When thinking of the month of February, everyone’s first thoughts turn to the most “romantic” day of the year: Valentine’s Day. While people run around trying to buy last-minute flowers for their dates, or booking late night reservations, there seems to be a common theme throughout this holiday: the idea that love is only between two people. In recent years, this idea’s popularity, and a new possibility is making its way into the headlines: the idea that we should love ourselves first and foremost.
While everyone has their own opinions on the topic of self-love, my own journey of finding myself started on March 27th, 2018; coincidentally, the day I found one of my now favorite groups: BTS.
BTS is a Korean boy band consisting of seven members: RM, Jin, Suga, J-Hope, Jimin, V, and Jungkook. The K-pop septet debuted in 2013, with a rough hip-hop start, exploring the idea of teenage rebellion. Later in their career as idols, they expanded into ideas such as unrequited love, struggling to find one’s identity, and, recently, into exploring one’s self introspectively.
In 2017, the group released the first part of their Love Yourself trilogy, with the first album titled, Love Yourself: ‘Her’, which explored the idea of newfound love. The following year, the band released the latter two parts of the series with Love Yourself ‘Tear being released in May 2018 and Love Yourself ‘Answer’ released in August. With the series exploring all sides of love, ‘Tear’ explored the idea of bitter, toxic love, and realizing one’s worth outside of love, which I found was quite a breakthrough in the K-pop scene. In ‘Answer’, the group finalizes their thoughts on the concept of love, by turning the discussion inwards, stating we should love ourselves above all else.
With the release of ‘Tear’, the song “Magic Shop” resonated with me, even if I didn’t understand the lyrics at first. Within this song, the BTS members offer solace to their fans, saying “On the days where you don’t want to be yourself, let’s make a doorway inside your heart”, and thus begins the journey of self-love. I vividly remember staying up late, waiting for the album to drop, and when my phone reached this song, I shed tears from the first listen. BTS’s music definitely helped me realize that it’s alright to have “off” days, and you have to take care of yourself, even if the stress of finals feels like the weight of the world on your shoulders (we are all familiar with that feeling).
A few months later, BTS had another comeback, finalizing their trilogy with the release of Love Yourself ‘Answer’. While this album was a mix of brand new songs and repackaged songs from previous albums, this album explained that in order to truly love others, we must first love ourselves, as seen when Jin sings in “Epiphany”, “I’m the one I should love, in this world/ Shining, precious soul of mine”. As an introduction to the album, this perfectly sets the tone for the rest of the songs to fall into place. Another song that emphasizes the power behind loving oneself, is in the song ironically sharing the same title, “Answer: Love Myself”, in which the chorus states “You’ve shown me I have reasons/ I should love myself”. This album summarizes BTS’ journey as an optimistic farewell as well as my own journey with self-love and overcoming hardships. As the final note finishes on the last song, I’m grateful for finding a group like BTS that helped me help me appreciate the person I’ve become, and the person that I aim to be.