New BTS album ARIRANG drops ahead of comeback mega-gig

The new 14-track album has been billed as reflecting the maturing boy band’s Korean roots and identity. Read more at straitstimes.com.

SEOUL – K-pop megastars BTS released a new album on March 20 billed as reflecting the maturing boy band’s Korean roots and identity, as buzz built ahead of their open-air comeback concert in the heart of Seoul.

The gig on the night of March 21, which is expected to draw around 260,000 people, will be BTS’s first after a hiatus of almost four years while all seven members served compulsory military service. It comes ahead of an 82-date world tour.

“We gave deep thought to our identity – and how best to express ourselves authentically – across the entirety of our music and performances,” BTS member Jimin, 30, said ahead of the release of the group’s album, their fifth studio release.

“As an extension of that process, we also revisited the significance of our background as a group comprised entirely Korean members,” he said in a statement.

Beginning with Body To Body and ending with Into The Sun, the 14-track ARIRANG album takes its name from a folk song about longing and separation that is often dubbed South Korea’s unofficial national anthem.

An animated trailer appears to draw on the story of Korean students whose singing of the song US anthropologist Alice Fletcher recorded on a cylinder phonograph in Washington in 1896.