How BTS Did It

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Don't like ads? Go ad-free with TradeBriefs Premium How BTS Did It    Beyond the Story: 10-Year Record of BTS manages to layer an emotional history on top of the professional rise of the world’s biggest band. In early May, rumors swirled on social media about a mysterious book. Its title wouldn't be announced until June 13, but it was slated for worldwide publication on July 9, with an initial print run of 1 million copies. Media coverage focused on fan speculation that the author was Taylor Swift, a theory that drove a wave of preorders of the still-unnamed project. However, some of us immediately deduced that the book was actually about the South Korean pop group BTS. The biggest clue was that the announcement and release dates were each a major anniversary for the band—10 years since its debut and the naming of its enormous fan base, ARMY, respectively. And indeed, within days the publisher, Flatiron Books, confirmed to The New York Times that the 544-page book was titled Beyond the Story: 10-Year Record of BTS. It was written by the South Korean journalist Myeongseok Kang (and translated into English by Anton Hur, Slin Jung, and Clare Richards), based on extensive interviews with the group’s seven members. But I still had questions, both as a fan and a cultural critic who has written my own book about BTS. How candid would the members be? Would the book speak mostly to diehards like me, or would it manage to capture the nature of stratospheric fame for general readers? After a decade of the group’s existence, how far would Beyond the Story go beyond the … well, you know. As it turns out, the book is less a traditional memoir or personal biography than a meticulous accounting of how BTS was born and became a worldwide juggernaut under the once-tiny record label Big Hit (now the massive entertainment company Hybe). For anyone who’s ever heard “Butter” on the radio and puzzled over the group’s ascent in America, Beyond the Story has answers: It’s a fascinating, complicated, and at-times anxiety-inducing chronicle of fan-driven global domination—as well as a highly accessible resource for newer devotees. Continued here

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