BTS's "Idol" Video Passes 1.4 Billion Views. It's Their Fifth to Get There.
The music video for BTS's 2018 single "Idol" surpassed 1.4 billion views on YouTube at 9:19 p.m. KST on July 29, Big Hit Music said. It's the fifth BTS video to cross that line, joining "Dynamite," "Boy With Luv," "DNA" and the "MIC Drop" remix.
"Idol" is the title track off "Love Yourself: Answer," the repackaged version of 2018's "Love Yourself: Tear." The song layers traditional Korean rhythmic patterns and chuimsae - the call-and-response chants shouted during Korean folk performances - over a South African house beat, and the video matches that fusion visually: tropical savanna sets, Bukcheong lion-dance costuming, and choreography that mixes the South African gwara gwara with Korean folk dance. It debuted at No. 11 on the Billboard Hot 100 and No. 21 on the UK Official Singles Chart, and won Music Video of the Year at the 2018 E! People's Choice Awards. Getting from release to 1.4 billion views took seven years, eleven months and five days.
The milestone lands the same week BTS announced they won't submit their comeback album "Arirang" for consideration at the 2027 Grammy Awards, after the Recording Academy introduced a new Best Asian Pop Music Performance category. The group's stated reason - that they want their music "heard and loved for what it is, rather than being categorized by region or language" - echoes back to what made "Idol" land globally in the first place: a song built from Korean elements that never asked to be filed under a regional label to find an audience.
"Idol" remains part of the setlist on BTS's ongoing ARIRANG World Tour, which kicked off in April in support of the group's post-military-service comeback album of the same name. That album debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 with 641,000 units sold in its first week - the biggest opening for a group album in more than a decade - and topped Apple Music's chart in 115 countries and regions.
Four of the group's other music videos got to 1.4 billion first. "Idol" took a South African beat, a chuimsae chant, and a lion dance to get there its own way.
