BTS claims double victory on Billboard 200 albums chart

SEOUL, Sept. 3 (Yonhap) -- K-pop boy group BTS has scored its second No. 1 title on the Billboard 200 Albums chart with its latest work, "Love Yourself: Answer." It is the K-pop sensation's second achievement on the American music chart after its "Love Yourself: Tear" rose to the top in May, rewriting K-pop music history. Billboard on Sunday said, citing Nielsen Music, the last one of the group's "Love Yourself" trilogy earned 185,000 equivalent album units in the week ending last Thursday, a result that combines the sales of physical albums and those of track equivalent and streaming equivalent albums. The chart "ranks the most popular albums of the week in the U.S. based on multi-metric consumption as measured in equivalent album units." "BTS is the only K-pop act with a No. 1 album and obviously the first with two leaders. They were also the first with a top 10 set, when Love Yourself: Her -- the first of the Love Yourself trilogy -- debuted and peaked at No. 7," Billboard said on its website. The weekly performance marks the "third-largest" feat for a pop album on the Billboard for 2018 after Justin Timberlake's "Man of the Woods" and Ariana Grande's "Sweetener," which recorded weekly figures of 293,000 and 231,000 units, respectively. "Sales of Love Yourself: Answer were likely enhanced by how the album was issued in four collectible editions of the set -- each with alternative artwork and ephemera -- where devoted fans likely bought all four copies," Billboard noted. BTS also reset Billboard history as the first non-English album topping the key album chart since 2006, when Il Divo's "Ancora," a collection of songs in Spanish, Italian and French came atop the list in February. BTS is also the only artists who scored a double victory at the Billboard 200 in a single year since British boy band One Direction topped the list twice between December 2013 to next December. With the weekly update of the Billboard 200, former No. 1 Travis Scott slipped to the second spot with "Astroworld," followed by Drake's "Scorpion" and Ariana Grande's "Sweetener." The updated chart will be posted on the Billboard websites Wednesday, one day later than usual due to the Labor Day holiday Monday in the U.S., according to Billboard. (END)