That’s the question I set out to investigate about two weeks ago. It’s been a wild ride, let me tell you…
Full disclosure: I cuss a lot sometimes. I am not young…more middle aged, and my favorite band is Tool. Doesn’t seem like an ideal combination for the BTS bandwagon, but there you go.
I am, and have been for several years, aware of a phenomenon called BTS ARMY. I didn’t know until recently that it’s an army of fans of the musical group known as BTS. What I did know is that they are fierce, smart, and they can organize like it’s going out of style. They were truly impressive when all the BLM stuff was happening. (It’s still happening, it’s just not on the news anymore.) They put in their two cents regarding Me too (also still happening), and they got several assholes kicked off twitter at the very least. I have the utmost respect for the ARMY. You guys rock.
I have lots of questions, so I’m going to do this blog for as many days as I can think of questions.
The first order of business is What is it anyway?
I kept hearing BTS and Butter. It was in all the papers. It comes up on google searches where they show you news. I asked my daughter, who is much cooler than I am, “What’s BTS?” She said, “It’s a KPop band.” That didn’t really help because I don’t even know what KPop is. Eventually she told me they are a boy band from Korea. Ok, I can work with that. I have lots of experience with Boy bands because I raised two daughters. Boy bands can be entertaining, although the only one I really cared for was 1D. Backstreet Boys were ok, didn’t like NSync or the other ones. Anyway, I decide to open you tube and find out what BTS is.
I typed in Butter BTS and here’s what I got.
Ok, cool. Korean boy band. They’re cute, they’re boys, they sing and dance, hell they even rap. Nice. And that woulda been it except there were about a billion recommended videos and I just happened to click on this one:
HOLY CRAP!!!!
Ok this changes everything.
I was confused, I have to admit. Mic Drop is amazing. I don’t even like Rap and I thought it was amazing. They dance cool, they combine the rap and singing parts really well and they have great attitude. So that got me wondering, why did they change it? I mean, is pop really all that much more sellable? Apparently, but the answer was even weirder.
Like, I haven’t really gone all the way back to their very beginning so I can’t say anything with certainty. But it seems like they’ve been doing rap, and melodious and whatever else they feel like doing… the whole time. That doesn’t happen very often.
As a Tool fan, I must confess that my very favorite thing about them is they are sarcastic assholes. I mean that in the nicest possible way. They make me laugh. They are also excellent musicians, and Maynard can really sing. But mostly I like them cause they make me think.
Ok, so watch this with lyrics attached…
The words aren’t quite synched with the video but it’s pretty close and you get the idea. I laughed and laughed. Good one guys.
So I spent several days in the youtube rabbit hole watching BTS and then I sheepishly told my daughter, “uh, can I show you something?”
I proceeded to fill her in with all my research and my conclusion that BTS is in fact Korean but they are definitely not a boy band. They are amazing.
Writing me crazy 