① BTS “Our secret to success is not SNS but sincerity + ability”
20s, the age that eats and eats and still craves for more. At 5 PM, BTS opened up some treats and had snack time, proving to be hearty eaters. To the members (RM 24, Suga 25, Jin 26, J-Hope 24, Jimin 23, V 23, Jungkook 21), who have to split up their time small, with success comes the time they miss home cooking.
“Members whose houses are at Seoul can eat a meal and come back, while Jungkook and Jimin are from Busan, so they eat home cooking about 1-2 times a year.”
At Nonhyun-dong, Gangnam-gu, Seoul, we interviewed BTS, said to be more difficult to meet than any other celebrity.
With 1-year worth of schedule packed already and a busy year waiting ahead, the members shared “We still sleep 6-7 hours a day. Only Jin and V sleep a little later because they play games”. Even with a small question, they didn’t answer sloppily.
Last year, BTS attained First·Best achievements in the Billboard chart, recorded 1.5 million in album sales on Gaon Chart and swept Daesangs at various award shows with ‘Love Yourself 承 Her’ album and ‘MIC Drop’ Remix version. With a year-long rapid leap, they became an ‘uncrossable wall’ group that will be the turning point in the history of Korean music, like Seo Taiji & Kids, H.O.T, DBSK, Psy.
During the one-hour long interview, the members expressed “It’s the beginning of a year with lots of thoughts” and laid out their feelings. They led the conversation with honesty, repeating the word ‘sincerity’, talking about the emotions when their sweat brought forth fruits, the anxiety and loneliness behind and how they overcome it.
Below are Q&As with BTS.
- Anyone would understand the swag in your ‘Mic Drop’ lyrics. You spent a year with ‘bags filled with trophies’.
▲ J-HOPE: It was a year of many achievements that I feel proud of myself looking back. All thanks to our fans’ enthusiastic support.
▲ JUNGKOOK: I wasn’t nervous at all, be it at award shows or American NBC talk show ‘Ellen DeGeneres Show’. It’s because I believed in our fans. At that time I felt that I made a right decision choosing to become a singer.
▲ JIN: Hmh, I think I became more handsome last year. I’ve been saying this for years so our fans would understand this, haha. We interacted with fans a lot last year too. We had more contents, interacted with fans in various ways and together made achievements.
- Many fields have analyzed BTS’ secret to success and economical value. Even in the politics world there were reports urging to learn your method of communication. It was summarized into many factors like refined music, contemporary messages that connect with the youth, synchronized choreography, friendly SNS interactions, but what do the members think is the key factor?
▲ RM: We have received this question countless of times and I think I have represented the team to answer more than 200 times. It’s finalized gradually with every answer and this is the newest version. I truly praise Bang Shihyuk PD-nim for his batting eye. We started as a hiphop crew but Bang PD-nim thought that there needs to be someone to talk about what is needed in our society. There were rappers like us who can realize that idea and other members who are skilled performance-wise. If we were to summarize BTS’ secret to success into keywords, I think it would be ‘Sincerity + Ability’. Our sincerity is visible in the public’s eyes, but people only focus on the point that we’re active on SNS. What’s more important is that we’re singers, so our music and performances’ quality has to be good no matter what. We have that and combining with the sincerity and messages we want to deliver and our frequent SNS usage, they’re envisioned and supported by Bang PD-nim. He provided us the freedom and we as players took high risk to get high return. We and the company have equal credit and in terms of a collaborative relationship between the company and the artists as business partners, I think this is a good model.
▲ SUGA: I thought a lot about this too since I was curious. It’s hard to sum up in one thing. What someone needs to talk about but no one did, I think that’s where I started. I took a look back to see how I made music before, since it was the beginning of a new year and I was feeling restless, and Bang PD-nim was like this from the start. He sat in the small studio and told us, ‘What do you want to talk about? Think about the subject for your beats.’ We said ‘Respect personal taste’, ‘Why does no one talk about schools and the society?’ and that’s how we started. Unfortunately, when others analyze us, they attribute our success to SNS only. Kim Saengmin sunbae-nim who hosted our fanmeeting not long ago praised us in his podcast that ‘Nothing can beat working hard at what they’re good at’. When I heard that I thought ‘He really felt what we do’. It took 5 years for people to know this, so I felt sentimental.
- Last year you were record makers. The most representative records were your Billboard achievements and album sales, which figures came close to you emotionally?
▲ RM: When we made it to No.28 on the Billboard main single chart ‘Hot 100’ with ‘MIC Drop’ Remix. Having our name on the ‘Hot 100’ that I have been seeing since I was small was shocking to me. Normally in America, the top 40 songs on ‘Hot 100’ are considered nationwide hits, so making it into the top 30 itself was a huge deal.
▲ J-HOPE: The album sales came to me. I felt moved how the album with music we made recorded a big sales number.
▲ SUGA: Actually I don’t dwell on figures or records. Many things happened last year but the performance at ‘American Music Awards’ was the most memorable to me. When I was little, award shows weren’t broadcasted live on TV so I had to watch on the Internet. Appearing on the show was thrilling already but getting to perform on stage right in front of Diana Ross, who received the Lifetime Achievement award, was unbelievable.
- You received fervent responses in American. Local fans arranged campaigns to request your songs at radio stations and helped with Billboard rankings. With ‘Mic Drop’ entered the ‘Hot 100’ for 8 consecutive weeks and ‘Love Yourself 承 Her’ on ‘Billboard 200’ for 15 consecutive weeks, your popularity doesn’t seem to cool down. In which aspect do you see the local fans’ enthusiastic reactions?
▲ SUGA: There’s barely any difference between the way Korean and American fans love us and how they express that love. If I were to choose one, I’d say they like when we’re together the most. They must have found it special how we’re always together no matter what we do.
▲ RM: In the same context, before fans become fans, they’re part of the public who consume contents. I believe they become ‘core fans’ because they distinguished what is not visible in the eyes. If we combine our chemistry and sincerity they felt through video contents like performance videos and behind-the-scenes, music and high-quality performances, I don’t think there’s any weapon more powerful than that. It transcended languages and became the catalyst powering fans to request our songs on radios.
- You appeared on 3 big American talk shows, was there any behind story?
▲ V: I remember these questions the most, ‘Why are your fans so enthusiastic?’, ‘How did you gain such great fans?’. (When asked how he replied) RM answered because he’s good at English. (laughs)
▲ RM: We originally planned to only perform at all 3 talk shows, but after the production crew saw the fanchant and reactions of the fans on set, they add corners like games and talk section with the MCs. There wasn’t supposed to be a talk section with Ellen but after seeing our fans, Ellen said ‘This can’t be it, we need to do more’ and arranged it. It was thanks to fans.
▲ JIN: We asked the translator hyungnim for cool words and sentences and memorized them to talk one by one, but we couldn’t quite understand the questions so we couldn’t answer. V even stayed up all night to prepare questions that would likely to come out but he couldn’t answer, it’s cute.
▲ V: (Searching for the memo note he wrote answers on) I predicted they would ask questions about the performance so I memorized all the answers, but Ellen didn’t ask. The translator hyung obviously said ‘There’s a good chance they’ll ask this question’... (laughs)
- Since your debut in 2013, you have faced the dreams and reality of boys and youth, and in Suga’s mixtape track ‘The Last’, you also confessed about the feeling of separation with reality, depression and compulsion when you dreamed of being an idol star. Looking back at your trainee days, how did you overcome the anxiety and how far do you think you have reached that dream now?
▲ SUGA: I think anxiety and loneliness are something that’ll come with us for the rest of our life. How we let then out matters much and we have to learn our whole life to know how to. I think life is thinking every moment, because emotions change so much with each situation and moment. Through this article, I want to tell people that “I feel the anxiety and so do you, so let’s find the way and learn it together". Never once have I not had a dream. All of my dreams came true. When I was a trainee, my dream was to debut as a singer, after I debuted, it was winning first place, after I won first place, it was winning the daesang and making it to Japan and America. To be honest, Billboard and ‘AMA’ were only far-fetched talks I couldn’t even dream of, but it came true. I don’t feel like I’m running towards a specific dream more than before, but lately my thoughts have changed, our values and happiness as human beings are also important, so I’m still far (from attaining it). I have achieved a lot as a single but last year was probably the turning point. I’m only 26 years old and even though I have been making music for 10 years, counting from pre-debut, I will continue for a long time. I’ve been having a lot of thoughts this new year.
▲ RM: I think humans are programmed to feel ambivalent emotions at the same time. They say it’s the motivation created for humans to dominate other worlds as the lord of all creation. We think about parting as we love and we think about fall and failure as we feel the success, it’s in our genes. It’s the same context with what Suga-hyung said, (anxiety is) like a shadow. To put it in my case, my father got tinnitus during his 25 years working at a company. He said it was hard for him, he got stressed when he concentrated on his work or did something he liked even with no symptom shown, and when he faced stressing situations it got so severe that it affected his life. The anxiety that shows as tinnitus to someone is like a shadow, it gets taller with my height and longer with the night. We can’t say we overcome the ambivalent emotions from the other side of our hearts, however, humans must embrace our inevitable loneliness and darkness, so we need a haven for ourselves. Before, music was the only thing to me and I was lucky to choose this path and meet good friends, achieving occupationally and financially. I made a few havens for myself so I could befriend my anxiety. I collect figurines, buy clothes that I like, go to unknown neighborhoods to see how people live. When I take the bus and wander around unknown neighborhoods, it bridges the gap and makes me feel like I’m not far away from this world. It’s how I disperse my anxiety.
- Looking at the lyrics that harbor your experiences, there must be a lot of hard times in the past 5 years.
▲ JIN: I’m the type to avoid such moments so I try to live another life by playing games. When I play games, I get to live with a completely different personality. Recently I started gaming again and happened to meet friends I met 10 years ago when I played. We have never met in real life, just online friends recognizing each other from IDs. But I felt somewhat happy. It brought back old memories.
▲ JIMIN: Now is probably the time I feel lonely and tired the most. We always say we’re happy, but when hard times come we start thinking there’s no one who understands us, not friends, family, and it makes us feel lonely. Not long ago, I listened again to our songs and rewatched our live broadcasts and felt better.
② BTS “Topics we introduced through music, hope you could think about them together with us”
- During the last 5 years, you have released a lot of non-formal tracks on Soundcloud, this ‘consistency’ differentiates you from other idols.
▲ SUGA: Consistency is an amazing thing. There isn’t any special reason, I just like music and find releasing music fun. You need to be so to understand the non-formal tracks. A creator should not approach commercially. I heard many say ‘Why would you release this?’ but there’s only one reason, because it’s fun. I can make and release it, get feedback, express what is hard to deliver with words or my sincerity with music. They say we express ourselves a lot and make use of SNS well, and releasing non-formal tracks is also a method. It’s not an easy decision to release as 10 original tracks, I can’t use any word to describe it other than that I just wanted to it. The non-formal tracks released long ago were made when I was thoughtful and not so sociable, so I have some regrets personally, but it feels like thanks to it the sharp edges are now carved. It was one of the turning points in my life and marked my improvement in terms of music.
- I know that until before releasing the youth series ‘Hwa Yang Yeon Hwa’, you concerned a lot about your music direction. Were there any trial and error and how did you set your direction?
▲ RM: Leaving Billboard chart entrance and Melon chart ranking aside, there are always trials and errors in music. In the past, ours were about “how can we attract the public and fans but still keep our identity", now we have more listeners so we’re working with the upcoming title track following ‘DNA’. Like how visible results come out through big and small trials and errors, the next title track will go through countless trials and errors as well. 4 years ago, ‘Danger’ entered the Melon chart at No.54 but fell out in just one day and never climbed back again. It makes me emotional remembering how there used to be times like that and in the future, we need to continue to go through trials and errors again.
▲ J-HOPE: As we’re active as BTS, we study too. When we set a subject, we think a lot about how to deliver our stories.
- Looking at the albums you have released so far, each has different themes but all deliver the messages that connect to the youth. How do you gather different thoughts of 7 members?
▲ SUGA: How we make music is, everybody participates in one beat and one subject. There has to be a standard, so the producers will pick out the best and arrange them. We always do what comes with clear standards, since we talked a lot about what’s right and wrong. We start from what anyone can think, like ‘This is obviously right, this is obviously wrong’, maybe that’s the reason why we can earn empathy.
- Your lyrics give the feels of Seo Taiji & Kids from the 90s in the sense that you both talk about what someone needs to say but no one did.
▲ SUGA, RM: Seo Taiji-hyungnim told us that. He also invited us to join his stage. (BTS participated in Seo Taiji’s 25th debut anniversary remake project and joined Seo Taiji’s celebratory concert held at Jamsil Olympic stadium, Seoul.)
- Any lyrics that you feel pleased with whenever you sing?
▲ SUGA: My favorite is ‘The dawn before the sun rises is the darkest’ from ‘Tomorrow’. When I wrote that line it just flowed out naturally.
▲ JUNGKOOK: ‘Where there is hope, there are trials’ from ‘Sea’, I don’t know why but it makes me emotional. (‘Sea’ is a track RM made inspired from 1Q84’s ‘Where there is hope, there are trials’ quote.)
▲ RM: Among lyrics I wrote recently, I like ‘Best Of Me’. There’s a line that’s dedicated to our fans ARMY, ‘I wanted to be a gentle wave but why didn’t I know you were the sea’. It means that I thought I wanted to be helpful to the fans like a gentle wave, but then I realized they are already much bigger waves than me and they made me.
▲ J-HOPE: I have two. One is ‘(So thanks) For becoming the flowers of my most beautiful moment in life’, it’s dedicated to our fans and it’s beautiful. Every time I sing the song, I feel emotional. ‘Hwa Yang Yeon Hwa’ is a meaningful album to us and it brought the fans to become our beautiful flowers. Another one is ‘I want to forever be a boy’ from ‘Epilogue: Young Forever’, it gets me thinking more and more as time passes. (Hwa Yang Yeon Hwa: 화양연화 = The most beautiful moment in life, 화 = Flower)
▲ JIMIN: The entire lyrics of ‘Epilogue: Young Forever’. It holds the thoughts we had after finishing a concert so it made me cry a lot.
▲ V: I like every lyrics RM-hyung wrote. All lyrics of ‘Epilogue: Young Forever’ are good but if I have to pick one line, it’d be ‘I was able to make someone shout’ and ‘I want to forever be a boy’.
▲ JIN: ‘It’s okay, forget it all when I say 1, 2, 3’ from ‘2!3!’. I’m the dodger type of person so I forget all bad memories. I always try to be happy so the lyrics came home to me. I have always believed if I want to be happy at the moment, I need to forget the unhappy memories.
- You’re currently preparing for the next album, so which kind of messages do you plan to follow up with?
▲ SUGA: So far we’ve only had the big picture so we can’t say anything for sure yet. Since last year’s tour, we have been talking with each other about happiness, what is happiness and how we can achieve it. Although I think we can’t become happier just by trying to be happy, I also believe we need to make efforts to be happy no matter how. We need to learn and research. Since I was young, I have been thinking a lot about what is happiness and how we can achieve it. No one has ever taught us that. I think if we introduce this topic, it’ll get many people to discuss about this matter.
▲ RM: I had been fixated on the keyword ‘happiness’ until early last year. But a while ago when I came to Japan, I read a newspaper column that said humans can never achieve the happiness we desire. It’s in our genes, we can’t be happy forever. It said that humanity achieved many goals like the industrial revolution or the advancement of science, but once we attain something, we would feel lacking in something else. We too thought we would be happy if we win first place, but there came the next goal. That column makes perfect sense to me. So rather than happiness, I think we should try and find our own conclusion about ‘Love Yourself’, which is what we’re talking about now. ‘Love Yourself’ is finding the way to love oneself. My dream is not to top the Billboard, it’s to love myself properly, because I think no matter how many times I face the ugly and insignificant sides of me, I can’t reach them. I was lucky to meet this ‘Love Yourself’ concept, so I want to stay true to this emotion and take a step closer towards the way to loving myself. There’s a lot that can be said on this subject, including darkness and loneliness.
- Many of your lyrics are inspired by literature works like ‘1Q84’ and ‘Demian’, even ‘Spring Day’ music video used ‘The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas’ from ‘The Wind’s Twelve Quarters’ as motive. Which book have you been reading recently?
▲ SUGA: I’ve been reading a lot recently. I used to love digital machines so much like an early adopter, but I went back to analog. I started writing and reading books like when I was small. Not long ago, I read ‘Life Lessons’ by psychiatrist and writer Elisabeth Kübler-Ross. I have several of her books. Right now I’m currently reading Yoshimoto Banana’s ‘About Her’.
▲ RM: I have Yoshimoto Banana’s ‘Kitchen’ at home so I’m reading it.
▲ J-HOPE: I’m planning to go back to childhood and read what I used to read back then, the classic science fiction ‘20 Thousand Leagues Under The Sea’ and ‘Around The World In 80 Days’ by French writer Jules Vernes. Lately thoughts of childhood have been keeping me relaxed.
▲ V: Recently I’ve been trying to read Phillip Chesterfield’s ‘Letters To His Son’.
- As the leader of K-pop, what do you think is the value or DNA that makes K-pop loved despite the fact that K-pop songs are in Korean?
▲ RM: K-pop is like a total art package. It’s a genre with lots of entertainment factors like music and music video, characteristics of each member, contents published on SNS and Youtube, fashion. It allows the public to enjoy in an intimate and diverse way. Fans relate to our lyrics and get to know our personalities, feel the closeness through photos, videos and everyday events we share on Twitter. K-pop creates lots of black holes that attract people in.
▲ SUGA: It hasn’t been long since the word ‘K-pop’ was born, so we still have a lot to do until we can characterize what is K-pop exactly. With Billboard opening the K-pop category again, it’s like our steps began again. I feel like it’s too soon to bring any conclusion to what it is.
③ BTS “We were fans too... We relate to how ARMYs feel”
- Among influences you have made on fans, which one makes you the proudest?
▲ JIN: When I go abroad and meet fans, many tell me ‘I learned Korean so I can talk to you’. Looking at fans who plan to learn Korean and Korean culture makes me feel proud and think ‘I promoted Korea’.
▲ JUNGKOOK: Many good things happened but at the same time, I also faced tough times, so recently I uploaded a cover of Lee Hi’s ‘Breathe’ on SNS for fans and myself. (‘Breathe’ was composed and written by the late Jonghyun). It’s dedicated to myself as well as the fans and in the comment section, one fan wrote ‘I was about to end everything today but I will try to start over’. I’m thankful that SNS is popularized and that we were able to become their strength just from a small action.
▲ JIMIN: My cousin is my fan, so my mom said if she studies well she’d give her CDs and a phone call with me. Since then she kept on ranking top at school. (laughs)
▲ JUNGKOOK: At these times I want to be a BTS fan too. Haha.
- There’s a lot of ‘fanfics’, ‘imagines’ written by fans on Internet blogs and also ‘BTS Literature Bot’ on Twitter. Your fans are very enthusiastic, but have you ever been an enthusiastic fan of something? If you have then I think you would understand how they feel.
▲ SUGA: I was a big fan of Epik High and Eminem. I’m close with Tablo-hyung now but [back then] I used to buy their CDs, go to their concerts and buy the accessories they used. SNS wasn’t popularized back then like now but I also looked up for their articles and videos. So I relate to the fans. I also like basketball so I was an avid fan of NBA star Allen Iverson.
▲ RM: I was a fan of Eminem and Epik High too. When Eminem came to Korea in 2012, I went to his concert with 2 other members. When Epik High was having promotion for ‘Fly’, I also searched for Tablo-hyung’s jacket. I’m the type to stick to one thing so once I like a clothes brand, I would collect all types. If there’s a figurine I like, I have to buy everything. I even look up the figurine designer’s interviews to read and see why they made it. So of course I understand how they feel.
▲ JIN: I’m into games. I used to play Maple Story before when it was super popular. I would memorize the information like details of a new item and even quarreled with friends who played rival games. I even fell asleep while playing and also bought character plushies and put up photos on my wall, but I stopped to prepare for college.
▲ V: I was a fan of one of those rival games, Sudden Attack. I was so into it that I even joined the No.1 squad. Joining the squad means I have to change my nickname, so I needed 10,000 won ($9,30), but back in middle school I got 1,000 won (~$1) allowance a day. I didn’t play games for a week and with the 3,000 won I already had, I collected 10,000 won. That’s how much I loved it.
- You interact closely with fans through everyday photos and videos like ‘Bangtan Bomb’, ‘Run BTS’ on SNS and Youtube. Your agency also conducted a fan survey in multiple languages, which shows their differentiated moves compared to other agencies. Do you have any basic rule when it comes to interacting with fans?
▲ RM, SUGA: We all interact through our official SNS account and [our rule is] to be as honest and sincere as we can.
▲ BTS: We get to do however we want but we promised not to curse. We also set rules among ourselves like to ‘not make individual accounts’, ‘not post photos with exposed skin’, ‘not post memes without consent’, ‘not Tweet when drunk’.
▲ SUGA: I know SNS is a double-blade knife. We earned extremely great synergy through it but if we go wrong, it can also bring huge risk. Right now it’s something we freely do everyday with sincerity, but we also think a lot. We’re aware that SNS is not a personal space so we’re running it well.
- There’s a lot of quotes by BTS on the Internet like ‘I want to be an adult who will keep on chasing my dreams’, ‘Bloom like a rose, flutter like a cherry blossom, fall like a morning glory’.
▲ JIN: I heard fans are consoled by my quotes ‘Only you need to know how hard you worked’. Sometimes we work really hard but the result doesn’t turn out well. People will only know about [our efforts] if the result is good, so I think we all need this kind of healing to console ourselves.
- Last year, you stated that your goals for this year would be No.1 on ‘Billboard 200’ and a stadium tour. Do you have anything you want to achieve personally aside from team’s goals?
▲ JUNGKOOK: I’m ambitious so I want to do everything, but there’s just so many that I couldn’t do them properly. I can’t stick to one thing for long. But this year I’m determined to do what’s useful to my singer career. So lately I don’t even play games. I want to play classic music with a piano, be good at foreign languages and sing well. I plan to work hard to these 3 things only.
▲ JIN: Last year Jungkook started learning drums. It’s when I started learning guitar. Jungkook gave up drums so I stopped with guitar as well. Now that Jungkook started learning piano, I’ll take my guitar out of the storage and see how far Jungkook has done to catch up with him. I want to try forming a BTS band one day.
▲ SUGA: I want to be good at English and Japanese.
▲ JIMIN: I still want to become perfect as a singer as ever, but I’ll try to think about what I want to do.
▲ V: I want to be really good at singing. I’ll aim for this goal only.
▲ J-HOPE: I have set up many plans for this year as well, but if I want to do them, I need to prioritize my health. I want to take good care of my body. My mixtape that’s been prepared since last year will be revealed soon, so I’m focusing on it to bring good music. Hope many people would listen to it and give it lots of love.
▲ RM: First and foremost, the next album.
- Through the ‘Love Myself’ campaign in collaboration with Korean Committee for UNICEF, you have raised more than 600 million won. What do you think about sharing?
▲ SUGA: There was one thing clear about the campaign. Rather than aiming to show compassion or trying to help someone, we started with the hope to spread good energy and to gather that energy into one place. I don’t think ‘sharing’ would be an equivalent word. Good results are showing and people are getting help, but those who carry it out are seeing changes in their views as well. I think we have the synergy here, which is a good thing.
▲ JIN: My life goal is to be happy, but right now I think I’m happy enough, because I’m getting loved by so many people. I’m this happy from the love I receive, so now I want to share my happiness with other people.
