In A Difficult Year, BTS’s “BE” Was Created To Comfort
On Friday, BTS released BE (Essential Edition), a streamlined, slightly more wallet-friendly iteration of the original album, which came out in November. The music is the same, but the album itself is less expensive, and not marketed as ~deluxe~, so this version’s photobook consists of fewer pages, and there aren’t as many fun extras included in the packaging. There were a couple of notable additions to the album’s new edition, though, that got fans excited when it was announced: two stickers, placed smack-dab on its front. “Featuring Billboard Hot 100 singles ‘Dynamite’ and ‘Life Goes On,’” the first reads. “63rd Grammy Awards nominee,” says the second. So. I guess 2020 was a milestone year for BTS after all.
If Map of the Soul: 7 was an introspective reflection on BTS’s journey as artists, BE is personal in a more of-the-moment way. Perhaps it’s because the group had such a hands-on involvement in its creation that it is so intrinsically them — each member’s fingerprints can be found on every single element, from the album artwork to the video production to, of course, the music. Vocalist Jin described the completed record as “comfortable” in a video on the group’s YouTube channel; V agreed, saying BE feels “more valuable and precious for us than any other album.”
Written and recorded during coronavirus quarantine, the album’s seven new tracks offer an intimate insight into the members’ mindsets during a time so many of us are struggling, anxious and isolated by the current situation, to articulate how we are feeling. With BE, BTS reaches out a companionable hand and promises that they are dealing with those feelings too. “It was a year that we struggled a lot,” Jimin told Time in December, when the group was named Entertainer of the Year. “We might look like we’ve been doing well on the outside with the numbers, but we do go through hard times ourselves.”
That unflinching honesty and sincerity is just another facet of the deep connection BTS strives to maintain with their ARMY, even when physically apart — and it’s reflected, time and time again, in the music on BE.
The album’s third track, “Blue & Grey” — written originally by vocalist V for his much-anticipated solo mixtape, but adapted for the group after the other members heard and loved it — presents that understanding of isolation most explicitly. The lyrics describe the experience of burnout caused by feelings of exhaustion and loneliness, and the apparent inability to escape the gloom. But the song is far from hopeless; the ending note is optimistic, suggesting that pouring those feelings into lyrics and sharing them with others is what finally brings peace. Over the warm strum of an acoustic guitar, and drums that echo the sound of a heartbeat, V sings: “After secretly collecting words that wander in the void / Now I fall asleep at dawn / Good night.”
That optimism is reflected in “Fly to My Room,” a subunit track featuring Suga, J-Hope, Jimin, and V, which explores the merits of creating new experiences inside your own familiar space. The members sing and rap about the despair of feeling trapped inside your room, unable to leave, and the eventual determination to make the best of a bad situation. “Even though I was stuck feeling lonely at home, I started to think of it as another trip instead,” J-Hope explained in an interview. “I thought of my room as my world, and delivery food as a three-star hotel meal.”
In “Dis-ease,” the members explore yet another reality of life in quarantine, agonizing over the restlessness, overthinking, and self-inflicted guilt that come hand-in-hand with a sudden overwhelming influx of free time. The title itself is a play on words, both in English — “Dis-ease,” of course, refers to the pandemic, but also to the sense of unease explored in the song’s lyrics — and in the group’s native Korean — 병, pronounced “byeong,” means both “disease” and “bottle,” invoking a feeling of being stuck in a small space with no way out. The track’s composition was led by rapper J-Hope, recalling sounds of old-school Korean hip-hop that wouldn’t feel out of place on his 2018 mixtape, Hope World. As that name suggests, the song is hopeful despite its subject matter: The production intensifies at the track’s conclusion as the members sing about building strength, waking up every day and persisting on the knowledge that nothing, including life’s current turmoil, lasts forever.
Just as BTS would not be BTS without ARMY, a BTS album would not be a BTS album without at least one song about their cherished relationship with their fans. BE has two. In “Telepathy,” Suga speaks directly to ARMY, expressing hopes that they are doing well and staying healthy while the pandemic is keeping them apart. “For me, these days, well / I feel like I’m floating up in the air,” he raps in the first verse. “Thanks to all this time on my hands / I get to write a song like this / This song is for you.” In “Stay,” RM, Jin, and Jungkook sing about being physically separated from their fans, but secure in the knowledge that the relationship they have with ARMY is strong enough to persist. “Wherever you are / I know you’ll always stay,” sings Jungkook, who originally wrote the track in English for his eagerly awaited solo mixtape, in the song’s hook. Both are upbeat — “Telepathy” funky and retro, “Stay” an EDM-esque club banger. It’s almost as if they were made to be performed, someday, in stadiums to crowds of tens of thousands of the people they were written for; in times where the possibility of that happening is uncertain, they feel like a promise for the future.
Bookending it all are BTS’s two biggest singles of 2020, “Life Goes On” and “Dynamite.” The latter was released in August, and promptly — pun absolutely, 100% intended — exploded. It shot straight to No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100, both BTS’s first single and the first by a Korean group ever to do so, and it stayed there for several weeks. In BE’s fourth track — the first “skit” the group has released since 2017, and a staple of their earlier discography — the members invite us to listen in on their celebration in the studio the day they found out the news. It was their youngest, Jungkook’s, 23rd birthday, and they joked he wouldn’t need any other gifts. When RM chastised the members for not responding to his text about the news, Suga replied that he had been too busy crying. The achievement was, to both BTS and ARMY, a huge deal. And three months later, just a few days after the album was released, “Dynamite” got BTS their first Grammy nomination.
But such achievements and accolades were never the motivation behind releasing the song. In countless interviews in late summer, the members explained they wanted “Dynamite” to reach as many fans as quickly as possible, providing them a source of comfort and joy during a difficult time. That was also one of the reasons the track became the first BTS has ever released fully in English. “We were trying to convey the message of healing and comfort to our fans,” Jin explained in November, in the band’s cover interview with Esquire. “World domination wasn’t actually our plan.”
