Wednesday, May 20, 2026

Sony Music Says BTS Is First Ever International Group to Debut New Single on All of Top 40 at Once

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BTS, the Korean K Pop dynamos, have set a record at least for the recent modern past.

Sony Music says BTS’s single “Butter,” currently number 1 or 2 everywhere, represents the first time an international group  has debuted single on every Top 40 station at once.

That’s probably partially true. In the 60s there was no measurement of the top 40 the way there is today. The Beatles, an international group, commanded the top 40 in 1964 and 1965. In one week they held the top 5 spots on the charts and many other positions. There wasn’t a station in the US that wasn’t playing their music all day, every day.

But let’s say since 1990 or even 1980, BTS now has this distinction. “Butter” is hot and it’s melting over everything. It’s a perfect top 40 pop hit, full of pep and utterly unmemorable. But the BTS machine has been building to this moment, so we’ll let them have it.

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Roger Friedman
Roger Friedmanhttps://www.showbiz411.com
Roger Friedman is the founder and editor-in-chief of Showbiz411. He wrote the FOX411 column on FoxNews.com from 1999 to 2009 and previously edited Fame magazine and wrote the "Intelligencer" column at New York magazine. His bylines have appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, the New York Daily News, the New York Post, Vogue, Details, and the Miami Herald. He is a voting member of the Critics Choice Awards (Film and Television branches), and his movie reviews are tracked by Rotten Tomatoes. is articles have appeared in dozens of publications over the years including New York Magazine, where he wrote the Intelligencer column in the mid 90s and covered the OJ Simpson trial, and Fox News (when it wasn't so crazy) where he covered Michael Jackson. With D.A. Pennebaker and Chris Hegedus, he co-produced the 2002 documentary "Only the Strong Survive," which screened at Directors' Fortnight at the Cannes Film Festival.

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