Oh Snap! BTS Just Made the Grammys Irrelevant

I am not ARMY. The first BTS member to intrigue me was J-Hope, who appeared last year on one of my favorite Korean shows, Chef & My Fridge, with his refrigerator in tow. There, I learned that he had performed at Le Gala des Pièces Jaunes at Paris La Défense Arena at the personal invitation of Brigitte Macron, France’s first lady. Naturally, I found the performance on YouTube. Thirty-five thousand people filled the arena as thousands of voices in France roared the Korean lyric, “adeuri neom jal nagaseo mianhae, eomma.” One need not own a purple light stick to recognize that kind of cultural power. Afterward, I became mildly obsessed with J-Hope and, by association, BTS.

Original photo by Sudhith Xavier. Photoshop by ChatGPT.

A song currently in heavy rotation on my playlist is SWIM, from their latest album, ARIRANG. The album debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 and remained there for three consecutive weeks. During its debut week, its songs occupied the top nine positions on the Billboard Global 200. By late July, ARIRANG had spent eighteen weeks on the Billboard 200 and returned to the top ten after a new vinyl release, as though its first entrance had somehow been too discreet.

On Spotify, ARIRANG generated approximately 110 million streams worldwide on its first day, the largest opening for an album on the platform in 2026 at that point. It reached No. 1 in major markets including South Korea, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, and Japan. In Germany, ARIRANG and SWIM debuted simultaneously at No. 1 on the album and singles charts, making BTS the first group in German chart history to enter both charts at No. 1 in the same week.

And BTS is hardly an isolated marvel in K-pop. BLACKPINK, Stray Kids with eight consecutive No. 1 debuts on the Billboard 200, SEVENTEEN, and TWICE are not promising regional acts politely waiting to be discovered by the West. They are global pop powers with the charts, sales, and audiences to prove it. That makes the Recording Academy’s new Best Asian Pop Music Performance category feel like an attempt to seat these global megastars at a separate table. The kids’ table.

In February, Bad Bunny’s DeBÍ TiRAR MáS FOToS became the first Spanish-language album to win Album of the Year. Four months later, the Recording Academy announced five new Grammy categories, including Best Latin Song and Best Asian Pop Music Performance. At the time, eyebrows rose. Then all seven members of BTS posted matching statements in Korean on Instagram Stories announcing that they would not submit their music for Grammy consideration. The controversy has gone global, and the Grammys have begun to look perilously like the Grannies.

Why, exactly, did the Recording Academy segregate pop music from Asia? Was it afraid that nominee lists long dominated by music in English from the United States and Europe might soon be overtaken by artists from Asia, and did it thus feel it necessary to segregate them under the pretense of recognition? Or is the Academy suggesting that Asian artists cannot compete for Grammys without a category created especially for them? Perhaps this is the institution acknowledging its xenophobia.

And what did Harvey Mason Jr., the Recording Academy’s CEO, mean when he said the category was created to “celebrate the depth, diversity and extraordinary growth of pop artistry coming out of Asia”? Has he been living six feet under? South Korean pop did not suddenly emerge this year. It has been a dominant global force for years. Yes, years, plural.

He must have been living six feet under in 2022, when eight of the ten most-used hashtags during the Grammy broadcast were connected to BTS. According to Brandwatch, #BTS appeared about 2 million times among more than 3.3 million Grammy-related Twitter mentions. Their Butter performance produced the night’s largest spike, exceeding 17,460 mentions in a single minute, and BTS was the ceremony’s most-mentioned performer.

He must also have been clueless that three of the four leading individual Grammy-performance uploads on YouTube feature BTS: BTS performing Butter at the 2022 Grammys, with more than 110 million views; Jennifer Lopez and Marc Anthony performing Escapémonos at the 2005 Grammys, with about 100.6 million views; BTS performing Dynamite at the 2021 Grammys, with about 92 million views; and Lil Nas X and guests, including BTS, performing Old Town Road at the 2020 Grammys, with about 83.9 million views. Clearly, the Recording Academy neither consults data nor bothers to remain culturally current.

I appreciate that the BTS members posted their statements in Korean to stand against segregation poorly disguised as inclusion. Their talent has earned them global dominance, and their music moves fluidly across borders, languages, cultures, and time zones. Their relevance is rooted in both talent and courage. The more pressing question is whether the Grammys can remain relevant when seven global megatalents behind one of the year’s highest-performing albums and several of its highest-performing songs have simply walked away from them.

I highly doubt it.

_____

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