By Maria Eduarda Ribeiro Cavalcanti
Part 2 of a series of posts- you can check part 1 here.
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| "The Most Beautiful Moment In Life: Young Forever" © HYBE Ent. |
In "The Most Beautiful Moment In Life pt.1 and pt.2" BTS also offers us their perspective as young people in our modern society. The name pays homage to the synonymy normally associated with youth " the best moment in our life" moments that some may not have.
The weight of lost youth is too heavy to bear. In " Picture of Dorian Gray" Oscar Wilde writes for pages about the importance of youth and it's no less. In our youth, we are at our peak physically, fueled with energy. We are not our smartest or wisest version but we are at our happiest and anxious to live. But as time changes, youth has stopped being synonymous with happiness. Now it's a time full of insecurities, doubts, and pain. Even more than before. An entire generation of lost youth was painted beautifully in the two BTS albums that represent this era: The Most Beautiful Moment In Life pt.1 and pt.2.
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| The Most Beautiful Moment In Life: Young Forever" © HYBE Ent. |
The first visible change is the aesthetic. Instead of the heavy clothes with darker tones, they are now freer than before, with casual clothing and colorful hair. Their sound has also evolved from being hip-hop-based to a dreamy pop beat, very teen. And as we read the lyrics we also realize that BTS has mature, both emotionally and artistically.
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| The Most Beautiful Moment In Life: Young Forever" © HYBE Ent. |
They are still full of anger towards society and their injustice, as showed in the music "Silver Spoon/Baepsae", where the members mock the older generations for calling them "the generation that has given up" and "weak" when in truth it's just a matter of being easier for the older generations to grow up as their country was passing through an economic boom while the younger generations have to grow in a society which is in crises and lives in a hyper-competitive scenario. The lack of communication and open-mindedness between generations creates this childish fight where one humiliates the other. It's impossible to push your values and ideas in a society that constantly changes, what went right in your time may not work nowadays. BTS screams for a truce and asks for their seniors to take the silver spoons of their mouths and understand that we are trying our best but the world, unfortunately, did not give us a silver spoon when we were born. "How do you expect me to run with you when my legs are shorter?"
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| The Most Beautiful Moment In Life: Young Forever" © HYBE Ent. |
But during most of the albums, BTS shows us a more sentimental and understanding side of their personalities, the stop focusing on the exterior world to focus on the macro and micro self, that being, their external self, and internal self.
To me, the peak of the album is right at the beginning: the intros.
In the intro "The Most Beautiful Moment In Life", Suga takes the lead and transforms a rather simple moment of playing basketball into a reflection of his youth. He starts by describing a boy afraid of reality, and as he reveals to us that the boy is him, he starts to explain all the worries and insecurities that surround him. Youth doesn't end as you hit the majority, you are still broken and afraid way after school is over. But differently from the Suga from the 1st era, this Suga offers us a more mature perspective. He accepts that he is behind others, that he lost a part of his youth, and that he is still kind of stupid, a little insecure and confused a very melancholic, but he knows someday and somehow things are going to get better. He speaks from experience since he never hid his struggles with depression and anxiety.
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| The Most Beautiful Moment In Life: Young Forever" © HYBE Ent. |
The sunset mentioned in the song serves as a metaphor for his youth, he is starting to enjoy now and he wishes for this moment to last a little longer because he has lost so much of it, but he knows that eventually the night arrives and everything will be over, so he will try his best to make good memories and try not to let his negative emotions take over him. He ends the song by asking himself if he is happy or not, but he already knows the answer, fortunately, it's a positive one.
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| The Most Beautiful Moment In Life: Young Forever" © HYBE Ent. |
The intro of the second album "Nevermind" serves to affirm to us the ideas presented in the first, yet again Suga confirms that although he has changed in height and having more experience, he still as broken as his teenage self, but now he has learned to chase his dreams again and he will never stop running again. An idea is presented also in the title track "Run".
Although the title tracks and most of the b-sides have a bigger emphasis on romantic themes, some parts of both the lyrics and music videos and more focused on the message that the era tries to pass. And, is not love a big part of our lives?
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| The Most Beautiful Moment In Life: Young Forever" © HYBE Ent. |
Especially the young love, so intense and so fragile at the same time.
Themes very explored on the songs "I Need U", "Autumn Leaves", "House Of Cards", "Love Is Not Over" and "Hold Me Tight", maybe my favorite examples are the first three mentioned, as they so masterfully treat themes of the painful spectrum of love, the breakup.
It's with such artistic vein that BTS paints these subjects, and in "Autumn Leaves" they relate the inevitable end of a relationship with the orange fragile leaf of fall, this is BTS at their most sensible. The members see on that crumbled leaf pieces of their relationship, and they know that they don't have how to fix it although they wish for it. They know it will only be a matter of time for the world to go back for its usual green but that leaf that fell will never be whole again. Just like their relationship will no longer exist and that's why they beg for autumn to pass slowly and that one leaf never falls from the tree, so their relationship can also be saved.
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| The Most Beautiful Moment In Life: Young Forever" © HYBE Ent. |
Another metaphor used it's in "House Of Cards", the name already gives in that it's going to be about a house of cards, and as you guessed, the house of cards is extremely fragile and unstable. Just like their relation, it may collapse at any time. The chorus tells us that the house is on fire, but even though disaster it's on its way they still do not abandon the house, in a blind hope that maybe their love will work out somehow.
Feelings such as this of necessity and liability are exposed in "I Need U" and "Save Me" and so many other songs in the album, some already mentioned in the post. To BTS, young love it's intense, they don't just love the girl, they need her. The constant paradox of love and hate is brought to the surface, they hate the girl but they also love her. Paradoxes that would be answer years later by RM, a member of BTS, in his own solo song "Seoul" where he says "If love and hate are the same things, I hate you Seoul, I love you Seoul."
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| The Most Beautiful Moment In Life: Young Forever" © HYBE Ent. |
But youth it's not only made of insecurities and love. In "Fire" and "Dope" BTS teach us the value of having fun and making good memories. Youth may hurt but it should also be remembered as a good time and that's why we should live intensely and insanely, one day the time will come and our youth will have burned up completely and it will be stolen from our hands, and we will never have these moments again.
In "Young Forever" they focus equally on their micro and macro selves. They confess their on-stage insecurities, their mistakes and asked themselves if people are judging them harshly. But not even these negative feelings can match the euphoria of going in the stages, they were born for this and they are very aware of that. But it comes with a grain of melancholy because they know someday the stadium will be empty and they will sing their last song and it will be the end of it. The emptiness of the stadium drowns them and these waters are colds in contrast to the warmth of the happiness they feel on stage. BTS wishes these moments and their youth remained the same forever, these feelings of ecstasy may be warm in their memories and never leave them, even when inevitably their youth ends and with it their glory days as BTS.
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| The Most Beautiful Moment In Life: Young Forever" © HYBE Ent. |
From their first to their second era, BTS changed, they became wiser, their angst diminished and although they never forgot how to feel angry towards society, they are aware of the world around them and how big it is, and how worth it is to fight for this world. With "The Most Beautiful Moment In Life", BTS disagrees with the poets mentioned previously in the 1st paragraph of this post. Even when it seems lost, youth still shines and still is good, even for those who have suffered.
BTS youth is still going on, but they already said goodbye to this era, even though it was short-lived, it brought BTS the recognition they long deserved and prepared the 7 boys for a much brighter future.
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| The Most Beautiful Moment In Life: Young Forever" © HYBE Ent. |
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