Coveted American music and entertainment magazine Billboard has ranked K-pop megastars BTS No. 6 for the top pop stars of 2021 for its ongoing Greatest Pop Star by Year project.

The magazine commended the Bangtan Boys' achievements with a praiseful article. Billboard is doing a countdown of a full top 10 of 2021's Greatest Pop Stars. The rankings have been determined by weekly and year-end charts but equal importance has been given to intangible factors such as industry influence, cultural importance, and overall omnipresence.

It has been a massively successful year for the super idols from South Korea. The group made American Music Awards history by winning the 2021 "Artist of the Year" award, by becoming the first Asian artist to bag this trophy. They also dethroned Taylor Swift, who had won this title continuously every year since 2018.

The band members delivered their grateful acceptance speech On US primetime TV, partly in Korean, which according to Billboard has its own weight as a cultural milestone especially for non-native English speakers who chase American dreams.

Billboard also stated that BTS's win particularly signaled a shift in what American pop music can sound and look like in 2021. According to them, the Bangtan Boys' route to becoming AMAs "Artist of the Year" can be traced to their explosive first English-language track "Dynamite", which was released in August 2020.

The single became BTS's first No. 1 on Billboard's Hot 100 and opened the doorway to five more No. 1s a period of 13 months, starting with their appearance on the remix to Jason Derulo's "Savage Love in Oct. 2020. The American magazine had named BTS Billboard's Greatest Pop Star of 2020.

"Dynamite" also finally opened the door for the band to the 2021 Grammys in two historic ways. BTS became the first pop group from Korea to vie for the best pop duo/group performance at the awards show. The band also became the first Korean-language artist to perform their original song on the iconic stage of the Grammys.

The group's second English-language single "Butter" released earlier this year also went on to become a game-changer like "Dynamite". The former enjoyed the No. 1 position on Billboard's Hot 100 for 10 nonconsecutive weeks in 2021. They went on to achieve the rare feat of taking their own No. 1 spot with another song of theirs called "Permission To Dance".

In September, BTS and Coldplay collaborated to drop the hugely successful "My Universe", which topped the chart, notching up the K-pop stars' total No. 1 spots to six in just two years, proving their Midas touch too.

Rounding out an already stupendous year, the Bangtan Boys hosted the "BTS Permission to Dance on Stage - LA" at the SoFi Stadium in Inglewood, California. The concert was spread across four days from Nov. 27 to Dec. 2. The boys earned a whopping $33.3 million from 214,000 ticket sales. The tour also made history as the largest gross for run of shows at a single venue since 2012.

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