“Savage Love (Laxed – Siren Beat)” by Jawsh 685 (Joshua Stylah) and Jason Derulo peaked at #7 on the Billboard Hot 100. Stylah shared the original piece of music on TikTok months ago and it was already a viral hit on the platform before Jason sampled it for the song and, obviously, it’s been one of the more popular tracks of the year.
A remix for “Savage Love” just dropped today…featuring Suga, j-hope, and Jungkook of BTS. As mentioned earlier this week, the group announced their participation earlier this on, where else?, TikTok.
@bts_official_bighit @jasonderulo 님과 #듀엣 #SAVAGELOVE #BTS @jawsh_685 @jasonderulo
♬ Savage Love (Laxed - Siren Beat) - Jawsh 685 & Jason Derulo
You can listen and watch the lyric video for “Savage Love” featuring BTS here which includes JK’s vocals and a verse by Suga and j-hope in Korean. ARMY has been freaking out all day over JK singing “two f-cks”, LOL.
But what’s the motivation here? I mean, obviously, we know what Jason Derulo gets out of working with BTS but what does BTS get out of doing this remix? They already have the #1 single on the charts with “Dynamite”. Their new album is coming out in November. They’re prepping for their upcoming online concert Map of the Soul ON:E. So it’s not like they’re sitting around looking for sh-t to do.
Then again, this is happening during the first round of Grammy nomination consideration. And displaying all this versatility isn’t a bad move, especially if they can take a song that’s already a hit… and make it an even BIGGER hit with their involvement. This, as the kids say, would be some swagger.
Speaking of swagger…
BTS Week continued on The Tonight Show last night and their penultimate appearance involved a game of goofy Olympics events and a BREATHTAKING performance of their song “Mikrokosmos”. “Mikrokosmos” is BTS’s dedication to ARMY (one of many) and when they performed it in concert last year, they used drones to light up the sky with the band’s logo and the ARMY logo – which also happens in this performance. Only this performance, once again, takes place at Gyeongbokgung Palace in Seoul, where they also shot their “Idol” performance on Monday. But for “Idol”, RM, Jin, Suga, j-hope, Jimin, V, and Jungkook were performing at ground level, with a stage erected in front of the palace. This time the band performed inside the palace, well above ground, and this required a different kind of technical execution…and more drones. Again with the production value!
If you’re a film and TV production nerd, you’ll appreciate the camera work involved here. Please note before you watch, if you haven’t already, that the band members are performing quite high up on the structure with open space in front of them. Which means you can’t shoot on the wide angle like that using camera operators without getting the cameras and the operators in the shot. The opening shots, then, have to be on drone. From different angles. To be sure, I asked a DP I’ve worked with over the years, Dylan, to watch the video and tell me what gear they used. Dylan’s response:
“They did two passes for sure. A wide pass for those extreme wide shots and a closeup pass. So wide pass with drone to get those extreme wides and then a closeup pass with a steady and a couple of hard cameras and a jib on the closeup pass. (Lainey: A jib is a camera that looks like a crane, I’m sure you’ve seen them.) The closeup pass was a multi camera shoot. Probably three or four cameras. Looks like a steady camera and a couple of hard cameras.”
Or… you know… whatever newly invented camera sh-t they have over in South Korea since they’re so advanced on tech. And we haven’t even gotten into how the audio was delivered from a place that was never built to accommodate acoustics – and they are singing live!
But the point is…this was a performance at the end of the show. They didn’t open The Tonight Show with “Mikrokosmos”, it was only for the hardcore who stay to the episode’s conclusion, usually not a high value timeslot. You don’t have to work in TV to know that what happens at the end of a talk show is not typically super prioritised – and they still put in all the planning and effort and logistics and thought and rehearsal and energy into it. For less than five minutes of screen time. That is the care and the consideration that BTS applies to everything the do. This is why so many of their fans – me included – are so into them. This is what the western recording industry has overlooked and what so many people who are being introduced to them are just now appreciating.
