as a jonas brothers & bts fan i think this is a reductive take that we don’t need in order to adequately criticise the western industry/recording academy’s obfuscation of bts’ successes. i think we can do that work and actually learn from parallels b/w jb & bts! and here’s why: https://twitter.com/shookytwts/status/1301228792548134914

this take fails to recognize that some (not all) of the reasons why jb never got a nom outside BNA in their original era are the same as why bts haven’t been recognized: a disregard for all things whose success is attributable to young women (@ least in the eyes of gatekeepers)

jb faced SOME (again not all, see last few tweets) of the same ‘barriers’ to ‘legitimate’ industry recognition because they were viewed as a manufactured boy band marketed to and consumed by teen girls whose interests and tastes could never be validated by the recording academy

this was all despite the fact that jb had worked their way up from nothing, playing small shows, touring out of a van for years, etc. they paid their dues b4 they broke thru and wrote their own music which was rarely recognized b/c it was easier to dismiss them as Disney Robots

in this way there are actually some parallels to bts’ arc in that as army we get frustrated when people paint them into the ‘manufactured kpop’ box (a WHOLE other convo) and don’t recognized bts’ musical input. that was very much a phenomenon in the jonas brothers original era.

relatedly what op also fails to take into account is that the jonas brothers ‘comeback’ was fuelled by a broader (and ‘older’) audience than they originally possessed in 2007-2010 giving them a newfound ‘legitimacy’ the recording academy then deigned to recognize...

which is EXACTLY the problem. jb finally got recognition because they got ‘mainstream’ (read: male, establishment, older) attention. in some ways this is the same problem army&bts have because the industry refuses to pay attention until a ‘broader’ (ew) ‘mainstream’ audience does

because god forbid we recognize something that predominantly young women like until some dudes w/ credentials like it too. we’ve even seen that play out this week w/the noticeable uptick in male music journalists covering bts’ #1 in outlets where previously only women had done so

now OBVIOUSLY im not saying the 2 are direct parallels or totally comparable and the racism & xenophobia that bts face entering the western mkt is a vector that not only will jb never face but which props them up to the detriment of acts like bts (which op is totally right on!)

that is an extremely important conversation to be having and i want to be clear that my above discussion can and should intersect with discussions of the racism inherent in how bts are/are not recognized. my only aim with this thread was to add another perspective...

and to point out that ops characterization of the situation is both right in many ways and overly simplistic/reductive in others (a problem inherent to the format of twitter really) such that it felt a little unfair to another act who shares at least some similarities with bts.

(also just as a total sidenote re: the original tweet, the jonas brothers history of ‘comebacks’ alone are as old as bts, with them returning and then breaking up in 2012/13, ultimately baseless rumors of a reunion in 2017/18 and then of course the actual comeback in 2019...

so when i see tweets acting like the jb’s return was the western industry answer to bts it does make me chuckle a little because while that may be a pertinent observation of other acts, i promise you it’s not for jb whose career started when jungkook was like still in preschool)