Intro: Epiphany drops and shows BTS' deep artistry

Source: https://bts101media.wordpress.com/2018/08/10/intro-epiphany-drops-and-shows-bts-deep-artistry/

Before we break into the analysis, let’s go over the facts.

“Intro: Epiphany” was released on August 10th at midnight K.S.T. The song is the first track in the last installment of BTS’ Love Yourself saga, a series focusing on the different aspects of introspective and reflective love in human relationships and with oneself. Kim Seokjin alone sings “Intro: Epiphany” and joins the three other vocalists in the band as those featured on the Love Yourself introductory tracks (Park Jimin, Jeon Jungkook, and Kim Taehyung).

BTS fans have been speculating for days on when the track would drop. Their excitement was contagious. Six different trends trended worldwide on Twitter hours within the song’s release with more than two million combined uses. The most used trend, #Epiphany, attracted more than one million tweets on its own. The impact of BTS was so great that even the official Merriam-Webster Dictionary account tweeted about the word.

On YouTube, the video trended at number three and has over seven and a half million views as of time of publication. Jimin of BTS, tweeted the link to the video on the verified BTS account in support of his fellow bandmate.

“Intro: Epiphany” will be released as a part of Love Yourself: Answer, BTS’ upcoming album set for release on August 24th. Uncoincidentally, BTS’ worldwide concert tour, BTS World Tour: Love Yourself, kicks off one day later on August 25th. Jin’s track and other songs from the Love Yourself series, as well as some old fan and/or artist favorites, will comprise the setlist for the tour. The North American leg of the tour will finish with BTS performing at Citi Field, a New York stadium with a capacity to hold 41,922. BTS’ stadium booking surpasses Madison Square Garden, a crowning American entertainment venue. Madison Square Garden holds 20,789, able to hold only 49% of the audience that Citi Field can.

Love Yourself has been almost two and half years in the making and Jin’s track, the final lead-in, beams with maturity. There isn’t one single word to explain how Jin performs the song—ethereal, transcending,wondrous—but instead a collection of feelings, all emancipated by those who view the music video and who hear the song. It is this encapsulating act, of shaping a piece so piercing that it’s almost coated in vagueness, that validates the maturity of Kim Seokjin’s performance.

While the three other introductory songs from the Love Yourself saga (“Serendipity,” “Euphoria,” and “Singularity”) focus on relationships between two individuals, “Epiphany” digs its knife into only itself. The progression from “Serendipity,” which places such importance on needing another, to “Epiphany,” which focuses on the need to love yourself, the eponymous message of the series, is one fulfilled with such depth and carefulness that it’s clear BTS truly understands the gravity of the dichotomy. The development of the progression is not rushed or haphazardly thrown together, but developed over a twenty-nine month period in four separate installments in which the BTS members have been pushed into change more than any other Korean artist ever has. The Love Yourself series was created during a time in which BTS was forced to pave their own way and make their own mark in history.

If there was ever a time to falter, it would have been during those two and half years.

Those two and half years sent them worldwide.

Love is never an easy subject, especially when it comes to loving ourselves. It is bravery to attack the subject with such openness in the way that BTS has, and even braver for BTS to end their series with an epiphany of their own; there is regret in loving someone else when someone should have been loving themselves.

But even with the sadness, “Intro: Epiphany” still drives the message home into our hearts.

Love Yourself.

The septet of BTS introductions has finally been completed. With the release of “Intro: Epiphany,” Jin closes ranks and shows that, even in the case of turbulent worldwide stardom, love with oneself is one that never dies.