I vividly remember being in middle school when I listened to BTS for the first time. I was friends with these two girls who were obsessed with K-Pop, and BTS had just dropped their newest album, Wings. As an angsty middle schooler who wanted to think like the other kids, I declined. It was so unfamiliar to me, and the other kids wanted nothing to do with K-Pop. However, I decided to give it a chance, and what I heard was unlike anything I had ever heard before. They had a whole concept and story behind their album, and the music was so tight, so well-produced, and so unique compared to anything I had heard before. That was the moment it began to click, and that is the moment BTS became one of, if not, my favorite artists of all time.
With the Arirang tour making its first stop in Tampa soon, I wanted to do a deep dive into BTS, their career, and their discography as someone who has been an ARMY (their fandom name) for almost 10 years. Their rise to popularity is meteoric, and it is worth looking back to see how they got to where they are today.
First of all, BTS did not start as a pop group. Not at all, actually. BTS actually debuted as a hip-hop group in 2013 under a small company called BigHit, which is now the mega corporation known as HYBE. They consist of seven members: RM, Jin, Suga, J-Hope, Jimin, V, and Jungkook. There was a time almost 13 years ago when Jungkook was a rapper, RM was known as Rap Monster, and they all had the most insane haircuts you would ever see. However, they were a group of young artists making songs about being bulletproof, chasing their dreams as youth in Korea, and young love. “No More Dream” is, to me, a classic in K-Pop, with that beat and chorus that gets you hooked instantly. This continued with their successive title tracks “NO,” “Boy In Luv,” and “Danger,” all of which stuck to that hip-hop sound. Skool Luv Affair especially had some of their best B-sides to date, including my favorite BTS song of all time, “Tomorrow,” which is maybe one of the greatest songs ever recorded.
In 2015, there was a noticeable, yet highly welcomed, shift in their sound. ““The Most Beautiful Moment in Life” series was released throughout 2015, with Part 1, Part 2, and “Young Forever,” a combination of both parts with some new songs included. This represented a complete shift to a more K-pop sound, but also to a conceptually driven, story-based album series. BTS were telling stories of love, heartbreak, being young and trying to live through the tough times the world brings. This was when their popularity really began to skyrocket, with songs such as “Run”, “Butterfly”, “Save Me” and so much more becoming some of their defining songs, with songs such as “FIRE” and “Silver Spoon” really showing an evolution of their hiphop sound. This came to a head in Wings, one of the best albums I have ever heard. The storyline is so beautiful, and it has one of their most iconic title tracks to date in “Blood, Sweat, and Tears”. It had a sound and concept unlike anything out at the time, and has one of the most beautiful music videos I have ever seen. While BTS’ music videos have always been iconic, this took it to a whole other level.
The Love Yourself series was the moment BTS would officially see world domination. Her, Tear, and Answer, marked the moment when BTS became fully and truly K-Pop. “DNA” became an instant sensation. I remember the moment the music video came out, and I sobbed watching it the first time. If “Tomorrow” is my favorite BTS song, “Best of Me” is my second; it is such an emotionally powerful track. “Pied Piper” became one of their most popular b-sides of all time. Tear just continued that momentum, with “Fake Love” becoming an instant classic, and b-sides such as “Airplane pt 2” and “Anpanman” also became extremely popular b-sides. I truly believe Love Yourself: Tear especially is their best album, with not a single skip to be found. I always recommend this album to new ARMY because it really does show how talented and how beautiful BTS’ music is. Love Yourself: Answer was the moment BTS exploded in popularity, with “Idol” dropping and their tour becoming one of the biggest tours I personally had ever seen. “Boy With Luv” then dropped with Map of the Soul: Persona, which once again, cemented their exploding popularity.
Then COVID hit, and BTS did one of two things. The first was dropping Map of the Soul: 7, an extremely underrated album that deserves much more recognition. While they were going to go on their Map of the Soul tour and stop in Orlando, COVID unfortunately halted the whole tour. This was when BTS did something that brought a whole new generation of fans to them. They dropped the song “Dynamite,” a song fully in English about “lighting it up like dynamite”. The vibes were exactly what was needed during COVID, a happy-go-lucky song in the midst of the gloom, and it brought a whole new group of fans to BTS. From there, they dropped another underrated album a few months after, Be, an album that became an instant comfort album for me during COVID. “Butter”, “Permission to Dance”, and “Yet to Come” continued to bring more and more new fans to the group, with the group even getting nominated for Grammys for these songs, specifically “Dynamite” and “Butter”. Once that was over, each member went off to their mandatory military service, beginning a four-year hiatus where, while we got solo music from each of the members, we didn’t see them as 7 for 4 years.
That changed in 2026. Here we are in 2026, and Arirang, their first album as seven in four years, has dropped. It is a full return to their roots as a hip-hop group and their older sound, bringing 2013 BTS to a 2026 album. While it has seen some criticism, I truly do think this is their magnum opus, and the curation of this album is so beautifully done. Tampa welcomed BTS into Raymond James Stadium on April 25, 26, and 28, 2026, and I was so excited to see my favorite group live for the first time. I will be making a review of the Arirang tour soon, but in the meantime, I just want to conclude by saying that BTS is such an iconic group, and their discography is incredible and so diverse. There is something for everyone, and I hope this is a good introduction for anyone curious about BTS.