Elevating the storyline of a film or drama through its soundtrack is an extremely effective way of capturing an audience’s attention, promoting the film or drama, and profiling the recording artist(s) overall. Referred to as an Original Soundtrack or OST, the soundtrack may feature new and original works or pre-existing songs that suit the vibe of the theatrics. In South Korea’s entertainment industry, K-dramas and K-pop come together in a variety of ways, so it’s not unusual for K-pop artists to feature on Korean drama and movie OSTs. BTS have taken this one step further by increasing their Japanese presence with the recent release of their third Japanese OST.
BTS’ newest OST, Film out, dropped earlier this week, immediately striking social media as the ARMY fandom responded with targeted goals to stream, buy, and shazam. The BU (Bangtan Universe) also made a strong comeback as ARMYs searched for hidden clues and meanings in the MV, with special mentions of similarities to the “Fake Love” MV and the TU (TXT universe). While BTS’ presence in the realm of OSTs is not a new endeavor, this is their first official release for 2021, so ARMYs’ emotions have understandably been running high this past week.
However, this is not their first Japanese OST. If we travel back in time a few years to 2018 we are greeted by “Don’t Leave Me.” This track from their third Japanese studio album Face Yourself became the opening theme song for the Japanese drama remake Signal. “Don’t Leave Me” also marked BTS’ first OST as a septet. 2020 saw the release of BTS’ second Japanese OST, “Your Eyes Tell” - a song composed and written by Jung Kook for BTS’ Map of the Soul: 7 - The Journey album. This song featured in Kimi No Me Ga Toikaketeiru (English title: Your Eyes Tell), a Japanese movie remake of Korea’s original movie Always.
This year BTS’ newest release Film out is the ending theme song for a special Japanese feature film based on the 2018 drama series — Signal: The Movie - Cold Case Investigation Unit. This OST was particularly significant for BTS as they were able to collaborate with one of Japan’s top pop bands - Back Number and although the Japanese artist had some reservations at first, Japanese media reported that they thoroughly enjoyed their collaboration experience with BTS.
To date, these are BTS’ only Japanese OSTs and all three songs will feature in BTS’ third Japanese compilation album BTS, The Best, due out June 16.
As we move on now to explore BTS’ Korean OSTs, we belatedly celebrate the one-year anniversary of V’s ‘acoustic indie-pop ballad’ “Sweet Night.” Released March 13, 2020 as the OST for episode 12 of Itaewon Class, this was V’s second all-English song with teenVOGUE announcing that “Sweet Night” was “composed, written, produced, and performed by V himself.” Various media accounts report that V was asked by his good friend Park Seo Joon, lead male actor in Itaewon Class, to write a song for the K-drama series, which he did.
Many are familiar with the notion that movies and dramas will have an accompanying soundtrack, which is why many fans were surprised when BTS launched BTS World: Original Soundtrack in June 2019. This OST was created specifically for BTS’ new mobile game of the same name “BTS World.” The South Korean mobile game developer Netmarble described BTS World as a 14-track album complete with theme songs for each of the members and background music. The title track MV from that album, “Heartbeat” depicted the seven members living in alternative universes, pre-empting both the concept of the game and the song with these words:
As we continue to look back upon BTS’ OST contributions, we arrive at Hwarang in 2016, the Korean drama that cast V and Park Seo Joon together as members of Hwarang — an elite group of young warriors. Late December 2016, Korean news media announced that BTS members V and Jin would be singing the second OST for K-drama titled “Even If I Die, It’s You.” The song experienced a modicum of success as it was nominated for the “Best OST Award” at the 2017 Melon Music Awards, eventually missing out though to Ailee’s “I Will Go To You Like The First Snow” from another hit K-drama — Goblin.
HOT MENTION:
Before we finish this trip down BTS’ OST memory lane, we have one more OST to celebrate although this one might not be as widely known as the previous ones. It may come as a surprise to many newer ARMYs that in 2015 RM released his “Fantastic” OST for the Marvel movie Fantastic Four. What was even more exciting, however, was BTS’ promise to watch a movie with ARMYs to celebrate their first music show award in May 2015 with “I Need U.” Three months later, BTS x ARMYs spent a never-to-be-repeated evening together at the movies to watch the release of Fantastic Four.
We’ll leave you with this BangtanTV snippet. Can you see how excited everyone was to go on a ‘movie date’ with BTS? Definitely worthy of a Hot Mention!
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Written by: Mama
Edited by: Esma
Checked by: Aury