BTS’s new album is essential pandemic pop.
What do you do after you’ve made world history by becoming the first Korean band — and only the third band ever — to hit the No.1 spot on the Billboard Hot 100? If you’re BTS, apparently you keep on working. On Friday, the much-adored K-pop group released Be, their first album since February’s Map of the Soul: 7 dropped at the beginning of the pandemic, and since its summer bop “Dynamite” became their first top-charting single in the US. “Dynamite,” not incidentally BTS’s first single entirely in English, seemed to be born out of a recognition that the band was somehow too complex to get American radio play. It was in many ways a major departure from their typical approach to their craft. So when BTS announced a new album, the question loomed about what kind of album Be would, uh, be: whether it would venture still further away from their previous musical and collaborative styles, or represent a return to their typical mix of rock and hip-hop with the occasional lighter pop thrown in. Be is a short album, with just seven new tracks alongside “Dynamite.” But nearly all of them are sublime. Taken as a whole, they form a seamless litany of bops intended to commemorate and celebrate getting through the Covid-19 pandemic. Musically, Be is pure pop, all the way down — a loudly retro mix of pop sounds ranging from frothy to funky, melancholic to mellow, filtered through a lens of determined positivity. The band’s harder, more anthemic sound, which put them on the map and landed their fantastic single “On” at the fourth spot on the Billboard Hot 100 in February, is absent here. And that’s fine, because the album’s message seems to be about staying light, upbeat, and grasping hope wherever possible. As many parts of the US are reentering states of crisis, Be is like a deliberate road map for how we can all get through the next few months: singalongs, good humor, and reliance on the bonds that keep us close. Be is both a proclamation and a promise. It’s okay to rest, it says: to simply exist, to survive, to be. In that sense, the album’s auditory shift toward total pop feels like a completely necessary response to a very difficult year — and indeed, it’s intended to be. Be opens with the band’s newest single, “Life Goes On,” which dropped at midnight on Friday alongside the album itself. Its theme — the pandemic — is immediately obvious from the accompanying music video, which was directed by band member Jeon Jungkook and opens with a lonely V (Kim Taehyung) driving down a mostly empty highway. He’s intercut with shots of Jungkook glancing wistfully outside his window, as they both reminisce about how “one day the world stopped.” One by one, the other band members join in, singing good-naturedly about how even though they miss company and activity, even though they’re pursued by melancholy, one day life will return to normal.
