The legacy of BTS just hit a new milestone with the South Korean pop band and their team earning their very first Grammy recognition at the upcoming 61st Annual Grammy Awards.
BTS' Love Yourself: Tear album has earned a nomination for best recording package. The album, which hit No. 1 on the Billboard 200 in May, marks the first recognition for the group and a huge breakthrough moment for the Korean music scene. The album is nominated alongside HuskyFox, who is listed on the official Love Yourself: Tear credits for "art work." HuskyFox is a Seoul-based, professional branding company, who, according to their website aims to "build a relationship between brands and users by creating an identity through brand languages and visual elements to experience design."
Love Yourself: Tear is nominated alongside St. Vincent's Masseduction, Mitski's Be the Cowboy, The Chairman's The Offering and Foxhole's Well Kept Thing.
As fans can attest, BTS' Love Yourself: Tear boasts some of the most beautiful album packaging in recent years -- outdoing BTS' known commitment to standout visuals in their packaging to stand out as some of the most impressive in the highly visual K-pop scene. Each of the three albums in BTS Love Yourself series came in four different versions with each version boasting its own set of concept photos. Tear was notable for its more muted color scheme with the members boasting similarly dark hair colors and subdued and simple fashion -- all keeping in line with the album's themes of heartbreak and sadness.
BTS earning the recognition (along with their art team) is a further testament to the importance of the larger teams that collectively work together to bring not only high-quality music, but top-notch visuals and packaging that coincide with the larger themes represented by the music.
The nomination for BTS' Love Yourself: Tear marks a major moment of inclusion and appreciation for South Korea's breakout artists, and is an important step inside and gaining attention of the notoriously traditional Recording Academy.
At last year's 60th Annual Grammy Awards in 2017, there was a tie for the winner of best album package. Art directors Sasha Barr, Ed Steed and Josh Tillman won the award with indie-rock artist Father John Misty for his Pure Comedy (Deluxe) album, along with Carlos Dussán, Juliana Jaramillo, Juan Felipe Martínez and Claudio Roncoli, the art directors working with Colombian musician Magín Díaz on his El Orisha de la Rosa album.
While one of the more complicated award structures, the nominees are the credited art directors for the album in package categories, as Billboard confirmed with The Recording Academy who added, "only credited Art Directors are nominees in the package categories. Not artist unless they are also a credited Art Director." In the case of Father John Misty's page on Grammy.com, he is listed as a one-time winner for best album package among his three nominations, as Tillman is Father John Misty's legal name. Meanwhile, Magín Díaz is not listed as a winner on Grammy.com, but HuskyFox now has an official Grammy.com nomination page.
