Even One Year After Its Release, BTS's J-Hope and V's Song "A Brand New Day" Continues Its Remarkable Global Success

On the first anniversary of the official release of BTS‘s J-Hope and V‘s unit song “A Brand New Day,” the song continues to show how it’s endlessly loved by fans all over the world.

The song “A Brand New Day,” which featured Swedish singer-songwriter Zara Larson, was released last year on June 14 as part of the soundtrack to BTS’s mobile video game BTS World. Two of the other songs on the video game’s soundtrack were also performed as units and featured other artists as well. “Dream Glow” was performed by the group of Jin, Jimin, and Jungkook and featured the English singer-songwriter Charli XCX, and “All Night” was performed by Suga and RM and featured the American rapper Juice World. “Heartbeat,” performed by all the members, was the album and video game’s lead song.

Even though fans have loved all of the unit songs, it’s the J-Hope x V collaboration that seems to have found greater international popularity. On June 14, the song rose to #1 on Bolivia’s iTunes Top Songs Chart, just one of 65 other #1 chart positions it has since reached.

This song’s success this year is just a revival of what it experienced last year. Shortly after its original release, it soared to the top of the Billboard World Digital Song Sales Chart as well as the European iTunes charts, where on the latter “A Brand New Day” displaced Taylor Swift to take the top spot.

“A Brand New Day” was produced in part by Zara Larson as well as English EDM producer Mura Masa. Zara Larson also lent the track her powerful and unique voice alongside those of J-Hope and V. The song was a critical success. Music experts were particularly impressed by a subtle change in V’s voice tone, commenting on how he went from a sultry and deep R&B tone found in his solo song “Singularity” to a lighter, brighter sound in this latest track.

Last year’s success of “A Brand New Day” didn’t continue just on music charts. It also sparked an online dance challenge for fans to upload videos of them showing off their best moves to the song onto social media, which has also seen a revival. It was even included on NASA‘s “Moon Tunes Playlist,” a playlist created by Spotify full of songs that astronauts would listen to while in space.

In interviews about the song, V has surprised many fans about how the song’s arrangement changed from its original one.

Actually, J-Hope was originally going to sing the song by himself. After hearing the recording, I asked to join him because I liked [the sound] so much.

—V

Their fellow performer Zara Larson also commented on how V was added to the lineup.

It was originally just going to be performed by J-Hope and myself. After listening to the two of us together, V asked if he could try singing with us. Everyone’s voices meshed so well together that we decided to have all three of us record it together.

—Zara Larson

It’s safe to say that fans are more than happy that the two decided to record the song together, and everyone hopes for more collaborations in the future. However, neither BTS nor their company Big Hit Entertainment has hinted at any future unit projects. Given the critical and popular success of all three unit songs and, especially for “A Brand New Day,” it makes sense that we could very well see more unit songs in the near future.

Check the official audio for the song below: