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breaking down Love Yourself trilogy "concept" through K-pop lens because I wanna address whatever bullshit this was - a thread
last night i finally finished a Love Yourself: Answer album narrative analysis and I touched upon some K-pop stans' opinions on the series, which you can read here: https://twitter.com/viveladiana/status/1334345954791579650?s=20
One of the things I touched on but didn't elaborate was this tweet because I knew I wanted to address it in a separate thread analysing the "concept" as understood by K-pop stans: https://twitter.com/viveladiana/status/1338536946742640645?s=20
The word "concept" is framed in quotation marks because I have long made my stance clear on the K-pop concept. Recently, I made a thread talking about how @TXT_members's The Dream Chapter: Magic subverts the very idea of it. https://twitter.com/viveladiana/status/1337803717710508033?s=20
In a broader picture, I will say this: both BTS and TXT utilise the term 'concept' in a way that is different from the industry standard application. The closest BTS ever got to actually applying the K-pop concept was The School Trilogy.
That is, there is application of aesthetic and there was an emphasis in how a group is conceptualised and how they adhered to a certain aesthetic. But even then, The School Trilogy, while narratively isn't as strong as the rest of their discography, portrayed a more cohesive--
narrative, albeit in broad strokes. You get the idea of what they're trying to project and what they're trying to say and you understand why it makes sense for them to employ the rebellious school image for that particular phase in their music.
With The Most Beautiful Moment In Life trilogy, however, you can tell that BTS and Bang PD decided that they want to tell a more cohesive narrative about things that they care about. They still tell the story of their youth but they employ a multi-medium approach.
I think they find it intuitive to actually do that because they understand that K-pop is packaged to be visually driven, they're just utilising the tools that are already available in a more harmonious way--a stroke of genius on their part.
By telling an actual story, they were able to marry the music with the visuals in a way that is coherent and cohesive and allowed them to fully experiment with things because now there is a story at the helm. Keep in mind that when I say 'story', I don't mean--
the Bangtan Universe. I mean a particular message or personal story that they want to convey the audience. Bangtan Universe/HYYH is just a medium for them to deliver that message in a way that the narrative-driven audience (like resident HYYH expert @jhsjoonie) would relate to.
I briefly touched upon the narrative brilliance of HYYH in this album narrative analysis of HYYH pt. 2 (thanks again @ughstreamer for inspiring me to kickstart this series of analysis and ramblings) https://twitter.com/viveladiana/status/1334051145757593601?s=20
I've already broken down the definition of K-pop concept and this definition will be the basis of the analysis for Love Yourself trilogy analysis here: https://twitter.com/viveladiana/status/1337804704370237443?s=20
Now, bearing that in mind and having seen this utter bullshit, let's delve into the LOVE YOURSELF TRILOGY concept analysis
If you've read my point by point elaboration on what K-pop concept is, you'll immediately notice the glaring point that undercuts Bangtan's multi-album narrative structure: "the same flower boy concept, for the past three years".
I've said this before, K-pop stans are so used to talking about musical release from a conceptual point of view without actually understanding how an artistic concept is conceived. @tteokknj made a very good thread on that from an industry perspective.
Truthfully, K-pop visual concept was conceived superficially to touch upon the immediately marketable points. Leather and harness, layers of horns and beats. Switch concept to a refreshing sound in the summer to match the mood outside.
The binary approach of the K-pop concept made most of BTS' (and TXT's) musical releases inaccessible for K-pop stans because they cannot be boxed into either of the two (dark & bright) labels. That screenshot^ in particular, I suspect, was a jab at both HYYH & LY series.
(Which completely erased the Wings & YNWA duology and the fact that BST and Not Today are the blueprints of most of contemporary dark boygroups' 'dark concepts', but okay :D)
