BTS 'Life Goes On' Joins Group's Growing List of 600M-View Videos

The music video for BTS's "Life Goes On" has crossed 600 million views on YouTube. The title track from the group's seventh mini-album, "BE (Deluxe Edition)," passed the mark at around 12:34 a.m. KST on the 12th, roughly five years after the album's 2020 release.

Member Jung Kook directed the video himself. It cuts between quiet scenes of the members at home and moments of them singing, capturing the mood of a period when the group could not meet fans in person because of COVID-19. Small details fill the frame throughout, from a dust-covered bicycle to an empty concert venue, standing in for a daily life that had come to a halt.

"Life Goes On" carries a simple message. Life had been forced to pause under circumstances no one saw coming, but it continues anyway. On Spotify, the song has now been streamed more than 1.03 billion times as of the 12th. The number matters because "Life Goes On" is a track built mostly around Korean-language lyrics, a rare profile for a song to reach a billion streams on the platform.

The song also made history on the U.S. charts. It debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 on the chart dated December 5, 2020, and stayed on the chart for three weeks. It was the first song in the Hot 100's 62-year history to reach the top spot with lyrics primarily in Korean.

"Life Goes On" now joins a growing shelf of BTS music videos that have passed the billion or hundred-million-view mark on YouTube. Those include "Dynamite" at 2.1 billion views, "Boy With Luv" featuring Halsey at 1.9 billion, "DNA" at 1.6 billion, "MIC Drop (Steve Aoki Remix)" at 1.5 billion, "FAKE LOVE" and "IDOL" at 1.3 billion each, and "Butter" at 1 billion. Together, they trace the arc of a group that has kept setting new marks well past its earliest global peaks.