BTS: Arirang review – the world’s biggest pop band return with dumb fun and downright weirdness

Ending a hiatus that began in 2022, the septet recapture a distinctiveness that had been threatening to ebb away

The general consensus seems to be that as BTS’s commercial stock has gone stratospheric – more than 500m units sold worldwide, including over 104bn streams, making them the bestselling Asian act of all time – the actual music has become more and more irrelevant. Before taking their hiatus in 2022 to fulfil their mandatory military service in South Korea, their saccharine, English-language bops such as Dynamite and Butter – while gargantuan global hits – had smothered the K-pop-specific idiosyncrasies that peppered their earlier material. By 2020’s double whammy of Map of the Soul: 7 and Be, the band’s early years as a hip-hop-focused collective were a distant memory, and thanks to a more westernised sound and studio cast list, so was their identity as a Korean act.

On the eagerly anticipated Arirang – pointedly named after a Korean folk song dating back to 1896, and presented with the tagline “born in Korea, playing for the world” – the septet do their best to right those wrongs. Crucially, it manages to capture the K-pop spirit of experimentation while welding it to a litany of memorable hooks. And when western collaborators are brought in, they’re interestingly off-kilter, including outsider rapper-producer Jpegmafia, and producer El Guincho, known for his work with Björk and Rosalía.

Split into two distinct moods, the opening trio of songs immediately reinstate rapper RM as the band’s guiding creative force. Over an elastic Diplo-assisted beat that recalls Timbaland’s gonzo work on Nelly Furtado’s Loose, RM, Suga and J-Hope sound as if they’re having a lot of fun weaving in and out of opener Body to Body’s tempo changes, echo-laden drums and snatches of processed vocals. They’re adept, too, at riding Hooligan’s metallic experimentation, with El Guincho constructing a beat out of what sounds like swords sharpening on steel. It answers the question of what BTS produced by Sophie might have sounded like. Even the densely packed beats by US rap production titan Mike Will Made-It make sense on the crunchy Aliens, while the pleasingly braggadocious 2.0 (“you know how we do … came back for what’s mine”) could be read as a warning to the K-pop boybands that scrambled to take BTS’s place during their hiatus.

But BTS, and their paymasters Big Hit Music, also understand that a softer side is key for any boyband. Lead single Swim, sung solely in English, plays things relatively straight and should be No 1 globally until about November. Recalling the featherlight synth-pop of Troye Sivan, in classic BTS style its fairly rudimentary lyric about watching a hot girl in the sea has been repurposed in accompanying materials as focusing on the “resolve to keep swimming onward through life’s many tides”. Having claimed their previous albums have been about philosophical concepts touching on Jungian theory and the work of Hermann Hesse, such intellectual retrofitting does them a disservice. Much of Arirang is big, dumb pop fun and all the better for it. When they do dig deeper, as on the lightly frazzled Kevin Parker-produced Merry Go Round – a statement perhaps on fame’s repetitive treadmill – its lyrical lightness of touch leaves space for genuine emotion. Like Animals, which sounds like Diplo producing the Pixies, continues the second half’s more reflective mood, Jung Kook’s soft croon balanced by a chunky processed guitar solo.

At 14 songs, things tail off slightly as themes start to duplicate – the underwritten They Don’t Know ’Bout Us repeats 2.0’s posturing to less interesting effect – but there’s also time for one more surprise. Slathered in vocal effects and stripped back to replicate a live band jam session, Into the Sun makes for an intriguing closer. While lyrically its mantra of “I’ll follow you into the sun” could be read as a nod to their loyal fans, or each other, its slurred style and robotic sound add a curious edge that feels almost fatalistic. “Nobody knows me” they croon, which feels apt. BTS are too big to fail now, and big enough to want to protect their inner lives at every turn. On Arirang, they’ve made an album that makes good on their status as the planet’s biggest pop phenomenon, and that’s more than enough.