i was tagged by my medicine patch for motion sickness @rms-expensive-girl, my blue mold @fi-lter, and the sleep in my eyes @lesovoj to play this game! not me looking up namjoon's most wtf lyrical compliments...kim namjoon greatest metaphysical poet of our generation?
template on left, mine on right
tagging: @94ishlove, @mindofnmn, @bangguks, and anyone else who wants to do this! <3
no one asked and this isn't even part of the game but here is my origin story:
i will first mention that i did have a bunch of friends in high school who liked kpop but they never tried too hard to get me into it. the only attempt i remember was a friend who was obsessed with the i'll eat you up song by boa and it's a banger for sure but she sang it all the time and after a while it just...left a bad taste in my mouth. and then there was gangnam style. those were the only other kpop songs i really knew and they didn't really make me want to listen to more kpop
i first heard about bts specifically from my younger sister in 2017 (?) when she and her friends were just obsessed with them. she never tried to show me anything to get me into them but she would play their music really loudly in the car but the only songs i remember her playing were not today and dna and at the time the sound of those songs, especially playing so loud, just wasn't my thing. not today kinda gave me anxiety lol. i vaguely remember watching the dna music video because there was also so much hype and i was curious but i was going through some things and i was just a really negative person at the time and i think all the colors and smiles and the meaning of the song turned me off even more
but i think another reason why i didn't really explore further, even after they started showing up on american tv, was that i was a really big fan of one direction and i was a little too invested in the friendship between the members. towards the end of their time and soon after it became pretty clear that the guys weren't as close as i thought they were. like maybe they aren't on bad terms (i think a few of them were at one point) but it was just like, the friendship goals fantasy crumbled, and it was still kinda fresh. so anytime i thought about another boyband i was just like what's the point??? it's all fake love and they don't last. sorry i was very bitter about it lol
my next opportunity to get into bts was in 2019 when they did boy with luv barely feat. halsey. i wasn't even going to listen to it because i was just like i'm not into bts why would i? but i was on tumblr occasionally at the time and people were going crazy over it and it had halsey in it so i was like okay fine and watched the video. but at THAT time i was getting over a breakup so that song did NOT resonate i was just like nice try but men are incapable of love please take your lies elsewhere thx. so i missed my chance there lmao
and then suga's interlude was on halsey's manic album that i was OBSESSED with so i listened to it quite a few times but i don't think that particular rap was enough for me to look into them further. i did like the sound of his voice though
then in summer 2020 (!!!) my roommate (a friend from high school, who has actually been an on and off army since no more dream but never mentioned it) randomly one day was like hey, can i show you like 7 kpop videos and you tell me which one you like best? because i guess there were just a lot of good songs that came out at the same time. it was just a little game so i was like sure! i watched the videos and i was surprised that i liked some of the songs. in particular summer hate by zico and rain and pporappippam by sunmi. so i was already in the mindset of maybe i actually do like kpop? hahaha...little did she know...
and then like two weeks later dynamite came out and my roommate was like hey, i think you should try and listen to this one too, i think you would like it. and as you know the song was a bop, and i was learning to be less cynical at the time so the happy colorfulness was actually ...fun? and since i liked the song my roommate was like you know, since you liked one direction i think you would like bts. and by that point i was over the one direction breakup and just enjoying their solo music so i was like okay, i think i'm ready to be hurt again
so my roommate showed me all their music videos first and honestly i still wasn't hooked right away. most of the songs had to grow on me and as you know some of the old videos were pretty cringey haha. hell even dynamite made me cringe. like the intro where jimin shoots you with his finger? i was like oh god oh god oh god oh god no please stop. but look at me now!!!
so i told my roommate the main reason i was into one direction was their personalities. so if i watch content that shows their personalities i might get more into them. that didn't work right away either just because i was still learning their names and i couldn't match the personalities with the people. but i just kept watching stuff because i was intrigued and maybe just maybe i wanted another emotional support boyband? i think eventually it was a mix of their sense of humor (comedians are lucky bts chose music), their performances, and their underdog story that really got me hooked. and my roommate started playing their music in the car all the time lol. i don't know the exact moment i officially knew i was IN IT but dynamite was my official introduction and it didn't actually take too long after that (maybe a month or two) for me to be OBSESSED
so tl:dr in the past i didn't have the best impression of kpop, i was bitter about one direction, and just a negative nancy and that's why i didn't get into bts for YEARS. but then my roommate showed me dynamite and much much more when i was in a better place and here i am 1.5, almost 2 years later!
