BTS
Map Of The Soul:Persona

The k-pop is, for the uninitiated, the Asian artistic movement that most draws from Western culture, specifically from the pop music aesthetic of the '90s that fueled the success of boybands, girlbands, and similar groups. Among its audience, it makes no distinctions of gender, age, or sexual orientation. K-pop is the armageddon.

Strongly devoted to visual arts and hip-hop subculture in general, it has cross-pollinated and taken root even in our homes for quite some time, generating some of the most massive and loyal fandoms in the world, capable of documenting every move, every appearance of its performers with disarming precision, in a climate of collective hysteria that shows no sign of decreasing and, on the contrary, continues to recruit an ever-increasing number of fans ready to go wild for a front-row spot at the numerous style exercises scattered across venues in Europe, waiting for the savviest of local organizers to provide the arena in which to plant yet another flag on the path to conquering the universe.

Among the major protagonists of this k-pop season, we find the BTS, a boyband assembled by the outsider of South Korean scouting agencies. (I'll leave it to those interested to research "agencies," "idols," and the whole bizarre corollary that makes up the star system of the land of kimchi) bringing together 7 young men whose talents range from modern dance to singing, even to rap.

"Who cares about them?" some might say.
Now, here are some of the staggering numbers recorded by the Seoul combo: since debuting in 2013 to date, the BTS have sold something like 10 million records only in their native land, matched the Beatles' impressive feat of scoring three number one spots on the "Billboard 200" in one year, set the record for the most albums sold worldwide in 2018 (just behind Drake), achieved the status of the most globally "tweeted" celebrity in 2018, and released around 10 studio works in such a short period of activity.
All this just to give an idea of the proportions of their international success, leaving aside the impact that the boyband has had on the new generations of a relatively young country (independence from Japan dates back to 1945) but at the same time strongly conservative and in a historically delicate geopolitical position like South Korea.

"Map Of The Soul:Persona" is the work that has propelled them into double digits, published on April 12, 2019, and becoming in record time the best-selling album in their country (in case you were wondering, in Italy the sales brought the record to a maximum fifth position on the charts).
Calling it an EP, defining it as an album, seems reductive, even wrong: like all BTS productions, this also has a specific concept on which the artwork, videoclips, and tracks in the tracklist are based.
In this case, judging by the title, the work finds its magnetic north in the volume titled "Jung's Map Of The Soul:An Introduction," a summary of the research conducted by Dr. Murray Stein on the work of Carl Jung, a Swiss psychiatrist and founder of analytical psychology, first published in 1998.

Analytical psychology, therefore. Nothing could be more providential to understand the reasons for the success of a cultural, as well as musical, phenomenon, as unusual in its approach as it is cacophonous in its sound (Korean language, listening to believe it, is not as familiar as Lando Fiorini's Roman dialect).

The first point in favor of the septet is undoubtedly the massive production: from the pre-release videos aimed at increasing the hype, to the numerous versions of the album released on the market (which will contribute in some measure to raising sales quotas thanks to randomly packaged bundles to fuel the spasmodic collecting of the most hardcore fans), to the actual music; composed, studied, and programmed in the tracklist so as not to waste a single second of the overall runtime, to have not a single note out of place, not to present a single sound not perfectly in focus, in respect of the most stereotypical search for Asian perfection.

Representative in this sense is the opener "Intro: Persona", a balanced mix of Transplants-style rapcore and rocking guitars taken directly from the Led Zeppelin of "Whole Lotta Love."
Because it doesn't matter in what sequence you hit the point and the target, what counts is hitting something somehow.
Mission accomplished?

Not yet, it's the next track "Boy With Luv" that properly winks at the vast sea of U.S. hip-hop and officially ends the South Korean musical embargo, hybridizing funky and midtempo electro-dancehall before succumbing to the most predictable of rap bridges.

"Mikrokosmos" resembles one of those common pop-rock ballads we are all sadly accustomed to, at least until the refrain explodes in the purest expression of collaboration and synergy (the "ooh-ooh" chorus helps markedly with the impression), leaving one to imagine the spectacle of sounds, lights, and images that have already made BTS's live shows legendary worldwide.
A piece where genuine quality emerges that the first two tracks did not even hint at and that has the extraordinary ability to make otherwise repellent elements such as the drum machine and spoken-word truly functional.

However, alas, it's a flash in the pan: "Make It Right," "HOME" and "Jamais Vu" flatten the attention curve to the point of making the listening experience horizontal.
The credit, sorry, the discredit, is due to a rather implausible duality between the sugary whimpers of the vocalists and the grumbling of the 3 rappers in the lineup, along with a whole series of stylistic solutions that are more than easy listening, even banal.

"Dionysus" is tasked with picking up the pieces and closing this seven-track admirably with a crossover where typically underground-sourced dirty and harsh sounds blend with rock elements and references to none other than reggaeton.
Even in this case, the electronics are an essential plus for the piece's framework, the best of the lot.

What remains to be saved, beyond any mere aesthetic question, is the content of the songs, their intent sometimes inspirational ("Mykrokosmos"), sometimes symbolically self-referential ("Make It Right"):

"Oh, I can make it all better
I, who have become a hero in this world
The deafening cheers
And the golden trophies and microphones in my hand
All day, everywhere
But all of this is to touch you
This is the answer to my journey
I sing to find you
Baby, for you."

The emotional load of current themes like dependency (see the closing track) and the exposure at all costs that we all undergo more or less consciously ("Jamais Vu," "HOME"), although treated effectively and credibly, impart insufficient momentum to an album centered only in intentions on a pretentious attempt to map the human soul.
And this is the big contradiction of the EP.
Do not misunderstand, the album strikes from the first listen as an unassailable monolith from any side for quality and production level, it wouldn't disgrace on heavy rotation even in the Belpaese.
Yet, under that "all tastes plus one" candy packaging, something seems not to add up: no matter how frequent the references to psychoanalysis or even Greek mythology, "Map Of The Soul:Persona" falls completely short of its premises, returning to us at 26:05 the impression of facing a boyband stuck between a consuming expressive ambition and the allure of a record market more concerned with creating clones at every latitude than highlighting the peculiar elements of each of the different cultures around the world.

This is why it is difficult, too difficult, to trace in this work even one of the reasons that led these very BTS to become a phenomenon of global scale.

Now, judging the value of a band based on a product expressly conceived to once and for all break the resistance of a closed and competitive music market like the U.S.A, and also to place the merchandise on as many shelves as possible, would be unfair, especially considering that in this, like in any other k-pop project, the music is only one of the expressive forms that constitute the package.

But there it is, the album itself leaves little room for judgments on anything other than music. To those braver than the undersigned, the task of embarking on a journey towards the roots of BTS's sound and authenticity of message.