BURBANK, CALIFORNIA – JANUARY 27: (L-R) Jin, Jungkook, RM, Jimin, and J-Hope of “BTS” speak onstage … [+] at iHeartRadio LIVE with BTS presented by HOT TOPIC at iHeartRadio Theater on January 27, 2020 in Burbank, California. (Photo by Kevin Winter/Getty Images for iHeartMedia)
Getty Images for iHeartMedia
Late last week, BTS was surprised with an important honor from one of the biggest organizations in the U.K. music industry, as their latest album Map of the Soul: 7 was certified silver. That distinction is bestowed upon full-lengths in the island nation when they have reached 60,000 equivalent units shifted, with all sales and streaming equivalents certified by the BPI (British Phonographic Industry).
It isn’t uncommon for successful albums to be certified silver in the U.K., and it remains the lowest-level certification in the country, but it is an award rarely earned by non-English projects. In fact, very few titles performed in a language other than English manage to grab any form of certification, and throughout the many years that this program has been in place in the U.K., only five Korean albums have been lucky enough and popular enough to do so.
Impressively, four of those five albums are from the same group, while the other only collected the honor thanks to one massive single the public couldn’t get enough of.
The first Korean-language album to go silver in the U.K. was BTS’s Love Yourself: Answer, which made history by doing so back in late May 2019. Just one month later, the same act’s Map of the Soul: Persona also managed to do so, but it reached the important milestone much faster, as it had only been released a few months prior.
At the top of 2020, BTS’s Love Yourself: Tear was certified silver. Less than two full months later, Pinkfong’s The Best of Baby Shark joined the club, becoming the first non-BTS Korean-language release to be named a silver title in the U.K. The compilation hit that mark thanks to the incredible success of the single “Baby Shark,” which was an unavoidable viral smash for what seemed like forever.
Now, Map of the Soul: 7 makes five Korean-language albums, and while there may not be many more inductees to this group in the coming years, it will surely grow, if only due to BTS launching new full-lengths.
It will be interesting to see which Korean title is the first to go gold, a certification that comes when any project has officially moved 100,000 equivalent units. So far, none of the aforementioned releases have managed to make it to that level, but some day, one will, and there’s a very good chance it will be one of BTS’s full-lengths.