K-pop group, Bulletproof Boy Scouts, or Beyond The Scene (BTS), released the finale album of their trilogy series titled, “Love Yourself” on August 24, 2018. This album, called “LOVE YOURSELF : 結 Answer,” broke an enormous amount of records both domestically and internationally, as did many of their previous albums.

They have even been invited to many talk shows and conferences. On Monday, September 24, 2018, they spoke at a United Nations (UN) Conference held in New York for the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) in order to launch a new youth initiative called “Generation Unlimited” in order to support adolescents and youths and ensure they have adequate education and a bright future. This was monumental and historical as they are a Korean group who have inspired millions of people around the entire world. Here is Kim Namjoon’s full six minute speech. This is a transcribed version of his speech, although Namjoon changed a few parts of it as he spoke. This speech definitely spoke straight to my heart as I experienced many hardships in my youth, and BTS will continue to inspire and motivate me to have a brighter future.

BTS began their “LOVE YOURSELF TOUR” on August 24, 2018, the same day as the album release, treating their fans to a nice surprise as they were able to witness new performances of many songs including the title track, IDOL, live at the two day Seoul concert.

LOVE YOURSELF : 結 Answer comes in four different versions, S, E, L and F, each with a unique photo book and photo cards, and contains a total of 25 tracks separated onto two discs. Many of the tracks were previously included in the preceding albums, Tear and Her, which also spell out LOVE and YOUR. The full trilogy spells “LOVE YOURSELF”. The pre-orders for this album surpassed the combined totals for Tear and Her, exceeding even more records and receiving critical acclaim.

Here is the track list for Answer:

DISC A

1. Euphoria*
2. Trivia: 起 Just Dance*
3. Serendipity (Full Length Edition)*
4. DNA
5. Dimple
6. Trivia: 承 Love*
7. Her
8. Singularity
9. Fake Love
10. The Truth Untold (featuring Steve Aoki)
11. Trivia: 轉 Seesaw*
12. Tear
13. Epiphany*
14. I’m Fine*
15. Idol*
16. Answer: Love Myself*

DISC B

1. Magic Shop
2. Best of Me
3. Airplane Pt. 2
4. Go Go
5. Anpanman
6. Mic Drop
7. DNA (Pedal 2 LA mix)*
8. Fake Love (Rocking Vibe Mix)*
9. Mic Drop (Steve Aoki remix) (Full Length Edition)*

*First time on a BTS album

To listen to BTS’ full album, click here.

The album begins with vocalist Jeon Jungkook’s solo, “Euphoria,” a previously released track through their Youtube channel, ibighit. However, the music video released only contained an incomplete version of the song. With the release of Answer, fans are now able to enjoy the full length track. The tone of the song is bright and very uplifting, and it is one of my personal favorites, along with Serendipity (Full Length Edition), sung by vocalist Park Jimin. Similarly to Euphoria, Serendipity’s original version was also a shortened version. The full version includes an extended instrumental using an acoustic guitar and a brand new bridge, appropriately completing the song with a sweet, calming melody. Both of these tracks never fail to bring my mood up.

Within Answer, there is a mini-series with three tracks beginning with “Trivia”. Each of them represents a different album in the Love Yourself trilogy. The rappers of the group took to self-composing and producing their own solo tracks because the vocalists each also had their own solo tracks, each of them being respective intro tracks for previous albums. The first of the series is Trivia: 起 Just Dance which belongs to rapper J-Hope (Jung Hoseok). While not one of my favorite songs, the track provides a smooth sound that gets you moving along with the beat. Next, Trivia: 承 Love belongs to rapper RM (Kim Namjoon). He created this track with the intent of allowing the audience to chant along with the chorus. Personally, this track is low on the list because I do not particularly enjoy this style of rapping. Finally. We have Trivia: 轉 Seesaw, my personal favorite song on the album, excluding the vocalists’ intros because those are on a different league. Seesaw was produced by rapper Suga (Min Yoongi) and has a bittersweet feeling as the song is about equating love to a seesaw. However, the seesaw is unbalanced and only one side is weighed down, causing the relationship to be unequal and ultimately resulting in an ending between the two. Although I love the bittersweet, heartfelt vibes that were included in Seesaw, I was not expecting this track in particular to be my favorite as I am usually more into vocals rather than rapping, but Min did a stellar job challenging himself with singing for his solo. On September 21, 2018, he released a remixed version of Seesaw and one of BTS’ past title songs, I Need U.

After a full year of anticipation, fans of vocalist Jin (Kim Seokjin) finally got their wish: his solo called, “Epiphany,” which they have dubbed, “Jintro,” or a combination of his stage name, Jin, and the word intro. Epiphany serves as the intro for the entire album, despite being in the middle of the tracks, and it has a beautiful message of loving yourself. The song, co-produced by Kim, talks about how he realized that he should be the one he truly loves in this world instead of devoting himself to someone else. Many fans have taken his lyrics and adapted them into their own lives, appropriately following the overall theme of the Love Yourself trilogy. As I mentioned before, the vocalists’ solo tracks are on a completely different scale in my opinion. I rank the intros by themselves, and then I consider the rest of the album.

Here is my ranking for the intros:

1. Park Jimin – Serendipity (Full Length Edition)
2. Jeon Jungkook – Euphoria
3. Kim Seokjin – Epiphany
4. Kim Taehyung – Singularity

Disclaimer: This is by no means implying that the lower ranked tracks are bad.

The next track, “I’m Fine,” is particularly interesting because it is essentially a reversed version of a previous track from 2016 titled, “Save ME”.  he reason why the whole reverse concept works so well with these two tracks is because they are ambigrams of each other, meaning that if you flip it upside down, it forms the other word. They revamp the lyrics from Save ME and the main instrumental melody, but instead of simply copy and pasting it into their new track, they changed the pitch and distorted it. During performances, BTS perform half of Save ME and allow the song to transition straight into I’m Fine. This track took a little bit to grow on me, but I loved the premise from the very moment it was teased in 2017. The lyrics impacted me the most about this track because they are the literal opposite of Save ME, which spoke about needing love in order to be saved. In I’m Fine, however, the members wrote the lyrics to signify that they are fine the way they are and that they do not need love in order to be saved.

Finally, we come to the title track, or the representative track for the entire album which receives a music video and is promoted on music shows: IDOL. I am not going to lie or sugarcoat how I feel about this song. When I first heard this track while watching the music video, I hated it. Over time, it did grow on me, but I will not glorify it. This was not BTS’ best song. In fact, in my opinion, this was their worst title track and possibly one of their worst songs. I understand they were trying to be more experimental while still appealing to both the Western community and their domestic Korean music industry, but I strongly feel like they need to return to their roots and focus on South Korea more. They are a Korean group, and they should be primarily based in South Korea, not in America. They also collaborated with Nicki Minaj for this track, but we do not talk about that. Let us move on to the next track.

Track 16, Answer; Love Myself, is quite possibly the song with the most impactful message on the entire album. Once again keeping in line with the positive self-love theme, BTS outdo themselves with this song. This is just an excerpt of the lyrics that made me literally start crying. I felt as if I could truly understand myself and it felt so relieving and healing.

Maybe I fell in order to take place of those countless stars
The target of the thousands of bright arrows is me alone

You’ve shown me I have reasons
I should love myself
Maybe there’s no answer
Maybe this isn’t the answer either
It’s just that loving myself
Doesn’t require anyone else’s permission
I’m looking for myself again
But I don’t wanna die anymore
Me, who used to be sad
Me, who used to be hurt
It’ll make me more beautiful

Why do you keep trying to hide under your mask?
Even all the scars from your mistakes make up your constellation.

For full lyrics, click here.

Finally, we get to the second disc of Answer. This contains mainly songs from past albums, but remixes were also included. “DNA (Pedal 2 LA Mix)” is essentially just a rock version of the title track from “Love Yourself: Her”, “DNA”. “Fake Love (Rocking Vibe Mix)” has already previously been released as a separate digital single, so fans were not very surprised to see it return again. The only difference is the inclusion of a louder acoustic guitar in the instrumental. Lastly, we have “Mic Drop (Steve Aoki remix) (Full Length Edition)” which has, again, been heard in the past as BTS have many different remixes of the song “Mic Drop” that they have performed.

Overall, this album is proof that BTS will never stop impressing me. Time and time again, they will continue to produce and release incredible music with amazing messages. My final ranking for this spectacular album, only including new vocalist solos and excluding past tracks, is as follows:

1. Serendipity (Full Length Edition)
2. Euphoria
3. Trivia: Seesaw
4. Epiphany
5. Answer: Love Myself
6. I’m Fine
7. Trivia: Just Dance
8. Trivia: Love
9. IDOL

This ranking is subject change in the future, but as of September 26, 2018, this is my ranking of “LOVE YOURSELF 結 Answer”.

BTS are currently on tour around the world, performing their Love Yourself trilogy albums in various countries. Tickets online for their concert dates have sold out at record breaking rates, and BTS will continue to perform for their international fans.

If you would like to read my previous review on LOVE YOURSELF : 轉 Tear, you can click here.

Gallery • 75 Photos

Bighit Entertainment

The track list for Love Yourself: Answer. The four versions spell SELF in accordance to the rest of the series which have been LOVE and YOUR.