'Permission to Dance': did Ed Sheeran just give away BTS' next single?

Did Ed Sheeran just accidentally reveal BTS’s next single?

In an interview with the American radio show Most Requested Live, the Shape of You singer said he had worked with the K-pop group on their last record, and had also written a song for their new one.

“They’re like super, super-cool guys as well,” he said.

After Sheeran's comments, BTS’ label, Big Hit Music, confirmed the news with a short statement to South Korean media, saying: “It is true that Ed Sheeran is participating in BTS’s new song.”

And it seems Sheeran may have also inadvertently given away the title of the coming track during a question and answer session on Instagram Stories.

A fan asked about his favourite track from the K-pop group and he responded: “I’d say my favourite BTS song is their new song, Permission to Dance.”

BTS fans will already know that a song by that title has not yet been released by the group, leading many to speculate that Permission to Dance will be the follow-up to chart-topping hit Butter.

In June, the seven-member K-pop group held two virtual fan events called BTS 2021 Muster Sowoozoo to mark the eighth anniversary of their debut single.

BTS, short for Bangtan Boys, released their first track, 2 Cool 4 Skool, in 2013. Their debut Korean album, Dark & Wild, was released in 2014 along with a Japanese album, Wake Up.

BTS also have two English songs to their credit. The first, Dynamite, was released in August 2020 and became a global success, debuting at No 1 in the Billboard Top 100 chart. They also made history by becoming the first South Korean pop group to be nominated for a Grammy.

The follow-up to that track is Butter, which was released on May 21, and again went straight to the top of the Billboard Top 100 chart. The group also broke their own YouTube record of 108.2 million views within 24 hours. Dynamite received 101 million views in the same period, which means BTS hold the No 1 and No 2 spots when it comes to the most-viewed music videos on YouTube in 24 hours.

But it was their 2018 album, Love Yourself: Tear, which topped the US Billboard 200, that helped them to find worldwide stardom. It made them the first Asian act to top the US chart. A compilation record called Love Yourself: Answer, released the same year, also became the first K-pop album to spend an entire year in the Billboard 200 chart in 2019.