Simon Cowell recently sparked the anger of K-pop fans for belittling BTS' achievements. Simon Cowell is known as an entrepreneur, reality TV star, and record label owner. He has been a judge on various famous competitions such as 'Pop Idol', 'American Idol', 'The X Factor', and 'Britain's Got Talent'.
In particular, Simon Cowell formed the boy band One Direction which is popular all over the world. One Direction achieved phenomenal success, breaking numerous records and selling 70 million records worldwide as of April 2020. The success of One Direction is certainly a source of pride for Simon Cowell.
In an interview with Rolling Stone, he announced his plans to find a new boy band to replace One Direction. Apart from that, Simon revealed that in his opinion there has been no music group that has been as successful as One Direction in the last 14 years.
"Every generation deserves a megastar boy band and I don't think any generation has achieved the success of One Direction in more than 14 years. This industry tends to focus on solo artists, so usually it takes someone from outside to form a group," said Simon Cowell as quoted from Koreaboo on Thursday June 6, 2024.
While One Direction's achievements cannot be denied, Simon's statements have irritated many people, especially K-pop fans. They think Simon Cowell is too ' western-centric ' and deliberately ignores the success of Korean groups, especially BTS.
Some even remember Simon's response to the rise of BTS when he expressed his desire to create a 'UKpop' group to compete with K-pop. The fans' frustration is not without reason, considering that BTS has broken many records set by One Direction, including the number of followers on Instagram and Twitter.
Musically, BTS has broken the record for most views in 24 hours on YouTube for a boy group and frequently tops the Billboard Hot 100 charts. Even though the two groups were active at different times, Simon's comments were considered disparaging to BTS and other K-pop groups.
Apart from BTS, other K-pop groups such as BLACKPINK, TWICE, NewJeans, Stray Kids, and SEVENTEEN have also achieved international success. " I'm not a BTS fan, but this man dares to say there is no group as successful as One Direction as long as BTS is still standing tall? " wrote one netizen.
" In 2019, he also wanted to create a group to overthrow BTS, but look at how it turned out, " said another netizen. " Simon clearly ignores and denies all the success that K-pop has achieved, " another netizen chimed in. What do you think?
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