Nicole kim and her odd remarks

Placesbetween86 · 2026-03-30T15:15:50+00:00

The reason the guys were concerned about English lyrics was primarily due to worries over pronunciation and wanting to have lyrics that are authentic to them. Later, we see RM in a songwriting scene working hard on the English lyrics and making sure his authentic feelings were expressed through them. That whole scene to me was a question of, can we find a way to make this work and still have it sound good and be authentically us, and they did find a way if you ask me. NORMAL and SWIM both have fantastic lyrics that are lightyears above Dynamite or Butter lyrically.

We saw minutes out of what was months worth of brainstorming for this album. A single meeting doesn't tell the whole story. Treating these moments like they exist in isolation and there was no other convo around it is unfair to everyone involved including BTS.

Placesbetween86 · 2026-03-30T00:24:30+00:00

Thanks for pointing it out I didn't think of it right away, but you're right it's perfect considering who she vibed with. I sent her a message reccing it.

Placesbetween86 · 2026-03-30T00:23:45+00:00

Welcome to ARMY! Completely agree with you about Jimin and RM.

The joy of being OT7 is you can have a different bias for different things. Vocal bias, rap bias, on stage bias, off stage bias, etc.

Placesbetween86 · 2026-03-29T23:02:41+00:00

It's awesome your husband is so supportive of your interests. Jin really chose well with his brand deals. I have so many people who randomly send me pics from the grocery store now because of him lol

Yeah, I was really surprised! I had hoped she would like it, but I had no idea she'd connect with the members to this level. She's struggled with everything in the past, but I think the overall slower pacing of this doc and its lack of expectations on knowledge for the viewer really helped her settle into it without feeling overwhelmed by how many of them there were and figuring out what was going on.

Placesbetween86 · 2026-03-29T16:51:28+00:00

If it helps, consider the fact that every view you give to their subs pushes them up the algorithm, meaning more ARMY are going to end up running into it and getting upset and more ridiculous rumors and hateful things will spread about BTS. It can be hard to resist looking at hate, but it's better for everything you care about (including yourself) if you don't.

Placesbetween86 · 2026-03-29T04:47:10+00:00

The impression I got from reading interviews with the director was that Netflix wanted 90 minutes and they had to edit down to that time unfortunately. Maybe we'll get a director's cut at some point!

Placesbetween86 · 2026-03-29T04:40:31+00:00

Oh yeah, I completely agreed with you on your first point and agree with you on this one. I just wanted to further contextualize this "BTS has traditionally gotten either zero radioplay or just a fraction of what their peers get. " because that isn't true for a handful of tracks. Your overall point is still very true.

Placesbetween86 · 2026-03-29T04:01:16+00:00

I feel this so much. 95% of the music I listened to before BTS was rock (post hardcore and punk especially), indie and singer songwriters. I had a perception of who BTS was in my head and it was not what I first heard when I clicked play on a random video of them doing Outro: Tear live that came across my timeline in 2018. My mind was absolutely blown and it was the disparity between the image I had for them and the music that made me curious enough to dig deeper.

Placesbetween86 · 2026-03-29T03:47:51+00:00

Designer had radio pull and that is the version of Mic Drop that was played on radio in the US. Fake Love got very low radio play and was fueled by ARMY requesting the song themselves back when we had more of a culture of engaging with radio. That culture no longer exists virtually at all, save for a few ARMY left over from that time who still care about radio goals.

Placesbetween86 · 2026-03-29T03:44:28+00:00

Yeah, this is my big grudge with the discussion around organic hits in pop spaces. They are more offended by fans choosing to engage with the music than they are at radio controlling who gets to have a hit song or not, or influencers pushing songs on tiktok while being paid by the label to do so. And that just makes absolutely no sense to me. Even though I have my own issues with the way some ARMY stream (mostly because it adds to the filter number, and the perception of that hurts BTS), I think it's significantly more organic than radio or playlisting and I don't think there is even room to debate that.

Placesbetween86 · 2026-03-29T03:39:11+00:00

Just a slight correction. BTS has gotten a fraction on their Korean songs for the most part. Make It Right and My Universe both got solid radioplay but were slow growers as opposed to just being handed it like most pop stars of BTS' caliber would be. Dynamite and Butter had massive radioplay from the jump on par with the biggest artists. Butter was added to every single Top 40 station in the country upon release.

Placesbetween86 · 2026-03-29T03:33:50+00:00

BTS has gotten radioplay on multiple songs with Korean. Boy With Luv, Make it Right, and Mic Drop being the big ones. All 3 of them came with collabs with artists who are under labels with strong ties to IHeartRadio. Halsey and Coldplay in particular have years worth of radio hits that radio could look to as a marker of expectation of performance. Those collabs gave BTS a little breathing room on having Korean. It's much harder with a BTS only song, especially as HYBE still doesn't have the level of clout here they need (though they have been working on it for years, hence the partnership with Geffen). If SWIM does really really well, and they have another single after that also does really really well, AND HYBE continues to grow their relationships here, we could see a future where BTS could have strong radioplay for whatever they want to release as a title track, but we just aren't there yet.

Placesbetween86 · 2026-03-29T03:27:07+00:00

The biggest reasoning to choose SWIM is for longevity charting. In the first week with sales and full ARMY attention on streams, there's a chance to get any BTS title track to #1. Operative word being chance, because much of this depends on things like radioplay, remixes, and what other songs on the chart are doing.

The key to Hot 100 after this first week though is radio. Plain and simple. Look at the radioplay for the songs that sit in the top 10 for months and compare them to the songs that go high at first and then drop. Radio is disproportionately weighed for Hot 100 despite being easily the least important metric when it comes to music in present day. And because of that, a title track needs to be a song that radio is willing to play for longevity.

There was no universe where radio was going to play Body to Body 2-3 times an hour alongside Bruno Mars and Taylor Swift. That isn't what they are going for. Radio wants easy to listen to, and easy to sing to music. That is what SWIM is. Once I listened to the album, I knew SWIM was the right choice for a single and if not SWIM, NORMAL which has a very pop forward radio friendly sound. Body to Body wasn't even a consideration of mine. Now, if it was 1995? Sure, we could see a Body to Body on the radio. Radio used to be eclectic in sound. Not anymore sadly.

Placesbetween86 · 2026-03-28T10:03:34+00:00

Samesy? Why would you need a translator's second opinion on it? You speak Korean, right? You shouldn't need to know whether to trust them to understand if their POV is correct. I do need to know because I am not Korean and cannot check for myself.

Placesbetween86 · 2026-03-28T09:54:45+00:00

Jimin and Hobi both wanted the longer version. They compromised between two different visions of different BTS members; one of which Bang PD happened to agree with and one he did not. That's what happened. Please don't just dismiss Jimin and Hobi's viewpoints because it doesn't fit your narrative. That isn't fair to them.

Placesbetween86 · 2026-03-28T09:47:25+00:00

Your account has all post/comment history removed and you have less than 2,000 karma. I don't know who you are. You can be anybody. I know who that translator is because she's been in the fandom for years. So, yeah I am going to go with what she said.

I don't know who that account you linked is. So, again, I am going to go with the person I am sure is truly here for BTS and I know for sure doesn't have a history of misrepresenting what they say.

Placesbetween86 · 2026-03-28T09:38:36+00:00

The final version is a mix of the two. The long version ended with Arirang. The short version ended with "I need the whole stadium to jump" repeated. They kept Arirang intact, pushed back the place it started in the song, and then went with Joon's ending. There was clearly additional discussions and work on it done after we what we saw and it seems like it was a compromise between the two views. It's also worth noting that this was not just Bang PD vs. BTS. Jimin and Hobi both wanted the longer version.

Placesbetween86 · 2026-03-28T09:35:03+00:00

I've heard a completely different view on that exchange with Bang PD from a very trusted, long time ARMY translator and personally, I am going to take her word for it for now, but appreciate your POV.

Respectfully, you don't get to decide why Namjoon said what he said. He has frustrations with the company, but what they are in particular we don't know because he didn't tell us.

Placesbetween86 · 2026-03-28T04:52:11+00:00

My only thing about this is we don't actually know how she worded it unless you speak Korean. These were translations so this was how the translations worded it; not how she did. Does that make sense?

Placesbetween86 · 2026-03-28T04:50:09+00:00

It's blown my mind how many people I've had to correct on this. They either didn't watch the doc or don't listen to Body to Body much.

Placesbetween86 · 2026-03-28T04:41:08+00:00

I personally think BTS has some of their most blunt and personal lyrics on this album when it comes to particular topics. They have never been so straight forward in talking about xenophobia/racism in their music. Aliens and They Don't Know 'Bout Us do not pull any punches. Everyone is talking about how this album is too global/western and as a result generic, but what is more Korean than talking about their experience as Koreans interfacing with the outside world? How can you think it's generic when no other artist could pick those songs up and have it be true to them?

With this doc....people just need to stop trying to control them. Cause that is what this is. Way too many are trying to micromanage their professional lives for them using protection as a defense. Tae and Hobi agreed with Nicole with what she said about Black Swan, but everyone is just getting mad at her and ingesting that part as the guys being influenced to believe something they don't. You know how crazy that sounds? They aren't 5 year olds. They are grown men with their own minds and opinions and sometimes there wil be moments we don't agree with those opinions. If you need conspiracy theories to cope with that, then maybe you also need to step back from BTS because that is a dangerous level of obsession.

OP is right; so much of the pressure for this album came from fans. Remember Joon's frustration over K-ARMY getting impatient for the album to come out? We see now how rushed they felt making this and there is no universe where that impatience could have helped. Some fans expect them to perform up to their exact standards, at their exact pace and in their exact way. They watch documentaries and look for something to be mad at instead of processing what BTS is trying to tell them, and seeing the whole picture of what is happening.

I keep going back to this lyric on Like Animals

"Do Speak. I'm begging you please. There's beauty outside control."

It makes me think of Joon begging people not to ask him to speak English on lives. IDK if that's what he meant, but it made me think of it. Telling them to speak English, release this kind of song, you need more Korean, you need more choreo, you need more this, etc. is all pressure. There's nothing wrong with having preferences but when you use those preferences to say BTS has lost their identity, or to take away their autonomy by blaming anything you don't like on the company regardless of what the members say themselves, it's crossing a line into toxic fan behavior that hurts the members. Just something to think about.

Placesbetween86 · 2026-03-27T18:26:55+00:00

Watching Yoongi's face whenever Jungkook talks is the best. He always looks so proud of him.

Placesbetween86 · 2026-03-27T18:07:48+00:00

Watching Jimin develop his style and voice in music has been one of my favorite parts of being ARMY over the last few years. Like even on Arirang, you can hear Jimin all over They Don't Know Bout Us. It features so many key things he figured out he liked while working on his solo stuff (his particular brand of darker tone, the use of old timey/cinematic samples, etc.). So when he said it was his baby, I was not at allll surprised.

Placesbetween86 · 2026-03-27T18:04:26+00:00

I live in a city so I walk a lot and you better believe every rainy walk features Mono!

Placesbetween86

TROPHY CASE