The Butterification of BTS
First, a little bit of context: I wrote this essay a year ago in a disappointment-fueled daze after Butter came out (when I should have been writing my Master’s dissertation, but let’s not talk about that) but I was too shy to post it. To my continued disappointment, it is still relevant today, and I still agree with most of what I wrote, so I figured I might as well reupload it with a few minor edits.
Oh, when I look in the mirror
I’ll melt your heart into two
I got that superstar glow so
Do the boogie like…– BTS, Butter, 2021
On May 21st, 2021, BTS released their all-English single Butter, and after one listen I knew this was the end.
For anyone who might have wandered here without any previous knowledge of BTS and their background, though it is unnecessary nowadays to introduce them as “a seven-member K-pop group” given the reach of their online and media presence, a brief introduction is in order: the group takes its roots in a somewhat naïve emulation of West Coast hip-hop. It was formed around self-made underground rapper Kim Namjoon, who at only 16 years of age, signed with what was in 2010 an insignificant record label, Big Hit Entertainment. The six other members of the group were then recruited for their specific skills or talents over the next three years, the project slowly morphing into a hip-hop themed K-pop group rather than the purely hip-hop group it was originally supposed to be, meaning there would be dancing and singing involved.
Ten years after the idea that would become BTS was put into motion, the group has strayed very far from its clunky hip-hop roots. Although the music in the 2013 and 2014 releases was definitely hard-hitting hip-hop done well, it was undermined by bouts of tentative singing from the then mostly teenaged “vocal line”, and the mimicry of West Coast style of clothing and attitude is hard to look back on without cringing. However, starting 2015, the struggling group took a sharp turn towards pop, made more attention-catching by the layered and stronger vocals, the increasingly clean instrumentals, and the ever-present rap verses. Whether it was a series of decisions or a carefully laid-out plan, this change in musical style coincided with the emergence of a new aesthetic for the group, completely discarding any hip-hop visual marker to bring out the fragility of youth — an aesthetic which was inserted in a narrative that encompasses the albums released in 2015 and 2016: the BU (or BTS Universe) is a Bildungsroman in the shape of a series of albums (The Most Beautiful Moment in Life, part 1 and 2, and the compilation of these two albums, Young Forever), now accompanied by a short movie, a mobile game, and a novel, where the characters are all based on the group members.
It is difficult to analyze what exactly pushed BTS to international fame, but the convergence of these important changes in their music, image and marketing strategy resulted in a series of increasingly more prestigious local awards, and an ever-growing presence in Western countries that did not go unnoticed by US media outlets. Bang Sihyuk, Big Hit’s founder and chairman, is a producer, but also a businessman through and through — needless to say, BTS’s success in reaching national and international fame does not rest solely on the inherent qualities of the group members, despite what ARMY are inclined to believe.
The BTS I am ‘unstanning’ now is not the BTS I grew to love when I was 17, when K-pop was still a rather niche and embarrassing interest for French internet-dwellers. The BTS I am unstanning is post-Love Yourself BTS. Love Yourself is a series of albums that I would pinpoint as the beginning of the end: it was an attempt to replicate the formula that had worked so well before. A trilogy of albums, the latter of which being a repackage of the first two, augmented with a few new tracks, all dealing with the same theme, and loosely bound by a narrative thread and a sense of aesthetic coherence. The mere fact that Big Hit was using the exact same parameters to ensure continued success did not sit well with me, though I lacked the critical distance to put words on it back then. I now recognize the 2016 album WINGS as the oddity it is: though metaphorically related to the BU, this album stands out musically and visually in between the two trilogies, and could have been the start of a new direction for BTS, had Big Hit not started a strong push towards the US market. The culmination of this continuous effort to earn a spot on American charts is Butter, the musical equivalent to the absurdity of late-stage capitalism, with its ideal of infinite growth based on the same repetitive pattern.
Now, to say that I am ‘unstanning’ does not mean that I hate BTS, as people or performers, or that I will stop listening to their music entirely. To understand what I mean, one must know what ‘stanning’ refers to. It is a slang term, or rather internet lingo. It comes from Eminem’s song Stan (released in 2000), told from the point of view of a man who is completely obsessed with the rapper, and convinced they share a bond. He grows increasingly more resentful as he feels that the celebrity he adores is refusing to give him the attention he is due as a devoted fan: what starts as admiring letters quickly devolves into delusions and resentment, as Stan goes from:
“…I know you probably hear this everyday, but I’m your biggest fan / […] / I got a room full of your posters and your pictures man”,
to the considerably more worrying:
“My girlfriend’s jealous ’cause I talk about you 24/7 / But she don’t know you like I know you Slim, no one does”,
to a final, grim:
“I love you Slim, we coulda been together, think about it / You ruined it now, I hope you can’t sleep and you dream about it.”
as Stan drives off a bridge with his pregnant girlfriend tied up in the truck. The song’s tragic end shows how such behavior can be a symptom of underlying, unaddressed mental issues, and it is ironically self-aware that fans of a celebrity now refer to themselves as ‘stans’. It speaks of an over-involvement in this celebrity’s life and actions. I have been guilty of this as well, for months at a time, once in 2016 when I first discovered BTS, and once more in 2020. But that doesn’t mean I was lying when I told myself I was mostly in it for the music. And now that the music I liked isn’t there anymore, I suppose I won’t be either.
Musically and aesthetically speaking, Butter was a huge disappointment for me. I saw it coming, what with the promotional tactics clearly aiming to recreate the hype that surrounded Dynamite in 2020. I was ready to accept Dynamite as a one-time thing — the song did sound fun with its light English lyrics, and the video put a smile on my face. It was a welcome distraction in 2020. But Butter isn’t nearly as relevant: the beat does not have Dynamite’s retro disco charm; the lyrics are lacking BTS’s usual depth of meaning; the video is boring in its minimalism, especially compared to HYBE’s productions for its new group TXT; the unique textures of the members’ voices are drowned out. A summer hit, as bland as they come.
Funnily enough, Butter in itself is not a bad song by popular standards. The problem lies in the context in which it was produced and advertised. BTS’s official website proudly claims: “Butter puts forth BTS’s unique charm that no one else can pull off.” This, of course, is a blatant lie. Written and produced by no less than six songwriters based in North America alongside Namjoon, Butter could easily find a home in any unremarkable mainstream pop album in the US, and I would not pay it any mind. But it is the complete lack of humility on HYBE’s part that makes it so aggravating to be subjected to this song — the assumption that anyone would like it because of who is singing it. But where is the BTS I liked? Though these are the same faces on my screen, all I see is one huge business plan to dominate the mainstream music market by appealing to the US, the current goal to reach being, more or less implicitly, a Grammy. I am not the target audience anymore, because the target audience isn’t people, but streaming services, radio shows, and whatever allows BTS (and behind them, the many-limbed monster, HYBE Corporation) to stay in the public eye and generate revenue. This feels like watching puppets where I used to see people.
I know they don’t owe me anything. I am the customer (not just the audience), I make the choices, I pick the products I consume. I just think it’s a shame. It is embarrassing for everyone involved, including BTS’s past selves. “Be the subject of your own life” (as opposed to the object) was the aggressive message of their 2013 debut track No More Dream. “What is the you that you’ve dreamed of?” It seems contradictory for the same driven young men who wrote about wanting to make a difference in the industry to be reduced to the empty caricatures they so vehemently criticized. Korean rapper B-Free’s infamous confrontation with Yoongi and Namjoon in the early days of BTS comes to mind: was it inevitable that such a career path would corrupt their creative essence? I argue it wasn’t. What B-Free was deploring boiled down to a macho distaste for the superficial aspect of K-pop — the feminizing makeup, the dancing, the highly ritualized relationship to predominantly female fans.
According to Yoongi and Namjoon, the first two members of BTS and the only ones with previous songwriting and producing experience, choosing to enter the K-pop industry and to present themselves as a K-pop group was only a means to an end, a slightly safer way to gain an audience in a crowded market, though it was a risky gamble. They clearly intended to carry their genuine love for music into this new life, and, to an extent, they did: as HYBE is always happy to remind us, some BTS members are heavily involved in the creative process. So, the responsibility for the fiasco that is Butter does not rest solely on their shoulders, but rather on the management team that has been redirecting their energy towards safer and less subversive territories than their angry and socially critical origins, ever since the romantic pop song I Need U’s success in 2015.
The rappers’ solo work itself shows that their style has mellowed down, not being fed anymore by the resentment of the starving creatives faced with the indifference and unfairness of the world. Taking on a more self-reflective and introspective tone, their individual projects, such as Yoongi’s D-2 or Namjoon’s mono, show maturity and hard-earned tranquility, but also a sort of resignation when it comes to the commercialized and mainstream aspect of their main output. But then again, earning that much money must be more comfortable than the endless grind of making the music you really want to be making, so I try not to berate them as people — who knows what choice I would make in a similar situation. Yoongi, distancing himself from his boy-group member persona by swapping the stage name Suga for Agust D, which he uses for his solo work, wrote many a verse about the ambivalence of chasing success while trying to maintain his creative drive and authenticity:
“The monster, my success earned at the cost of my youth, wants greater wealth / The greed that used to be my weapon now swallows me”,
can be heard in his brutally honest 2016 free release The Last. This then morphed into the melancholy:
“The life I wished for, the life I wanted, a so-and-so life / Whatever it is, it doesn’t matter anymore / For just one day, without any concerns / […] / to live… to live… to live…”
in his 2020 track soberly titled 28.
There are many other popular singers I listen to frequently. I keep an eye on their releases, I watch their music videos when the algorithm suggests I do. The only reason BTS weren’t the same, the reason why I religiously followed every update for months on end, and was excited about everything regardless of the quality, is that I wasn’t in it just for the music. I had an emotional attachment. Shallow, but it felt deep. Why? I am far from the only one to have asked that question. Wallea Eaglehawk confronts this uncomfortable truth in the fictional mode in her book Idol Limerence: The Art of Loving BTS as Phenomena, by referring to the line from Fake Love : “I grew a flower that can’t bloom in a dream that can never come true.” Such is the love of the fan for the idol: sterile. The answer to this confused “Why? Why is this happening to me, a rational person?” is disappointingly simple: it’s a mix of factors. In my case, a budding anxiety disorder, stress from my studies, feeling like the odd one out, and a predisposition to love pop music, thanks to its strong visual dimension, were all things that led me to cling to BTS near the end of my teenage years; aided by the fact that HYBE had carefully crafted a “private” or “authentic” persona for each member, going to great lengths to show the “real” personality of the boys. All of them being in my age group (children of the 1990s), it made it all the more easy to form an unusually strong parasocial relationship with them, as what is shown of their private life is by no means fake, though it is, of course, incomplete and heavily curated by the company in order to suppress any potentially scandal-inducing elements.
Unsurprisingly, my most intense ‘stanning’ period almost exactly coincided with the first wave of covid-19, and the first lockdown. But the phase that left the strongest impression on me was the end of high school, when I had just started listening to BTS, who had recently released their aptly-titled two-parter, The Most Beautiful Moment in Life. It was true, at the time, that having such role models was bettering my life, as they are integral to children and teenagers’ development: I was offered a window into a new way of life, as the group dynamics, work ethics and gender expression that I was able to see in these boys were unlike anything I knew. I can pinpoint actual positive changes in my behavior, that happened surprisingly fast after I started engaging with behind-the-scenes content. However, it was in 2020 that I truly realized how much of a problem it had become: from an uplifting new perspective, the need to know more about BTS had shifted into an emotional dependency.
As a good friend who found herself in the same predicament once pointed out, I am but a social animal, and regularly seeing people speak, eat, and sleep tricked my rather primitive brain into thinking we must be sharing a form of intimacy. I even had the unwanted privilege of watching them wash their face, or discuss who will pee in what order during a long road trip. Though these are things that I would do alongside my friends, I would not watch my friends sleep , but I imagine I would watch my child sleep to ensure they are safe. And so, rather than forming an imaginary friendship, or an imaginary romantic relationship with BTS, as is often the case with celebrities — though both are still incredibly common — BTS fans tend to develop feelings of a parental or familial nature: contentment at seeing a loved one eat, laugh or sleep, along with a deeply embedded sense of protectiveness towards their physical and mental well-being. Though HYBE is far from the only company to appeal to fans’ familial feelings, such invasion of privacy being common in variety shows revolving around K-pop groups, HYBE are the masters of this type of marketing. It helps that the BTS members have actually likable personalities, but how far would that go, if those traits were not constantly, and seemingly accidentally and innocently emphasized? Moreover, what does it do to the audience to be only fed snippets of life that, though they have enough diversity and numbers to mimic the chaos of a real life lived alongside friends and family, are overwhelmingly positive and only serve to paint the unrealistic picture of a sort of humanly flawed perfection? What does it do to us to see them cry, or be struck by exhaustion or anxiety? What does it do to us to hear Jungkook’s gasps of pain fill up a cinema as on screen, a wound on his foot is being urgently sewn shut during a world tour?
I often told myself that BTS found me at the right time. And that’s exactly what happened, except not in the way I thought. It is not magic, or destiny, or any nebulous positive force, as the song and concept of Magic Shop would have us believe. As appealing as the idea of a spiritual bond might be for younger or psychologically distressed minds, it is the all-powerful YouTube algorithm that pushed me towards them, because of course I would like them. It was related to my interests: I already knew and liked K-pop, its visual power, the gender non-conformity of the male performers to my European eyes. But the tale spun by what is now HYBE was so appealing, I let myself buy it. And, at its core, liking BTS isn’t a bad thing, nor is it unreasonable. They were endearing boys, now they seem to be good men; their music is enjoyable, the lyrics often more interesting than one would expect. The creative team behind them, both on the musical and visual side, is full of good and compelling ideas. So, what feels so wrong about liking BTS these days? Well, you can only go so far in crafting your own legend, when you don’t have the means to back it up with content that lives up to the expectations you set yourself. I’m sure this isn’t BTS’s doing, I’m sure they would not have minded not being invited to speak at the UN, back in 2018. The problem is the lie that HYBE sells. When it was still Big Hit, managing only BTS, the lie was endearing. A nice story the fans told each other: the BTS members were destined to meet, destined for success, soulmates in a way. But once HYBE started capitalizing on this, once they understood that showing authenticity and vulnerability was what made BTS special to fans, they tried to replicate that effect ad nauseam.
The thing is, you can’t manufacture authenticity. HYBE not recognizing BTS as what it always was (a product), and instead trying to present it as what it could have become, had it not followed the laws of the market, is what grates on my nerves, what feels most disrespectful. The lie of BTS as self-made artists, the lie of them as activist superstars, the lie of them as ready-made friends. The way HYBE controls the narrative of their lives. It all feels manipulative, and it is surprising that so many people either buy it, or don’t care, though one could say the same about the likes of Disney. It says something about how used we are to the pervasiveness of HYBE’s American counterparts, that its tentacular, fast and efficient way of permeating global mainstream culture should unsettle me so much; but it is almost frightening to see that, in the span of three to four years, HYBE has grown to the point where it can invest in other groups and performers, or simply merge with smaller companies, produce variety shows, movies for international cinemas, and a drama based on BTS’s life which is supposedly in the works, organize art exhibitions across the world, and even put out mobile games, or educational content with partnerships as prestigious as the Ecole Normale Supérieure, as part of the “Learn! Korean with BTS” program; not to mention the derivative merchandise such as BT21, a brand centered around cartoonish characters partly designed by the BTS members themselves, and TinyTan, animated shrunken effigies of the BTS members, as well as the countless endorsements (Puma, CocaCola, Hyundai and Samsung being the most notable ones). In short, BTS now exists so HYBE can sell you things, rather than the reverse. The music is an afterthought. So it goes in our modern world.
I think nothing illustrates BTS’s regrettable change in values better than the modification of the acronym’s meaning. From the Korean bangtan sonyeondan, a phrase coined by Big Hit and at first translated as “Bulletproof Boy Scouts” by unofficial sources, or as a more sober “Bulletproof Boys”, to the sleek English Beyond The Scene, BTS’s purpose has shifted from carrying a message of social change, aggressively addressing the school system and economic inequalities crushing young Koreans specifically, to a global, conventional and thus meaningless idea of social justice, carried not only by the music, but also by the members themselves, as champions on which rests the increasingly heavy pressure of being perfectly politically correct at all times. From standing, bulletproof, between Korean youths and the metaphorical bullets the current system riddles them with, to offering themselves to the public eye, beyond what should be expected of a performer, BTS have lost the spark that allowed their fans to believe in the somewhat organic aspect of their coming together and creative process, and have been transformed into a brand or promotional tool that HYBE uses how it sees fit. Blood, Sweat & Tears takes on a new meaning in that regard, with its litany of “Want it more more more more”, and its morbid capitulation:
“My blood, sweat and tears, / My last dance too, just take them, take them”.
Were I a full-blown pessimist, I would leave it there. But despite this bleak portrayal of what was once my favorite source of entertainment, I have hope for a later time, post-disbandment or further along in their career, a time when some BTS members, rendered increasingly irrelevant by their own company in favor of newer and even more polished groups such as TXT or the freshly-minted Enhypen, could finally create or perform on their own terms, thus gaining a relative form of freedom that is for now, only simulated or staged for the benefit of the customers.
Notes
Note 1: ARMY refers to all self-proclaimed members of BTS’s fandom. Embarrassingly enough, the acronym means “Adorable Representative MC of Youth”, which is clearly a circumvoluted attempt at justifying the use of the word ‘army’, much more fitting in itself, to describe a loyal and uniform group of people who consistently respond positively to any directive issued by their leaders, and have garnered a reputation of incivility all across the internet.
Note 2: This is clearly shown by its instant number one spot on iTunes WorldWide, and the handful of YouTube records it broke in the span of 24h, gathering a staggering 112.8M views.
Note 3: Ron Perry, Sebastian Garcia, Alex Bilowitz, Stephen Kirk, Rob Grimaldi and Jenna Andrews
Note 4: I doubt this can ever be achieved, seeing as despite their fascination with BTS, the US media outlets tend to treat them as a phenomenon meant to disappear as quickly as they rose to fame. The fact that they stuck around long enough to become household names in a country that is not used to being on the receiving end of soft power is bothering some people, as shown by the widely controversial caricature of BTS as a human whack-a-mole, battered and bruised after their Grammy loss, that was removed from sale after ARMY made their outrage known. The racist undertones cannot be ignored, as well as in the few public comparisons made between BTS and covid-19 at the start of the epidemic.
Note 5: Hybe Corporation is a South Korean company established in 2005 by Bang Si-hyuk as Big Hit Entertainment Co., Ltd.. The company has multiple subsidiaries, collectively known as Hybe Labels. In March 2021, Big Hit announced its rebranding into an entertainment lifestyle platform company under the name Hybe Corporation. The company released an online presentation detailing its organizational restructuring, and stated that the name “Big Hit Entertainment” (as related to its music operations) would become Big Hit Music under Hybe’s new Labels division [source: Wikipedia]
Note 6: A parasocial interaction, an exposure that garners interest in a persona, becomes a parasocial relationship after repeated exposure to the media persona causes the media user to develop illusions of intimacy, friendship, and identification. [source: Wikipedia]
Note 7: “On a day you hate being yourself, on a day you want to disappear forever, / let’s build a door in your mind / Once you open the door and enter, this place will wait for you / It’s okay to believe in the Magic Shop that will comfort you”
Note 8: This baffling speech took place in the context of the Love Myself charity campaign organized by HYBE in partnership with UNICEF. Interestingly, the UN speech contained promotional elements for the album trilogy Love Yourself.
Note 9: Most notably, HYBE donated 1 million $ in BTS’s name to the organization Black Lives Matter following the death of George Floyd, a smart move considering that US-based celebrities are under heavy pressure to use their platform to speak out on the most mediatised and sensational social issues despite their otherwise lack of political engagement.
Translation credits: doolset & HYBE, adapted by me.
