VIDEO BTS' new album is out

K-pop band BTS' new album featuring two high-profile collaborations with pop stars, Halsey and Ed Sheeran, rocked the world music scene Friday (KST) at major online stores, revealing stories of love, self and the outside world.

“Map of the Soul: Persona,” is the opening album of the group's new “Map of the Soul” series, following their two-year-long “Love Yourself” trilogy that posted two No. 1s on the Billboard 200 albums chart.

Within two hours of its release, “Boy With Luv,” the lead track on the album, conquered the real-time music charts of six major online streaming sites here, including Melon and Mnet. The other six tracks off the album all charted in real time.

As fans rushed to listen to the new songs, online access to Melon, one of the top K-pop streaming sites, was paralyzed for an hour after they were made available. The lead off song garnered more than 16 million YouTube views in slightly more than four hours following the official release.

“Boy With Luv,” featuring American diva Halsey, is a funk pop track with a music video that pays homage to the iconic film “Singin' in the Rain.”

The song “plays with interest on and love toward 'you,' as well as the joy of small, humble love,” BigHit, the group's agency, said in a press release hours before the album was released.

“It colorfully expresses the feeling of the thrill from love and has an easy-to-listen melody line,” it said.

Following off the lead track, the other songs on the album explore the stories of the inner mind, interest in the outside world and the joy of love, the agency continued.

The album has an assortment of surprises for fans, with fourth track “Make It Right” featuring British singer-songwriter Ed Sheeran.

The third, “Mikrokosmo” is a philosophical song delving into the link between the self and the outside world; while the fifth, “HOME,” is a song for the band's fans, drawn as a metaphorical home where anyone can always return in times of hardship and loneliness.

The sixth track “Jamais Vu” is a joint work by the three-member BTS subunit ― J-Hope, Jin and Jung-kook ― while the final song, “Dionysus” is a hip-hop number featuring Jin's rocking vocals, according to BigHit.

Preorders for the first “Map of the Soul” album reached 3.02 million, and it has maintained the best-seller position on Amazon's CDs & Vinyl store ever since they were started about a month ago, heralding another wild success for the band.

BTS will world-premiere the lead track on the famous American comedy show “SNL,” Saturday, before holding a news conference on the new release in Seoul, Wednesday. (Yonhap)