BTS’s Influence through Music
BTS is a Kpop group from South Korea debuting back in 2013 with their debut song No More Dream. They gained millions of fans but didn’t reach their hit fame till 2017 due to the group attending the Billboard Music Awards. Since then the group has been only going up and there seems to be no stopping point for the hit group. From creating music that inspires millions to collaborating with UNICEF BTS’s impact on this new generation doesn’t seem to be stopping anytime soon.
In 2017 BTS and UNICEF came together to create the Love Myself campaign in hope to sponsor a campaign that has been going on for a while called #ENDviolence. The Love Myself campaign is spreading the message of love and a better place to live for all. The members of BTS have given back to society by making donations to local communities and by doing so it has inspired their fans to make the same donations around the world. The funds raised through the first official campaign will be used to protect and support children and teen victims of domestic and school violence also including sexual assault around the world. It has provided an education to local communities for violence protection. They have used their voices in the United Nation to speak on many important topics. Back in 2018 member RM, the leader of the group, shed light on his struggles with becoming who he is today. He then proceeded to discuss the topic of speaking yourself. He began an important message through this speech, “No matter who you are, where you’re from, your skin color, your gender identity, just speak yourself. Find your name and find your voice by speaking yourself.”. This has helped a lot of teens and children share their stories and hardships.
Although their messages outside of music has inspired many to speak up, the biggest influence that they have on their fans has to come from their music and what message they want to spread through each song. Their song Answer: Love Myself shows how BTS individually learned to love who they were through their fans loving what BTS considered a “flaw”. In verse 1 rapper Suga discussed how it’s hard to love yourself when it’s easier to love others. “Loving myself might be harder
, Than loving someone else, let's admit it. The standards you made are more strict for yourself.” shows how he believes that loving others will never be a struggle since there is never a standard set but on the other hand you have a set high standard for yourself so you want to match that standard and put on a mask to who you truly are. This is a big struggle many people deal with and BTS shows that being able to love yourself is possible with how connected they feel with their fans. You can see this with many of the newer music they release.
BTS released their BE album November 2020 that shows many different emotions that they have felt during the Covid-19 pandemic. The song Life Goes On perfectly shows how although we may struggle with many different things it is all temporary and in the end we will be able to move past it. “One day, the world stopped, Without any warning, Spring didn’t know to wait, Showed up not even a minute late.”, this song refers to the sudden lockdown the entire world went through and shows how this was only the beginning of everything. Going deeper into the pandemic rapper RM mentions the feeling of pain and hopelessness, “Running faster than that cloud of rain, Thought that’d be enough, Guess I’m only human after all, I’m in a world of pain”. Going deeper into the lyrics the rapper uses the metaphor ‘black cloud’ being the source of all gloom and sorrow, there is no way to escape these feelings. The metaphor ties in the sadness and hopelessness throughout the song. BTS reference a lot of real world questions such as wether a tree falls in the forest and there’s no one there to hear it, does it make a sound? “Like an echo in the forest, The day will come back around, As if nothing happened” BTS is making the point that once a problem is fixed, such as a global pandemic that is constantly discussed, people usually continue on with their lives. This specific lyric ties back into the name of the song of life going on and our current problems won’t be there forever.
BTS use real world issues to write their music so its not only relatable to them but to their listeners as well. They can use a lot of their emotions to help portray the emotions their listeners can’t describe themselves. This can help a lot of young listeners find who they truly are in the end. So many artists nowadays aren’t writing music like how BTS writes theirs. BTS aren’t the only group who write music based off of their own experiences. Other artists such as Lizzo spreads a wider range of positivity to teens and young women.
