Crystal Snow: Winters, And The Magic Of Curiosity
Ever since I was a child, I’ve wondered about snow: those white slopes in documentaries on Russian and Siberian villages that would stretch out into oblivion. Living in a tropical country, and an even equatorial city, I’ve never had the chance to see snow: to feel a deep chill in my bones, to see icicles outside my window, to make angels in snow. To taste the snowflakes like I would taste the monsoon rain, and make little snowmen and ducks alongside the pathways. Every winter, I would look at the sky and ask it questions about snow; how it is made, how delicately it’s delivered like a waterfall of flower petals fluttering down, how the world always allowed itself to enter its cold embrace, and feel warm instead. I was curious about how I’d feel if I could ever see snow; until the song arrived, breathing and alive in my palms, on a winter’s day.
“Like snow piles up, I remember what you gave me / You gave me the courage to live.”
‘Crystal Snow’ is one of BTS’ Japanese tracks, appearing on the 2018 album ‘Face Yourself’ and the 2020 album ‘BTS: The Best’; first released in November 2017, it is a song of warmth on an unbearably cold day. The song begins softly, growing in volume as Jungkook sings the first two lines. The music is charged by a beautiful tenderness that rises, as Jungkook sings, like snow piling up, sweet voice over love. Snow, as referenced in the following lines, is a metaphor for love: it represents a time where the world stands still in time, frozen; it is a fragile system where ice covers everything, yet little reeds of grass, like love, rise in the cold, waiting. J-Hope talks about this fragility in our love in the next verse (“So now how do we do? can we make it work/ this fragile love”) that makes him afraid of losing it all. This sentiment is also echoed by V; talking about how fast the world changes seasons (“the world moves faster than we thought”), and how our love has entered the winter, where there’s uncertainty whether we’d survive the cold, with the little conviction that love offers (“how we gonna change it? / we don’t know yet but for sure we will”).
Jimin starts with a small voice, singing about the wave, the cool breeze of love welling into the world (“love in our hearts, uh yeah”), and the rare, warm sunshine that spreads on our bodies (“slowly started to grow”). Everything in the world of winters, that gives birth to the everlasting, childish yet lovely emotion:
Curiosity.
“I want to hold you one more time before you disappear / ah, crystal flies high wherever it goes.”
As the song ascends into the chorus, it becomes curious of the subject of its love: the feeling of ‘I want to know who you are, how you love, how you breath.’ Its heart lies in this inherent curiosity of the love, a want to know who you truly are (“hey, there’s nothing else I want, I just want to feel a little more”), as the vocal line hold the song in their palms. V sings the mentioned line with such tenderness, his voice laced with that curiosity to know, to feel, to recognize you close to him, so close he could know the deepest you (“can I touch your heart?”). However, the last line of this breathes the familiar uncertainty of bloom in winters; where they doubt that their love, their desire to know you is enough to survive the cold (“I want to touch it but it keeps slipping through my fingers, someday, someday.”).
The same idea is carried on in the next verse, when V and Jungkook sing:
“Your little smile somehow hurts me / how can I be closer uh uh? / why can’t I find an answer for this love? / how am I gonna find it? How? / oh, let me know.”
In the verses that follow, BTS create a picture of yearning and curiosity: which seem like two very different emotions, but really aren’t. Their curiosity to know their love deeper makes them yearn after them all the more. Suga’s verse begins with “crystal snow only holds an ambiguous shape”; here, ‘crystal snow’ becomes a representation of love: how snow melts so quickly yet can give one so much fleeting joy. Its ambiguity comes with Suga’s love: that he wants their love to stay forever, yet the very nature of winter is contrary to its existence. His love is unrequited due to him being unsure of its longeivity: where it can be as all-enduring as it can be, like an eternal spring. Jin then comes in, bringing conviction to Suga’s unsure moments, by singing the lyric “surely, I can promise you”.
“Even after hundred years, I want to live with you / can I be your one? / there is no single star in this snowy sky, oh, someday, someday.”
This time, the tone of the chorus changes: from the simple curiosity of the first, this chorus deepens with the emotion, now wanting to earnestly know their love. When Jin sings “but crystal gets further from reach, the more I wish for it”, it refers to their love ellipsing their footsteps, not letting them into their elusive world. In this chorus, BTS pleads to their lover, their curiosity to the peak, telling their love to let them inside the world of their ideas, beliefs, and all their loves. The simple confession of them asking to be their ‘one’ points out to the beauty of their simplicity, and their curiosity fueled by love, for it to survive.
RM, through his verse, brings conviction into the song: in his little plea of curiosity, he reasons why he wants to know you deeply. In a winter that freezes everything in its wake, you and he are the only people who are warm and alive; and so even if you push him away, he would just come walking on your path (“the two of us are already far apart / even though we are meant to be together”). The phrase “now we cannot choose the paint that colours us” creates an environment where the winter, through its coldness, deprives the world of heat and therefore, even though you (‘snow’) will melt through the heat emanated by his warmth, you will also survive, live, become alive under his love. Even nature that is you, he raps — and its transience, that is your change — cannot erase the fact that he will love you in all your forms (“even the black breath / even your thick white fog / even though you pass through me and turn to water, you are still in my heart.”). He expresses the curiosity of their love’s form through the beauty of winter, in the world that is frozen and reflects your beauty on them and again:
“(You are in my heart) / I watch you shining and reflecting on every single sparkling thing / I’ll wait for you no matter where / I want to see you, even if you’re pretending, please hold this hand.”
The bridge / pre-chorus builds upon the feeling that RM creates in his verse; it talks about how with curiosity, with knowing their love more, the initial adrenaline of love will turn into this all-pervading, omniscient feeling that is genuine with knowledge, loving with all emotion (“the warmth of love started melting / this genuine warmth, please stay forever”). The chorus comes back in full force, decorated by Jin’s high vocals, but with a change. The earlier lines are replaced by the lyric “hey, words aren’t enough to express my feelings but I will tell you as it is / can I touch your heart?”: BTS, this time, are confessing their curiosity surrounding their love openly. They reach your heart up first and talk of knowing you openly. The first moments of the song were yearning, but the last represents a direct conversation; reflected in the outro with the phrase “it’s always you”. The outro is when their love accepts their curiosity and offers them knowledge: words that belong to you and them alone, warming up the chilly mornings and the breezy evenings. The song ends with Jungkook’s warm lilt, knowing the certainty in his love, knowing that it’ll survive until the next spring, ending the song on a promise, with the lines:
“Oh yeah, crystal snow, oh, oh / forever baby (baby), crystal snow.”
Crystal Snow is a song of curiosity. It reminds me of Charles Dickens’ ‘A Christmas Carol’, where the children gather around to receive their presents. It reminds me of the one dream I had when I woke up to snow covering the entire city, opening my eyes to pitch cold and icicles. It reminds me of my imagination around my first snow sighting, when I thought of walking on snow with my bare feet. It reminds me of reading Han Kang’s ‘The White Book’, where she describes the desolation and newness of environment that snow provides. The song represents the little loves that BTS has taught me, and themselves in the process, to cherish; holding oneself closer for warmth, and breathing easy for once, being human who is in love with the world for once.
Because a curious song teaches us not only to love the world in its springs, but also in its deepest, direst winters through something we all take for granted: knowing.
Lyric translations from Genius. Pictures from New York Times and Observer.
