The general consensus seems to be that as BTS\u2019s commercial stock has gone stratospheric \u2013 more than 500m units sold worldwide, including over 104bn streams, making them the bestselling Asian act of all time \u2013 the actual music has become more and more irrelevant. Before taking their hiatus in 2022 to fulfil their mandatory military service in South Korea, their saccharine, English-language bops such as Dynamite and Butter \u2013 while gargantuan global hits \u2013 had smothered the K-pop-specific idiosyncrasies that peppered their earlier material. By 2020\u2019s double whammy of Map of the Soul: 7 and Be, the band\u2019s early years as a hip-hop-focused collective were a distant memory, and thanks to a more westernised sound and studio cast list, so was their identity as a Korean act.<\/p>\n
On the eagerly anticipated Arirang \u2013 pointedly named after a Korean folk song dating back to 1896, and presented with the tagline \u201cborn in Korea, playing for the world\u201d \u2013 the septet do their best to right those wrongs. Crucially, it manages to capture the K-pop spirit of experimentation while welding it to a litany of memorable hooks. And when western collaborators are brought in, they\u2019re interestingly off-kilter, including outsider rapper-producer Jpegmafia, and producer El Guincho, known for his work with Bj\u00f6rk and Rosal\u00eda.<\/p>\n
Split into two distinct moods, the opening trio of songs immediately reinstate rapper RM as the band\u2019s guiding creative force. Over an elastic Diplo-assisted beat that recalls Timbaland\u2019s gonzo work on Nelly Furtado\u2019s Loose, RM, Suga and J-Hope sound as if they\u2019re having a lot of fun weaving in and out of opener Body to Body\u2019s tempo changes, echo-laden drums and snatches of processed vocals. They\u2019re adept, too, at riding Hooligan\u2019s metallic experimentation, with El Guincho constructing a beat out of what sounds like swords sharpening on steel. It answers the question of what BTS produced by Sophie might have sounded like. Even the densely packed beats by US rap production titan Mike Will Made-It make sense on the crunchy Aliens, while the pleasingly braggadocious 2.0 (\u201cyou know how we do \u2026 came back for what\u2019s mine\u201d) could be read as a warning to the K-pop boybands that scrambled to take BTS\u2019s place during their hiatus.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
But BTS, and their paymasters Big Hit Music, also understand that a softer side is key for any boyband. Lead single Swim, sung solely in English, plays things relatively straight and should be No 1 globally until about November. Recalling the featherlight synth-pop of Troye Sivan, in classic BTS style its fairly rudimentary lyric about watching a hot girl in the sea has been repurposed in accompanying materials as focusing on the \u201cresolve to keep swimming onward through life\u2019s many tides\u201d. Having claimed their previous albums have been about philosophical concepts touching on Jungian theory and the work of Hermann Hesse, such intellectual retrofitting does them a disservice. Much of Arirang is big, dumb pop fun and all the better for it. When they do dig deeper, as on the lightly frazzled Kevin Parker-produced Merry Go Round \u2013 a statement perhaps on fame\u2019s repetitive treadmill \u2013 its lyrical lightness of touch leaves space for genuine emotion. Like Animals, which sounds like Diplo producing the Pixies, continues the second half\u2019s more reflective mood, Jung Kook\u2019s soft croon balanced by a chunky processed guitar solo.<\/p>\n
At 14 songs, things tail off slightly as themes start to duplicate \u2013 the underwritten They Don\u2019t Know \u2019Bout Us repeats 2.0\u2019s posturing to less interesting effect \u2013 but there\u2019s also time for one more surprise. Slathered in vocal effects and stripped back to replicate a live band jam session, Into the Sun makes for an intriguing closer. While lyrically its mantra of \u201cI\u2019ll follow you into the sun\u201d could be read as a nod to their loyal fans, or each other, its slurred style and robotic sound add a curious edge that feels almost fatalistic. \u201cNobody knows me\u201d they croon, which feels apt. BTS are too big to fail now, and big enough to want to protect their inner lives at every turn. On Arirang, they\u2019ve made an album that makes good on their status as the planet\u2019s biggest pop phenomenon, and that\u2019s more than enough.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The general consensus seems to be that as BTS\u2019s commercial stock has gone stratospheric \u2013 more than 500m…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":553866,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[64,63,134,136],"class_list":["post-553865","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-music","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-entertainment","tag-music"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/553865","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=553865"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/553865\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/553866"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=553865"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=553865"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=553865"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}