A comeback couldn’t be bigger. BTS are finally back with “Arirang,” their first new album in over five years. Fans around the world have been anticipating this moment since BTS put the group on hold so all seven members could complete their military service in South Korea. But the kings are reunited: RM, Jin, Suga, J-Hope, Jimin, V and Jung Kook. The news can spread: The boys are back.
“Arirang” celebrates their collective strength – ready to pick up where they left off as world-dominating pop titans. The last BTS album was “Be” in November 2020, but this is a far more confident statement: 14 tracks produced by Diplo, Flume, Ryan Tedder, Tame Impala’s Kevin Parker, Mike WiLL Made-It and JPEGMAFIA. They set the tone with the opening anthem “Body to Body,” in which they interpolate a beloved Korean folk song and chant: “I need the whole stadium to jump!”
During their time off, all BTS members diligently made music, lived out their individual personalities and pursued their fundamentally different artistic ideas. This resulted in some of her most personal – and fascinating – works. Jimin delved into smooth pop on “Muse,” while RM returned to his underground roots and explored his soul side on “Indigo,” with duets alongside Erykah Badu and Anderson .Paak and Moses Sumney on “Right Place, Wrong Person.”
The members’ solo projects
Suga released the album “D-Day” with the introspective “Haegeum” under his alter ego Agust D. Jung Kook went raw with Latto and Jack Harlow on “Golden,” J-Hope got raw and unpolished on “Jack in the Box” and his street dance docuseries “Hope on the Street.” V went for charming, jazzy supper club ballads on “Layover.” And Jin – last but never least – ushered in his glam rock era with the black nail polish and delivered a “Worldwide Handsome” moment with “Echo”. All of these were passion projects, free of any concessions to the general public; Works by self-confident men who go their own way.
On “Arirang” they now want to prove that they are all pulling together again – with emphasis on their group identity and, above all, on their South Korean roots. They borrowed the album title from a legendary Korean folk song that was first recorded by Korean exchange students in the USA in the 1890s. It was the internationally best-known song of her homeland even before the K-pop explosion – a song of mourning and resistance that is deeply intertwined with the national history of the 20th century. In the final 30 seconds of “Body to Body,” they weave it in along with traditional Korean percussion—a powerful collision of ancient and modern in BTS’s sound.
This is a significant step because one of the most crucial elements of their global rise has been their steadfast refusal to dilute their Korean identity. Anyone who knew the music business might have told them that the only way to the US was through English-language crossover pop hits – but instead they insisted on conquering America on their own terms. BTS only started with English songs long after they had long since established themselves as stadium-filling megastars in the States. The hard way.
Korean identity at the center
So it’s not without meaning that on “Arirang” BTS want to remind their worldwide ARMY where they come from. Particularly touching is a moment in the middle of the album: an “Interlude” that simply contains the sound of King Seongdeok’s sacred bell – also known as the Emille Bell. It is one of Korea’s most revered national treasures: a huge bronze bell weighing almost 19 tons that was cast over 1,200 years ago. (Its unique sound is said to carry over 40 kilometers.) Here it only sounds once, reverberates for almost two minutes – and is still a huge statement.
RM has a hand in the production of every track, with the exception of the interlude; the remaining members are continuously involved as songwriters and producers. The first half of the album is one uptempo stomper after the next, packed with hip-hop braggadocio – an unmistakable statement that they are back with a force. “FYA” sets the tone, with lines like “Club go psycho/Might take you viral/I go full “Thriller” tonight” or “Club go crazy/Like Britney, baby/Hit me with it one more time!” They assert themselves in “Aliens” (with playful details about how they feel as Koreans in the West), “Hooligan” (with Rosalía/Charli-XCX producer El Guincho) or “2.0”, the theme song of their new chapter. “They Don’t Know ‘Bout Us” has the message “You said we changed? We feel the same”, while on “Normal” the refrain is: “Kerosene, dopamine, what I gotta do? We call this shit normal!”
Nineties R&B vibes with jazzy chords
The second half takes much more interesting creative paths compared to the straightforward self-confidence of the first part. “Swim” is a synthpop love song about diving into messy feelings, about sinking into something incomprehensible. But when you hear these voices singing “Swim,” you inevitably hear a song about their own fears – the risk of jumping back into their BTS lives. “One More Night” is the musically boldest banger on “Arirang”: a Diplo track with a numbing psychedelic organ over an early 90s house beat – sounds like Stereolab or Neu! celebrate with Robin S. in the club. “Please” relies on nineties R&B vibes with jazzy chords.
Melancholy and free spirit
“Merry Go Round” is the album’s most melancholy moment: a veiled electropop lament featuring Tame Impala’s Kevin Parker about emotional patterns you just can’t get out of. “My life is like a broken roller coaster,” they sing – a mourning for a broken relationship that simultaneously expresses how chaotic it feels to return to the BTS cosmos and start the relentless ups-and-downs carousel of global pop star life all over again.
“Like Animals” is the loosest, most exuberant track on the album: an acoustic guitar rock loop with an eighties goth feel – very much like Love and Rockets around the time of “Earth, Sun, Moon”. It contains the most carnal pick-up lines on the album: “We can go all night,” promises Jung Kook, while Jimin adds: “If you wanna be animals/Baby, we can be animals.” The whole thing ends in flames, with a screaming guitar solo. “Arirang” closes on a high with the buoyantly optimistic “Into the Sun” – digitally distorted vocal harmonies over Bieber blues guitar swag. It’s one of BTS’ love letters to their audience, the flip side of “Moon,” when all voices chant in unison: “I’ll follow you into the sun, into the sun, into the sun!”
During their absence, the world has ironically come to know these seven men better as individuals than ever before. Everyone got to show sides they’d never been able to show publicly before – whether it was Jin proposing to a can of tuna or J-Hope in a cowboy outfit in front of a San Antonio crowd shouting “Howdy, y’all!” shouted. (He picked up the saying from “SpongeBob.”) All seven of them used the meantime to explore new paths on their own. Now they can finally bring everything they have learned and explored back to the group where it all began. This is the power of “Arirang” – seven different voices, reunited and stronger than ever.
