K-Pop Boy Band BTS Most Popular in the World

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fountainhall

K-Pop Boy Band BTS Most Popular in the World

Post by fountainhall »

The K-Pop band BTS has shattered the record for most YouTube views in one 24-hour period with their new single "Boy With Luv". The previous record had been held by a Korean girl band with 56.7 million views. BTS' new record is 74.6 million views. They also broke the record for the fastest vdo to hit 100 million views. A week ago they appeared on "Saturday Night Live" in the USA. They also became the first K-Pop band to be presenters at this year's Grammy Awards ceremony. The band is unquestionably the most popular in the world.

"Boy With Luv" apparently pays homage to the classic Gene Kelly movie "Singing' in the Rain". Perhaps interestingly, the translation of the words forming the name BTS is "bullet proof boy scouts". Does that mean absolutely no-one can penetrate them? :o

https://variety.com/2019/digital/news/b ... 203188877/

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Photo: Mnet Music Awards December 2018
Jun

Re: K-Pop Boy Band BTS Most Popular in the World

Post by Jun »

They certainly look cute, even though they are somewhat overdressed. Not my kind of music though.
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Re: K-Pop Boy Band BTS Most Popular in the World

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Jun wrote: Sun Apr 21, 2019 2:54 pm They certainly look cute, even though they are somewhat overdressed. Not my kind of music though.

There music is not meant for you but rather young people.
"In the land of the blind the one eyed man is king"
Jun

Re: K-Pop Boy Band BTS Most Popular in the World

Post by Jun »

Undaunted wrote: Sun Apr 21, 2019 3:11 pmThere music is not meant for you but rather young people.
Probably correct. Even though I am still open to discovering new music, that does not cut it.

There seems to be some sexism is the dress code for Korean bands. Compare these screenshots for google searches on "Korean boy band" and "Korean girl band". The girls show a lot more flesh. The boys need to raise their game.


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fountainhall

Re: K-Pop Boy Band BTS Most Popular in the World

Post by fountainhall »

The group A.C.E. has a better gay fashion sense, I guess!

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Re: K-Pop Boy Band BTS Most Popular in the World

Post by Undaunted »

I think the guys in BTS look great! K POP is setting fashion trends all over Asia.
"In the land of the blind the one eyed man is king"
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Re: K-Pop Boy Band BTS Most Popular in the World

Post by windwalker »

They sure don't look like any Koreans that I have met; cosmetic surgery is wonderful.
fountainhall

Re: K-Pop Boy Band BTS Most Popular in the World

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BTS Delve into Jungian Analytic Psychology

The essence of the lyrics of many pop songs is often analysed extensively. I don't know when it started but The Beatles "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds" was soon regarded as a paean to LSD -

"Newspaper taxis appear on the shore
Waiting to take you away
Climb in the back with your head in the clouds
And you're gone"

But how many lyrics have delved considerably into Jungian analytic psychology? BTS new album due out this week is titled "Map of the Soul: Persona". This has been brought to the attention of 75 year old Dr Murray Stein of the Jung Institute of Evanston, Illinois.
It's not just the album title, though: BTS's lyrics delve into Jungian concepts of the psyche, ego and collective unconscious - with a particular focus on the idea of Persona.

"Persona is a reference to the theatre," explains Dr Stein. "It's the Latin word for the masks that actors wore on the stage - and we all put on masks, in a sense, when we go out into public.

"It's part of being a social animal: Our need to get along with other people, our need to be polite, our need to be part of a group.

"In some cultures this is more important than others, and I must say in the Asian cultures of Korea and Japan, where BTS originate, persona is an extremely important part of their lives.

"How you present yourself, how you address other people, how you locate yourself in the social world - as a younger brother, or a student, or a professor - all of this is really very prominent in their consciousness and their functioning as people in their society."

BTS plunge straight into this concept on Map of the Soul's opening track.

"'Who am I?' is the question I've had all my life / And I'll probably never find the answer," raps Kim Nam-joon, discussing how praise for his on-stage persona stops him addressing his flaws and getting to know his true self.
Jung was the founding father of analytic psychology who proposed and developed the concepts of extravert and introvert personalities, and the power of the unconscious. Dr. Stein's studies were condensed into a book titled "Jung's Map of the Soul". When told about BTS' upcoming album, he had to look up who BTS were! His reaction to the new album? "I was floored!"
Dr Stein recognises the band's struggle to balance their public and private life as "the persona trap" - a condition that can trigger serious psychological problems.

"It's a very important topic because young people who find their personas inadequate, or feel like they're not fitting in, are very vulnerable to mobbing (bullying) or to suicidal acts - so I think BTS addressing that is very timely and important for their audience."

The band continue to grapple with these ideas of identity throughout Map of the Soul: Persona.

Mikrokosmos talks about deriving self-worth from within; while Jamais Vu looks at our tendency to repeat the same mistakes over and over again.

Dr Stein explores the lyrics in-depth in a recent episode of the Speaking Of Jung podcast *, where he explains how Map of the Soul is an album full of "longing and struggling for authenticity" that resolves on the final track, Dionysus, with the band "breaking out of persona traps" and reaching an awakening.
BTS have a habit of issuing albums in trilogies. So another two based on Jungian theory may be in the works.

https://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-47965524

* For anyone interested, Dr. Stein's hour-long podcast which talks about BTS can be heard here. It is episode 42 which you can download or hear by clicking on the link in the middle of the article.

https://speakingofjung.com/podcast/2019 ... f-the-soul
I was quite impressed with Kim Nam-joon, RM as he’s called — I guess he’s the leader of the BTS group — when he spoke at the United Nations. What impressed me about that was that he kept the distinction, carefully, between who he was a boy growing up in a small village outside of Seoul, Korea and who he is publicly and famously now. You know, a star in the firmament of the entertainment world. If he were to identify with that role totally, he would lose contact with himself, with the boy he was, with the human being that he is. He would be ungrounded.
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BTS address the United Nations
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