Dynamite: the song that took BTS to the top of the American charts

When BTS released Dynamite on August 21, 2020, the world was in the middle of the pandemic, concerts had stopped, and the group's plans for the year had vanished overnight. Instead of another song tied to their album storylines, they decided to release something completely different, an upbeat disco-pop song whose main job was to give people a bit of energy and a good mood.

The members said at the time that they themselves had been looking for a sense of freedom and joy through music and dance during the pandemic. Dynamite ended up becoming their first single sung entirely in English. The song was written by David Stewart and Jessica Agombar, and BTS decided to keep the original English lyrics because the song already felt right to them exactly as it was on first listen.

It was clear something big was happening almost immediately. The music video racked up 101.1 million views in its first 24 hours, setting what was then YouTube's record for most-viewed music video in a single day. More than three million people watched the premiere live at the same time, also a new record.

The biggest news came on August 31, when Billboard released its new Hot 100 chart. Dynamite debuted straight at number one, and BTS became the first all-South Korean group to top the most important American singles chart. Until then, the closest anyone had come was PSY with Gangnam Style, which spent seven weeks at number two in 2012 but never reached number one.

The first-week numbers were impressive too. Dynamite racked up 33.9 million streams and 300,000 copies sold in the US. It spent a total of three weeks at number one on the Hot 100, and the success continued long after its initial surge. The song stayed among the country's biggest hits for months and set a record with 18 weeks at the top of Billboard's Digital Song Sales chart.

One more detail gives the whole story extra meaning that ARMY remembers well. While it was still August 31 in the US, September 1 had already begun in South Korea, Jungkook's birthday. So the news of their first Billboard Hot 100 number one arrived right on his birthday, and footage of the members celebrating one of the biggest successes of their career together stayed part of the Dynamite story.

Then, just a few months later, BTS showed this wasn't a one-off American hit. Life Goes On, a song mostly in Korean, also debuted at number one on the Hot 100. It became the first non-English-language song in the chart's history to debut directly at number one.

Dynamite also brought BTS something they'd long hoped for. In November 2020, a Grammy nomination arrived in the Best Pop Duo/Group Performance category, their first-ever Grammy nomination as performers. A song they'd released in the middle of a year they couldn't perform for a live audience ended up becoming one of the biggest breakthroughs of their career.