Golden reached #2 in Billboard Hot 100, but the radio play of Alex Warren's Ordinary is too strong. Golden has maybe 3m while Ordinary has about 70m, cannot be beaten.
It only illustrates the strategy used by Hybe, not easy to replicate now, to put Dynamite to the top of Hot 100 was correct.
When Psy was sweeping the world with Gangnam Style, Scooter Braun advised him to promote more in there, but Psy, with pressure from YG who refused to cancel the events Psy had booked with bullshit colleges in Korea, Psy foolishly returned to Korea at the most critical moment, which led him not being able to defeat Maroon 5's song at the Billboard Hot 100.
if Psy had listened to Scooter Braun his current stature would have been very different. It is OK to ignore Korean fans - they are irrelevant as far as the world is concerned.
IU was there during Gangnam Style days, and in 2020 Suga foolishly collaborated with IU, thinking the covid crisis would last for a while, and put BTS into grave danger because IU cut Suga's part in Eight and threatened to reclimb the throne of KPop.
Only a resounding , irreversible triumph would cement BTS' position in Korea; otherwise IU would have regained the initiative there.
When Dynamite was released, it had no chance of winning in radio, so it engaged in digital dumping, and releasing a lot of remixes. At that time the sales of all of these were included into the main song - after Butter the rules were changed.
Exo-Ls exposed such practices but with the euphoria of having the first Korean-based act winning a #1 in Hot 100, such criticisms were buried.
The digital remix dumping strategy worked, and it was enough to overcome the huge deficit in radio play . It defeated Cardi B's WAP, ending the R&B and hiphop era in Pop, and also ended IU's ambition to reclimb KPop's throne because of Suga's mistake.
Since Golden is basically a Korean-American project (all three who sang the song are US citizens) it is unlikely that Koreans will support their quest to reach #1 in Hot 100, so it will stop short of the goal by Gangnam Style.
