Posted by BTS putting out a formal biography after 10 years seems like a waste of time. The K-pop superband is already super well-known worldwide because their songs have topped the charts in dozens of countries. Even grandmas in Seoul and teenagers worldwide can teach each other all kinds of facts.
There’s RM, who is the smartest and leads the group; Jin, who calls himself “Worldwide Handsome” and is both the oldest and the silliest; Suga, who once wanted to be reborn as a rock; J-Hope, BTS’s sunny and energetic den mom; Jimin, who is known for his charm and magnetic stage presence; V, who is mysterious, playful, and most likely to be wearing a vest; and finally, Jungkook, the group’s golden child (or “Golden Maknae”).
But “Beyond the Story,” by Myeongseok Kang, is a book that knows its readers. It came out on July 9, the same day BTS fans started calling themselves “ARMY” 10 years ago. The book combines hundreds of blogs, YouTube videos, magazine articles, and live video chats about BTS’s journey as musicians into a single story, with new reflections and interviews from the members themselves.
It also tries to answer the question that still hangs over BTS: What about them made the world fall in love with them?
Here are 6 critical points, according to The Washington Post, that made BTS so loveable:
1. From the start, the risks were high
BTS’s seven members were “trainees” under the Korean music industry’s well-organized talent development plan, like many other K-pop singers. Labels provided housing, food, and dance and singing lessons to young artists in hopes of turning them into “idols.”
BTS was formed by Big Hit Entertainment, which is now called Hybe. It was a small company that didn’t have nearly as much money as Korea’s top three labels. The label put out a girl group called Glam in 2012, but they were already having trouble when BTS was still being put together.
Suga, a rapper and producer for BTS, says in the book, “I thought the company was going to go under.”
As the pressure grew, Big Hit’s hopes rested on the shoulders of seven young men in their teens and early 20s: RM, Jin, Suga, J-Hope, Jimin, V, and Jungkook.
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2. The kings of vlogs
Introducing a new K-pop idol group for more prominent labels was like “a major Hollywood production,” says the author. Because of the intense K-pop scene, a group needs to have fans before it even comes out.
Big Hit couldn’t compete with bigger labels’ marketing and music industry contacts, so it chose a different approach with BTS. In honest video diaries and blog entries, the boys discussed their daily life, anxieties, and dreams and teased unreleased songs.
Members of BTS ran their own Twitter accounts, and later, one of the singers, Jin, started a YouTube series called “Eat Jin,” in which he… ate things.
“At the time, there really wasn’t any way to communicate with the fans, and as I liked eating, I thought I should upload that, at least,” Jin says.
The rough, unedited footage greatly contrasts the polished, glamorous image that idols were meant to show. Years later, when video streams became the standard way for Korean celebrities to talk to their fans, the plan turned out to be good.
3. Breaking K-pop rules
Even though BTS is often seen as the face of K-pop worldwide, “Beyond the Story” says that the group’s biggest wins came from breaking the rules of the genre.
In K-pop, lead singles are usually dance-heavy songs that come out with a flashy music video with very precise dancing. “I Need U,” BTS’s first big hit in Korea, went against this trend by giving fans a dark song with many ideas and a video focused on violence and family problems.
“The way we expressed the emotions was really important,” J-Hope says. “When I danced, I got into the character of a boy hanging off the edge of a cliff.”
People thought it was a big risk for a group that had been harshly criticized by online users and industry peers and was, in many ways, still finding its feet.
And unlike most K-pop groups at the time, BTS kept exploring these darker themes in their later work, like the 2016 album “Wings,” which was inspired by Hermann Hesse’s Jungian book “Demian” to explore themes of temptation, shame, and reinvention.
4. Pushed to the brink by success
Even though BTS started getting a foothold in the United States around 2015, it wasn’t until 2017 and 2018 that the group broke into the world’s biggest music market.
Before that, Americans didn’t know anything about K-pop. In 2012, Psy’s song “Gangnam Style” quickly topped the charts worldwide. But BTS’s long-lasting success was unheard of. Songs like “DNA” and “Mic Drop” started to make it into the Billboard Hot 100. The group started bringing their high-energy shows to big awards like “The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon” and “GMA.”
The band would then go back to South Korea and start over.
“We really had no days off,” Jin says. “I wondered whether it was right for a person to live a life as exhausted as this.”
The English-speaking press was also challenging for the group to understand. RM was the only one who could speak English well and was often afraid of making mistakes that would be heard across the Pacific.
RM says that when he talked to the press at the 2018 Billboard Music Awards, “It felt like I was having a mental breakdown.”
5. The make-or-break point
During this time, group members were tired of being in the group, and their contract updates came up. This led to talk about whether or not BTS would break up.
Jin says that the seven members were so close that if even one of them left, the group probably wouldn’t be able to keep going.
The book shows how they dealt with stress and fame: Jungkook, the youngest member, started drinking alone, and Jimin, a singer, and dancer, locked himself in a 6-by-6-foot room to escape the group.
Suga says, “We all wanted to say, ‘Let’s quit,’ but none of us could bring ourselves to do it.”
But they also did the best they could. The group’s members say that their success on shows like the 2018 Billboard Music Awards gave them the courage to discuss their problems. Ultimately, they decided to keep working together for another seven years.
6. Doubts about ‘Dynamite’
Even though BTS had already made a lot of history by the time its first English-language song, “Dynamite,” came out in August 2020, not all of its members thought it was a good idea. RM was worried that “someone from the outside” wrote it.
Bang Si-hyuk, the founder of Big Hit and a director for the group, came up with the idea for “Dynamite” to win over fans who were getting into BTS before the pandemic got in the way of their promotions. The disco-pop song differed from the rest of the songs on “Be,” which were sadder and more serious. The group was proud that their biggest hits were Korean songs they wrote and produced.
The song’s success around the world put an end to their worries. “Dynamite” was their first song to reach the top of the Billboard Hot 100.
“We were all overjoyed together,” V says. “Someone was laughing and someone was crying, and it was all, … ‘Ah, we weren’t going down a dead end this whole time.’”
Anisa is a writer who focuses on career and lifestyle topics in an effort to motivate both job searchers and employers towards greater fulfillment in their professional lives.
Reach me at anisa@jobstore.com.