BTS song Butter rules Billboard charts after melting YouTube, Spotify records

BTS’ new English single Butter is now sitting atop the Billboard Hot 100 songs chart, unseating Olivia Rodrigo’s Good 4 U, which held the spot last week.

“The song marks the superstar South Korean septet’s fourth Hot 100 No. 1, all in the last nine months, marking any act’s quickest accumulation of four initial leaders since Justin Timberlake a decade and a half ago,” Billboard says. “Among groups, BTS has landed its first four No. 1s the fastest since the Jackson 5 in 1970.”

The Hot 100 determines the most popular songs of the week by blending all-genre US streaming of official audio and official video, plus radio airplay and sales data. Butter is also at No. 1 on the Billboard Global 200, the company’s weekly ranking of most consumed songs in the world. 

It will come as no surprise to the BTS Army to learn Butter is setting all sorts of records.

The new single broke the record for the most viewers for the premiere of a video on YouTube with 3.9 million concurrent viewers for its premiere on May 21. It also set a record for most YouTube views within 24 hours of release. Butter hit 108.2 million views during that time frame, surpassing the group’s own 101.1 million view record for Dynamite. As of this writing, Butter’s at more than 280 million views. 

Want to know how many views it had in its first hour alone? Oh, you know, almost 19 million. About the same as the entire country of Chile watching the video in the first hour. No big deal.

And that’s just the start. According to Pop Base, it surpassed 10 million views in just 13 minutes — a record. 

But it’s breaking records outside YouTube as well, as Guinness World Records notes. After the single dropped on Spotify, it garnered more than 11 million global streams in just one day, making it the most-streamed Spotify track in the first 24 hours. The track beat Ed Sheeran and Justin Bieber’s track I Don’t Care by 64,946 streams.

BTS also has racked up an unrivaled number of streams on the platform. 

“These latest accolades bring BTS’ number of records up to an incredible 23 — making them one of the most successful music groups in Guinness World Records history, alongside other chart toppers like Ariana Grande, Mariah Carey, Madonna, and The Beatles,” Guinness notes. 

You can view the new video below.

Anyway, how good is it when Suga comes in? Damn. Smooth like butter.