When South Korean pop megastars BTS announced that they will be focusing on their solo careers, they did so with very careful words. “It’s not that we’re disbanding! We’re just living apart for a while,” clarified Suga, halfway through the emotional, hour-long conversation, released on YouTube on Tuesday. “I hope you see that it’s a healthy plan,” added J-Hope, seriously. “It’s something that we all need.”
Little wonder that BTS – also known as Bangtan Sonyeondan, or Bulletproof Boy Scouts in Korean – were nervous to reveal their next steps. Since their announcement, it has been reported that shares in the group’s agency lost as much as $1.7bn (£1.4bn) in market value. And more than that, they have the emotions of their deeply passionate global fanbase, BTS Army, to contend with – as well as the weight of a nation’s expectations on their shoulders.
Over the last two years, the idea of BTS almost became bigger than the seven members themselves. Breaking so many records that yesterday the Guinness World Records tweeted, “BTS we’re going to miss you”, the group are the first Grammy-nominated K-pop group, the first to chart a primarily Korean-language single at No 1 in the US, and grossed $33.3m from just four gigs in Los Angeles last year. Their success in the west is just the tip of the iceberg: BTS have also won all four major categories at the Mnet Asian Music awards for three years in a row.
Beyond their glittering trophy room (which is now open to the public at the Hybe Insight museum in Seoul), BTS have become figureheads for South Korea on the global stage. They spoke at the United Nations assembly in 2021 after travelling there on diplomatic passports, and earlier this month visited the White House to discuss Asian inclusion and representation with President Biden, as well as the rise in anti-Asian hate crimes. According to a 2018 report, the seven men are worth more than $3.4bn to the South Korean economy.
But ever since BTS’s debut in 2013, they’ve been over-achievers. Despite their label’s humble origins, and in a K-pop industry then dominated by the “Big Three” music agencies, BTS set themselves apart from their peers through ferocious performances, a warm yet rebellious spirit, and a deeply tangible love for music backed by the underground hip-hop credentials of several of their members. They won their first major award in 2015, for the bitterly romantic pop track I Need U, and began a steady climb towards industry domination with introspective, philosophical lyrics and a knack for twisting their hip-hop beginnings into a number of global pop genres. On 10 June, the group released the anthology album Proof, a three-disc epic that spans their chart-topping singles as well as raw, endearingly youthful early demos.
Drive has defined BTS, and it’s clear that this change in circumstances is no small decision. To watch RM, Jin, Suga, J-Hope, Jimin, V and Jungkook lay it all out, with frank and sometimes tearful honesty, over a dinner table in their once-shared apartment, is to understand just how heavily they have carried the weight of expectation. Even more striking is their willingness to open up this decision to inevitable public scrutiny.
RM, the group’s leader, was blunt in his assessment of an industry that does not easily permit such reflection: “I started music and became BTS because I had a message for the world. But at some point I haven’t been sure what kind of group we are [any more] and for me, it was a big deal that I didn’t know.”
Visibly frustrated, he continued: “I’ve always thought BTS was different from other groups, but the problem with K-pop is that they don’t give you time to mature. You have to keep producing music, to keep doing something. After I get up in the morning and get makeup done there’s no time left for growth. Right now we’ve lost our direction, and I just want to take some time to think.”
Fans also learned that this change has been a long time coming. Jungkook revealed that their album Map of the Soul: 7, released in 2020, was intended to mark the end of the group’s “first chapter”. That record, with its often brutal appraisal of the group’s relationship to music and fame, alongside seven solo tracks that dissected each member’s personal journey, should have culminated in a lengthy world tour and, it’s implied, opened the door to this focus on the artists as individuals. “This timing should have come to us earlier, but I guess we held it off. We’ve got to do it now,” he said, emphatically.
That they “held it off” is understandable, though. In the lull of that cancelled tour, due to Covid-19, BTS chose to release a standalone single to lift the spirits of their fans – as well as their own. Dynamite, a sugary disco-pop track and their first fully English-language single, earned them their first No 1 in the US and their first Grammy nomination. Fair enough that BTS, and their agency, felt the need to capitalise on this sudden ascension to pop’s upper echelons, even though RM pinpoints it now as the moment at which he began to lose his grasp on the group’s direction.
In reassurance, Suga offers: “But when we look back on the past nine years, almost nothing went to plan. We should live doing what we want to do – we’ll all die eventually!” But the rapper also admitted to recent struggles when writing lyrics, reflecting: “Back then [in the group’s earlier years] I had something to say but just lacked the skills, now I don’t know what to say.”
Around the dinner table, each of the seven members begins to describe – hesitantly at first, and then with confidence – that they are all working on individual albums. J-Hope, a rapper and dancer with effervescent stage presence, will release his in July, ahead of his first solo headline set at Lollapalooza – another record broken, as he’s the first Asian artist to headline Chicago’s longstanding festival. Jin, the group’s oldest member, and once an aspiring actor, beams as he describes spending his newfound free time on gaming, and promises that he’s working on new songs but is likely to be the last to release them. “I hope yours all go well,” he teases, as RM interjects: “You’ll be the grand finale!”
V, a singer with a dusky baritone and a penchant for dusty jazz bars, speaks earnestly when describing his hopes for a “chance to show my music to the world, and not just music – I’ve wanted to show the things that are inside me for a long time now”. Jungkook, a skilled R&B singer and the youngest of the seven, is similarly serious in his pledge that: “I’ll do my best, and we’ll become a better version of us, I firmly believe that.”
Suga, already an in-demand producer, jokes that his rates are prohibitively expensive since his chart-topping collaboration with K-pop royalty Psy, but is quick to offer assistance to the other members – and specifically to Jimin, a balletic dancer and distinctively emotional vocalist, who is visibly moved by proceedings. “We can’t tell you everything directly,” he says to the camera, “and that’s very sad and difficult at times. If you’d take our words as they are … that would be great.” The other members chorus “don’t cry!” as he gently dabs at a tear.
RM, the last to speak, sums it up: “The seven of us went towards a united goal with all we’ve got. I want BTS to go on for a long time, but [for that to happen] I think I have to retain who I am. What I know for sure is that we’re BTS, and we made it here thanks to you. I always want to be RM of BTS.” All this, he gestures at the tearful members, “is for the future in front of us”.
As they stand for a toast, BTS Army across the globe take to social media to reassure the group: BTS have run far enough, and – as their recent single puts it – the best is yet to come.
