Over the past 2 years I have come to love the South Korean band BTS. In fact I’ve become a huge, raving fanboy of them and their music.
The TLDR summary? Hmmmm, well if Michael Jackson was a band, he would be BTS. Except they are so much more than that.
This post, I hope to take you through my journey, which started 4 years ago, actually when my daughter first tried to introduce me to them. Then I’ll go through what (in my mind) is the case against them and their music, and then the case FOR them and their music. Which is really a just an example of me having huge musical biases and me slowly overcoming those biases. Buckle up buttercup, it’s gonna be a bumpy ride.
Some Emotional BackgroundThe last 3.5 years have not been a normal time for me, emotionally. I was married for 23 years in what I thought was a pretty good marriage. Which I kept thinking, all the way up to the point that my wife left me for a another guy and ripped our family apart (our daughter was 11 at the time this all happened).
It was a shock to the system. In real life, I am a flexible, adaptable guy who’s very good at problem solving. And to fail at keeping the marriage together, despite my level best efforts, was another blow. That entire first year after the separation I think I was just walking around in a shell-shocked/zombie state.
A Little History of my Musical TastesI like dark, complex music. Bjork, Radiohead, Tool, Nine Inch Nails, Tom Waits, Ani DiFranco, Tupac, Eminem, Jay-Z, PJ Harvey; these are my jams. Along with some Jazz and a bunch of Classical music. This type of music just seems more real and authentic to me. I’ve always connected with music that trended toward darkness and even into melancholy.
I actually like a broad selection of music, but there is one type of music I
hate. Viscerally. Boy bands. I don’t even have to listen to their insipid music to fucking hate them. And it’s a hate at a physical level. Seriously, I hear/see them and it makes me want to punch them in the face.
5 years ago, my daughter showed me BTS for the first time. Ugh, what is this shit? They look like the Korean 1 Direction. Get that shit out of here. I remember thinking at the time that normally Kira has such excellent taste in music (she also introduced me to Billie Eilish and Halsey, among others), it’s so odd that she fell for this stupid boyband bullshit music.
2 Years Ago - The Journey Begins, with DanceI love dance. In fact, my daughter and I have tickets to the Colorado Ballet every year and we love it. But if the dance is not executed at a very high level, I can’t watch it because I only see the mistakes and only notice the people that aren’t perfect.
This is part of the reason I hate American boy bands (and girl bands) because usually there’s only 1 (or 2 maybe) that can dance and the rest of them kind of suck, and they try to hide this by 1) making the dances very easy and 2) hiding the bad dancers at the back.
Then I saw a video of BTS with them dancing, it was
On: Kinetic Manifesto and they just killed it. This choreo was not easy at ALL, in fact it was highly complex. And it constantly rotated new people to the front, so no one could ‘hide’ in the back. Holy crapy, every single one of these dudes is at Michael Jackson levels of movement. To say I was shocked is a bit of an understatement.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gwMa6gpoE9IOK, But Can They Sing (probably not)Well I was wrong, again. There’s a ton of example of them just killing it vocally but here’s two examples, one recent, the other one a bit older:
House of Cards, an R&B inspired song about how things fall apart -
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DWTQduiZ8IMBlue and Grey, a song about struggling with depression -
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qmMspfkCnuc Well, Their Live Performances Have to be Lip Synched TrashAgain, I was so, so, so wrong. This was the biggest hurdle for me because in the West ALL of these pop groups suck at live performances. Studio tools like Autotune and the ability to do take after take after take allows some very mediocre singers to sound fabulous on their album. But when it comes to live, the literally stink up the stage. Same with BTS, right?
Haha, there’s a massive amount of live BTS performances out there, but here’s a live version of
House of Cards (from above) and not only can you hear their raw vocals, it’s even BETTER than the album track because you can see/hear that they sing in an absolutely committed and intensely emotional way.
House of Cards in concert:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oDLXVbP3CQcBlue and Grey on MTV Unplugged:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iP62Tg04vwwLyrics Are Insipid and StupidReally, they have to be like all other boy bands and really just doing stupid, obvious songs about love in order to fool unsophisticated little girls. I think with Western groups like this, this is the part that makes me the most disgusted. It’s such an obvious, insincere manipulation. Also, intellectually I am a snob. I simply cannot stand easy/obvious/dumb lyrics and songwriting.
This is the part I might have been the MOST wrong about. Here’s an example. There are great bands out there that have ‘concept albums’ around a central theme that they want to deeply explore. Well, BTS has ‘concept trilogy’ sets of albums. Sometimes it’s only 2 albums, but it’s rarely just one. I learned later that all of the people in BTS are very smart (IQ of 120s to 130s for most of them), but the leader of the group (Kim Namjoon) is a literal genius with an IQ of 150. And it’s not just that it’s smart. It’s also deeply embedded in serious art and broader culture.
Here’s an example. This song is
Serendipity and it’s embedded in their “Love” album trilogy, on the first album. Because the first album is about the dopamine filled euphoria of that mad rush of falling in love. Then the 2nd album is about how things go sour (inevitably), and the 3rd album is about self reflection and self acceptance. Yeah, seriously.
Anyway, the video for Serendipity almost perfectly captures that feeling of falling in love, but not just that, there’s also references to the ache of love and visual references to love being not just a flower, but a cactus that will make you bleed. Oh, and a ton of references to work by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry and themes of isolation, even during the actual physical act of falling in love.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BEMaH9Sm3lQLater on I found out, not only does it do all of that, but it’s also linked to a very famous modern poem in Korea called
Flower, by Kim Chun Soo. The poem is about a man’s ache for a woman and the call to her during absence.
Serendipity can be seen as a literal response to that call. But even more surprising is that BTS gender-flips the response (in the video, Jimin [a man]) is doing the answering. So yeah, it’s just crazy the sheer depth of what they are doing with this.
And this is not an isolated example. If you look below the surface, the LARGE MAJORITY of it is like this.
Here’s another example,
Spring Day. You think it’s about a relationship that’s gone bad, or even just a friendship that’s dissolved:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xEeFrLSkMm8But then if you dig below the surface, you see that it’s about so much more:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FrT4a_Fw6pE 2 of their more recent albums were called “Map of the Soul” and are based on Jungian theories of identity. Yes, albums inspired by Carl Jung. Crazy.
A Pivot Toward HopeSo I started this journey 2 years ago back when I was in my darkest times after the dissolution of my marriage. I really connected with their music and their message. But why? I mean, they ultimately offer a message of hope and of self acceptance, which honestly my entire life I’ve spit on bands that put that type of music out there. I couldn’t understand why BTS affected me differently.
But now I understand. They offer hope, but only after they fully explore the darkness. And it’s the fact that hope is never easy, and it’s only seen as something needed after you’ve gone through some real shit, that it’s even necessary. THAT I can understand. For me personally, this was a shocking revelation, especially during that time (maybe the darkest time in my life, and I’m including my heart attack, recovery and later alcoholism in that statement - my divorce nearly destroyed me).
So, when they put out a song like Epiphany, about self-acceptance, it only comes at the very end of a pretty shitty road they've outlined in the previous album. In that context, you can see it’s that rarest of things:
authentic.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fIkZOLsnoqYAnd the live concert performance, because it’s even better:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Da7jaKOD_xs An Embrace of ColorI should mention that I was raised in Texas, by a family 1 generation removed from poor white trash. So it got into me EARLY that there are certain ways that a man looks and acts. And any embrace of color or softness or open-ness was perceived as ‘gay’ and weak. And if you displayed any of that out in public, you’d just get your ass kicked every day. My dad joined the military, which at least got us out of there, but honestly the military culture was hardly less macho.
So for me, the hardest songs to fully embrace are the ones like
Boy in Luv, off of their "Map of the Soul: Persona" album, where it’s embracing the Jungian concept of Animus (an embrace of your feminine side):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XsX3ATc3FbABTS doesn’t say this explicitly, they just show it. They act it out and live it. Considering they started out as a hip-hop group (and only dressed ‘hard’ in black and white), it’s quite a transformation over the past 7 years, and IMO, very very brave.
Not only that, the video is an homage to old Hollywood musicals (Dancing in the Rain, specifically) as well as thematically a sequel to their earlier song
Boy in Luv which was about the blind passion of young love. In contrast
Boy with Luv is about love from the perspective of an older and wiser person. Yeah, this level of connectedness and sophistication never stops. It’s ALL like this.
Love is Not RationalSo this is why I’ve fallen in love with BTS. They say that love is not rational. I certainly had massive, conscious level reasons to hate them, to dismiss them. But due to the circumstances of the last 3 years, I gave them a 2nd chance. I’m glad I did.
In fact, I’m just happy to be alive to be able to see what they are doing. To me, they are like watching Michael Jordan in his prime. A once-in-a-generation manifestation of excellence.
