BTS ARIRANG: Human, Hungry, Horny

This is not an album review. As a hardcore fan of BTS, it’s probably not possible for me to be completely objective about the new album, ARIRANG. In my opinion, they did it, they delivered, under all that pressure and expectation, having been away for so long, and their global impact and popularity virtually undiminished despite the hiatus, they managed to produce an album that is uniquely them – which, first and foremost, is deeply human.

Because it’s never been BTS’s toughness that has inspired the devotion of an ARMY, it’s always been their vulnerability, their honesty, their softness. ARIRANG goes hard, for sure, musically, especially the first half of the album. But the sound never overshadows the ideas that they’re wrestling with, as they admit to feeling lost, misunderstood at times, uncertain, sharing with their fans the complicated relationship they have with their success. BTS is singular, the biggest band in the world, but they are not impenetrable or inaccessible; rather it’s their humanity that defines them, the fragility of being human on full display.

Immediately after the album drop and just minutes before the group went live on YouTube for a session called Studio Notes to talk through the songs, it was announced that RM had injured his ankle during rehearsal which will limit his ability to perform tomorrow during the comeback concert from Gwanghwamun Square in Seoul. This is obviously devastating and you could see the disappointment on his face, particularly in the opening minutes of the livestream. But, naturally, his brothers rallied around him, and for ARMY, what makes BTS BTS is their support of one another, their unity, that their bodies may fall apart but their spiritual solidarity will always remain intact. It’s the connection they’ve maintained with each other and also the connection that they’ve maintained with their fans.

A 90-minute livestream on album release day? That’s the BTS we know – even though they’re megastars now, even though that livestream was for the most ardent of fans, some of us staying up until 2am, who would have already bought the album without the livestream. Most celebrities at their level would no longer bother with that kind of engagement, but these unfiltered and unscripted livestreams characterised their beginning, 13 years ago, giving ARMY the most intimate insight into who RM, Jin, Suga, j-hope, Jimin, V, and Jung Kook were then, how they grew and changed, and what they’re like now. This is what keeps them tangible, and close, and … again… human: seven humans reflecting on their artistry, figuring out how to evolve it so that it represents who they’ve become, as individuals within a group, without abandoning the magic that brought them together in the first place.

The answer is the hunger. The moment I hit play on ARIRANG, with the rap line front and center, I could feel the urgency, a more mature urgency than what we heard in the early days of Bangtan, but it was hunger all the same. The hunger to create and imagine and try – experimenting with new sounds, new shapes in their sonic presentation; the hunger that compelled them to NOT play it safe but to stretch the potential of their talent. Every member of the group has writing credits on ARIRANG, all of them sound like they’ve unlocked another level of curiosity and artistic desire; at times it borders on desperation, thrilling desperation, the way inspiration comes in bursts that you have to keep pace with.

As a fan, it was exhilarating to hear this pulsating insistence pouring out through each track, a real-time documentation of self-discovery that surprised them more than anyone else – after all, they’ve been at this for 13 years, it’s not like they are amateurs, and yet that hunger was fresh all over again. So fresh in the way their culture is included, sometimes with pride, as it is right off the top in the first track “Body to Body” with the lyric, “BT-uh, from everywhere to Korea”; fresh with history in “No 29” with the tolling of the Divine Bell of King Seongdeok, a Korean national treasure; but also fresh with defiance, as it is in “Aliens”, which made me jump off my couch fist-pumping and then had me crumpled on the floor in tears a moment later.

“Aliens” is BTS celebrating their otherness, with so many Korean and East Asian culture drops, like shoes off at the door, lines like “Out of the East, the sun’s rising”. And an unapologetically aggressive RM snarling:

“Everybody know now where the K is
How far are we taking this? Dammit
Still cursing us out and talking trash
Pardon me, Kim Gu seonsaengnim, tell me how you feel
I'm the only one who speaks English, but that is how we kill
You guys with ridiculously big eyes say
Are they for real? For real?”

With his whole f-cking chest RM is holding up those of us who see with smaller and slantier eyes. I have not stopped sobbing over this song, it’s ferocity, the impatience in his voice over, the sneer in his bars at the persistent ignorance…

This is BTS’s leader, Kim Namjoon, unleashing the creative hunger he’d been containing for two years in the military, his raw ambition throbbing through every track on this album.

Throbbing, though, is apt, LOL. Because the BTS hunger has layers. The hunger for artistic expression, sure, but also…

This a horny f-cking album, I’m not sure we can even call it subtext. These people came out of the army with their ripped bodies and said, yes, we f-ck. You want under or over?

You don’t have to hear it to know it, it’s all over the song titles. First half of the album is lust, second half of the album is romance, put it all together and everyone has their own style of love song. Sometimes you want it hard, sometimes the mood is slow and sweet. Whatever your flavour, BTS has 13 f-ck jams at the ready.

Sorry for the porn talk but you cannot tell me that there isn’t an interpretation of ARIRANG’s love vibe that isn’t carnal.

We survived the hiatus, now it’s a matter of surviving whatever horny choreo they’ll be serving on this tour. Back in the day, ARMY would lose it over a body roll in “Mic Drop”. ARIRANG is basically one long body roll, grinding from first gear to sixth, grooving high and low, in circles, side to side, and up and down.

ARMY, get your health checks and work on that blood pressure. BTS is coming for us – and you can take that however you want it.