@asya @pixelcats @Glittery this one always cracks me up bc like, are they *all* Beyonce then? How do you pick which of the recent highly successful solo albums is the ““real”” one??
@Satsuma @asya @pixelcats Exactly! Like, all 6 of the albums (plus Jin's The Astronaut) are aiming at different things AND cover different genres AND are a representation of who each individual member is at while Chapter 2 kicks off.
So there's no a single "true way" to measure the successes of each album and/or single UNLESS the person views everything thru an extremely narrow (and, I'll say, weirdly racist) lens. And this is why my default (when it comes to Western media discussing BTS (or any other K-pop artist for that matter) is a solid "prove me that you're looking at this K-Pop artist as a human being with thoughts, feelings, and emotions who is talented in a way that you might not fully understand but still are able to appreciate. Please don't be racist (whether blatantly or not.)"
@pixelcats @Glittery @asya yeah!!! like, you can prefer one of their’s styles, or think that album’ll do better in the media market most relevant to your work as a journalist and decide to put an emphasis on it—that’s fine!!! But very obviously all of them could have highly successful solo careers if they wanted to (tho there’s no evidence that any of them *do* so like) and pretending that’s not true just makes it look like you’re a critic/media journalist who has no idea what you’re talking about
@Satsuma @pixelcats @asya Based on what I've seen, there are v., v. few journalists who are willing to understand even a tenth of what the K-Pop structure is like. I get wanting to use [insert any Western pop group that has disbanded w/one ex-member being labeled "the breakthrough star"], but a good 90% of them rely on that comparison so much that it become a wall of really bad text. LOLsob