INTERVIEW

RM: “I hope I’m on my way somewhere”

BTS Butter album release interview
2021.07.30
There are two gears in his life that RM shifts between: when he has to pick up
speed as the leader of a worldwide hit-making group, and when he makes his way back
home and slowly cracks open some artist’s catalogue. Let’s take a look at the time
in between, at the young artist’s journey to seek out his own canvas.

Do you still work out? Your stature looks very different.

RM: It’s been around one year? Since I started doing it four times a week without
fail. It’s like my lifeline. (laughs) Since, if you exercise, your body gradually
improves. I like to feel like I’m doing something and getting better. If you look
at other people posting their progress, you can see their bodies change
dramatically, but I’m not very strict about my diet, so it’s not like that for me.
(laughs) Still, I can feel my frame changing bit by bit.

I saw in the “ARMY Corner Store” video uploaded to YouTube for the 2021 FESTA
celebration of your eighth anniversary that your life is focused on doing work and
making appearances these days. Has following that repetitive routine led to any
changes in your life?
RM: My daily routine has become very clear-cut. Now that it’s been exactly a year
since I started doing this mid-last year, I kind of think, So is this how people
live? I have to go to work and come home, then there’s things I need to do there,
and things I have to keep up with like exercise. And same for checking out
exhibits. And so I thought my nature itself has changed a lot over the course of a
year, but I don’t know whether it’s good for me as a creator.

Why’s that?
RM: There was so much that happened with BTS, but with the current situation,
sometimes it felt like those things were just things happening on my phone. When
I’m listening to other music or watching something I’ll sometimes think about how I
would do it, but my life is what it is right now, so I can only draw on things from
my own life.

In that case, how did it feel to keep up the energy for your Grammys performance
and for everything related to “Butter”?
RM: I was really happy that we added one more thing to our list of accomplishments.
I think our team really needed the work itself. It made me realize we still have
things left to achieve. And I want to thank ARMY above all others for making all of
this possible. I’m Korean, so I’m no stranger to finding joy in accomplishment.
(laughs) It was really satisfying and nice. It would’ve been better if we got a
Grammy, but so what if we didn’t? In the end, getting it means you have one more
trophy at home, and after that your daily routine repeats.

How was writing the lyrics for “Butter”? Your performance with SUGA works to kick
the energy of the second half of the song up a notch, but I also think, strikes a
balance to improve the song as a whole. Your short rap feels like a fusion of
American pop and BTS’s distinctive style.
RM: That’s the part I spent the most time on. Even though the song’s in English, I
thought we should make it feel like our own, so we kept the original but put a
little of our own flavor in at the end.

I felt that fine-tuning turned out well. It’s short, but I think it would’ve been a
very different song without that part.
RM: It’d feel like something’s missing if it weren’t there, right? (laughs) I felt
like we absolutely had to have it in there. There’s something different about us
from American pop stars. Our DNA is different.
How was making “Permission to Dance”? You can count on one hand how many BTS songs
have a message as positive as in that song.
RM: Right. They talked about putting some rap in “Permission to Dance” while we
were working on it, but we said it would never work. I have more fun when I’m
singing and dancing than anything else. I think this song was one of the few times
that I felt like I was just having fun while singing and dancing on it. It feels
amazing to give into the song with your whole body and just laugh instead of
thinking about it too much. I think that’s the power of the song. I wasn’t stressed
preparing for it like I was with “Butter.” When it came to “Butter,” I had to think
about what we should show off and how I could do that. I’m always careful not to be
a problem within the group dynamic. But I didn’t really have to worry about that
with “Permission to Dance.” Honestly, I felt like I only needed to add just a dash
of the enjoyment I felt.

After the unimaginable continued success of “Dynamite” and “Butter,” this song
feels a little more laid back.
RM: Oh, this is really fun. Just like that. And there’s a line in the lyrics that
says, “We don’t need to worry / ’Cause when we fall we know how to land.” The
message is universal, but you could say it’s also something BTS has been saying all
along.

You talked about “2! 3!” on “ARMY’s Corner Store,” saying, “2015 to 2017 was a
tough time for us and our fans.” Were you able to say that because you ended up
knowing how to “land”?
RM: What I do can be thought of as a sort of business—a person-to-person kind of
business. That’s why I want to be as honest with ARMY as I can be, almost
obsessively so. They say it can’t happen in the world of K-pop, and there’s an
aspect of good faith to that because I don’t want to worry the fans, but I want to
tell them about the things we’ve been through as much as I can. Another reason I
talked about those times was that I wanted to pay off my debts to a lot of people.
To pass over this story like it never happened would be like saying “that’s not
us.” And because it’s in the past. I think that, since it’s in the past, and since
we’re doing all right now, and since those days were clearly necessary, I think we
have to be able to talk about just how difficult a time that was.

It feels like that was something you wanted to convey to your fans, too.
RM: Sometimes we’re artists whose souls are full to our very cores, sometimes we’re
meticulous office workers, and sometimes we’re part of the hyper-patriotic “do-you-
know club.” We’re many things all at once—that’s why we talked about persona and
ego. It’s sort of painful and lonely to want to talk about these things to this
extent, but I guess that’s who I am. I want to express myself in full.

Would you say that the song “Bicycle,” released during 2021 FESTA, shows who you
are as a person? You talked about your everyday emotions using a bicycle as a
metaphor.
RM: I’ve faced a lot of pressure while making music throughout my life to move
ahead a little more or make music that stands out better, from minor things like my
rap technique to bigger things like trends. I wanted to be good at rapping and I
wanted some recognition. In that sense, you could say “Bicycle” is somewhat
defiant. I wanted to release a song to celebrate FESTA, but the subject matter is
really important to me specifically. Bicycles hold an important place in my heart,
so that’s just what I ended up writing about. The song’s something like a compass,
telling me where I’m at right now, I feel like. My present-day life is the input,
so that was going to end up being the output one way or another.

There’s a part in the lyrics where you say, “When you’re happy, it makes you sad.”
I imagined you riding your bike and contemplating your life.
RM: My feelings kind of go to extremes whenever I ride my bike. My personality used
to run to both extremes sometimes, but it also comes back to me again on its own
when I ride a bike. When I ride my bike, I’m free from the pressure of the things
I’m supposed to feel and think about. I don’t care if people recognize me, and
that’s the closest I get to feeling free, mentally and physically—when I’m riding
fast and feeling like I’m up on a cloud.

In my case, there’s a big bookstore in my neighborhood, and there’s times when I’ll
walk all the way there by myself and think over what kind of person I am while
choosing which books to buy. Somehow it makes me think of that.
RM: I read a book by Lee Seok Won from Sister’s Barbershop recently. He was
contemplating why he likes bookstores. He remembered how not only is it noisy, but
everybody’s staring at their books and not looking at anyone else, and there’s a
kind of freedom in that. I really sympathize with that. So I make time to go to the
bookstore and spend a little more time reading.

I end up talking to myself just by looking at all the book covers at the store. In
a way, it’s contemplation on contemplation, but it seems to be an especially
necessary time for you.
RM: I think I’d be pretty bored without it, since I’ve been too sheltered lately.
Read! Work out! Go to galleries! Ride my bike! (laughs)

So writing “Bicycle” was an experience that you had to go through anyways, even
though we’re not sure where you’ve come from, where you’re at now, or where you’re
headed to.
RM: Exactly. It was exactly that kind of milestone of a song for me, and I think I
kept that in mind to some degree when I released it for FESTA. I agreed to do
something at first, but then I asked myself what I should do and that came to mind
immediately: Let’s just do something about bikes.

Even the music has deep connections to all the music you’ve ever listened to, from
folk to the hip hop and Korean indie scenes.
RM: You’re right. I drew on music from the people who’ve had an impact on my life—
artists I’ve been listening to lately, like Elliott Smith and Jeff Buckley, and
groups like KIRINJI.

It’s interesting how the end result is a song whose style is difficult to attribute
to any one era. Neither the sentiment nor the sound is retro, nor do they reflect
current trends.
RM: I, and our team, are, you could say, at the forefront of pop, so after I made
“Bicycle” we wondered whether we should go with it. But that’s actually why I ended
up doing it this way instead. Because that’s what my life looks like right now.
It’s good for me just to get to know myself this way, but I don’t want to trap
myself, either. On the other hand, I’m interested in artists from all around the
world who are totally different from me. There’s even people who make music on a
whim and who don’t care about the genre whose music I’m interested in now. It’s—how
should I say this? Anyway, I’m at some place in my life, I guess. (laughs)

Last year, in an interview with Weverse Magazine, you said, “I’m just 27 in Korean
age.” I think “Bicycle” might be your own response to that statement—the song of
someone who grew up listening to Drake in Korea.
RM: You got it. Exactly. Drake’s the one who made me think I could sing, too, back
in 2009 (laughs) and that’s what brought me all the way here. In the past I wanted
to do something just like Drake—he influences Western music as the musical style
he’s after changes. But because I don’t live my life the way they do, I can’t make
the exact same music as them.

And for that reason, I figured it’s the kind of song that would end up on the
playlists of people like you, as it has a style that can express that sort of
person’s overall feelings more than any specific genre can.
RM: That’s how it usually turns out eventually. I sometimes think this way: Can’t I
put “Bicycle” on the same mixtape as some songs that are made totally off the cuff,
like I just talked about? I wish I had that kind of flare or image when I made
songs, but nowadays I’m really slow at making them. I can’t think of lyrics as well
as I used to, either. I have more avenues to absorb new things, and yet the output
coming from inside of me is ridiculously limited, and extremely slow. They say
there’s plenty of stories of artists from the past going up to their canvas and
being unable to pick up their brush and screaming, “Who am I?” That’s sort of how
I’m feeling. I’ve been working on a mixtape since 2019, but I haven’t finished that
many songs.

Well, maybe it’s because the direction you want to take with your lyrics has
changed. That is, that you’re trying to express the ideas you’ve built up inside
yourself, instead of your experiences or social commentary.
RM: That’s why I can’t write lyrics as fast as I used to. I don’t know what I’m
doing, so I have no choice but to just write first. And that’s why I think Yoongi
is such an amazing person. I mean, how does he make that many songs, and so well?
Maybe it’s because he takes a producer’s point of view, but I can’t do that. Not
only am I jealous, but I also think the starting point when I’m making music has to
be the lyrics. I just—I hope I’m on my way somewhere. But that’s how I always feel
(laughs) so when I listen to my stuff from two years ago now, it already sounds
old.

You’re featured on eAeon’s “Don’t,” which boasts impressive lyrics as well—lyrics

that start with the color of waves and end with an image of pebbles. It seem like
it’s your interest in art that allows you to keep developing such visual images.
RM: I can’t say for sure, but it’s likely a strong reflection. I had seen an
article where an artist said that pebbles are the perfect form: a rock worn down
over and over in a series of incidents and coincidences, made into some round shape
in the end. It said the artist collected pebbles for a long time, saying pebbles
are so perfectly smooth without any edges, although they’re neither perfect circles
nor ovals. Also, I absolutely love Lee Qoede. I saw a quote in a book about his
art: “Let’s become entangled. Let us stand united. Let’s not argue. And let’s
become pebbles in the new leadership narrative of my country.” He wrote it in a
letter while he was working during the country’s liberation period. I thought it
was, what, a very modern way to express things, for someone who lived through the
chaotic political circumstances of 1948 to want to become a pebble. I felt like his
words still have meaning—like they live on. I guess those two artists’ use of the
word “pebble” made a very lasting impression on me.

I was impressed how the relatively large waves give way to the image of small
pebbles, and then you end the flow with lyrics like, “Don’t take that name away,
the one only you know,” and “I hate being just any wildflower,” about a small
presence that is defined by others.
RM: Yes, it was fun. I once thought how people’s relationships are like crashing
waves, and I think that mixed together with my thoughts about pebbles and it came
out all at once. There’s a sentence I wrote down a long time ago while I was
thinking by the sea. I thought, Is there any color in the waves? When people talk
about waves crashing in, what waves are they talking about? The blue waves, or the
white waves? I went completely overboard with emotion when I was thinking that
(laughs) but again, that’s just me. So I wrote this one sentence—“I wonder what
color the waves are”—and listened to the music eAeon gave me, and it sounded to me
like fog rolling over the ocean. It was really easy to start writing the lyrics
since the sensory perception of that sentence overlapped with what he gave me. It
was a so-called “aha moment” (laughs) and whenever that happens, the lyrics come
out of me all at once. It only took about an hour and a half to write the lyrics. I
thought of more lyrics later on, but I ended up sticking with the first ones.

What are you looking for that you’re thinking that much?
RM: In the end, it’s really important for me to ask about who I am, and I want to
express who I found myself out to be, but I’m having a really difficult time
because I don’t know if what I found is right. So for now, “Bicycle” is also the
result of collecting the selves I found who I think represent the best of me. Even
while making a song like “Bicycle,” I have to convey—how do I put this? It’s just
about me, this kid from outside the big city—an essence that I can’t get rid of, I
guess. I can’t let go of the kid who used to perform in Hongdae. It’s not really
something I want to express or hold onto; it’s my essence, so I don’t really have a
choice. (laughs)

You’ll just ride your bike, anyhow.

RM: Exactly. Exactly that. (laughs)