Almost one year ago, BTS released their first-ever English single, Dynamite. Everyone was talking about it on Instagram, so I had to satisfy my curiosity.
And I did. I played that music video in all its pastel-themed glory at ten in the morning for every person in the house to hear — including my sister who was an ARMY a few years ago. I had no idea who anyone was. To me, they were a bunch of really pretty boys dancing and singing and having fun. All I knew were 1) the music video was cute, and 2) why do I like this song so much?
I liked it so much that it was all I listened to for days. Literally. Spotify told me I reached more than a hundred streams in a week. And I wasn’t an ARMY yet.
Since then, YouTube relentlessly recommended all the Dynamite-related content there was. Stages. Behind the scenes. Interviews. More stages. And the NPR Tiny Desk Concert.
You see, when a bunch of really pretty men dance and sing and have fun like that, one would assume it’s all lip-synced. You can’t be pretty and talented and famous. That’s just not fair.
Anyway, there I was in bed on a typical lockdown afternoon. Innocent to the world of K-pop and a slave to YouTube’s algorithm, I clicked on the NPR Tiny Desk concert thumbnail. In the video, they sing Dynamite right away. No hi’s. No hellos. No warnings. Just straight-up singing. Actual singing. Their microphones were, in fact, turned on and catching the littlest of inhales and exhales, adlibs, and everything else that happened live.
Occupied by utter disbelief, I sat in the middle of my bed and rammed the volume button on my phone. These men, dressed in retro vests and silks and things, were doing all these sitting down.
I hit pause, jumped out of bed, and ran to my sister who was next door. Without any explanation, I squished myself into her bed, pushing her to scoot. “They don’t lipsync?” I said in the most casual way possible — but ultimately failing. “WHY DO THEY SOUND EXACTLY LIKE THE MUSIC VIDEO?”
My sister laughed in an ‘I told you so’ way but also in secret amazement. Her sister, forever nonchalant of music in a language she doesn’t understand, gave full attention to Save Me and Spring Day. “Yes,” my sister replied. This time, in an ‘I’ve been trying to tell you all these years’ way. “They’re actually good.”
That day was September 26, 2020, a couple of weeks after my 23rd birthday. Fully acknowledging the existence of the pandemic and its financial effects on us, I was grateful that my 23rd birthday was so much better than the 22nd.
But it was also my first semester in law school. It’s the first time I’m doing something I did not love. Something that wasn’t in my plan.
Can I learn to love things? I can tell you, yes, but it’s not easy. I struggled with the longest inexplicably sad episode I’ve ever had. For three months, it was difficult to get out of bed or to have the energy to power through the day. I was zoning out more and more. I had trouble sleeping. I isolated and rarely kept in touch with other people. My backlogs piled up because I couldn’t bring myself to be productive.
Some days were easier than others. Some days all I had was Blue & Grey.
One night, when I couldn’t sleep, they released an animated TinyTan video of Zero O’Clock, featuring a girl who dreamed of being a pianist but needed to pay the bills. At the end of the video was a message: “When this song ends, may you be a little happier.” And I was.
During my study hours, BTS was having their first online concert, Map of the Soul On:E. To this day, I don’t know what it was, but I cried when Jimin cried. It felt like something pent-up was finally being released. That night, my backlogs didn’t seem as heavy.
On a day when spacing out had taken up most of my time, Twitter showed me a video of Namjoon. In the video, he says, “If your pain is 100 on a scale of 100, and we can lessen it to 99, 98, 97… If we can make it like that, the value of our existence is enough.” After watching the video, my pain went from 99 to 98.
I wish I could tell you how many times BTS has done this for me. Throughout these months, they’ve made everything a little more bearable. A little lighter. A little more like turning everything around. I wish I could tell you, but there are only enough words in my vocabulary.
So, one day, when I tell you I’ve stayed alive because of 7 men who probably don’t know my existence, take it literally. All their songs, all their content, all the speeches they make — these are things I thank them for; things that have become my anchor to get through one more day. And the next day, and the next day, and the next.
There’s a quote that the fandom collectively agrees on:
“No matter when you became an ARMY, it was never too late because you found BTS when you needed them the most.”
To me, it was a typical lockdown afternoon. September 26, 2020.
