How I Accidentally Discovered The Next One Direction

As with any Tuesday morning, I couldn't help but search the trending topics on Twitter.

My first stop was the BBMA (Billboard Music Award) hashtag, still trending from the event on Sunday, and, expecting to find a gazillion memes of Christina Aguilera performing with Demi Lovato, I was pleasantly surprised. A Korean band I had no clue about was dominating the hashtag and, as a person who's curious about music and pop culture, I had to investigate.

It turns out the band was BTS, a seven-piece boy band, who became the first Korean act to ever perform at the Billboard Music Awards on Sunday night. Debuting their new song 'Fake Love', the band took home the award for Top Social Artist. Hundreds of fans cheered as they accepted the award and I couldn't help but think of the hysteria that surrounded British band 1D and we can't blame them after this knock out performance:

Fans of the band in Korea are celebrating that it's finally time for K-pop, to shine in the world as famous faces and the audience declared it "the BTS show". Most of the tweets react to the band hilariously reacting to megastars, including Dua Lipa and Ariana Grande, performing their hits on the Billboard stage which makes BTS even more relatable.

guys after Ariana finished her performance look at how babyboy jungkook felt the need to give a standing ovation but then sat back down real quick when he realised nobody else stood up.

JIMIN WAS LAUGHING AT HIM LMAOOO@BTS_twt #BTS_BBMAs #BBMAs pic.twitter.com/6G4JArN36I

— ariella~ (@imjungshook) May 21, 2018

We were not ready for this! #BBMAs pic.twitter.com/XDqKCAodtv

— billboard (@billboard) May 21, 2018

It turns out BTS, also known as Bangtan Boys, aren't new to the music scene and the bands' dominance of the BBMA Twitter hashtag will not be news to their fans. Two of their albums have already made the top 40 in the US with their last record reaching the highest position a Korean act has ever reached on the US charts. The boys also have some 14.9 million followers on their Twitter - the biggest social media engagement of any band alive - yet, until this morning, we'd never heard of them.

Although K-Pop is massive in some parts of the world it hasn't really made its mark here, apart from songs like 'Dreamin' Together' by Flower and Psy's 'Gangnam Style' which featured the worlds biggest girl band, Little Mix. It's a welcome change from the usual chart hits and Ireland is obsessed with Spanish hits like 'Despacito','Mi Gente' and 'Havana' which all came out in the last year so why not get onboard with BTS and K-Pop?

If that wasn't enough to make you fall in love with these guys then check out the group playing with puppy's in a recent video with Buzzfeed.