The majesty of the ‘Winter Prince’ was amazing.

BTS member V, who is currently serving in the military, is drawing attention by ‘lining the charts’ with the release of the seasonal song ‘Winter Ahead’, in which he collaborated with K-pop legend Park Hyo-shin.

Tidal, one of the world‘s three global music platforms, is a representative example. On the North American Top Videos chart recently released by Tidal, V not only topped the new season song ‘Winter Ahead’, but also the expanded version of ‘Winter Ahead’, the Cinematic version, and ‘Friends’, ‘Slow Dancing’, ‘Rainy Days’, ‘Love Me Again’, which were released before and after his military enlistment, taking ‘90%’ of the Top 10. This is a monopoly phenomenon commonly referred to as ‘chart lining up’.

In addition, V also set a new record of ‘Most simultaneous Top 10 entries’ in K-pop history on the chart published by Tidal.
Meanwhile, the ‘Winter Ahead’ music video is also doing well on YouTube, the leading global video platform.

Despite the running time of 6 minutes and 22 seconds, which is considered a feature-length music video, it easily ranked first on the ‘Music Video Trending Worldwide’, which measures global popularity. The ‘Winter Ahead’ music video, which has a scale reminiscent of a movie, was reportedly filmed in the form of a so-called ‘pre-produced’ before he enlisted in the military late last year.

Following ‘Winter Ahead’, V is also about to release ‘White Christmas’, a collaboration with legendary pop artist Bing Crosby. This is V’s reinterpretation of the legendary carol ‘White Christmas’, which has symbolized Bing Crosby, and it is the first time the song has been released in a ‘duet’ format. The song will be released simultaneously worldwide on the 6th.


Reporter Heo Min-nyeong mignon@donga.com