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South Korean K-pop group BTS released a music video for their new song, “Permission to Dance” on Friday. Typically, a BTS outing is a cause for mirth and celebration among their “Armies” supporters.
However, this time around, the atmosphere online is different, still overwhelmingly positive but less jubilant. Their fans are starting to do something that was anything but forbidden before: criticize.
As BTS fans begin to emerge from their fandom’s echo chamber, expressing varying opinions about the song, a common message has started to aggregate: to bring back the “old” BTS.
The song and the music video are… very good. All seven singers are dressed in cowboy costumes, dancing in the wilderness while winking and smiling attractively at the camera. “Permission to Dance” itself is cute, if not eye-catching. Like their other English songs before, “Dynamite” and “Butter”, the song is expertly produced for maximum deworming, but has a bland quality that makes the track hard to remember after listening to it.
The group has made it clear that their main goal as artists at this point is to win a Grammy. They were nominated for Best Pop Duo / Group Performance for “Dynamite” in 2021, but lost to Lady Gaga’s “Rain On Me” with Ariana Grande.
BTS is committed to keeping trying, with fans more than willing to stand up for the Recording Academy, their HYBE label, and anyone else on social media who may be nearby.
However, the crusade for a Grammy raised many questions regarding the efforts the group was willing to go to to secure the prize. There was no doubt about their admirers, who would sell their left foot if he got BTS to the top of the charts. They wanted their beloved group to win, but on unquestionable quality, integrity and love of the craft. Some fans just weren’t sure this was happening.
The subject of Western validation is a delicate thing. It carries with it a number of unpleasant nuances associated with racism, colonialism and assimilation. BTS’s South Korean heritage carries with it many expectations, including different. You could argue that this quality is exactly what has earned them their legion of dedicated fans. Yet in a music industry often criticized for its lack of diversity, run by older white men who are opposed to the very idea of different, it can be difficult to do this if your act does not follow a proven formula.
That’s actually what makes BTS’s success all the more miraculous – they’ve been able to permeate the upper echelon of artists, all thanks to a fandom who loves them to the point of obedience. What BTS wants, BTS gets.
All of this begs the question, why bother to fit in when you have already found the proven formula, and created your own level of success out of it? Well, when you want to break into the biggest music market in the world, sometimes the old rules don’t apply. But is success worth getting rid of your identity?
The huge “Asian Celebs” thread on Lipstick Alley is heavily populated by K-pop fans, many of whom identify as black. When “Permission to Dance” premiered, they swept it away, and users like Comicfan804 sensed the direction BTS has been heading for some time.
“I understand that they are trying to be seen as western artists now, but whoever told them this is the music we love clearly lied to them on several occasions,” they wrote. “With PTD, it looks like they wanted a catchy Pharrell-like song ‘Happy’ that was family-friendly and accompanied by a dance that was easy to learn and can go viral on TikTok. This marketing strategy works sometimes, but the song actually has to be GOOD for it to do it. “
“I feel like in this quest to get a Grammy, they’re really destroying their image and quality, and how long can their fans really crank up the mediocrity before they move on?” Comicfan804 added. “I know that right now the stans will air whatever they release, but after a few more flop songs and a military enlistment their fans are going to get bored and their popularity will run out of steam because they don’t. bring nothing to the table.
In some fan circles, there is a belief that there is a distinct difference in quality between BTS’s English songs and some of their popular South Korean songs, like “Spring Day”, “Persona” and “Black Swan”.
On the Goldenoona forum, master.of.tides lamented the demise of “old BTS” and referred to their beginnings as a “hip-hop group,” writing: “When we say we miss old BTS , we don’t mean we want them to put on booty shorts, put on their chains and start singing the tune while singing about depression. We mean we miss when BTS made quality songs that sounded like them.
Meanwhile, on BTS’s official subreddit, thousands of fans are actually having open and honest discussions about the band’s discography and their direction as artists.
User Mahertymcfly said: “I’m not a fan of this song and I think it’s because personally what I like about this band is their complexity – the complex choreos, the lyrics, vocal / rap harmonies etc. and this song lacks that. “
Northelai criticized the excessive use of autotune in the song and added, “The whole song feels like we’ve gone 15 years in the past. And not in a good ‘retro’ style, but in a bad ‘outdated production’ style… I want them to have a good feedback with constructive criticism and not just blind love no matter what they post.
Of course, on Twitter, these dissident fans are condemned by other Armies, who label them “false fans” and advise them to quit Twitter.
However, Northelai is right. If you love BTS so much, why wouldn’t you want them to grow as artists? Fans are buying wholesale and streaming “Butter” until its sixth week atop the Billboard 100 chart, but is there a correlation between the band’s immense success and its mainstream acceptance?
Something with BTS isn’t connecting and it could be any number of things – race, their designation as boy bands, or the quality of their music. BTS is everywhere and nowhere at the same time. They have name recognition with a lot but no relevance in the wider reach of American pop culture. At least not currently.
Their expansion into the Western market works in some ways, although it could be argued that the result would be the same whether they target America or not. So why can’t they just create music that truly embraces them as a band?
Even so, how much does authenticity matter when you’ve made $ 170 million and have legions of followers at your disposal?
Maybe this is proof that you don’t need everything.
Read the Original Story With ‘Permission to Dance’, some BTS fans question the group’s direction at TheWrap
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