#but yeah!!!! i hope this answers the question lolzers

[todayesterday]

hi! so there's this quote from this video that i found rather interesting: “an interesting comparison i like to make is bts have quite possibly become the antithesis of the beatles—a band that once started off with this manufactured sweetheart pop music but in their later releases experimented with texture and genre fusion because they had the means and resources to do so. they shifted the music industry in how people perceived boybands but instead bts are feeding right into it.”

i'm not even gonna get into the fact that the beatles were more than just manufactured bubblegum pop from 64-66 but thoughts?

oh boy... well, that is certainly An Opinion. and i certainly have Many Opinions on this too. so now that you mention it, here they go. you've endulged me, now prepare for my VERY LONG hot takes on bts' recent comebacks and recent career and how it compares to the beatles' later years (fair warning, i'm very bitter about hybe and i have very strong feelings about bts' management, so). and i love talking about their career in relation to the beatles, so bare with me here, i could talk about this for days on end.

i watched the entire bts part of the video and, beatles comparisson aside (i'll talk about this in a minute), i agree with every single word. it is UTTERLY frustrating to me, as someone who fell in love with bts's music for their incredibly unique and varied discography, to witness what they career has come to in 2021. i find it so hard to come to terms with the fact that the group has some of the most talented songwriters i've seen (namjoon's lyrics in particular are phenomenal and so full of substance), plus some very creative producers, such as hoseok and yoongi who clearly care about music very much - and some rising musicians too, like taehyung who has been doing a great job of writing and producing -, and such unique vocals has come to... that. generic pop that is a very obvious attempt to produce a hit, regardless of meaning or substance substance. really, the only word that comes to my mind is frustration, because i am positive that they can do SO much better than butter and PTD (and i don't even hate the songs btw, and dynamite i really love) if they're given the creative opportunity, and be is proof of that. so it bothers me to no end how this is what we are stuck with.

now, i can only imagine that this direction is not one really chosen by bts themselves, at least not fully. because those songs are not songs, they are business decisions (and bad decisions, at that). and hybe does the business decisions. i'm not saying that the boys don't have any authonomy or whatever, but some things (mainly namjoon's live he did on youtube after dynamite got #1, plus some weverse interviews) do make me think they're not totally happy with this direction either. watching them in those BE-hind interviews they did with each other, all of them talked about how into music they were, how they wanted to explore other genres, their relationship to songwriting, etc - to me, right then at the end of 2020 they seemed almost more connected to music-making then i've ever seen them before. so it came as a shock to me when all we got in 2021, after such a personal album - and after such a wonderful array of albuns and songs since their debut - were two comercial, soulless, generic pop songs. because bts is anything but soulless and that's what irks me.

really, it's been hard being a bts stan recently because of how much this makes me just *sigh*. because i love them for their art and their music, and hybe recently only ever uses them as models for overpriced merch and advertisements - that has been their main occupation in 2021. and i don't think that it is because they have regressed as songwriters or musicians, but because hybe's vision of what bts is has changed. and that's what i think the biggest difference lies between bts and the beatles when it comes to the progression of their career.

you see, i think that hybe is stuck in a very tight situation that they're handling the worst possible way. as bighit, they had only bts as their only chance, their lifeboat. bang pd had his philosophy of authenticity and Being True To Music, and he got lucky with finding the perfect people to carry it through. plus, they were a smaller house, i don't even think he'd have the money to hire overseas producers when they were working on their first albuns, so it was a process that i imagine was a lot more intimate and open than whatever went on with their latest singles. however, with bts, bh (and bang pd) always had their Extra Content, bring-bts-close-to-the-fans strategy. and of course that worked, the boys managed to gather the very loyal fanbase that we have today. but the thing is, as bts rose to success, i have the very strong impression that pd convinced himself that it happened because of the extra content, because of run bts, etc - and not because of the honesty of their music. i think it was in that harvard report that he said that he believes bh found the 'formula for success' with bts, citing the extra shows, the social media, etc. and so, as bts took over the world, hybe seems to have convinced themselves that they are to blame, and not bts. plus, they realised that they can make so much money out of them, but they also need to diversify their income as well.

now, the tight situation that i mentioned is explained by three main things.

they are obviously seen as The BTS Company

they don't want to be seen as The BTS Company, because what the hell will they do when bts ends? so they have now a bunch of other groups too. and social network. and everything else they can get, because they're DESPERATE to make money that isn't directly bts-related

at the same time, they CAN'T lose bts revenue, because none of their groups or enterprises make nearly as much as bts makes them.

in short, to me, it is a very clear goose that lays the golden eggs situation.

they want bts to become mainstream in the usa, and they want bts to get a grammy (probably desperate for it because it might mean that bts will get an exemption from the millitary, which would mean that they'd be around longer to make them money), and they're apparently willing to do anything for it. but at the same time, they don't want bts to be their only thing, because, well, the military. whatever will they do if bts stays away for two years!

now, as i said, i believe that hybe thinks that bts' success is due to their management, their ideas and their formula. and they seem to think that commercial success = easy pop, because that's what bts put out when they did the biggest breakthroughs of their career (boy with luv in 2019 and dynamite in 2020). so, naturally, when they had dynamite and it was such a smash hit, they thought, well, he hit the golden pot guys! this is it! and it probably didn't help that the sales were absolutely huge and they probably made so much money off it. they learned that the hot 100 is a very lucrative thing and they barely have to do anything for it, just release the song and army will buy it to oblivion to get the boys the #1. and don't get me wrong, i loved seeing them getting that #1, it's a very important landmark, but... what does it say, really? after the first two ones?

so there's another important point to the story, army's consuming power. army will buy anything, anything at all, music or otherwise. if the singles are in english that's a bit amplified, sure, but i don't think that hybe understands that most fans don't care about what language it is, and the general public doesn't care for generic pop. hybe is still trying to break the mainstream barrier while trying to keep fans engaged and ends up not really appealing to anybody. but, if they think that songs like ptd and butter are what's going to get them money (and they haven't been proven wrong), then they certainly won't release a song like tomorrow or butterfly as their main single. and they make so much money. they own bts in its entirety, so they can do what they want, basically. that's why they put so much merch out. they're not interested anymore in authentic music, they want to grow and have more things and more fancy buildings and grow and grow. they're a billionaire corporation now, and so they hire whatever producers they think will write the biggest hit, they do what they have to do to keep the ~winning streak~.

of course, they missed the mark completely. they're killing their goose of golden eggs. but, as of yet, they're only killing it creatively (and its musical reputation, tbh, but again, i don't think they care), because the money keeps coming in. did you see the amount of pointless merch they released last year? the amount of advertisement bts worked on? they sold bts water. music isn't a priority in their agenda anymore. but how does that work? bts are musicians.

as i said earlier, during be they showed signs to be super involved and eager to create music, to write, to produce. how come so many members have been writing mixtapes for the past two years, writing music, producing, and we haven't had a crumb of really authentic music from them all year? did their talents just vanish from thin air? how come?? we're going to have a jungkook song produced by yoongi for that pointless webtoon instead of putting it on an actual album. like, why??????????? we haven't had a yoongi produced song in SO long. and he's a well-renowed producer. but no, let's treat him like a model. this makes me so furious, honestly.

and that's where i think the comparisson with the beatles pales a bit. it is not wrong, necessarily, but i think the situations are very different, and i think it's kind of unfair to say that bts became what they said they wouldn't be.

to me, the thing that differentiates the situations is that the beatles formed, in the very start, a really strong bond with a single producer who they trusted and who trusted them, and with a team who recognized their talent for what it was and was prepared to let them do their thing. of course, kpop is a completely different industry than the 1960s british rock scene; however, putting that aside and talking only about music, i think that is a big part of why bts "regressed". in actuality i don't think they regressed: i believe that they are simply not given the space and chance to evolve.

with the beatles, george martin was really only theirs. they had a BUNCH of problems with contracts and with emi and shit, of course, but abbey road and george martin were there to let them go and do their shit. they trusted them to put out music that wasn't "common", they saw that they were huge and let them go for it. the bigger they got, the more trust and control they had over their creative decisions, and the more security they had to go and do things like what they did on the white album. by that point, they had their people, george martin knew how to work with them, they were making SO much money and nobody was really scared that it was going to flop or what the public would think. and the fact that they were english helped them to gain and secure that space, because it is true that the mainstream USA media doesn't care for anything else other than american and english people - and apart from the "we don't care about british people" attitude of the early-60s, the beatles were never really outsiders. not in the way bts is. so, essentially, they could go and do whatever they wanted, and they knew that. so they did.

with bts, the opposite happened. firstly, they don't have the security. even though they are huge, they're still outsiders to the music industry - so the company (and themselves too, in a way) is probably scared of scaring the public away in a way the beatles/EMI/apple were not. secondly, they don't have a team who is ready to ensure that they have creative freedom, and they don't have a secure team to work with them. to me it's pretty clear that hybe is more concerned with their business and making sure they're selling than they are with bts doing the music they want - and they made the most money when bts put out ptd and butter and etc, probably. that's the opposite of what george martin meant to the beatles creatively. in their recent singles (and we know it's hybe who decides that), they worked with american producers that they probably have never met before - that can't be a safe environment to be open and vulnerable about their music or to try something bold or experimental. additionally, if they spend so much time doing adds, recording stupid merch videos, working on a goddamn webtoon that has nothing to do with their art at all or games or whatever unrelated project hybe has, how are they going to have time to sit down and develop their art? the beatles stopped touring to dedicate to music in the height of their career. bts became full-time models because their ads probably give bang pd so much money he shits his pants just thinking about it. george martin never cared about john wearing fila for ads or whatever - because that wasn't such a thing then. EMI certainly wanted to make money off them, but things were different.

now, i have to clarify that i don't know for sure where does bts stand in this, and yes, they do make money too from all those things i mentioned. but not even nearly as much as bh does. and, to be honest, i don't see a world where people who care about music and art (and we know they do) and find themselves in this situation wouldn't be frustrated and angry about it. in interviews they have talked about questioning all of this, namjoon in particular, seokjin too.

i think this is, in general, a very telling tale of what the music industry has come to from the 60s to now, with mainstream artists (not only bts, i think this applies to a lot of people) really having become products and the objects of advertisement, hostages to what the creative industry as a whole has become with hypermodernity and the Internet as we so have it. it goes in line with what tiktok is doing to music, what instagram and algorhythms have done to art, and so on and so forth. it does raise the question of whether the beatles would have had the creative freedom they had back then if they were artists nowadays, and to that i haven't got an answer, but i think it's interesting to wonder. what if, instead of having time to record revolver or sgt pepper's, the beatles were stuck recording ads for partner brands that they are legally obliged to do? the paralells between the two groups fascinate me so much that my literal master's dissertation will be about this very thing, the differences in the consolidation of both of them as global icons in their different contexts and cultures.

as for bts, i just think it's such a shame to see it come to this. i think they have so much potential, creatively. they have so much talent, such great songs, and they could do many other things. they could release whatever they wanted and so many people would still love and support it. i think hybe is making a huge, huge mistake with all of this. they can't produce another bts, and they're putting a serious strain on the one they do have. and i don't think the problem is the english, but they soullessness of the songs they chose. because we didn't choose to love bts because they are cute, or because of run bts. we choose them because we resonate with them, because we fell in love with their music, with them as people, and not with whatever vision some american producer/songwriter has of what they think bts is.

i'm curious to see where 2022 will lead us, with them. there's apparently an album coming. i don't have any expectations for the single, but we'll see. i just want them to be free to create, honestly. i miss them and their music very much, and i wish dearly that they were in another situation because they're not a golden eggs goose, they are people who love art and who love to express themselves through it. i hope that's what they get to do, once this webtoon and merch nonsense is over. they deserve a safe space to create. they deserve their hearts and their voices to shine through, as they have always done.