BTS may not choose to sing in English again despite the fact that “Dynamite”, their first song using the language, immediately skyrocketed to No 1.
Not long after they released “Dynamite”, the group had hits with “Butter” and “Permission to Dance”, for which they also ditched their mother tongue. But now, members of the K-pop outfit have reportedly said that not everyone was keen on the idea, despite the protests of Shin Young-Jae, the president of BTS’ label Big Hit Music.
“I think it’s a testament to the band’s strengths, the way they can come to a friendly resolution and be mindful of the company’s needs,” Shin Young-Jae told Billboard. But BTS member RM said of these comments that “there was no alternative,” while another member, Jin, said singing in the language felt unnatural. “The English I learned in class was so different from the English in the song, I had to erase everything in my head first.”
The band had never planned to sing in English, with RM saying in an interview with Entertainment Weekly in 2019: “If we sing suddenly in full English, and change all these other things, then that’s not BTS”. The BTS member insisted that the band should work to maintain its “outlier position,” adding: “I don’t think we could ever be part of the mainstream in the US, and I don’t want that either.”
Jin has also said that he does not want HYBE, the larger company that owns Big Hit Music, to control their career. When renewing their contract with the label in 2018, he said: “We ended up telling each other that because we worked so hard up to that point, let’s see how far we can go. I don’t know if I should say this, but (we said), ‘Screw the agency, screw everything. Let’s just put our faith in the members and the fans and start again.’”
