It doesn’t seem like much at first glance: The frontman of the wildly popular Korean boyband BTS tweeted a song recommendation to his 14 million followers.
The performer, who goes by RM (aka Kim Namjoon), included a screengrab of the song playing from his phone — Troye Sivan‘s “Strawberries & Cigarettes” off the Love, Simon soundtrack. “It’s great,” he wrote in Korean.
??~~ #RMusic pic.twitter.com/ImWpBWgFGG
— ????? (@BTS_twt) April 15, 2018
BTS, it’s worth mentioning, were the most tweeted about celebrities in 2017. Love, Simon, of course, is the recent Greg Berlanti-helmed teen rom-com with a gay protagonist, a mainstream first.
Add to that the fact that Troye Sivan is a young, openly gay pop star, and this confluence of acceptance was not lost on people.
How about we take this to the next level?
Our newsletter is like a refreshing cocktail (or mocktail) of LGBTQ+ entertainment and pop culture, served up with a side of eye-candy.
The simple tweet has garnered over 670K likes and 265K comments.
Related: Watch the decidedly sexy debut from Holland, K-pop’s first openly gay star
“Not to be too dramatic about this,” one commenter wrote, “but namjoon openly supporting a gay song by a gay artist from a gay movie is uhhhhhhhhh Super F*cking Wonderful and really important.”
“Yasss we need more love and less hate in the world,” another commenter wrote.
“‘If u think namjoon sharing a gay song from a gay movie sung by a gay artist isn’t an iconic and political move, ur wrong,” said another.
Related: These tweets about ‘Love, Simon’ are going viral for all the right reasons
“My gay soul is shaking thank u legend,” added one particularly shook fan.
And as it turns out, the love is mutual.
Earlier this year, Sivan told an interviewer he’d love to work with BTS:
“That would be so fun. I fell way down watching all their music videos. They’ve been so nice to me since day one, so I just want to meet them and say thank you. It’s a world I’ve yet to fully delve into and understand, so I’m just completely curious about the whole thing.”
Among K-pop’s stars, open support for gay rights is still uncommon. For BTS to be as vocal as they are is hopefully setting a powerful trend.
Related: Troye Sivan’s new music vid features back-alley cruising, adult stars, and sleazy shenanigans
In an interview with Billboard in February, the band’s support of Macklemore & Ryan Lewis’ gay-marriage anthem, “Same Love,” came up, to which the band said:
“It’s hard to find the right words. To reverse the words: Saying ‘same love’ is saying ‘love is the same,” they said, adding, “There’s nothing wrong. Everyone is equal.”
Listen to Sivan’s track from Love, Simon below:
https://youtu.be/_mrGh64lqyE
Daniel-Reader
Smoking is a major problem for LGBT people and leads to lots of senseless painful deaths so it’s not a good song to include smoking.
ShowMeGuy
I’m guessing you get invited to all the really good parties.
Xzamilloh
Okay, that song is painfully generic, right down to the trying-too-hard title of it. But, good for Troye.