It was in an interview with Entertainment Weekly in 2019 where RM, leader of K-pop superstar group BTS, said that singing an all-English song wasn’t in the band’s plans. 

But things have apparently changed as the group is set to release the all-English song “Dynamite” on Friday at 1 p.m. local time. Its official teaser was released on Aug. 18 and has been viewed more than 41 million times at the time of writing.

#BTS #방탄소년단 Official Teaser
(https://t.co/o5d3lDueHW)#BTS_Dynamite

— BigHit Entertainment (@BigHitEnt) August 18, 2020

Debuting in 2013, BTS consists of RM, V, Jungkook, Jimin, Suga, J-Hope and Jin. The boyband has broken records and won numerous awards along the years, including having 4 million pre-orders for its album Map of the Soul: 7 in February and being awarded the Global V Live Top 10 Best Artist at the 33^rd Golden Disc Awards last year.

In an interview with USA Today, the group said the decision to perform an English song was related to the COVID-19 pandemic.

“This is a situation that everybody else around the world is facing, so we just started to explore what can we do right now, what can we do really good?” said Suga.

The pandemic has also affected the group. The band canceled its North America tours that was initially scheduled from April 25 to June 6 and four concerts in Seoul, South Korea, in April.

RM said the band had not intended for the song to be completely in English. “During the process of making our album […] it just came to us,” he said.

Though the group has English lyrics in some of its songs, singing all-English was another thing. Jungkook described it as “interesting”. “It was an interesting kind of challenge,” he said.

Along with the new song, BTS is also scheduled to have limited worldwide screenings of Break the Silence: The Movie starting on Sept. 10. (wir/wng)

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