entertainment

BTS song 'Life Goes On' debuts at No. 1 on U.S. chart in foreign language first

15 Comments
By Jung Yeon-je

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This is what American music has come to.

8 ( +11 / -3 )

Dynamite is a better song, but hey...

IMHO, this just go to show how cosmopolitan main stream America is, and it's a good sign. America exports rap and hip hop, it comes back as K Pop, how cheerful is that?

1 ( +6 / -5 )

stupid or below song, billboard desperately needs K-pop to keep its social media entertaining.Its a deliberate push to woo Asian base in their dying market.

3 ( +4 / -1 )

stupid or below song, billboard desperately needs K-pop to keep its social media entertaining.Its a deliberate push to woo Asian base in their dying market.

The West needs to tap into the Asian market, mostly China. However, China is extremely protectionist and insular. Their artists are sponsored by the state elites, so they won't allow any competition from the outside forces.

Kpop is the best thing able to penetrate into China.

0 ( +0 / -0 )

So this song has 163,942,992 views on YouTube. It is not such an interesting song to me, but I guess lots of people like it. I'll take SMAP any day.

-3 ( +0 / -3 )

Why not? "Disco Duck" sold something like 6 million copies. My friends and I sang along to Kraftwerk not knowing what they were talking about - 'ich, knee san shee(?)' - and I still don't know for sure (German? Japanese?), don't care either but still listen to them now. "Ina Gadda Davida" has an unintelligible title and lyrics but is a classic. Patti LaBelle sang a song partly in French, not really knowing what she was saying and neither did the vast majority who heard it. I sang along to many catchy Japanese tunes when I got here not knowing the true words. Point being, if people like it, they like it and it doesn't need to be in their native tongue. "Gangnam Style" really opened up people to Korea and now they are blowing the doors off. Don't know anything about BTS, but more power to them. It's good for the world and I agree with Sh1mon above.

2 ( +3 / -1 )

@hillclimber

spot on !

0 ( +1 / -1 )

More Americans finally getting used to foreign language songs - can only be a good sign

1 ( +2 / -1 )

Absolutely not interested in this stuff, but it can't be worse than pineapple.

3 ( +3 / -0 )

Pukey2.

LOL

1 ( +1 / -0 )

MocheakeDec. 2  07:28 pm JST

Why not? "Disco Duck" sold something like 6 million copies. My friends and I sang along to Kraftwerk not knowing what they were talking about - 'ich, knee san shee(?)' - and I still don't know for sure (German? Japanese?), don't care either but still listen to them now. "Ina Gadda Davida" has an unintelligible title and lyrics but is a classic. Patti LaBelle sang a song partly in French, not really knowing what she was saying and neither did the vast majority who heard it. I sang along to many catchy Japanese tunes when I got here not knowing the true words. Point being, if people like it, they like it and it doesn't need to be in their native tongue. "Gangnam Style" really opened up people to Korea and now they are blowing the doors off. Don't know anything about BTS, but more power to them. It's good for the world and I agree with Sh1mon above.

In the 50s there was a #1 by a Japanese artist, it was sung in Japanese. I love Kraftwerk and I was supposed to see this pioneering German band but CoVid-19 shelved everything for the time being. I remember growing up with Nena's '99 Luftballons', a German song that reached #2. There was Falco. 'Macarena' sucks big time and so does 'Disco Duck' and the 'Ketchup Song'. And Paul Simon on his his classic 'Graceland' album has a song where Ladysmith Black Mambaza sing the lyrics in Zulu, a language of which I know nothing, but it's catchy anyway.

0 ( +0 / -0 )

BigYen

I remember as a kid hearing that song on AM radio but like Kraftwerk's classic 'Autobahn' (sung in German) it just phonetically sounds like 'gibberish', at least when you're that young. Also there was the Spanish language 'Eres Tu' ('Touch the Wind') that hit big in America. When I was a teenager there was '99 Luftballons' which is far better in its original German. When I was in the military stationed in California Los Lobos' cover of 'La Bamba' hit #1, it's entirely in Spanish.

Since then I've seen two Japanese rock bands. The lady punk trio Shonen Knife sings in English but the psychedelic Acid Mother Temple sings what few lyrics they use entirely in Japanese. I've also seen Sukwinder Singh of India (he sings in whatever), Ladysmith Black Mambazo (Zulu), Mdou Moctar (Tuareg, he's from Niger), 57 (Korean), and last year I saw The Hu (Mongolian). And U2 did a song in their native Celtic long long ago but I never saw them perform that one.

It's everywhere now, in every language. And I know it's solid rock'n'roll, I like it, like it, yes I do.

0 ( +0 / -0 )

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