Love Yourself World Tour
BTS World Tour: Love Yourself, commonly known as the Love Yourself World Tour, was the third worldwide concert tour headlined by South Korean band BTS to promote their Love Yourself album series, including their Love Yourself: Her EP, Love Yourself: Tear studio album, and Love Yourself: Answer compilation album.[2] The tour began on August 25, 2018, in South Korea. A stadium extension to the tour, titled BTS World Tour Love Yourself: Speak Yourself, was announced on February 9, 2019, and began in Pasadena, California on May 4, 2019. The tour concluded on October 29, 2019, comprising 62 concerts in 14 countries.[3] The Love Yourself World Tour ranked at number three on Billboard's 2019 Year End Top 40 Tours chart worldwide, with a worldwide gross of $196.4 million from the last 42 shows of the tour. In total, the tour was attended by over 2 million people,[4] becoming BTS' most successful tour and the highest-grossing concert tour by an act that performs primarily in a non-English language, as reported by Billboard.
Background[edit]
On April 26, 2018, Big Hit Entertainment released a trailer on their official YouTube channel announcing an upcoming world tour.[5] The video revealed an initial schedule of 22 shows across 11 cities worldwide.[6][7] After the announcement, multiple hashtags trended worldwide on social media, including the tour's namesake tag #LOVE_YOURSELF.[8]
Reception[edit]
Commercial[edit]
In May 2018, after the first round of North American ticket pre-sales sold out in seconds,[9][10] a fourth show at Los Angeles' Staples Center was added due to overwhelming fan demand.[11] Tickets for the Hamilton shows sold out in just over an hour, with organizers for the Ontario stop, Core Entertainment, revealing they would have sold out faster if not for the strain put on Ticketmaster's online system due to the unprecedented heavy influx of site traffic.[12] All fourteen North American stops completely sold out,[13] prompting the addition of a fifteenth and final stop of the North American leg at New York's Citi Field. The concert sold out in under ten minutes,[14] making BTS the first Korean artist to headline a stadium show in the United States.[15] The London, Amsterdam, Berlin, and Paris arena stops—the group's first and biggest headlining shows in Europe at the time[16]—also saw commercial success. The London and Berlin shows sold out in two and nine minutes, respectively.[17] After the second general sale for Seoul's Seoul Olympic Stadium dates opened in August, all 90,000 available tickets sold out.[18] Estimated to have sold a total of 790,000 tickets from 33 sold-out shows in 16 cities,[19] BTS added eight additional Asia dates during the European leg of the tour.[20] The first K-pop artists to play at Singapore's National Stadium, BTS sold out all tickets in less than four hours.[21]
According to ticket resale site StubHub, BTS was one of 2018's best selling live artists in international markets outside the United States, second to only Ed Sheeran.[22] Variety named BTS as one of the top touring acts of Fall 2018 in the United States, entering StubHub's "highest-selling act" and "best-selling shows" lists with the "highest-selling average sales per show position".[23] According to Yahoo! Finance, BTS were also the top-selling act and top-selling show in Canada for Fall 2018.[24] In Japan, BTS came in as the nineteenth best-selling touring act on Nikkei Entertainment's 2018 Concert Mobilization Ranking Top 50.[25]
Critical[edit]
The Love Yourself received positive reviews from critics. Media outlets reported that fans began camping outside the Staples Center days ahead the concert.[26] Philip Cosores of Uproxx described BTS' Staples Center four-night concerts as an "enormous, multi-sensory experience" that created an "inclusive" and "multicultural experience" where music surpassed any language barrier.[27] Tiffany Taylor noted for Billboard News the "amazing choreography", praising the solo performances and energy of the fans as highlight of the night.[28] Jim Harrington of The Mercury News referred to the Oracle Arena concert on Oakland as "the hottest concert of the year in the Bay Area", describing the solo performances as "witnessing seven individual stars, each of whom could enjoy a successful solo career."[29] For the Chicago show, critic Kim Youngdae stated that BTS' strengths were the dazzling group displays, artistry in the solo numbers, and how immersive the concert was.[30] On the tour, Crystal Bell of MTV stated, "BTS have created an experience so captivating, so inclusive, and so visually stunning that it's cemented the boy band as one of the most vital acts in pop music today."[31] The Quietus wrote that the European tour was "a search for self-identity": "After two-and-a-half hours of costume changes, pulsing beats, soaring high notes and the impossible iconic beauty of their videos, BTS walk to the front of the stage in low-key jeans and T-shirts. As they sing the last song, ‘Anpanman’, which is about a new kind of superhero, we realise that their awkwardness and sensitivity is also the source of their strength."[32] The Denisonian rated the concert ten out of ten, highlighting the music, visuals, dancing, and fans.[33] Vivid Seats named BTS the 2018 artist of the year, citing the group's history-making concert at Citi Field.[34]
Associated album
BTS performing "DNA" during Love Yourself tour in Los Angeles on September 8, 2018.
BTS at Love Yourself concert in Nagoya on January 13, 2019.
ARMY 'Purple Ocean' during BTS Love Yourself tour in Bangkok, Thailand on April 7, 2019.
BTS Love Yourself - Speak Yourself tour at Rose Bowl, Pasadena (California), on May 4, 2019.
BTS performing "Mic Drop" during the Speak Yourself tour at Soldier Field, Chicago on May 12, 2019.
BTS performing "Not Today" during Speak Yourself tour at MetLife Stadium on May 18, 2019.
BTS in concert at Wembley Stadium on June 2, 2019.
