Could BTS be the ‘Korean Beatles’? How the pop band’s lyrics are educating the next generation

BTS shouldn’t need to be anything but good-looking. Convention, mostly regressive, says that boy bands are loved exclusively by young girls, are commercial entities designed to sell tickets and T-shirts, and that aesthetics trample on any kind of substance.

But BTS, the leading K-pop music act and the first to cross over to Western pop-culture ubiquity, always wanted more. Formed by songwriter and producer Bang Si-hyuk, the band was born out of frustration with the unspoken rules of K-pop, which traditionally stressed military-like choreography, visual perfection and gloss.

Many of BTS’s strongest lyrics, however, are rooted in feelings of insecurity, anxiety and peer pressure. Such anguish has underpinned much of their material over the years, and continues to fuel their fanbase. In a rare balancing act for such a lucrative enterprise, BTS still have the sincerity of everyday people. Their new album, Map of the Soul: 7, released today, looks set to propel them only further.

Within minutes of the album’s release this morning, ARMY (the collective name for the group’s fandom) had already begun dissecting its messaging, along with the visuals of the new video for single On. A face tattoo sported by band member V, that reads “The Shadow Like Me”, continues a familiar BTS theme of finding temporary safety in darkness. The song 00:00 (Zero O’Clock), on the other hand, has been interpreted as a kind of emotional reset for the group, reflective of turning a page and putting past trauma to bed.

By appearing to dangle over a dark abyss in one “concept photo”, meanwhile, some fans have speculated that the band are confronting the perils of temptation. Another photo, which shows the group enjoying a Last Supper-style feast, could symbolise decadence or a temporary space between Heaven and Hell. Other theories have involved quoting the surrealist poet Guillaume Apollinaire, or referencing art by Anish Kapoor.

Such lofty theorising won’t come as a surprise to long-time observers of BTS, who have always embodied a thinking-person’s boy band. Their lyrics have regularly tangled with politics and social commentary. Much of the band’s local appeal, at least at first, stemmed from their status. BTS positioned themselves as underdogs, not only within the K-pop machine but also South Korean society. Class has been a recurring theme, as are generational inequality and the high expectations thrust upon young people today.

But there’s more to them than that. BTS, in truth, have less in common with Western pop groups than with expansive television series such as Lost or Westworld; they deal in vast mythologies built on storytelling, mysteries and Easter eggs. Still endlessly pored over by fans is something dubbed “The BTS Universe”, which amounts to a surreal, fantasy-world soap opera operating within the band’s music videos.

There are currently thousands of fansites and chat threads devoted to unravelling this series, which began as an extended music clip in 2015 and has come to encapsulate books, cartoons and a forthcoming TV show. At its heart is trauma that needs to be overcome, shared between fictional characters portrayed by the group. One is a time traveller mourning the death of his girlfriend, another is potentially dead himself, one is struggling with his mental health, and so on.

The series has become increasingly abstract with time, but continually centres on ideas of self-doubt and assumed personas. Icarus symbolism is strong, as are angel motifs and the idea of encroaching shadows that seem to colour creativity and joy. By adopting different characters and striking clear lines between the private and the public, BTS have been able to grapple with feelings previously off-limits to much of the K-pop industry.

It’s also had the effect of turning a significant proportion of BTS fans into miniature detectives. Each single release, photo shoot or promotional teaser is now scouted for clues or hidden messages, much as modern comic-book movies are.

In recent months the band have gone one further, launching a series of elaborate installations in locations including London, New York and Berlin that bring contemporary art to the public. It makes a lot of sense: the group are often framed in elaborate tableaux in their videos, inspired by paintings, or they’re glimpsed interacting with artworks.

The response to the installation project, called “Connect, BTS”, has been impressive. “The art world is relatively insular and self-serving,” the sculptor Sir Antony Gormley told The Guardian this month, “and these young guys come along with their millions of followers and offer a bridge for a whole new kind of audience – how could you refuse that?”

They’re similarly no stranger to a historic quote, be it from philosophers, artists or poets. New single Black Swan, an examination of the group’s relationship with art and creativity, opens with a line from the dancer Martha Graham. The band has also paid tribute to the likes of Ursula K Le Guin, Herman Hesse and Haruki Murakami in their lyrics, and are often asked in interviews to reveal what books they’ve been reading and the thinkers that have inspired their work. (When James R Doty’s memoir Into the Magic Shop was mentioned as an influence, it became a bestseller in South Korea.)

As ARMY will go to great pains to tell you, the BTS fandom is a diverse one – crossing ages, genders and sexualities. There are the young Brits singing along in perfect Korean, or the middle-aged fans having conversations with very different people living in different countries.

A significant majority, however, are young, and there’s something thrilling about the biggest pop group in the world investing such resources in art, literature and education. Introducing art to the mix, and delivering to fans expressions of creativity typically kept out of reach, is worthy of considerable applause.

Even more so, given that BTS don’t need to do any of this. If the history of boy bands tells us anything, it’s that empowering lyrics, pretty faces and occasional appearances in the gossip pages are enough to earn a legacy. BTS already break records and ratchet up Spotify streams, yet there’s still ambition there, and a drive to keep being more interesting than many bands that have come before.

Last year they dismissed claims of being “the Korean Beatles” – but they certainly have similar DNA.