I first became an ARMY back in early 2017. There was a saying that when you need BTS the most, that’s when you’ll find them. Unfortunately, I did very much need them because I ended up losing both of my grandparents later in the year. Anyways, I feel like I’ve been in the fandom long enough to create an opinion on each era. I will be using this era breakdown chart, where it clumps albums from the same era together. So here are my favorite BTS eras in order!
Love Yourself
The Love Yourself era was my first ever comeback! Everything was so crazy and hectic but super fun. The era consisted of three “Love Yourself” albums: Her, Tear, and Answer. With this era, BTS focused on teaching ARMY how to love ourselves, and it really helped. My favorite song from the entire era would probably be “Best of Me”. The song talks about how this special person helps you feel so special and confident, and with their love, they are able to see the best version of yourself. But this era also had Jin’s solo song, “Epiphany”. And this might be super biased since Jin is my bias, but that’s my favorite solo song.
Wings
The world was still in the Wings era when I first joined the fandom and everything felt right. I joined about a month or two after the “Not Today” music video was released, and I immediately fell in love with the energy that the boys brought. The Wings album had all of their solo songs so it was easy to listen to each and learn about them through their individual songs. My favorite song from this era is definitely “A Supplementary Story: You Never Walk Alone”. The song made me feel like I was with them during one of the hardest times of my life.
Youth Trilogy
This entire trilogy hurt!! Watching the “I need u + prologue + young forever” epilogue was confusing at first, but when you find yourself down the rabbit hole of the trilogy theories, you might cry when you find out what each member’s story is about. This era represented the coming of age era and showed the struggles of growing up. This might be very biased again, but this era stays on the top of my list after every comeback because “Fire” was the song that got me into BTS. It is such a fast-paced song (which I love) and I love fire (I didn’t know at the time but I’m a triple fire sign). I will forever be grateful for this era for getting me into BTS.
Map of the Soul
The Map of the Soul era was when I was slowly starting to get very busy and my mental health was slowly plummeting. But I still remember when Map of the Soul: Persona was released and I fell in love with Mikrokosmos. A song about being stars in the pitch black sky and shining so bright. That was how I would’ve described falling for the perfect person as.
School Trilogy
This era was their original Hip Hop era and thus the beginning of BTS’s journey. Every song was an absolute banger, and although Hip Hop wouldn’t have been my first choice of music at the time, I definitely enjoyed listening to their songs. My favorite song from this era would be “2nd Grade”. They wrote this song because they received a lot of hate when they were rookies, and some of the hate was from their senior groups. But in the song, they refer to themselves as “sophomores”, hence “2nd grade”, to show that they are now getting older and that they’ll be just as good as their seniors, or even better.
Butter
This era is the current era that we are in. I really enjoy the English songs because they are really catchy, and I can avoid the awkward looks from people when I play K-Pop since they can now understand the lyrics. I’m also very grateful that this era has caught the attention of a lot of Westerners and their popularity is now bigger than ever! But the older eras do hold a special place in my heart.
BE
Honestly, I was not here during this era. I was caught up in life and was extremely stressed, mainly due to the pandemic. Ironically enough, BTS dropped this album to share with ARMY how they are feeling during the pandemic too. But because I was on my ARMY hiatus and wasn’t active in the fandom, I had to place this era on the bottom.