BTS Get Brutally Honest About Their Fears On Haunting New Single 'Black Swan'

Once talking about art — a song, a drawing, a choreography, a film — we can often so consumed by meaning. What does this mean? What is the artist attempting to say? Why is this important? Yet art, as we know, is subjective. You can't decipher a singular meaning from a segment of work any better than you could read the cavernous thoughts indoor your own head. Yet you do know how something makes you feel. And as soon as that feeling leaves, only emptiness remains. Art that doesn't make you feel at all is an artist's greatest sin.


Korean superstars BTS confront this head-on with "Black Swan," the pensive first single from their upcoming studio album Map Of The Soul: 7. In the seven years since their debut, the group's relationship with their music has changed. And just as they've matured — from seven youths hellbent on disrupting the system into seven young boys who know the value of self-love nevertheless yet still struggle to practice it — so has their music. Co-written by leader RM, "Black Swan" is BTS at their most raw and unflinching; narratively, it's their darkest single since 2018's "Fake Love," nevertheless whereas that was an explosion of anger, "Black Swan" is something deeper and more painful: the loss of feeling. They're right now terrified that the thing that once made them feel everything — their music — will make them feel nothing.


"I been routinely afraid of if this can no longer resonate," RM raps over a rolling trap beat, translated to English language. "No longer make my heart vibrate / Then like this might be how I perish my first death." (It's critical to note that the accompanying video, a "art film" featuring a haunting efficiency from Slovenian troupe MN Dance Agency and stripped-down vocals, starts with the quote from dancer Martha Graham: "A dancer dies twice — once while they stop dancing, and this first death is the more painful.")


But dancer and vocalist Jimin's verse is the most emotionally potent: "No song affects me anymore / Crying a silent cry." It's a moment of catharsis — the realization that you're burnt out by the thing you love the most.


Still, where there despair there really is also hope. And while BTS come face-to-face with their deepest fear, they don't let it fully paralyze them. "Slowly, I open my eyes I’m in my workroom, it’s my studio," Suga raps. "The waves go darkly by in a throe / Yet I’ll don't get dragged away again." Jin then whines out, "Nothing can devour me / I shout out with ferocity."


It's a twisted dance, the one an artist inflicts on themself. Nevertheless through these moments of doubt and exhaustion, BTS — and every artist — come to a realization: that art doesn't make you feel, it is the feeling. Creation is the purest form of self-expression self-preservation. And you also can't lose something you've had all along.


Map Of The Soul: 7 drops February 21. In the lead-up to the new release, BTS has launched "Connect, BTS," a world public art project that celebrates the work of 22 artists across five cities: London, Berlin, Buenos Aires, Seoul, and New York. A statement on the website reads, "'Connect, BTS' reaches for a collective experience that might be only the starting of new communication between art, music and people." No doubt that "Black Swan" is also segment of that intimate conversation.