Armys (BTS fans) are celebrating as K-pop idol, V (Kim Taehyung) of South Korean boy group BTS made his solo debut on the Billboard 200, last night.
On September 17, Billboard announced that V had entered its Top 200 Albums chart – its weekly ranking of the most popular albums in the United States – for the first time as a solo artist.
V’s recent solo mini album debuted on the Billboard 200 at number 2, tying the record set by his bandmates Jimin and Suga, for the highest rank achieved on the chart by a Korean solo album.
According to Luminate (formerly Nielsen Music), a platform that analyses music sales, ‘Layover’ earned a total of 100,000 equivalent album units during the week ending on September 14.
“The album’s total score consisted of 88,000 traditional album sales and 9,000 streaming equivalent album (SEA) units, which translates to 12.95 million on-demand audio streams over the course of the week,” South Korean entertainment website soompi.com reported.
Last week, the singer also debuted in the top 25 of the UK’s Official Singles Chart with his song ‘Slow Dancing’.
On September 15, the Official Charts, typically regarded as the UK equivalent to Billboard’s US charts, announced that V’s new solo title track had debuted at number 24 on its Official Singles Chart, marking his first time entering the chart as a solo artist.
Notably, this is the third song by a K-pop soloist ever to debut in the top 25, following Jimin’s ‘Like Crazy’ (which debuted at number eight) and Jungkook’s ‘Seven’ (at number three).
The singer was recently seen doing a ‘Slow Dancing’ dance challenge with the South Korean ballad singer and musical theatre actor, Park Hyo-shin. An Instagram video posted by the latter on Friday has gained over 500,000 likes.
Meanwhile, last week, V once again endeared himself to his Indian fans by grooving to Punjabi remix songs at an after-party in Seoul.
On September 15, Indian news outlet Times of India reported that the singer was spotted enjoying a night out with friends, including Park Seo-joon and Choi Woo-shik.
An undated clip from inside the bash, circulated widely on the internet, shows V shaking a leg while a DJ plays Punjabi tunes in the background.
