Niccijade Reeves-Alhark
Editor-in-Chief
From 2020 to the present, the K-pop band BTS has been releasing their songs in English. The past two years they have taken a turn creatively, singing in different languages, working with western artists, and getting more close and personal with their physical album process. In the same two years, their popularity has increased in the west, with high Billboard Chart ratings, awards from the VMAs, and a nomination for the Grammys.
I have been listening to BTS since the 6th grade, and it has been amazing to see them grow and flourish, spreading their music and messages around the world. Something that has begun to worry me though is their move towards the west music-wise. It started when their first English single was released in August of 2020. I and a lot of their fans recalled an interview where Namjoon, also known as RM, said they would not release an album in English. Dynamite was an obvious retraction of that statement and everyone started to wonder why. In an interview with MTV, Namjoon reasoned that they wanted to keep the demo of Dynamite as original as possible because they already liked it as is.
I extremely disliked Dynamite when I first heard it. Not only was I confused, I just felt weird listening to the guys I have heard sing and rap the most intelligent and creative things suddenly make a track that is so shallow that if it was water and I jumped in I would break my ankle. This ‘happy-go-lucky dance dance track’ was very understandable in the context that we have been through a lot of taxing things this year. But that never gave the excuse for crappy lyrics and awkward verses. The chorus, in my opinion, was the only good part about this song and if I never had to hear it again I would gladly do so. It genuinely sounded like every other summer dance track ever and it seemed so unreal that it was coming from them I had to clean my glasses.
After releasing Dynamite, they revealed that they were all working on an album, and showing the process along the way. This was through YouTube live streams where they would have meetings and do work together on making the album. They also shared the making process of the physical album with their fans, painting, taking pictures, etc. BE was a great album and I loved it. I got the physical album as a gift and it was stunning and something they had never done before. It honestly restored my faith in their craft and that Dynamite was just for fun. Then Butter came out.
It was better than Dynamite by a good amount, the lyrics were better and they made a bit more sense. I liked that they were finally showing their well-earned confidence in this song and enjoyed it for the most part. Butter was a decent song and I did not mind it too much.
Permission To Dance is on a whole new level of terrible, I genuinely could not sit through the music video when it came out. Not only was the song just plain bad, so was the choreography! It was designed to become a trend on YouTube and other social platforms like TikTok. Their goal was not to make good music but to gain more following in the west and it shows so much it hurts. It also does not help that the song was written by Ed Sheeren, it felt like he had set them up to embarrass themselves with this song. You can not understand the lyrics because of the immense autotuning of their voices, which they did not need because they have amazing vocals. The music video for this song is basically a rip-off of Justin Timberlake’s Can’t Stop The Feeling, but on top of everyone dancing people are taking off their masks like a deadly virus is not going around. D’Angelo Wallace makes some more good points about this in his YouTube video on the release.
Overall, I do not dislike the fact that they are singing in English and trying to appeal to more English-speaking audiences, but it reeks of desperate approval from America at this point. I simply wish they had tried a better approach with their music these past two years. Come into the states with the same energy in their lyrics as they did when they sang in Korean. If it takes longer for them to produce an English track like that, so be it.
They have meant so much to me throughout middle school and the beginning of high school and helped me through a lot of hard times with their music. I would hate to see them fall off because they want to conform to a music industry that is not willing to accept them for who they are.
Image Credit: HYBE Entertainment
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