Four years of mandatory military service will do something to a man — and apparently, it’ll make him want to reclaim his roots. The fifth studio album from K-pop boy band BTS, “Arirang,” arrives draped in cultural ambition: its title is borrowed from Korea’s most beloved folk song; its tagline trumpets, “born in Korea, playing for the world.” The intentions? Noble. The execution, however, leaves much to be desired.
Opening on the pitched-up synths of “Body to Body,” there’s an immediate jolt of energy, with RM hollering at fans to jump while Suga plants the flag: “B-T-uh, from everywhere to Korea.” It’s certainly a rousing mission statement, and the climactic folk song interpolation raises goosebumps. For about three minutes, you believe this album is going to deliver on its enormous promise.
Then, “FYA” happens. The half-hearted attempt at recreating jersey club energy collapses. The chorus is just the word “fire,” repeated until it loses all meaning:, a trick that works for TikTok but falls flat everywhere else. “Everything’s lit, it’s fire / everything big, it’s fire / she wanna dance on fire / everything gas, it’s fire” — at a certain point, you wonder if they had simply forgotten to replace the endless repetition with synonyms. Verse one isn’t much better, with Jung Kook breathlessly demanding “gasoline” over and over like a child who just learned the word. It’s a song that just loops, formulated to be clipped, captioned and posted.
The exception is supposed to be “Hooligan.” On paper, the clanging swords-and-strings production of El Guincho — a Spanish producer most known for his involvement in artist Rosalía’s work — should sound captivating. It’s a callback to the 2014 era of “Cypher Pt. 3,” where BTS’s rap line sounded like they actually had something to prove. But then RM unleashes a drawn-out “hahahahahahaha” that arrives with such overly calculated spontaneity that when it loops back around, it feels completely lifeless. The difference between the “Cypher” days and now is that their menacing sound used to be earned through sheer conviction of their presence, not openly constructed sound effects. The knife sounds clatter around as if the prop department had a budget surplus. It all feels trite. Yes, we get it, you’re trying to sound edgy — “villain era,” sword noises, evil cackling — but it gets to a point where it just becomes nonsensical to listen to.
The back half of the album softens into familiar pop territory, but with mixed results. “Like Animals” reaches for the emotional heights of their 2017 hit “Spring Day” and finds only the foothills. The vocals are somewhat accomplished, but also emotionless, accompanied by a plain instrumental. “Into the Sun” throws a curveball. Resembling a live studio jam with its layered guitar strums and warm vibratos, it is fascinating like no other song on the album. But because it arrives at track 14, an hour after the record has already spent all of its time playing it safe, it feels like a bold closing statement that was made entirely by accident. And that’s the real problem with many songs in the back half.
The album is not a spectacular failure, by any means. Song after song, such as “2.0” and “Swim,” makes the sensible, radio-friendly choice, the choice least likely to alienate anyone. But for a band that once built its identity on swinging wildly and occasionally missing, settling for “enough” feels like a defeat.
That’s not to say “Arirang” is a complete letdown. There are small moments that make you mourn its potential, such as the unique Vocoder vocals. Meanwhile, “They Don’t Know ‘Bout Us” opens like a lullaby from another decade. It’s soft and the kind of thing your parents might have had on in the background at home, before a hip-hop beatdrop arrives and reframes the entire energy — it shouldn’t work as well as it does. The chorus blooms with the kind of layered vocals that make you sit up straighter. “One More Night” is similarly disarming. It’s pure pop in the best sense, like cracking a fresh can of soda.
The tragedy of Arirang is that BTS clearly wanted to make something meaningful about Korean identity, but the album’s endless commercial polish keeps the group from achieving that goal. They’re caught between two worlds, but this time, they haven’t landed in either one.
Rating: 2 Viking helmets out of 5
