Celebs we lost in 2021

A huge number of famous faces have passed away this year

Dusty Hill (died July 28th, aged 72)

Celebs we lost in 2021 1
Credit: Antti Salonen / Wikimedia Commons

Joe Michael “Dusty” Hill, the bassist of the rock band ZZ Top, died at his home in Houston, Texas, at the age of 72. In a letter posted to the band’s Facebook page, Hill’s widow, Charleen McCrory, recounted the moments leading up to Hill’s death. “He woke me up and we talked and as he was sweetly chatting with me, he suddenly stopped,” she recalled. “And he was gone in an instant.”

Though the cause of death had not been revealed, Hill had been struggling with a dislocated shoulder and a broken hip prior to his passing. Despite those health woes, his friends and family were expecting him to recover. “The plan was for another round of physical therapy, with a different approach, to help his chronic bursitis,” McCrory noted. “The plan was he would return to the second leg of the [band’s] tour in September.”

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Interesting facts about BTS
  • The group name, “BTS” stands for the Korean expression Bangtan Sonyeondan which translates to “Bulletproof Boy Scouts”. Band member J-Hope said that they chose this name because it represents BTS’s desire “to block out stereotypes, criticisms, and expectations that aim on adolescents like bullets.” But that isn’t the only meaning behind the name. In 2017, BTS said, as part of their new brand identity, that their name would also stand for Beyond the Scene” which extended their name to mean “growing youth BTS who is going beyond the realities they are facing, and going forward.”
  • BTS was originally intended to be a hip-hop group, similar to YG Entertainment’s 1TYM. This was because Big Hit Entertainment CEO Bang Si-hyuk met with RM and was very impressed by his rapping talents. However, Bang Si-hyuk changed his mind and decided that today’s youth needed “a hero who can lend them a shoulder to lean on, even without speaking a single word.”
  • BTS has said that all of the following musicians have inspired their music; Post Malone, Eminem, Seo Taiji and Boys, Nas, Kanye West, Drake, Charlie Puth, Danger, and Queen.
  • The band’s first English-language single, “Dynamite”, was released on August 21st. Its video broke the YouTube record for the most viewed music video premiere, grabbing the attention of three million viewers, and it set a new record for the most viewed video on the first day of release. “Dynamite” is also the first music video on YouTube to surpass 100 million views in less than one day.
  • BTS has been often labeled as “easily the biggest and most successful name in K-pop in the world” that can “do things no other name in their genre can.” Time magazine has gone as far as calling them the “Princes of Pop.”