Welcome to Sleeper Hit Support Group, a column diving into the song currently occupying the bottom spot of the Billboard Hot 100.

In a pop landscape that asks more questions that it answers, I'm setting out to answer three questions about each of these songs: how it got here, if the song is good, and where it's going. In this 100th spot we'll find unlikely ascents, falls from grace, and resurgences of hits from bygone eras.

Today, we're talking about BTS' "SWIM," a song that fell all the way down the chart from #1.

Some excerpts of this article repurpose quotes from my Bachelor's thesis. If you feel so inclined, you can read all 35 pages here.

How did it get here?

It wasn't until 1995, nearly 40 years into the Hot 100's existence, that a single debuted at #1. But even that achievement – which belongs to Michael Jackson's "You Are Not Alone" – comes with an asterisk. Under Billboard's rules at the time, singles were not eligible for the Hot 100 until they hit retail. So to try to get that #1 debut, Epic Records promoted the single to radio for a month before it hit stores, knowing that Jackson's fans would rush to buy the 7" when it finally hit stores.

Due to a combination of ever-changing charting regulations and the paradigm shift brought upon the music industry by streaming, singles now debut at #1 all the time. So far this year, seven songs (out of twelve total #1 hits this year) have debuted at #1, "SWIM" being the third among them.

Robust, strategic fan organization for #1 hits, while now common practice, was brought to public attention after Justin Bieber posted fan-made infographics with instructions on how to contribute to "Yummy"'s #1 push.

The post didn’t work as intended, with the track stalling out at #2 behind Roddy Ricch's "The Box." What it did do, though, was reaffirm the notion that chart manipulation is now unequivocally fan-driven. Gaming the charts is now gaming the audience as opposed to the inside baseball tactics of previous eras. These fans are invested in their fave’s chart placement because of the tangible privileges it’s likely to grant them: higher-budget label advances, longer and bigger tours, media attention, etc. For BTS in particular, chart accomplishments come with geopolitical implications. It proves Kpop is an unignorable force in the American music industry and must be taken seriously.

For that to happen, though, compromises needed to be made. Initially, BTS vowed to stay true to their roots by never releasing an all-English song. In 2019, RM – BTS' only member that speaks fluent English – told Time, "We don't want to change our identity or our genuineness to get the #1. Like, if we suddenly sing in full English and change these other things, then that's not BTS."

They did not keep that promise. The pandemic forced them to cancel their touring plans, and they were hungry for that #1 in the face of that slowed momentum. "Dynamite," the group's first ever #1, was sung in a non-sensical string of loosely related English phrases.

Just take the first verse: "Shoes on, get up in the morn' / Cup of milk, let's rock and roll / King Kong, kick the drum / Rolling on like a rolling stone / Sing-song when I'm walking home / Jump up to the top, LeBron / Ding-dong, call me on my phone / Ice tea, and a game of ping-pong."

What any of those phrases have to do with each other is beyond me, but it worked. It didn't matter what the lyrics were; the mere presence of English lyrics was enough to win over pop radio, which was the final supplement the BTS ARMY needed to get their boys to #1.

BTS were able to rack up four more #1s within a year's time (albeit one of them as a featured artist on a remix). But besides "Dynamite" and "Butter" (their second all-English hit), these songs had no semblance of cultural ubiquity or staying power in the way you'd expect a #1 hit to.

In an article analyzing BTS' chart domination, Forbes music industry reporter emeritus Bryan Rolli claimed, “In a way, you could consider the BTS ARMY the largest grassroots organization in pop music, supporting their favorite artist 69 cents at a time.” The 69 cents is in reference to the cost BTS sold digital downloads of “Butter” for, which was the main contributor to its Hot 100 #1 debut. The BTS ARMY is perhaps the fanbase most invested in the charts, and a plurality of them are more than willing to pony up $1.38 (69 cents for the single and another 69 cents for the instrumental track) to contribute to that cause. Since BTS are Korean, the fans see that chart success as a mark of their global dominance.

But because the fervor for BTS is largely contained within its fanbase, Stereogum columnist Tom Breihan claims, “if you look at the charts, then, you’re going to get a completely distorted idea of how popular BTS actually are. The Hot 100 is the best historic marker we have for what’s big at any specific time.” Breihan continues, “In gaming the system, BTS are fucking that whole thing up.” For reference, BTS were able to rack up their first four #1 hits as quickly as The Jackson Five did in 1970.

Ultimately, this dominance had a looming expiration date. In compliance with South Korean law, the members of BTS were required to complete 18 months of mandatory military service. This hurdle forced the group to go on hiatus, with each of the boys beginning their military service at staggered times in 2023. During the hiatus, each member dabbled in solo careers to varying degrees of success. While Jimin and Jung Kook were able to score #1 hits of their own with "Like Crazy" and "Seven" respectively, the rest of them were unable to even crack the top 20.

Work on what would eventually become BTS' comeback album ARIRANG started before the members had all completed their service. This is not particularly out of the ordinary, as Kpop operates as a corporate and state-funded entity much more than it does as a musical group. Because of this, the group's members are more-or-less unnecessary to an album's prep-work. Members of the label (in this case, HYBE) work to craft the record's vision and identity before any music is written, and songwriters-for-hire are commissioned to write songs based on the guidelines and subsequent feedback provided by the label.

"Before we even began sourcing songs for the album, the process of designing its overall structure and defining its musical vision really took shape during the pre-song camps we held in the U.S. In early 2025, before the members were discharged, Diplo was selected as the lead producer who would oversee the on-site process. In April and May, we held two pre-song camps in Los Angeles, where we developed around 100 prototype tracks," HYBE chairman Bang Si-Hyuk told Billboard in an April interview. These songwriting camps in LA involved dozens of songwriters and producers, resulting in "200 to 300 pieces of fully realized music" by the end of it.

The vision for ARIRANG seemed to center around the vague concept of BTS 2.0, a phrase Bang recites multiple times in every answer in that Billboard interview. The only time he provided any sort of specificity was with the following:

"I came across a historical account from 1896 of seven young Korean men, facing unfamiliar language and cultural barriers on American soil, who left behind what is considered the first recorded Korean song—'Arirang.' The image of them proving their existence through music in a foreign land over 130 years ago bore a striking resemblance to the situation our members now face—returning from military service in 2025 and stepping back onto the global stage to open a new chapter as BTS 2.0. It did not feel like a coincidence, but rather a sense of a shared, enduring destiny—one that can be understood through the lens of the diaspora."

The folk song "Arirang" is incorporated in the album track "Body to Body," which seems ready-made for BTS' stadium performances: "I need the whole stadium to jump / Put your phone down, let's get all the fun," goes the refrain. This may read as a profoundly distasteful incorporation of an artifact of Korean cultural history, but at this point, so are BTS themselves. “At first, we were concerned it might come across as ‘overly nationalistic marketing,’" the members told Billboard. "But after playing it for people around us, every Korean we spoke to said they felt chills and were deeply moved when ‘Arirang’ came in."

"SWIM" was written by nine people at the LA songwriting camp, spearheaded by OneRepublic frontman and pop machine stalwart Ryan Tedder. Under his wing were ghostwriters Kirsten Spencer, Derrick Milano, and James Essien, 3OH!3's Sean Foreman, producers Tyler Spry and Pdogg, and Diplo collaborator Jamison Baken (Diplo himself contributed significantly to ARIRANG).

In press materials, the song was attributed to BTS member RM, who said "I wrote the lyrics and I tried to express the confusion that we all had before [and] after the military... and we want to just keep swimming." This is not true. According to Spry, the process was more like this: "That day, we were paired with [producer] Leclair, who’s signed to Diplo. When we were working, we’d write two or three songs because we weren’t trying to deliver a finished, polished thought. There weren’t any references. Leclair and I just put together the rough beat while James and Sean were freestyling on the couch. The chorus just fell out of thin air."

As was a guarantee for BTS' comeback single, "SWIM" debuted at #1 upon its March release.

With all that said...

Is the song any good?

Kpop catered to an American audience is 100x more sinister than it was before its crossover to the states. I am not here to knock the cultural institutions in a country I have never been to or have any ties to, but when the uniquely dirty hands of American capitalism took the reins, that plausible deniability is greatly (if not entirely) diminished.

Regardless of however BTS' PR team want to frame the song, "SWIM" is practically about nothing. There is no story or real-life event it was inspired by. It is a handful of loosely related nautical clichés that vaguely reference a siren of a love interest. The group's statement reads like some kind of AI hallucination:

"[It's] a song that mirrors life itself. [We] hope it resonates with many people as they move through each day, taking each moment as it comes, splashing along and continuing to swim forward. The more you listen, the warmer it feels, so [we] hope it becomes a source of strength as people go through their lives. Also, just like the folk song 'Arirang,' which has been passed from mouth to mouth and stayed with people through generations, [we] hope 'Swim' will remain close to people's hearts for a long time to come."

Sonically, "SWIM" resembles a mish-mash of late 2010's Spotify "chill vibes" playlist fodder. One-hit-wonder 24kGoldn's "Mood" and Post Malone's "Sunflower" come to mind immediately. As much as HYBE wants to push the notion of BTS 2.0, there is nothing particularly fresh or interesting about this song.

As critic Joshua Minsoo Kim put it in his review of ARIRANG for Pitchfork, "Sometimes, all a song needs to do is make you believe in something—love, transcendence, yourself—but ARIRANG’s messages repeatedly ring hollow, like birthday emails from a mega corporation." If there is some greater, sentimental message BTS and their team are aiming for (which I have a hard time believing to be the case), the methods Kpop rely on to keep the machine running are inhibiting that entirely.

Where is it going?

There is an ongoing copyright lawsuit against BTS for "SWIM." Earlier this month, three songwriters-for-hire filed a copyright infringement lawsuit against Hybe, Hybe America, Big Hit Music, Hybe Music Services, Artist Publishing Group, and the songwriters credited on "SWIM" except RM, who likely made no legitimate contributions to the song's creation. The plaintiffs stated they started sending out copies of a demo in March 2025 “to various parties for them to consider,” allegedly including execs at Artist Publishing Group, who the plaintiffs claim “listened to the [demo] and shared it with others,” including some of the songwriters who eventually worked on “SWIM.”

Musicologist Alexander Stewart, who has worked on landmark music copyright cases against Ed Sheeran's "Thinking Out Loud" and Led Zeppelin's "Stairway To Heaven" (both cases sided with the defendants) was tapped to analyze the two songs for similarities. In the report, he stated:

“These similarities encompass the signature phrase (or ‘hook’) referencing the title, unusual harmonies, textures, and rhythmic and lyrical elements. These elements are unique in the aggregate as well as distinctive individually. In my expert opinion, independent creation of BTS can be ruled out and copying is the inescapable conclusion.”

This lawsuit is currently pending, but if I had to guess, the lawyers that all these multi-billion dollar entertainment corporations have on retainer will likely be able to bury this in court. I have no way to hear the demo in question, so I can't assess whether the accusations have legs, but that factor is likely the least pertinent in this case.

More than they are a Kpop group, BTS have become a historically significant juggernaut in Korean culture – one that chairman Bang has likened to Disneyland or the allure of a blockbuster movie. The amount that the Kpop-loving subsect of the American public has bought into it is a damning indicator of the direction of our culture, but its concentration within these hyper-vigilant fandoms prevent any sort of cultural ubiquity. That's why the song has been in free fall after debuting at #1, why it sits at #100 today, and will be all but forgotten tomorrow.