The stakes were impossibly high, but the long-awaited results appear to have delivered.
Nearly four years after K-pop supergroup BTS stepped away from the public eye to fulfill South Korea’s mandatory military service, the world’s biggest band reconvened in Los Angeles last summer to begin the high-pressure task of crafting a comeback album. The resulting fifth BTS studio LP, Arirang — a blend of bold new pop experiments and assertive Korean national pride (the album samples and takes its name from a century-old folk song that functions as an unofficial national anthem in the country) — arrived on March 20 and promptly became the most-streamed album in a single day on Spotify this year, as well as the most-streamed K-pop album in the platform’s history. The following night, BTS performed together for the first time in nearly four years before tens of thousands of fans in Seoul’s historic Gwanghwamun Square,
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