The arrival of K-pop band BTS’s latest mini-album comes heralded not merely by eye-watering statistics – according to a press release it has “surpassed 3m pre-orders globally”, an incredible figure in the current climate – but fan-produced crib notes as well. “Ask any fan of the Korean septet and they’ll probably tell you how they’ve spent the weeks leading up to Map of the Soul: Persona’s release brushing up on the psychological theories of Carl Jung,” offered a recent feature on the MTV website.
As preparations for your favourite boyband’s latest release go, it certainly beats camping outside a record shop while bellowing their hits to keep your spirits up. Before you dismiss this as the ravings of a berserk fan who’s Googled the album’s title, discovered its links to a 1999 introduction to Jung written by a psychologist called Murray Stein and run with the idea, it’s worth noting that the website of BTS’s management company Big Hit is currently selling copies of Stein’s book alongside the CDs and memorabilia.
Whether you view this as a welcome return to the idea of pop music as a doorway into an new world of literature and art, or just as an inventive expansion of pop merchandising, may depend on the degree of cynicism with which you regard the entertainment agencies that control South Korea’s pop stars. But what of the music at the centre of this phenomenon?
Stripped of whatever associations it may have (not merely to Jung, but apparently Greek mythology and Singin’ in the Rain) the 26 minutes of Persona offer up polished, Auto-Tune-heavy pop that ranges from guitar-laden hip-hop on Intro: Persona to a gentle EDM influence on the Call Me Maybe-ish Halsey collaboration Boy With Luv. Halsey isn’t the only western artist to cannily hitch themselves to the K-pop juggernaut. Collaborating with Ed Sheeran on the falsetto-vocal heavy Make It Right, BTS prove smart enough to tap into the R&B end of Sheeran’s oeuvre rather than adding to the teetering mountain of earnest acoustic ballads that his success has borne.
It’s all extremely radio-ready and sung with a breathy, close-miked intensity that gives the curious illusion of intimacy even when BTS are belting it out – a smart trick to pull off. Those charged with rapping, meanwhile, are more convincing than your average boyband denizen chancing his arm at the old lyrical flow. Nevertheless, anyone outside of the BTS Army might struggle to grasp what differentiates them from the rest of 2019’s pop landscape. Occasionally, you get a faint hint of something coming, if not exactly out of left field, then at least from outside the standard pop playbook: the sinuous rhythmical shifts that underpin Mikrokosmos, the abrupt key changes in Jamais Vu, also the home of the album’s most memorable melody.
But ultimately, the most striking thing about the music here is how perfectly it fits in, rather than how much it stands out – which does beg the question of what it is about BTS that’s caused them not merely to become globally successful but to almost singlehandedly change Anglo-American attitudes to east-Asian pop. Perhaps it is the stuff that the MTV feature referred to as “the dozens of cryptic clues and callbacks sprinkled throughout the Bangtan Universe … the deeper themes, subjects and messages within their music”. The pop world isn’t exactly teeming with artists referencing Jung at the moment. But whatever the answer to the mystery is, it certainly doesn’t lurk within the music.
