It’s been reported that ahead of their live comeback show in Seoul on March 21, one day after the release of ARIRANG, their highly anticipated comeback album, BTS will make their way to the stage via what’s called the King’s Road, a historic path that was used for royal processions. Needless to say, city officials wouldn’t grant this privilege to just anyone, but it’s now an undisputed fact that RM, Jin, Suga, j-hope, Jimin, V, and Jung Kook are the modern pop culture sovereigns of their nation, whose influence has extended beyond Korea and the entire region to become global entertainment titans.

So it’s fitting that the concept of a pop act’s “imperial phase” comes up in the new profile of BTS in GQ, just released today. This is the theory that artists have one era of creative and commercial supremacy, a finite stretch of time that takes them to a peak that can never be reached again. As noted in GQ, though there are always exceptions, very few artists experience multiple imperial phases – and yet, the idea of the imperial phase up to this point has only been applied to artists from the west, and when the expression was coined, it was unimaginable that seven young men from Korea would go on to conquer pop music.

BTS soared to unprecedented summits prior to 2020, and then the world stopped. During the pandemic, somehow they flew even higher as they figured out how to not only remain connected to their existing fans but actually grow their fanbase. In 2022, when they paused group activities so that they could begin staggering their military service over the next two and a half years, they were already at a level of success that no one could have foretold.

Now it’s 2026, all of them have completed their service, we are a month away from their attempt to go imperial once again. And given the record breaking pre-sales for ARIRANG and that the tour is already sold out, we can probably just call it now – imperial phase number three, confirmed. So, yes, of course, they can walk the King’s Road in Seoul before they make their way around the world, again. And, most importantly, TOGETHER.

That’s my biggest takeaway from their GQ cover story, and by the way, it’s a global cover story. BTS isn’t just covering GQ in one territory, it’s all the territories.

The piece was reported by Raymond Ang, and it is OUTSTANDING, serving at once as a reintroduction to the band after their hiatus for the uninitiated, but also a deep-dive into who they are now for those who’ve been here, while thoughtfully analysing how they’ve defied industry expectations – without turning them into avatars but instead grounding them in their humanity.

That, after all, is one of the essential keys to BTS’s appeal and endurance. One of the highlights of the piece is when RM is asked about his vulnerability – he is prone to candid livestreams, including a recent one back in December when he talked about the pressure he was feeling about the comeback and how at times he was thinking of disbanding; it was unfiltered and raw, and of course it sent people into a panic.

What was the reaction from the other members to his public confession?

“Actually, none of us watched that video of the live-streaming,” V says. 

“We would only watch short YouTube Shorts on it or Reels,” says Jin.

“Because it’d be weird if you watch each other’s live-stream,” Suga explains. “We’re always together and we’re like brothers.”

“I think it’s RM’s love language to ARMY in a way,” says Jimin. “It really shows how emotionally invested he is in the group, and in ARMY as well. I think it was very RM to be vulnerable and say things like that.”

“RM is like the identity of this group,” V says. “He’s the core leader of the group, so he must feel so much more pressure than the rest of us do. I usually don’t have that much pressure, but it seems like he does.”

RM, visibly moved by his bandmates’ sentiments, says, “How sweet,” looking at the other six. “Love these guys.”

And then they go on to make fun of each other, using humour to redirect the mood, not because they don’t want to feel things or because they want to mask any discomfort, but because they innately understand how to balance and calibrate the energy between them, all seven of them bringing different shades of emotion to every moment.

This is the soft masculinity that they’ve been modelling ever since their debut, and it’s remained unchanged through crazy ass fame and also military service. But if we’re talking about the humanity that brings them together and keeps them together, ironically the military service, as hard as it was for them, is an essential factor to their next imperial phases.

I can’t stress this enough, especially for those of us who perceive celebrity through a western lens – THEY ENLISTED IN THE ARMY AT THE HEIGHT OF THEIR POPULARITY. This doesn’t happen to western pop stars! Fame, typically, insulates the stars. The more famous they are, the more unrelatable they become, because they have fewer and fewer opportunities to have non-famous experiences. But RM, Jin, Suga, j-hope, Jimin, V, and Jung Kook left the spotlight and the stage and spent a year and a half each with ordinary Korean citizens and did not get special treatment.

After a decade of international stardom, adored by millions, while making millions, for 18 months, most of them shared living quarters with strangers or, in Suga’s case, worked a desk job along with other office employees – it was the kind of extended and unglamorous existence that no modern popstars at their level would ever choose. And individually interspersed within that time, each of them embarked on their solo endeavours, with great success, too. If creativity is informed by life experience, consider the impact of these last three years on BTS’s creative trajectory and how monumentally unique that is in relation to other mega popstars.

And with all that in mind, after all of that, what makes this phenomenally extraordinary is that…they want to keep doing it TOGETHER! As Raymond Ang points out in the GQ piece, “It doesn’t always—or maybe ever—happen this way.”

NEVER.

The story we all know well is that once a member of a band tastes big time solo success, they want to stay single. This is why BTS is a unicorn, seven unicorns, who exited the military and rushed back to each other. They actually moved back in together for two months to work on the album. They will be bound together for at least another year and a half on this comeback and tour. Suga’s up in here telling GQ that he wouldn’t mind if they were still together in their 50s and 60s, and he’s usually the most reclusive one. As V said:

“We all treasure BTS more than we treasure each one of us separately. We debuted as a group, so I think that’s the core identity that we have.”

And that’s why they are defying the theory of the imperial phase, the exception to the rule that says there can only be one. Because this is a collective monarchy, seven kings who found a way to rule together. A new reign is upon us, I am so excited I could cry. No, wait, I’m already crying!

Click here for more on BTS in GQ.

Photo credits: Dukhwa Jang/GQ

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