ARMY has been reveling in the successes of BTS’ most recent album, BE. After a long year that felt like a decade by itself, BE has been a breath of fresh air for ARMYs, who have been struggling with the roller coaster of ups and downs of supporting BTS in a pandemic: cancelled appearances, tour dates pending reschedule, and difficulty connecting alongside a variety of new virtual content releases and digital concerts to replace the live experiences we lost.
Unfortunately, this fresh air has a sour undercurrent. Every time new music is released, a slew of articles follows shortly behind, and as we have discussed many times before (and will no doubt discuss many times again), these articles are peppered along a bell curve of usefulness.
In particular, album releases are accompanied by reviews, which appear in most major publications with a music section. Reviews are a fact of life when you’re an artist, as inescapable as the daily cycle of sunrise and sunset.
But there’s a major problem with the review process. These problems have always existed, and likely they always will. That doesn’t mean, however, that we should take them lying down.
And we certainly will not.
Before we progress to the in-depth review of the reviews, however, there is one important issue that we have to address. Inevitably, a detractor might look at our displeasure with these reviews as us being upset because we don’t agree with the opinion. In a way, this is a valid complaint — people don’t tend to get upset enough to comment on something if they agree with what’s being said. However, our intent here is not to say that we believe all human beings should like BTS and their music, but rather to call into question what gives people the right to judge music, something inherently subjective, and rate it based on an unknown set of criteria. Agreeing or disagreeing with the opinion is not the point — disappointment with the presentation of opinion as gospel is.
The term “objectivity” is often used when discussing journalism. However, as we’ve mentioned before (particularly in this entry from one of our very first series of blogs), true objectivity or impartiality is impossible for a human being, who interacts in some way or another with the world around them. This is a double-edged sword of journalism: in order to do the job properly, we should remain unbiased, but as a human being who lives and works and operates in the modern world, we’ll form opinions which are impossible to completely dismiss when writing. The only way to not have an opinion about something is to live in a bare, blank room with no input from the outside world — but then, can we do our job as a journalist if we’re not seeing and learning and understanding the things that are happening in the world?
Quite the conundrum, isn’t it? There is a solution, however: to do proper research and to try to the best of your ability to remain neutral and cover both sides of the story equally, displaying both pros and cons, flaws and strengths. When applied, this solution can make a well-rounded article that you as a reader might not agree with 100 percent but at least has substance and useful information.
When it comes to reviews, though, this principle often gets thrown out the window.
This is a little abstract but bear with us. Think about a product you’ve recently used. Whether you loved it or you hated it, when you’re asked about it, you’re going to either recommend it or not based on the experience you had. If you didn’t like the way a dish tasted at a restaurant, you’re likely going to tell someone that your experience there wasn’t a good one. But someone next to you might say that they had a great experience because they ordered a different dish and enjoyed it. Someone might like the way a shoe fits on their foot, but another person with a wider or narrower foot might not feel the same way about it.
The point of all this is that reviews are inherently based on one person’s experience with the item in question. When we apply this to art, it becomes even more abstract. If you’re reviewing a toaster oven, and the lid immediately broke when you tried to open it for the first time, that’s reasonably empirical evidence that there is a problem with the product. When you’re reviewing a piece of art, however, there is no hard-and-fast criteria by which to do so. If 500 people look at a Jackson Pollock painting, each and every person might have a different idea of what it means, if it’s pleasant to look at, or if it is symbolic of something else.
Each person’s idea of what makes “good art” is going to be different from the others, and even people who might have been trained in the same school of thought will likely have different interpretations of meanings, symbols, and ideas.
Writing a review, then, is complicated a great deal by this issue, and it takes a dedicated, thorough critic to look at something that might not appeal to them and still give it a fair assessment. More often than not (or at least more often than it should be), however, reviews are the opinion of the writer, disguised as the truth.
Take, for example, this review in Slant Magazine by Sophia Ordaz. The author’s opinion on BTS and their work is evident from the second sentence.
We see Ordaz’s preferences clearly defined right off the bat in her outright rejection of the use of Jungian theory and her brushing off of the entire concept of BE by comparing it to a “cup of tea.” At first, this comparison to a cup of tea might not sound too bad, but Ordaz carries the metaphor throughout the rest of the review, concluding the article by saying that “slight, self-referential releases like the pleasantly lukewarm BE won’t be enough for them to maintain a lasting foothold stateside or outside of their devoted fanbase.”
Taking all this into context, the tone of the cup of tea comparison becomes evident: it isn’t meant as a compliment. She also states that the album is “too insular” by being directed towards fans, and by doing so actually perfectly demonstrates the problem with reviews as a whole in one short article. For this, we extend our thanks.
Stating that BE is only as therapeutic as a cup of tea is a very individual statement and one that not everyone is going to share. People who come from a culture where tea is a prominent part of their daily workings — the United Kingdom and Japan being two major examples, both of which have a substantial ARMY presence, incidentally — may find this statement to be entirely unrelatable if not downright insulting. A proper cup of tea can be very therapeutic for some people, and any of those people who swear by their tea is likely to feel alienated by a statement like this (and they aren’t wrong to feel that way). Conversely, someone who prefers coffee probably won’t even notice this problem and might even agree with the sentiment...but if the shoe was on the other foot and the article had insulted their coffee in a backhanded way? They’d probably be furious.
Whether or not someone enjoys something is based entirely on their preferences, and no two people, not even two people within ARMY, have identical preferences. Even two people whose favorite song is “Spring Day” may have a few different things that they appreciate about it. This makes the entire concept of reviews suspect, because how can one person possibly hope to encompass every opinion that might exist in the world?
Most reviews are written very blatantly from the point of view of the person writing it, which isn’t a surprise — we’re only human, after all, and do not possess a Cerebro machine to plug into to see and hear all the thoughts of every listener. That would be an unrealistic expectation. However, an expectation which should be very realistic would be to add in just a few simple words: saying “I believe” or “I feel” would let the readers know that the writer acknowledges that the review is written based on their experience and won’t necessarily be the same as the experiences the millions of other listeners might have. It wouldn’t make it look like the reviewer is saying that their experience is the ultimate, quintessential experience to go by.
Additionally, Western reviewers tend to fall into another trap which is in the same vein: the double standard. If BTS experiments outside their usual sound, it’s going to “fall flat” or “not engage with audiences.” But if an American artist tries a new sound? It’s innovative and exciting. Ordaz herself falls into this trap, as a quick scan of her author page on Slant reveals. All artists should be allowed to experiment — they’re artists. Regardless of where they come from, they should have the same right to play around with new concepts and sounds as anyone operating out of the Western industry. Giving the OK to Western artists and saying that foreign artists should stay doing the same thing that they have always done is an unacceptable double standard, especially given the backstory behind BE. This is worth pointing out, as it is another circumstance of someone else’s opinions coloring the review, which isn’t helpful information. Writing a review should require doing at least minimal research into the album’s concept, not just dismissing it as “different.”
Ordaz got caught in both of these traps throughout her review — what doesn’t resonate with her, she dismisses, and she foists her opinions, both as a Westerner and a listener, onto the boys as artists. She defines the use of Jungian psychology as “cryptic” and “needlessly extensive,” but is this true? It may be true for Ordaz, yes, but it doesn’t make it true for every single person who will ever listen to a Map of the Soul album. Psychology doesn’t hit the same notes with her as it does with other people, which is perfectly fine — what isn’t fine is deciding for other people that it isn’t necessary or that it is cryptic. People who know BTS and understand (even at a basic level) their music writing process will know their reasoning behind using psychological theories, which helps provide context as to why it’s included. Of course, if you did research into the albums before listening to them, you could learn about this as well and provide the context even without being a fan.
Not being a fan of any topic does not excuse the writer of the article from doing their due diligence as a journalist. You might think that someone who is not a fan would actually be a better writer for a review because they are ostensibly more unbiased. However, as an analysis of the review process around BTS demonstrates, this is not the case. Too often, the reviewer’s preferences come through, expressed as though they were speaking the truth that all listeners would agree with.
Reviews may be a fact of life in music production, but the way that they’re set up doesn’t have to be. As a group of both consumers and creators, we can do better, and we can expect better from the sources we follow. Opinions are not facts, which we have discussed at Borasaek Vision many times before. When reading a review, we have to expect that not every single one will be glowing, and not every single reviewer will have the same experience with BTS that we do as ARMY.
And that’s okay. Everyone is entitled to their opinions, just as we are to ours. What isn’t okay is treating your opinion as the quintessential experience or the absolute truth. Considering the variety of people in ARMY and in the world — you’re never going to capture every emotion possible. Admitting that doesn’t make you weaker as a reviewer. It actually makes you stronger.
DISCLAIMER: We do not own any audio & visual content in this video except for the editing. ALL RIGHTS BELONG TO THE RIGHTFUL OWNERS. No copyright infringement intended.
Written by Anna Moon
Edited by Aury
Checked by Vera
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