BTS (band)

BTS (Korean: 방탄소년단; RR: Bangtan Sonyeondan), also known as the Bangtan Boys, and since 2017 also represented as Beyond The Scene, is a seven-member South Korean Boy Band formed in Seoul in 2013. The septet co-writes and produces much of their output. Initially rooted in Hip Hop, the group’s musical style has evolved to include a wide range of genres. Their lyrics, often focused on personal and social commentary, touch on the themes of mental health, troubles of school-age youth, loss, the journey towards loving oneself, and individualism. Their work features references to literature and psychological concepts and includes an alternative universe storyline. Popular for their live performances, the group has staged several world tours.

They are often perceived as a major 'Korean Wave' act which has helped Korean music and culture have more influence in the West.

In 2020, their album MAP OF THE SOUL: 7 has sold more than 4 million copies in South Korea: the highest-selling album ever there. In total, their albums sold more than 17 million copies.

The members in 2018. Clockwise, from left: V, J-Hope, RM, Jin, Jimin, Jungkook, and Suga

Members:

• Kim Namjoon (RM -formerly Rap Monster-, born September 12, 1994)
• Jung Hoseok (J-Hope, born February 18, 1994)
• Kim Taehyung (V, born December 30, 1995)
• Park Jimin (Jimin, born October 13, 1995)
• Min Yoongi (Suga, born March 9, 1993)
• Kim Seokjin (Jin, born December 4, 1992)
• Jeon Jungkook (Jungkook, born September 1, 1997)

Discography:

Studio albums in Korean

• Dark & Wild (2014)
• Wings (2016)
• Love Yourself: 轉 Tear (2018)
• Map of the Soul: 7 (2020)

Studio albums in Japanese

• Wake Up (2014)
• Youth (2016)
• Face Yourself (2018)

Other releases

• 2 Cool 4 Skool (2013, EP, debut album)
• O!RUL8,2 (2013)
• Skool Luv Affair (2014)
• The Most Beautiful Moment In Life, Part 1 (2015)
• The Most Beautiful Moment In Life, Part 2 (2015)
• Love Yourself: 承 Her (2017)
• Love Yourself: 結 Answer (2018)
• MAP OF THE SOUL: PERSONA (2019)
• BTS World: Original Soundtrack (2019)

Individual members' releases

• RM
  • RM (2015, mixtape)
  • mono (2018, playlist)
• Suga (as Agust D)
  • Agust D (2016, mixtape)
  • D-2 (2020, mixtape)
• J-Hope
  • Hope World (2018, mixtape)

Other Media Aparitions

Multimedia projects

• The BU (also called the "Bangtan Universe", "BTS universe" or "HYYH Universe" until the current name was revealed in 2017), an alternate universe that has been unveiled through several video clips and short films, a book (The Most Beautiful Moment In Life: The Notes 1), notes included in their albums booklets (most of them compiled in the before-mentioned book), and a webcomic (Save Me); a mobile game and a drama based on this storyline (not starring the band members) have been announced for 2020. The plot, told in non-linear fashion and with a great amount of symbolism, depict the group members in an Alternate Reality as a group of friends with dysfunctional lives, who had to confront their traumas and anxieties to get to the future. A great generator of Epileptic Trees within the fandom, and even when the webcomic clarified some things about the plot by telling what's going on (a Groundhog Day Loop to Set Right What Once Went Wrong, it turns out), it still left more questions than answers.
• The BT21 project, a collaboration with the messaging service LINE where the group created cutesy animal and pastry-based characters inspired on themselves to be used as stickers for said messaging service. It has generated a great amount of derivative merchandise, including plushies, clothes, makeup and skincare products, a cellphone game, a special menu in a Korean cafe, and even an animated web-series in YouTube starring the characters, BT21 Universe.

TV Series and Variety Shows

• Rookie King: Channel Bangtan: a skit-based 2013 variety show.
• American Hustle Life: a 2014 reality show where the members were brought to Los Angeles to know the West Coast rap culture.
• BTS Gayo, a "behind the scenes" showing the members doing promotional activities related to KPop, stream in the online service V Live between 2015 and 2017.
• Run BTS! a variety show stream in the online service V Live since 2015, where the members of the group do outrageous dares among themselves for small prizes or punishments. A selection of 8 episodes was shown on network TV in 2018.
• Burn the Stage, a 2018 8-episode YouTube exclusive series documenting their 2017 promotional tour "The Wings Tour".
• BTS: Bon Voyage, a travelogue show, portraying the members of the band during their vacations, who has run since 2016. It streams in V Live.
• Bring the Soul: the Docu-series: An extended, chaptered version of their documentary Bring the Soul, released in the online app Weverse in 2019.
• Learn Korean With BTS an Edutainment Show intended to teach fans basic Korean, released in Weverse in 2020.
• Break the Silence: Docu-Series: a documentary on BTS' Love Yourself and Speak Yourself tours, to be released in Weverse in mid 2020.

Filmography

• Burn the Stage: The Movie : a compiled, compressed version of the YouTube documentary.
• Love Yourself in Seoul: a concert film depicting their August 26, 2018 show of the band's Love Yourself Tour at Seoul Olympic Stadium.
• Bring the Soul: The Movie: a 2019 documentary that intercalates footage from their 2018 "Love Yourselves" tour with a rooftop conversation between the members filmed at the end of the European Leg of said tour.

Videogames

• SUPERSTAR BTS: a Rhythm Game for mobile phones featuring songs from their entire discography.
• PUZZLE STAR BT21, a puzzle game for mobiles featuring their BT21 characters
• BTS World, a mobile game released on June 26, 2019. It's an Episodic Visual Novel/Gacha Game where the player takes the role of the group manager and has to go through several journeys with the group members from their pre-debut era to 2019. It has an unlockable "Another Story" mode, that follows a scenario about What If...? each member didn't get into the music industry and instead got more mundane professions.

Webcomics

• We On: Be The Shield, a 2015 webtoon who portrays the band as a group of super-powered heroes having shounenesque adventures.
• Hip Hop Monster, a second webtoon, more comedic in tone, where the members of the group are Flanderized for laughs.
• The Most Beautiful Moment in Life Pt.0: Save Me or just Save Me: a webtoon released on Line Webtoon between January and April 2019, as part of the BU universe. A more linear retelling of the events of the 'verse or at least, the ones that happen in the real world. To date, the only webcomic with an official English release - the other two have fan translations.

BTS provides examples of the following tropes:

• Adorkable: their offstage personalities tend to be in the nerdy/dorky side.
• all lowercase letters:
  • All the song titles in mono.
  • Officially, "j-hope" is written with no caps. Most people prefer to write it J-Hope, however
• Archive Panic: Along with the above discography and the MV for their singles and comebacks, there are hundreds of hours on content from their social media, their stages, their shows, and all their side projects.
• Attractive Bent Gender:
  • Suga has experienced this at least twice: once when in Rookie King he was forced to dress as a maid as a punishment and the other members were surprised at how convincingly he looked, and then again for an episode of Run! BTS where he had to take the role of an "exchange-student high school girl", where he looked so convincing that pics of him in the role generated interest on "her" on the Internet.
  • Jin and Jungkook got also hit for this in Rookie King, when both were forced to wear a sexy red dress and a fairy costume respectively, and both looked quite convincing as females judging for the reactions of the other members and people around.
  • For one DVD, the group did a sketch titled "House of ARMY", where RM and J-Hope did the roles of a schoolgirl ARMY and her mother respectively. While the attractiveness of both men as girls can be debated, Mom!J-Hope was apparently so convincing that many fans didn't recognize him at first look, while others initially believed that an actual actress was hired for the role.
• Autobiographical Role ‎: the main storyline of BTS World has them portraying a sightly fictionalized version of their career, with scenes all acted by themselves.
• Berserk Button: you better don't dare to interfere with Suga's precious sleep time. Interrupting his sleep only attracts painful retaliation.
• Bishonen: being a boy band, this is a given, with the possible exception of RM and J-Hope who are more "manly handsome" than "pretty boy".
• Boastful Rap: Being a group with roots in western rap, this is a given. Notorious are "We Are Bulletproof" pt. 1 and 2 (Typical "we are good at rapping" songs), their Cyphers (basically their showcases of skill, with their lines being all about their hard work and their increasing success) and "Mic Drop" (see Take That, Critics! below)
  • From the mixtapes, the titular track of Agust D is a great example, with Suga boasting about his rapping skills (which he describes as "Sending listeners to Hong Kong^[1]" with his "tongue technology") and claiming that the K-pop scene isn't enough to contain him.
• Call Back: extremely frequent on their career. Some examples.
  • "I'm Fine" is both this and a sequel to the earlier "Save Me". They deal with opposite themes ("Save Me" is about a person hanging in a failing relationship to salvage their self-worth, "I'm Fine" is about a person that has found self-worth by themselves), the order of the rap-line is the opposite to the other song, and "I'm Fine" begins with the initial notes of "Save Me" before they fade to the actual melody
  • Similarly, "Boy With Luv" towards "Boy in Luv", showing the evolution between the Hormone-Addled Teenager featured in "Boy in Luv" with the more mature and respectful view of love in "Boy with Luv".
  • The video for "Persona" begins with a classroom suspiciously similar to the one used in the teaser for the "No More Dream" MV, features RM in outfits reminiscing to the ones used in the School Trilogy era, includes a scene of him surrounded by mirrors (the main motif of his character in the BU) that reminisces similar scenes en the videos for "Fake Love" and "Reflection", and even features a gigantic CGI version of himself similar to the ones that appear in "IDOL".
  • The official MV for "ON" ends by calling back the title screen of their very first MV single "No More Dream", same typography and all. Except that, in "ON", the first two words dissolve, leaving only "Dream".
• Cerebus Syndrome: The video clip for "I Need U", with its shocking plot and high angst content, marked a change of direction on the group career. Not that they stopped having silly or light MV and songs, but the video clips for its more serious song became darker and filled with symbology, and their songs became to treat more serious themes. To an extent, the album from where the song came out also counts.
• Concept Video: "Spring Day", "N.O", all their Comeback video clips, among others. The BU is a whole continuity of these.
• The Danza: In the BU, the characters have the same real name than the group members - and to an extent, similar personality traits and interests.
• Dye Hard: The members of the band like to dye their hair quite often, from normal colors like blond or red, to more outrageous colors like green and pink. According to this chart (which compiled until mid-2018), all members have had pink hair at some point, and RM and Suga are the ones with more hair color changes.
• Fan Community Nicknames: Their official fan club is named ARMY. Internal nicknames within the fanclubs involve the Korean side calling the international fans "i-lovelies"; they return the favor calling the Korean fans "K-diamonds"
• The Fashionista: V, who loves all things Gucci and always wears something from the brand every time he's in public.
• Fun With Acronyms:
  • The international name of the group is an initialism for "Bangtan Sonyeondan (which is given the official translation "Bulletproof Boyscouts"). They decided that since 2017 it would also mean "Beyond the Scene".
  • The name of their fan club, ARMY, stands for "Adorable MCs Representatives of Youth"
  • Note the titles of their documentaries: Burn the Stage, Bring the Soul,,Break the Silence .
  • RM has stopped using his original stage name Rap Monster since 2015 and has claimed different meanings for the initials he currently uses (one of them being "Real Me").
• Growing the Beard: The era of The Most Beautiful Moment In Life albums is acknowledged as the moment BTS step up their game and grew out of their initial "bad boys" image and overwhelming rap sound, with their songs growing in quality, their sound becoming more poppier while also venturing in other genres, their video clips actually getting a budget, the group refining their choreographies and stage presence, and the metaplot making its apparition.
• I Have Many Names: Note that the members tend to use both their stage and their given names interchangeably and that some have extra stage names (Suga's mixtape was released under the stage name Agust D) and additional nicknames.
• Jack of All Trades:
  • Jungkook, which has earned the nickname of "Golden Maknae" due to his ability to flawlessly sing, dance, rap, produce and compose, among other talents.
  • J-Hope, along with being one of the main dancers, also raps, sings vocals on his own verses, and has a producer/composer credit list almost as long as Suga and RM.
• Lighter and Softer
  • The 2019 track "Boy with Luv", with its soft sound, sweets lyrics and downright fluffy MV where the featured artist, Hasley, is treated as just one more of the group, is this compared to 2014' "Boy in Luv", featuring macho-charged lyrics to a harsh sounding tune and a gritty MV taking place in an even more gritty school where the group members treat the girl character/Love interest as an object and manhandle her.
  • Love Yourself: Her is a subversion, as it was released after the quite heavy and philosophically charged WINGS. The album does begin with soft and sweet-sounding love songs, but when you pay attention to the lyrics you notice that each song features an increasing amount of obsession towards the love interest... and then mid-album the songs change tone and become more introspective and dense.
  • J-Hope mixtape, Hope World, when compared with the very introspective mixtapes by RM and the autobiographical Agust D by Suga.
  • The first comeback trailer released for MOTS: 7 was "Shadow", interpreted by Suga, which was a song about the negative aspects of fame and whose MV was filled with oppressive imagery and dark colors. It was immediately followed by "Ego", interpreted by J-Hope, which was way much cheerful in sound, themes (it was equally introspective but in a more positive way) and imagery.
• Money Song: "If I Ruled the World".
• Never Trust a Trailer: a rare musical version. Every MV release is usually preceded by a short teaser; however, the teaser usually presents fragments of the song or instrumental versions that rarely coincide with the actual released song. For example:
  • The teasers for "I Need U" AND "Blood, Sweat, Tears" use the mellow bridges of said songs, giving the impression that the songs were R&B ballads instead of the more bombastic rock-sounding and trap-leaning tracks they respectively are.
  • The teaser for "Spring Day" uses an arrangement with chorus and organ that isn't used in the version of the song featured on the MV (said fragment was used in the "Brit Rock" remix of the song released on SoundCloud)
  • The teaser for "IDOL" used an arrangement with more Korean instruments; the arrangements on the released song is based more on African instrumentation.
• The Oner: The video for "Save Me" was filmed in one take.
• Pep Talk Song: since their stated mission is to give people a respite from their difficult lives with their songs, this is a given. Among their most notorious are "Not Today", "No More Dream", "21st Century Girl" and "A Supplementary Story: You Never Walk Alone".
• Pretty Fly for a White Guy: due to their heavier hip-hop/rap leanings around their debut era, their initial image threaded towards a "gangsta" line. However, after 2014 and their boot-camp in actual hip-hop culture for American Hustle, they dropped this image like a hot potato, with RM even publicly apologizing for his initial gaffes and putting it under Old Shame.
• Protest Song: "No More Dream" and "N.O" are protests against the Korean education system. "Baepsae", meanwhile, does so towards the Korean class system and their contradictory bouts of Tall Poppy Syndrome towards people who want to socially ascend and victim-blaming towards the ones who cannot do so. "Am I Wrong?" is a call out to the youth that doesn't care on the state of the world and disentangle them from politics, paradoxically helping bad politician with their indifference.
• Rated "G" for Gangsta: Played with. Their styling and sound are notoriously softer than the ones they had around his debut era and early years (just compare the MV of "No More Dream" to the ones for "I Need U" or "DNA"), but the themes they tackle in their songs had become harder and more serious.
• Running Gag
  • During the WINGS era, they made a habit of one member displaying a paper heart from somewhere in their clothing, usually revealing it from some hidden place. This gag got to its end and logical extreme in their New Year stage for "Go Go" in MBC, with every member revealing a paper heart from increasingly more outrageous places.
  • Jin, arguably the most Bishonen of the group, after becoming memetically known as "Third guy from the left" after his appearance in the magenta carpet for 2017 Billboard Awards was noticed by global internet, was asked in an interview how he felt about it. He jokingly answered "I'm worldwide handsome" to that question. Since then, he always introduces himself as "Worldwide Handsome" in every interview and presentation to western media.
• Shout-Out: Part of BTS fame is that they use references to western literature that aren't commonly see in Asian pop, or in pop in general.
  • Their album "Wings" is full of references to the famous Hermann Hesse novel Demian. The short films used to promote the individual songs of the members all begin with a reading of select quotes of the novel, and feature imagery of Abraxas, the deity revered by Demian.
  • Their video clip for "Spring Day" visibly features a hotel named Omelas, a reference to Ursula K. Le Guin's famous short story The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas. The song and its video clip were rumored to have been created to memorialize the victims of the Sewol Ferry tragedy.
  • "Blood, Sweat, Tears" quotes Friedrich Nietzsche's Thus Spake Zarathustra and its video clip features, along with the Demian references above mentioned, the famous pictures The Lament for Icarus by Herbert James Draper, and Pieter Bruegel's Landscape with the Fall of Icarus, and The Fall of the Rebel Angels.
  • The series of albums "Love Yourself" are said to be inspired by Erich Fromm's The Art of Loving. Their official Korean e-store even sold a special edition of the book.
  • "Magic Shop" was titled and inspired by the memoir Into the Magic Shop by James R. Doty
  • Their song "Anpanman" was inspired by and named after the titular Japanese character. The choreography they use for this song had the members doing famous poses from superheroes of Marvel and DC (and, of course, Anpanman's too).
  • Their albums Map of the Soul: Persona and Map of the Soul:7 are named after Murray Stein's Jung's Map of the Soul: An Introduction. The songs used for the comeback trailers for these albums, "Intro: Persona", "Interlude: Shadow" and "Outro: Ego", have several references to Carl Jung's psychological concepts ("Persona" use more of the psychological terms, while the other songs are more descriptive of the concepts themselves).
  • Their song "Attack on Bangtan" evidently references Attack on Titan. This one is especially obvious because the Japanese version of the song was titled "Shingeki no Boudan", after the manga's original Japanese title "Shingeki no Kyojin".
• Silly Love Songs: "Blanket Kick," "Miss Right," "Just One Day" and "Boy in Luv," among others.
• Singer Namedrop: present on "Rise of Bangtan/Attack on Bangtan", "Boys With Fun" "Not Today" and "Anpanman", among other songs.
• Singer-songwriter: everyone in the group, some way or another. Notably, the rap line has sung their own lines from day one.
• Spell My Name with an "S": For BTS World, they decide to use the traditional Hangul romanization for the names, instead of the slightly modified romanizations they use in official BTS releases.
• Stepford Smiler: The concept for the Love Yourself albums is that such a person decides to pursue a relationship by hiding his true self (pain, flaws, dreams) from the person they love, and how the relation collapses when it becomes painfully obvious that the relationship was based on so many lies it became unsustainable.
• Surreal Music Video: "IDOL".
• Take That, Critics!: "DDaeng", "MIC Drop", and "IDOL" are directed to every person that told them they couldn't make it or that questioned their artistic integrity. The video clip for "IDOL" even includes visual cues on the members wearing or doing things they had been criticized for online.
• You Gotta Have Blue Hair: In the Save Me webcomic, all the boys have ordinary-ish hair colors... except Yoongi, who has pink hair. And judging for his flashbacks to his childhood, it's apparently natural too.

1. ↑ in Korean jargon, "sending someone to Honk Kong" is a euphemism for "making them (sexually) climax"