I went and saw Burn the Stage yesterday, and it was soooo good! There were a couple of girls that were trying to act like we were at a concert by trying to get everyone to scream and do fanchants, which was completely disrespectful to all the other moviegoers at the theater. Thankfully the vast majority of the audience was mature enough to stay quiet, other than laughing and ‘awww’ing at different points of the movie. Even though the documentary follows the Wings tour, just like the YouTube series did, it was still 90% made up of completely new content that hadn’t been seen before. We saw Namjoon being treated for his near stress fracture, Jin exercising, Yoongi drinking an entire bottle of wine by himself, and so much more. Even though my friends and I had to drive all the way to Jonesboro to see it, it was so worth it!
If you haven’t seen any of Burn the Stage yet, here is the first episode of the YouTube series, which is free. If you would like to watch the rest of it, you’ll have to subscribe to YouTube Premium.
The concert was absolutely amazing!! As you can see above, there is a slideshow with some pictures taken by my friend, Erin, who came with me to the concert, so be sure to look through those after reading this post!
We got to the venue around 2:30 and there were already a ton of people there, but not as many as we had been expecting since people tend to camp out for their concerts, like, three days in advance. The first thing we did was buy the new concert lightsticks and the staff synced them to our seats so that they would change colors along with everyone else’s based on what song they were performing at the time. After spending about 30 minutes just walking around the merchandise area, we went inside to hang out where it was cooler and went straight to a little cafe to get drinks and snacks. I was sitting there drinking my Sprite when my other friend that came along, Catie, started hitting me on the arm and telling me to be quiet and listen. We could hear the boys’ soundcheck! So we gathered up all of our things and went to sit as close to the doors as we could so we could hear them. We heard them practice Fake Love twice, Mic Drop, DNA, Run, and The Truth Untold, and they sounded beautiful! I took some videos to remember the moment, so here’s one of them:
They finally had us line up around 4:45, separating us into 8 lines on the side of the venue we were on. My friends and I were first in line in our line because we didn’t hesitate to jump up and move to where the employee told us as soon as they said it was time to line up. While waiting in line, we got into a conversation with a girl and her dad behind us. We were trying to educate him about the group while he was telling us about how different concerts were ‘back in his day’.
They scanned our tickets around 5:30, and after a fight with the scanner because it was faulty and wasn’t wanting to scan our tickets, we finally made it inside the hall and to our seats. We were in section 303, row 9, seats 4 through 6, and we actually had a pretty great view of the boys. They spent the two and a half hours leading up to the concert playing their music videos and we were all screaming and singing along. I’m sure the boys could hear us backstage lol.
They did absolutely amazing with the dancing, singing, and rapping, and anyone who dares to accuse them of lip syncing has obviously never seen a performance of theirs, because it was all completely live.
Jimin messed up during The Truth Untold and looked so disappointed in himself and I feel so sad thinking about it because I know he went backstage and cried as soon as the song was over. I just wanna hug him and tell him that it’s okay and that he still did amazing.
The boys English has also improved so much since their last tour in America and I’m so proud of them.
I also can’t forget how my friends and I nearly died after seeing Jimin and Jungkook’s abs within 30 seconds of each other, both completely unexpected.
Basically the concert was amazing, so you should definitely check out the fancams from the night!
I don’t exactly have much to write for this week’s post. Probably because all I can think about is how in a week I will be going to Chicago with two of my friends to go see BTS live!! We’ve been making plans since we first got the tickets back in May (on the day my nephew, Oliver, was born), and the time is finally approaching!! We’ll be leaving Tuesday afternoon after my friend Catie (yes we have the same name) gets off work and driving straight through to Chicago, then the concert will be Wednesday, and we’ll come back Thursday. We’re all probably gonna die after seeing the boys’ live, but it will definitely be worth it. I’ll leave you with a few words of congratulations to BTS on their successful speech at the United Nations General Assembly today and make sure to watch them on Jimmy Fallon tomorrow night. And I also definitely recommend watching Bon Voyage season 3. If you can’t afford it on V Live, I’m sure you can find it somewhere on the internet, whether it be YouTube or other websites. I’ll link the teaser and preview episode (which are both free) below!
It all started with this video. After J-Hope tweeted this video with #IDOLCHALLENGE in the caption, the most recent dance challenge craze began. It spread even more after Jimin, Jungkook, and J-Hope posted a second dance challenge video with all three of them doing the challenge.
Thousands of people filmed themselves doing this challenge, tagging BTS in their tweets. Celebrities were even doing their own versions of the challenge, including fellow K-Pop star Zelo from BAP. It was even mentioned on The Ellen Show when Twitch did his version of the challenge.
Some of the videos showcased the talents of may people, while others were more for entertainment and comedic purposes.
The challenge spread so far that shortly before releasing the music video for the Idol remix featuring Nicki Minaj, BigHit, the company BTS is under, released a statement asking for permission from various participants for their permission to include their videos in a compilation to be added to the end of the music video.
Basically I didn’t know what to do this week, so my friend told me to talk about the dance challenge and include his version.
I’ve been thinking about what to do for this week’s blog post. Then I remembered that Namjoon’s 24th birthday is coming up, so I decided to do a little info post about our favorite genius leader.
Kim Namjoon was born in Ilsan, South Korea on September 12, 1994. He has two parents and a younger sister. He struggled from the beginning, as he did have a heart issue that was thankfully fixed by surgery when he was a teenager. He got into music when he was in elementary school, already writing his own songs by the age of 10. When he was in middle and high school, although he knew he loved music, he still wasn’t sure what he wanted to do with his life. Because of this, his parents told him to focus on his schooling so that he would have more options for his future. There is even an account of his mother destroying a microphone of his so that he would focus on his homework instead of his music. Focusing on his school ended up working in his favor, as his test scores placed him in the top 1% academically in South Korea, and he has even confirmed that he has an IQ of 148, although he gets very embarrassed and flustered when asked about it. By the age of 13, he knew that what he wanted to do was music, so he began to record and releases his songs online, even performing in an underground rap group under the name of Runch Randa. When he was 15, another Korean rapper by the name of Sleepy saw one of his underground performances and introduced him to Bang Sihyuk, the CEO of BigHit Entertainment. After hearing Namjoon’s rapping for himself, he immediately asked Namjoon to sign a contract to train at BigHit. To this day, Bang Sihyuk says that Namjoon’s rap skills were what made him want to create what is now BTS. To convince his parents to let him join the company, Namjoon sat down with his mother and told his mother that he could focus on his academics and be in the top thousand people in Korea, or he could pursue rap and become the number one rapper in Korea. Obviously, she wanted a son who was number one, so she allowed him to move out and begin training at BigHit. Of the original lineup to be in BTS, Namjoon is the only member remaining, hence why he is the leader of the group. During a rap training session, Namjoon referred to himself as the ‘rap monster’, which then became his stage name when BTS debuted. However, in September 2017, he officially changed his stage name to RM, which stands for Real Me, but he has said that people can interpret the name as whatever they want.
Just some fun facts about Namjoon:
He is completely fluent in English. He taught himself by watching the entire Friends series multiple times.
He is extremely clumsy and is often called ‘God of Destruction’. He once told a story that he opened a stall to use the bathroom and the door fell off. He has also hurt himself many times, ranging from spraining his fingers, and Jin’s, after hitting his hand against Jin’s during a dance practice to stubbing his toe in his hotel room and lifting the toenail enough that he was unable to perform at his concert that night.
I’m finally doing the review of the music video that I said I would do! Better late then never, right?
Okay, first I wanna talk about how great it is that the boys are doing an entire concept about loving yourself and being happy with and proud of who you are. Loving yourself is one of the hardest things a person can do, and we all know about the struggles each of the boys have faced from Jimin’s eating disorder to Yoongi’s anxiety and depression, so seeing them loving themselves is so great and I love it.
Now for the music video itself.
One thing that has caught a lot of people’s attention is how they’ve incorporated traditional Korean themes into the video. Part of the choreography mimics that of traditional Korean dance, they wear outfits that are similar to hanbok (traditional Korean clothing), they use the image of the tiger, which has been an important animal in South Korea, similar to the bald eagle with America, and even “얼쑤” (ulsoo), which they say multiple times during dance breaks throughout the song, is a chant that was used during traditional dances. Some people have said that this is a jab at all of the western ‘fans’ that have been demanding that BTS release an all English album. I must disagree with that. This message of this song is that haters can’t bring them down because they love who they are and what they are doing. While the people asking for an English album are culturally insensitive, they are not technically haters. I believe the incorporation of Korean staples is directed towards the people that are accusing them of forgetting their roots, the ones that are saying they’ve become too Americanized.
They mixed Korean elements with other cultural elements, such as EDM which is popular in America right now, and Hoseok said that some of the choreography was also inspired by African traditional dances, to show that they can branch out across the world while still being who they are, and that just because their music has become more similar to what you typically hear on American radios does not mean that they have forgotten who they are as Koreans.
Moving on from the serious stuff, this music video is one of my favorites from the editing, to the song itself, to how they obviously had fun while making this. I still laugh whenever Taehyung pops up randomly in his suspenders and glasses.
And I can’t forget about Jin leading the dance at one point. He has improved so much from when they first debuted.
Now before I go, I’m gonna leave you with a livestage of I’m Fine, because the choreography for this song is just…wow.
Hello! My name is Katie and I am heavily interested in K-Pop and Korean culture in general. I have to keep up with a blog for one of my classes this semester, so I thought why not choose a topic that makes me extremely happy! I’m not sure how interesting this blog will be, but hopefully someone will find it enjoyable. 🙂
Basically, I’ll just post random updates about K-Pop groups (probably mostly BTS, as they are my favorite). For sure, I will do a review of their new Idol music video soon, and in October I’ll be seeing them in concert, so I’ll definitely make a post about that experience. As for the rest of the weeks for the semester…I don’t know, probably whatever pops into my head at the time. For now, enjoy BTS’ new single!
In order to be successful, you have to fail too. -Kim Taehyung
have to fail too. -Kim Taehyung
The Inner Ramblings of a K-Pop Fan 