BTS Arirang — Seven Individuals Who Remembered How to Be a Group
The easiest thing BTS could have done with Arirang was play it safe. Four years away, a global fandom held in suspension, the largest comeback in K-pop history - the conditions were perfect for a polished, crowd-pleasing record that gave everyone exactly what they expected. Instead, they made something stranger, more personal, and considerably less comfortable. That's the first thing worth saying about this album before the tour kicks off in Goyang on April 9.
Arirang opens with "Body to Body," and within 30 seconds the album's thesis is clear. Diplo and Ryan Tedder build a percussive stadium anthem, RM raps with the assurance of someone who spent four years getting sharper, and then - at the very end - traditional Korean pansori slips in under the beat, the original folk song the album is named after bleeding through before fading out again. It's a quiet declaration: we are still this, no matter how globally we operate. For a group that built their entire career on refusing to dilute their Korean identity for Western markets, it's fitting that the comeback album's most significant moment lasts about 20 seconds and requires you to already know what you're listening to.
The first four tracks run like a freight train. "Hooligan" - El Guincho's layered percussion pulling the song sideways when you expect it to go straight - is the album's most aggressive moment and possibly its best. "Aliens," with Mike WiLL Made-It handling production, is the one track where the experimental instinct fully pays off: trap architecture, BTS rapping with something close to abandon, the kind of track that makes you wonder why they spent so much of their career making songs designed for radio playlists. "FYA" follows on a jersey club beat, and while it doesn't stick the way "Hooligan" does, it confirms that the group spent their solo years actually listening to music rather than just marketing themselves.
Then "2.0" arrives, and the album shows its first crack. Mike WiLL Made-It and V share production credits, and the result is strangely inert - the rhythm section feels like a mood board rather than a song, and for all of Jungkook's vocal control, the track doesn't land anywhere. It's not the only moment where Arirang loses momentum rather than building it.
"No. 29" - the interlude - is the album's structural hinge. It's just the tolling of King Seongdeok's sacred bell, South Korea's National Treasure No. 29, reverberating for nearly two minutes in silence. First listen, it reads as self-indulgent. Second listen, it feels like the album breathing before it changes gear. It earns them. Barely.
The back half is led by "Swim," the title track, and Kevin Parker's fingerprints are all over it - the reverb, the melodic spiral, the way it almost collapses into itself before pulling back. It's the closest thing to a conventional single on the album, which makes it the right choice for promotion without making it the album's best song. "Merry Go Round," also produced by Parker, is where his influence actually works best: disorienting in a satisfying way, the vocal line finally given room to show what four years of solo work did for each of them individually.
The back half loses discipline in places. "Like Animals" never finds a second gear. "One More Night" is pleasant without being memorable. Closer "Into the Sun" - V and Jimin both credited - opts for warmth over depth, a sunny finish that feels slightly underwritten for what's supposed to be the album's final word.
Arirang is a reunion album that knows it can't pretend nothing happened. The solo years gave each member a sharper identity, and RM - with writing credits on 13 of 14 tracks - held the whole thing together with a collaborator list that reads like the playlist of someone who genuinely listens to everything. The album feels like seven individuals who figured out, over the course of 41 minutes, how to be a group again. That process is sometimes messy, occasionally brilliant, and never boring.
Metacritic has it at 83. Pitchfork gave it a 5.3 and called it "the Biggest Band in the World factory." Both are partially right. Arirang is too ambitious to be a factory product and too uneven to be the masterpiece the moment seemed to call for. It is, instead, exactly what a comeback album should be: evidence that there was something worth coming back to.
Rating: 8/10
Arirang is out now on Big Hit Music. The BTS WORLD TOUR 'ARIRANG' begins April 9 at Goyang Stadium, South Korea.
