The Trilogy of Songs: BTS’ English Singles
If every song of BTS was a book, they’d have enough for me to spend fortunes on (which, inevitably, I would).
BTS’ music do feel like books I’d love to read, to write, to feel under my touch. While ‘Boy With Luv’ feels like singing with your soulmate in an old, deserted auditorium filled with yellow lights dripping from the stage like rain; ‘On’ feels like rescuing yourself from the cage of a world that bogs you down, setting yourself free. ‘Black Swan’ is the ballet of realizing yourself, ‘Life Goes On’ about experiencing the pandemic. ‘Dis-ease’ about over-exertion and over-working due to the dulling of hours; ‘Telepathy’ about connections running deeper in time and the universe.
Today though, I’d love to talk about the three songs and their remixes that form a trilogy of books with their chapters: Dynamite, Butter, and Permission To Dance; and how they form the story of you and I as we approach a world with lower restrictions midst the pandemic still going on.
Book I: Dynamite, Before and Beginning
The very first scene of the book is excitement; the times with your friends. Whenever I imagine the song as words, I see myself with my classmates in the middle of school periods, filling those empty times with shrill noises and loud talks. Passing notes to friends, writing on the corners of worn-out textbooks about the next movie to be released, the next song to listen. Walking on the steps of the basketball court with your lunch in your hands as your friends dance their heart out, and laughter envelops all of you. Dynamite is fun-filled; it wants you to light the world around you with the burst of fireworks and euphoria that it is. Because with your friends, don’t you feel in the stars?
“ ’Cause I, I, I’m in the stars tonight
So watch me bring the fire and set the night alight (Hey)
Shinin’ through the city with a little funk and soul
So I’ma light it up like dynamite, woah-oh-oh”
If Dynamite is a book, then the remixes are chapters leafing through the excitement the song mixes into the words. EDM remix is the farewell from school you always wanted; the night lighting up into pinks and purples in front of your pupils as you forget yourself in the music and the shouts of your classmates. Bedroom Remix is your self jumping on the bed with popcorn and make-believe disco lights from the plastic coloured sheets and squares. Midnight Remix is your friends climbing into your bedroom for your birthday; bringing in a cake and loud candles, but the parents never know, right? Tropical Remix is swimming with dolphins at the beach; Poolside Remix is embracing your friends under the pool waters and filling each other with colours different. Retro remix feels like a teenager donning their parents’ clothes from when they were adolescents; and the Slow Jam is bringing your friends to the computer’s screen and jamming to music. Acoustic remix, you say? It’s finding your fingers through the strings of your hair as you dance with abandon in your room, with your earphones on.
“Huh, this is gettin’ heavy, can you hear the bass boom? I’m ready (Woo-hoo)
Life is sweet as honey, yeah, this beat cha-ching like money, huh
Disco overload, I’m into that, I’m good to go
I’m diamond, you know I glow up
Let’s go.”
Now, the reason I said that ‘Dynamite’ is also for the beginning of the pandemic and the opening of a new kind of world for you and me is also excitement for this universe. Now, it was (and is) hard for all of us (especially for people who lost their beloved ones, front-line workers, people afflicted by the virus all around the world), but the experience of excitement for me comes from my online studying experience. Back in March 2020, when online classes were first introduced for us; the very first thing that ran in my mind was: “I’ve never tried this before.” For a person who’s never studied online before, this presented itself as both a curious and an exciting thing. It was only later that I realized the perils of it, but at the moment I felt excited fiddling with my phone.
“Day or night, the sky’s alight, so we dance to the break of dawn (Hey)
Ladies and gentlemen, I got the medicine so you should keep ya eyes on the ball.”
Dynamite is a book of not only excitement and euphoria of the things we miss, but also represents our resilience against the situation we are in now. BTS themselves have described the song as one that “can uplift anyone’s spirits.” It’s a song that presents itself as the hope for better days arriving sooner or later; that we will overcome the difficulties we face today and be filled with the burst of happiness that swells within us. This is Dynamite’s true intention: that we’re able to bring ourselves, pull each other through the pains and losses that the pandemic faces us with, and keep the flower of hope in between our hearts, blossoming slowly but surely each day.
Book II: Butter, of Mid-places and Imagination
Butter, in its own way, reminds me of growing up in the pandemic; stuck in the house at a time when I’m supposed to see the world and grow older with the wizened buildings. It can be best described as “the scene after a party”. As a book, it’s filled not with parties with people, but with yourself. The dark room with only fairy lights and the moon to grace your dances; and with your mind, it transforms. Our imagination turns the lonely room into the disco-themed, retro-styled party, of which you’re the person of importance. Stepping into spot-lights that fleet away from you yet arrive at you at the end: that’s Butter for me, a book of fun growth and hidden parties of the mind.
“Side step, right, left to my beat
High like the moon, rock with me, baby
Know that I got that heat
Let me show you ’cause talk is cheap
Side step, right, left to my beat
Get it, let it roll.”
The Hotter remix reminds me of confidence filling in your being when you look in the mirror (one of the lyrics does go “oh when I look in the mirror, I’ll melt your heart into two.”). With the saxophone instrumental, it reveals the facts of your confidence and how a mere slight of eye shows how beautiful you are as you enter the room. The remix captures the party and holds it in your grasp. The Cooler remix is of youth, reminding me of the times when I’d go on school trips; the buses filled to the brim with music and laughter and loud singing. The buses would capture our youth and energy in its wheels and absorb our standing, stomping feet to the music’s rhythm; even if the entire world could hear us. The Sweeter remix is of sweet cakes and groceries; flour lifting onto your faces as a friend and you try to make a cake that you’d like. Just licking the batter off your fingers and the spoon, and the smell of chocolate and vanilla wafting into your mouths as you wait with excitement.
“Ice on my wrist, I’m the nice guy
Got the right body and the right mind
Rollin’ up to party, got the right vibe
Smooth like (Butter), hate us (Love us)
Fresh boy pull up and we lay low
All the playas get movin’ when the bass low
Got ARMY right behind us when we say so
Let’s go.”
Butter is about living with the pandemic. We are resilient, but we’re also bored. Stuck in the never-ending loop of lockdowns, sanitizations, online classes, work load, over-exertion etc., it’s like the hope that this year will be better than the last is dimming. But what makes Butter different from Dynamite is that we’re stuck in the awkward middle ground of being in the pandemic and being detached from it at the same time. With vaccinations beginning and places opening up, we’re able to experience the outside once again. At the same time however, the pandemic holds onto us with the masks, the social distancing; normal life is still far. Stuck in the middle, Butter helps our minds to dream, to explore different avenues and features of ourselves.
“Smooth like (Butter), cool shade (Stunner)
And you know we don’t stop
Hot like (Summer), ain’t no (Bummer)
You be like, oh my God
We gon’ make you rock and you say (Yeah)
We gon’ make you bounce and you say (Yeah)
Hotter? Sweeter! Cooler? Butter!”
Book III: Permission To Dance, of New Worlds and Hopes
“It’s the thought of being young
When your heart’s just like a drum
Beating louder with no way to guard it.”
I think the lines that begin Permission To Dance are the best expression of the song. Both the music video and the song, and subsequently the idea of it as a book, overflow with youth and the feeling of hope. A world where the pandemic is a part of our history textbooks, and everything that we love and cherish returns back: physical classes, meeting friends, offices, our faces fully facing the summer sunlight, the monsoon rains, the autumn leaves, the winter snow crystals, and the spring blossoms once again. We’re dancing with each other, drawing on the walls with our hands, and feeling the wind on our hair all over again.
“There’s always something that’s standing in the way
But if you don’t let it faze ya
You’ll know just how to break
Just keep the right vibe, yeah
’Cause there’s no looking back
There ain’t no one to prove
We don’t got this on lock (Yeah).”
Permission To Dance is not only about a new world beyond the pandemic; it’s also about working and waiting patiently and hopefully for that world now. We’re all tired of the virus invading our carefully planned vacations and outings, but sometimes even within our houses we can dance and live and thrive. Because within us, ourselves, there’s a hope and so you and I, we can live golden youths (“And live just like we’re golden/ And roll in like we’re dancing fools.”). This book tells us about how we can just live within the idea of this world being just outside our doorstep, and that when our nights become lonelier (“When the nights get colder”), we can lean within the words of this book and we can go on with our dreams as the world approaches closer.
“We don’t need to worry
’Cause when we fall, we know how to land
Don’t need to talk the talk, just walk the walk tonight
’Cause we don’t need permission to dance.”
The book tells us to become ourselves and enjoy life to the fullest; all kinds of people from all ages, countries and ethnicities can find themselves in the words and experience the joy of living in the world where we can hope for better days to come. And the idea of “better days” has always been BTS’ motto, from ‘2!3!’ to ‘Dynamite’ and now, ‘Permission To Dance’. Both the original and the R&B remix represent smooth transitions to normalcy in our planet. Yes, normalcy can be an inch, a meter, a mile, even an acre away; but we don’t need to take someone’s permission to hope that it’s on our way. It isn’t over; the world is only beginning, only moving, only rising.
“Well, let me show ya
That we can keep the fire alive, mm
’Cause it’s not over
’Til it’s over, say it one more time.”
Dynamite, Butter, Permission To Dance: these songs are books of celebration. The reason they’re in English is because our history (that of BTS and ARMY) is one bonded by the existence of different languages echoing from both sides. And the fact that these songs are ones that BTS holds close to their heart, and that they represent a hope that one day, we all can gather back together for the promised concerts and have fun like we used to, once again. These songs are books of hope, of celebration, of feeling closer than ever in a world where people are getting further and further apart. With them, we’ll never be away from each other; we’ll always be together, because these songs are monikers of a time we had been kept away from one another, and that we came through that time closer than ever.
And yes, we never did need the permission to dance with hope; we just clutched at the opportunity given to us by our seven butterflies.
Lyric credits to Genius.
