Like other areas of the music industry, the pandemic has presented both challenges and new opportunities to the folks behind NPR’s Tiny Desk Concert series. They haven’t been hosting performances from the traditional venue at their offices, but that means they’ve been able to wrangle artists to participate from wherever they find themselves. For their latest, they got perhaps the biggest pop act in the world right now: BTS.
The performance immediately sent shock waves across the internet: It was the No. 1 trending topic on Twitter in the US within a half hour of its debut. For the set, the group took to their hometown South Korean record store and performed their first US No. 1 single “Dynamite.” After that, they dipped into their archives for the remaining two songs: “Save Me” and “Spring Day,” from 2016 and 2017, respectively.
NPR noted, “We’ve been trying to make a BTS Tiny Desk concert happen for years now — even gaming out ways we might move Bob Boilen’s desk far enough forward to accommodate the superstar Korean boy band’s dance moves. In the end, it took a global pandemic — and the launch of Tiny Desk (home) concerts back in March — to make something happen.”
Watch BTS’ Tiny Desk performance above.
