BTS “Love Yourself: Answer” Review

The kpop boy group, BTS, has continued to break records in both the western music scene and the eastern with their new album Love Yourself: Answer.

Apart of their “Love Yourself’ series, the album acts as a conclusion of the story they have been telling for two years. First came a series of videos titled “The Highlight Reels” which showed the members each getting entangled in romantic relationships that quickly fell apart. Then the first album of the series, Love Yourself: Her, provided the beginning of the story and what happened before “The Highlight Reels”. Next came the second album, Love Yourself: Tear, which was the aftermath of the broken relations in “The Highlight Reels”. Now the final chapter, Love Yourself: Answer, serves as a reflect as to why those relations fell apart. The answer: you have to love yourself before you can love others.

The music video for the title track “Idol” hit 56.2 million views in only 24 hours, placing second in the record of “Most Viewed Videos in 24 Hours”. They even managed to beat Taylor Swift’s “Look What You Made Me Do” which was sitting third prior to the release of “Idol”. The music video also beat the group’s two previous music videos that were also on the record list, “DNA” and “Fake Love”. BTS also climbed the U.S. iTunes chart the first day of release taking 12 of the top 15 songs, and the album jumped up to the number one spot on the top albums. The GRAMMY museum has invited BTS to host a private concert and interview on Sept. 11. The event was announced Aug. 27 and sold out in seconds. The fans, called ARMYs, are anxiously awaiting the update of the music charts for Billboard.

“Idol” incorporated traditional Korean music along with traditional African beats and was fused into the heavy EDM song, creating a fast-past, beat-heavy song. The music video itself was bright and colorful with weird, yet impressive editing effects. The group also made many allusions to their previous songs and music videos such as “Anpanman”, “Fire”, and “Not Today”. Along with the editing style, audiences were also entertained by the group’s intense choreography that comes along with most kpop songs. The best part of the song and music video is that BTS has their fans all around the world shouting “Can’t stop me from loving myself”.

Love Yourself: Answer features a lot of previous hits from the “Love Yourself” series including “DNA”, “Best of Me”, “Mic Drop”, “Fake Love”, “The Truth Untold”, and “Anpanman”. Each member also gets a song to themselves: Jin has “Epiphany” which was the trailer to this comeback, Suga has “Trivia: Seesaw”, RM has “Trivia: Love”, J-Hope has “Trivia: Just Dance”, Jimin has “Serendipity” which was the trailer for the Love Yourself: Her comeback, V has “Singularity” which was the trailer for the Love Yourself: Tear comeback, and Jungkook has “Euphoria”. The album ranges from upbeat EDM songs to relaxing ballads to heartbreaking slow songs to jazz, giving listeners a variety of genres to enjoy.

ARMYs are very pleased with this album and are excited for the chance to see their favorites perform as BTS goes on their second world tour.