Month: March 2023

The Love on Tour lovefest continues!

After Harry Styles performed a star-studded concert in Seoul, South Korea, BTS members RM, Suga, V and Jung Kook caught up with the pop star backstage and shared snaps from their meeting on Monday.

RM and V posted the crossover moment to their respective Instagram Stories. Both pictures sees the BTS idols with their arms around Styles or crouching down, holding up a peace sign and double K-pop finger hearts. RM shared the photo to his Story with a pink heart, while V opted for several disco emojis.

Styles’ Love on Tour stop in Seoul honored BTS by playing the group’s 2020 smash hit — which also served as the group’s first single to debut at No. 1 the Billboard Hot 100 — in the concert’s pre-show playlist.

As for the actual concert, Taekook — Taehyung (V) and Jung Kook — began trending on Twitter shortly after appearing in the audience energetically dancing as Styles performed One Direction’s “What Makes You Beautiful.” (RM and Suga were also spotted in the audience, but sat in separate locations from V and Jung Kook.)

See RM and V’s photos here and here on Instagram before they disappear.

Miley Cyrus took to social media on Tuesday (March 21) to celebrate “Flowers” returning to the top of the Billboard Hot 100 for a seventh week.

“Flowers is #1 for a 7th week! I love all of you. Endless Summer Vacation out now!” the singer wrote on Twitter, also sharing a candid shot of herself wearing an asymmetrical dress of black sequins, a long green fur coat, and her must-have accessory of the album cycle: a pair of black sunglasses. She also shared this week’s Hot 100 top 10 (chart dated March 25) and Billboard‘s own story about her 10th career week at No. 1 on her Instagram Stories.

The hit single’s return to the pinnacle of the Hot 100 was helped by the release of Endless Summer Vacation, which posted Cyrus’ best opening week on the Billboard 200 in more than a decade with 103,000 equivalent album units. The studio set lands at No. 3 on the chart behind Morgan Wallen’s One Thing at a Time — last week’s holdover at No. 1 — and TWICE’s READY TO BE.

In more global accomplishments, “Flowers” is also spending an eighth week at the top of both Billboard Global charts, and Cyrus also nabbed a rare chart double over in the U.K. with the smash single and its parent album simultaneously sitting at No. 1 on the Official Singles chart and Official Albums chart.

Check out Cyrus’ tweet about her song’s latest chart-topping accomplishment below.

It’s official: The Weeknd is statistically the most popular artist in the world according to Guinness World Records.

The organization proffered the title upon the pop star on Monday after analyzing the Spotify data of some of the biggest names in the music industry, including number of monthly listeners on the streaming platform.

Considering the artist otherwise known as Abel Tesfaye holds the record as the first, and so far only, artist in Spotify history to reach 100 million monthly listeners as of the end of February, he’s far and away at the top of the class. And yet, even in the few weeks since he crossed the nine-figure threshold, the “Starboy” singer has gained even more streaming followers — up to 111.4 million, according to the Guinness report.

And there’s quite the wide berth between that mind-boggling number and the next artist on the list, Miley Cyrus, who currently tallies 82.4 million monthly listeners in the wake of releasing her hotly anticipated eighth studio album Endless Summer Vacation. Other artists who trail The Weeknd include Shakira (81.6 million), Ariana Grande (80.6 million), Taylor Swift (80. 2 million), Rihanna (78.5 million) and Ed Sheeran (77.5 million).

A little over a week ago, The Weeknd swept the 2023 Juno Awards in his native Canada, taking home four awards, including both artist of the year and songwriter of the year for a record fourth time; single of the year for a third time (for 2022’s “Sacrifice”)l and pop album of the year (for Dawn FM).

The arrival of Jisoo’s solo album, ME, is imminent. To further drum up anticipation for its release, the BLACKPINK singer’s record label YG Entertainment shared a second teaser visual that provides one more piece to the puzzle of her debut as a solo artist.

The stunning video features a color palette primarily consisting of black and white. Jisoo first appears on screen as an elegant silhouette before her face and body are revealed. She poses in a black crop top and a satin-finished, voluminous skirt, gazing fiercely into the camera until her solo album and its release date appear in red text at the end of the video.

The new teaser visual also slipped a major nugget of information to fans of the K-pop star. In the description box of the video, the text reads #FLOWER,” potentially hinting at the title of the album’s lead single.

In YG’s post of the visual teaser on Twitter, several fans hilariously replied with the same block of text (also known as a copypasta), “ME isn’t just an album, it’s a cultural reset, it’s the oxygen you breathe, it’s a lifestyle, a reason to breathe, an escape from this cruel world, it’s art, the first gift you open on Christmas, a hug from a loved one, everything uv [sic] ever wanted and more. It’s a blessing.”

ME is set for release on March 31 via YG Entertainment and Interscope Records. It comes after Lisa’s LALISA and Rosé’s -R- in 2021 and Jennie’s “SOLO” in 2018.

See Jisoo’s new teaser above.

NCT DREAM is giving fans an English single to feast on, and it’s a re-release of one of the K-pop stars’ more recent tracks. The K-pop group shared its new version of “Beatbox” on Tuesday (March 21), alongside a lyric video handwritten by members Mark, Renjun, Jeno, Haechan, Chenle, Jaemin and Jisung.

“Yeah, pull up to the spot, turn it up (Yeah, yeah)/ Make a beatbox-box and it bump (Yeah, yeah)/ Rhythm with the flow is the gunghap/ Everywhere I go, bring the beatbox/ Yeah, hands up to the top, bring ’em up (Yeah, yeah)/ Make a beatbox-box and it bump (Yeah, yeah) Everywhere I go, make the room hop/ Everywhere I go, bring the beatbox,” the boys sing in unison on the song’s infectious chorus. The lyric video also highlights scenes of the group doing a photo shoot for the single.

“Beatbox” — which serves as NCT DREAM’s second English-language single after “Fireflies” — was originally released as the title track from the group’s second album repackage, Beatbox. The set arrived last year on May 30 and, in addition to the Korean version of “Beatbox,” featured new tracks “To My First,” “Sorry, Heart” and “On the Way,” which did not appear on the K-pop group’s second album, Glitch Mode. Glitch Mode peaked at No. 5 on Billboard‘s Top Album Sales chart, while Beatbox, Glitch Mode‘s repackage, peaked at No. 61.

Up next for NCT DREAM is a tour across the United States titled NCT DREAM — THE DREAM SHOW2: In A DREAM tour, which will kick off on April 5. It is set to make stops in Chicago, Atlanta, Houston, Dallas, Los Angeles and Seattle before concluding on April 21.

Listen to the English version of “Beatbox” in the video above.