BTS though. Early numbers have just come out and they are, as expected, not good – an average of 7.88 million, down from 18.7 million in 2020. This is bad. They called for it, as the show’s executive producer Ben Winston kept talking about it in his interviews, but even still, it’s a real plummet. 

And this brings me back to BTS, their generosity, and the bigger picture. BTS is only getting more and more influential. The Grammys, meanwhile, may be less and less relevant. Consider this: BTS did a livestream last night following the show, which is a tradition. They always broadcast to their fans after these kinds of big events and it’s an unscripted, hilariously messy opportunity for them to thank their supporters and give people a real-time sense of their emotions as they’re feeling them. At one point during the livestream, Jimin looked at the view count and noted that there were 6.7 million people watching. SIX POINT SEVEN MILLION people watching their livestream. That’s just a million less than the Grammys audience. They basically hit the red button on a tablet, without any other artists, no special effects, spoke in Korean the whole time, and generated that many eyeballs. As Beyoncé says, cultural currency is the real measurement. And BTS has so much more of it than the Grammys. 

 

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  • YongZura⁷ changed the title to ♡ BTS (방탄소년단) Official Thread [#GRAMMYNominatedBTS]

 

The Grammys Used BTS As Eye Candy & Everyone Saw Right Through It

 
During the 63rd Grammy Awards ceremony on March 14, it was obvious that the Recording Academy was trying to atone for its history of homogenous sins. However, a few distinct moments — like the déjà vu of seeing yet another white winner shout out a Black woman who was more deserving — made it clear that the Grammys haven't changed much at all. Case in point: BTS' performance.
 
The Korean septet's performance of their No.1 single "Dynamite" was understandably one of the most highly-anticipated of the night. Not only would it be historic, as a Korean group had never been invited to the Grammy's stage for a solo performance, but the song was also their sole (also historic) nomination this year. (Not to mention that performing is BTS' superpower). After previously being nominated for their album design and getting a cameo during Lil' Nas X's performance of "Old Town Road (Remix)" in 2020, it felt like the most successful group in the world was finally getting the recognition it deserved.
 
However, they lost the Grammy for Pop Duo/Collaboration to Lady Gaga and Ariana Grande's "Rain On Me" during the pre-show award handouts, to the disappointment of many. And even though viewers and fans had the performance to look forward to, the Grammys kept teasing that BTS' stage would be "up next," but they were one of the very last groups to perform during the 3.5 hour broadcast.
 
It wasn't hard for fans and critics to see exactly what the Grammys were up to — milking BTS' massive viewership power for all it was worth — and many were not happy about it.
 
It was an understandably frustrating situation, because unfortunately, this isn't the first time that BTS and their fans have been used to draw eyeballs. The majority of the times that BTS have been invited to American award shows, they’ve often been excluded from the main creative awards, and siloed into separate categories from their Western peers. It's also commonplace that brands will attempt to ingratiate themselves with K-pop fandoms by engaging with them on Twitter in a blatant play to grow their followings.
 
During last year's Grammys ceremony, the show loved to cut to BTS' charming and funny reactions to the acts on stage. Since then, they've done interviews with the group, and had them drum up excitement for the big night by having them perform on MusiCares’ pre-award show virtual livestream.
 
As eye and ear candy, BTS gave the Grammys tons of free promotion, and the Recording Academy was happy to take it. One Twitter user pointed out that this is a classic Grammys move, as fellow BIPOC artist Nicki Minaj has described a similar experience with the awards show. As people lamented the group's snub, #scammys began to trend online.
 
During the 63rd Grammy Awards ceremony on March 14, it was obvious that the Recording Academy was trying to atone for its history of homogenous sins. However, a few distinct moments — like the déjà vu of seeing yet another white winner shout out a Black woman who was more deserving — made it clear that the Grammys haven't changed much at all. Case in point: BTS' performance.
 
The Korean septet's performance of their No.1 single "Dynamite" was understandably one of the most highly-anticipated of the night. Not only would it be historic, as a Korean group had never been invited to the Grammy's stage for a solo performance, but the song was also their sole (also historic) nomination this year. (Not to mention that performing is BTS' superpower). After previously being nominated for their album design and getting a cameo during Lil' Nas X's performance of "Old Town Road (Remix)" in 2020, it felt like the most successful group in the world was finally getting the recognition it deserved.
 
However, they lost the Grammy for Pop Duo/Collaboration to Lady Gaga and Ariana Grande's "Rain On Me" during the pre-show award handouts, to the disappointment of many. And even though viewers and fans had the performance to look forward to, the Grammys kept teasing that BTS' stage would be "up next," but they were one of the very last groups to perform during the 3.5 hour broadcast.
 
It wasn't hard for fans and critics to see exactly what the Grammys were up to — milking BTS' massive viewership power for all it was worth — and many were not happy about it.
 
It was an understandably frustrating situation, because unfortunately, this isn't the first time that BTS and their fans have been used to draw eyeballs. The majority of the times that BTS have been invited to American award shows, they’ve often been excluded from the main creative awards, and siloed into separate categories from their Western peers. It's also commonplace that brands will attempt to ingratiate themselves with K-pop fandoms by engaging with them on Twitter in a blatant play to grow their followings. (Click the link in the title to see the posts on Twitter)
 
During last year's Grammys ceremony, the show loved to cut to BTS' charming and funny reactions to the acts on stage. Since then, they've done interviews with the group, and had them drum up excitement for the big night by having them perform on MusiCares’ pre-award show virtual livestream.
 
As eye and ear candy, BTS gave the Grammys tons of free promotion, and the Recording Academy was happy to take it. One Twitter user pointed out that this is a classic Grammys move, as fellow BIPOC artist Nicki Minaj has described a similar experience with the awards show. As people lamented the group's snub, #scammys began to trend online.
 
BTS took the loss like champs, and expressed their deep gratitude towards their fans on social media. But the most telling moment of the night happened after the ceremony aired. The group also posted a 17-minute livestream of their post-event celebration that has been viewed more than 11.1 million times (and counting) — eclipsing the 7.88 million who tuned in to watch the Grammys itself. So really, at the end of the day, who needs who? As Drake said during his 2019 Grammys speech, "If there's people who have regular jobs who are coming out in the rain, in the snow, spending their hard earned money to buy tickets to come to your shows, you don't need this right here. I promise you, you already won."
 
Let's just say that if BTS decide to hold a concert next year during the same time as the local music award ceremony, we'll know who the people will choose.
 
Credit to the writer
 
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I am happy to see public call out of what happened. Also did not liked that the producer then tried to ‘spin’ the criticism to say fans were upset because we lost; that isn’t the truth (it’s for being exploited for views again.) 

 

This is also what the German DJ and media did - to divert from the real issue and make the fandom the scapegoat.

 

 

 

 

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The Grammys Once Again Did The Bare Minimum For BTS 

Bryan Rolli

 

The 63rd Annual Grammy Awards took place last night, and no, BTS didn’t win.

If that feels like an abrupt way to start an article, then it matches how the Recording Academy unceremoniously dispensed with the Best Pop Duo/Group Performance award, for which BTS’s “Dynamite” was nominated, early in the evening. Before the telecast even started, Lady Gaga and Ariana Grande’s “Rain on Me” snagged the trophy, beating the Korean pop septet’s record-breaking hit. But that didn’t stop the Grammys from relentlessly hyping BTS’s live performance all night in a desperate bid to keep viewers tuned into the show.

 

Viewers griped on social media about the Grammys incessantly teasing the Korean pop septet’s performance, with many joking that the show was holding BTS and their fans hostage. It was a shameless and apparently unsuccessful attempt at ratings bait, as Variety reports that last night’s ceremony averaged an abysmal 8.8 million viewers, by far the least-watched telecast in Grammy history. It was a disappointing but predictable end to BTS’s 2021 Grammys saga, which once again found the Recording Academy doing the bare minimum for the biggest pop group in the world.

 

Who actually won the Best Pop Duo/Group Performance award last night is fairly inconsequential—“Rain on Me” is an infectious, chart-topping dance-pop anthem that made for a legitimate contender by Recording Academy standards. I would have preferred to see “Dynamite” take home the prize, but it makes perfect sense why “Rain on Me” triumphed. The real problem began the moment the Recording Academy announced this year’s nominees.

 

The momentousness of BTS earning their first Grammy nod this year was tainted slightly by the nagging sensation that the Recording Academy only nominated “Dynamite” as a conciliatory gesture to placate fans. It’s no surprise that BTS’s first nomination went to their most palatable song for casual Western listeners: a disco-pop anthem performed entirely in English that was engineered for mass consumption via streaming, radio play and TikTok dance challenges. “Dynamite” is an irresistibly catchy song and landmark achievement for BTS, but by design, it lacks the disarming vulnerability and musical nuance of their best work.

 

And they released a lot of top-tier work in 2020: two No. 1 albums, Map of the Soul: 7 and BE, and their accompanying singles, including the haunting emo-trap opus “Black Swan,” the multilayered arena-rap anthem “ON,” and the uplifting pandemic ballad “Life Goes On.” BTS’s staggering 2020 output saw the group at the peak of their creative powers and commercial dominance, and they would have made legitimate contenders for any of the major Grammy categories, including Album of the Year, Record of the Year, Song of the Year or Best Pop Vocal Album. Instead, the Recording Academy nominated BTS’s least adventurous song in a relatively minor category, as if to say to their fans, “Fine, we’ve heard your complaints and we’ll give you what you want, now will you please shut up about BTS?”

 

This also comes as little surprise, given the Grammys’ historically tenuous relationship with race. Since 1959, only 10 Black artists have won the Album of the Year award, while non-white artists are often relegated to genre-specific categories or tossed into the all-genre category as if to fulfill as diversity quota. BTS’s odds of winning last night were always slim, as I suspect they and many of their fans understood. But giving the Best Pop Duo/Group Performance to another nominee while relentlessly hyping BTS’s performance made their loss feel especially sleazy, as if the Recording Academy knew from day one that it had no intention of giving BTS the win—but hey, it would still milk their appearance for ratings, and they should feel honored to even be invited to perform on the (virtual) Grammys stage.

 

BTS, as always, accepted their loss with class and went on to deliver another spellbinding performance that ended with them on a rooftop with a gorgeous shot of the Seoul, South Korea skyline behind them. They made the most of the opportunity to perform on the Grammys and once again proved that they’re some of the hardest-working and most charismatic performers in the business. Not that their star power was up for debate, seeing as last October’s “Map of the Soul ON:E” virtual concerts brought in nearly 1 million paid viewers from 191 countries and regions around the world. (Quick rhetorical question: Do you think 1 million people would shell out $50 to $100 to watch the Grammys?)

 

Progress in the music industry happens at a glacial pace, if it happens at all. One can hope that BTS will continue to receive more high-profile Grammy nominations—and wins—after getting their foot in the door this year. It would certainly behoove the Recording Academy, which has been recently plagued by boycotts and accusations of bribery from several high-profile musicians, to recognize BTS more, if only to save face and slow its own death march into irrelevance. But if that doesn’t happen, neither BTS nor their fans should lose sleep over it. It’s only the Grammys’ loss.

 

Credit to the writer

 

p.s The last piece related to Grammy 2021.

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FYI - it has been an exhausting day; totally worried for my family and friends in the US too. Then I saw the fake ‘satire’ of the boys and sigh. Gonna be watching RUN episodes tonight. I have been saving them for bad days. 
 

 
 

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4 hours ago, Yinye said:

FYI - it has been an exhausting day; totally worried for my family and friends in the US too. Then I saw the fake ‘satire’ of the boys and sigh. Gonna be watching RUN episodes tonight. I have been saving them for bad days. 
 

 

I wish I could write better words to comfort you with so many things happening currently.  

 

 

 

 

Something to look forward to:

 

 

 

 

Credit to the owner

 

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It’s ok! I am better after venting and streaming Dynamite lol. Just got to let the emotions out and I think I should log off soon. Because I just saw the stupid non-apology and it’s making me sad again. 
 

Amazing! Karma is really an Army and I can’t wait to see what else comes!

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  • YongZura⁷ changed the title to ♡ GRAMMY Nominated BTS (방탄소년단) Official Thread

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