Last Friday, ahead of the release of Jungkook’s new single “Seven”, which dropped today, and all the thirst-trappy vibes he was serving to promote it, I wondered if the song was about JK being DTF seven days a week. Horny is not usually part of the BTS playbook – but JK was out here giving so much abdominal and manspreading, and had cast actress Han So Hee in the music video, there was definitely some horny potential. And now that the song is out, it is confirmed: “Seven” is indeed a horny song. But we’ll come back to that in a minute. 

 

First let’s talk about JK on Good Morning America where he performed “Seven” live-to-tape for the first time as part of their summer concert series. He was supposed to go live-live but because of the weather in New York today, they decided to pre-record this three-song set and run it later, not that it made a difference to the people in the crowd. They’d been queued there for the whole week and the anchors said this morning that the line was several blocks long. You see all those people behind him? There could easily have been more. This is just me on my regular petty ass f-cksh-t to the remaining non-believers out there who are still back on iPhone 6 with the BTS appreciation. Jungkook of BTS is blowing up all your feeds today and he also took over New York City. 

 

JK looked great on GMA. He sounded SO great on GMA. As previously mentioned, JK is one of the most purely talented all-rounders to come out of K-pop and you could see that versality on full display – he sings, he dances, he sings while dancing, and he can also rap, as you can hear him jumping in on Latto’s verse during the live performance of “Seven”, which was actually the second song he performed on the first solo live stage of his career. A huge deal in and of itself but what made it extra special was that he chose to lead off with “Euphoria”, a song off BTS’s 2018 album, Love Yourself: Answer. “Seven” and “Dynamite”, the third and final song that JK did today, are fully English tracks. “Euphoria”, however, is almost entirely in Korean. It is a very popular song among BTS fans but it’s not like “Euphoria” got the exposure that “Dynamite” has over the last few years. My point is, even though JK is out here on his solo run, he’s still living by the BTS code – which is that always and forever they are ambassadors for their home culture. Kicking off his set with “Euphoria”, opening his set with Korean lyrics and not English ones, on Good Morning America on a Friday in the summer, is intentional. He is a global pop superstar… and he is Korean. 

On that summer note though, what JK’s doing with “Seven” is making a bid for Song of the Summer. Because “Seven” is a bop! Jungkook’s vocal abilities suit the UK garage genre perfectly as the smooth consistency of his voice creates the perfect connective tissue for the signature syncopation of the genre. And the JK-garage combination also matches up really well with Latto’s verse. I LOVE her verse on this song, I love how they’re trading horny lyrics on this song, I love how horny this song is… period. 

 

Latto’s telling her man to “let me swallow your pride”. She’s demanding that he “better come and hit ya goals”. But it’s not all take for her either, because she’s also sharing that “you make Mondays feel like weekends” which is maybe my favourite lyric on the track – it’s such a simple sentence, just six little words, but they say everything about what it’s like when you are all in on a person, right? 

As for JK, as we’ve been anticipating all week, he, too, is coming with the big horny energy: 

“It's the way that you can ride

It's the way that you can ride 

Think I met you in another life

So break me off another time 

You wrap around me and you give me life

And that's why night after night

I'll be f-ckin' you right Seven days a week”

What did I tell you last week? JK is DTF seven days a week!

So that’s how the song sounds. And again, let me be clear, it sounds really, really, really good. I have to be clear because what I’m about to say is probably going to get me in some deep sh-t with ARMY – and if you don’t hear from me again, if this site goes missing, this is the post that will do it. 

 

Because as wonderfully sexy as the song is, the music video is… not that. The music video is not all that horny. 

Han So Hee is great here as the love interest – which totally tracks, she’s a strong actress. But I don’t know what’s happening here. It starts off with what looks like an argument in a restaurant. We don’t know what she’s mad at, though, or what’s setting her off. Still, disagreements can be sensual. Couples argue all the time, it’s a natural part of a relationship. And tension is friction… and friction is energy, THERMAL energy…so … where is the heat?! 

Honestly? I’m not seeing much heat. What I’m seeing, I think, is Han So Hee looking more and more annoyed by JK getting in her face, including at one point faking his own death until he realises she’s at the funeral, and then he pops out of the coffin and I’m like… excuse me, what happened to the horny promises, LOL?! 

And I’m not saying I was expecting them to straddle each other and start grinding because that’s not the only way to serve chemistry and attraction and desire. Koreans have actually perfected the art of non-physical intimacy in their dramas. There is nothing like a long drawn out stare in a Korean drama to dial up the longing and intensity. It’s totally PG but it’s also very, very effective. If you’ve ever watched a Korean romantic drama series, you know exactly what I’m talking about. The two lovers can be standing across the street from each other and it’s the way their eyes are locked that stops time, stops breathing, but you can almost feel their skin sizzling, even if you can’t see an inch of skin whatsoever. 

 

There’s none of that in the video, either. And I’ve seen enough of Han So Hee’s work to know she is capable of delivering on that level. But she’s not asked to for this video. Because I’m not sure this video knows what it wants to be. It’s not the best visual to represent how good and how sexy and how intimate this song is. 

And then on top of that, Jungkook and Latto – who shows up with a fire verse, and is giving body and eyes and a LOOK! – don’t even interact. 

“Seven” is a really, really great song…but the video doesn’t quite meet the moment. Am I cancelled now?