TSJ: “IDK”
[Video][Website]
[5.33]
Patrick St. Michel: Music has felt secondary in the BTS story over the last year. Normally, this would be an expected shame from a group responsible for plenty of solid-to-great songs in the past, but because K-pop can never be taken just for its music, the focus falls on other topics. Yet “DNA” sounds mediocre, a bunch of ideas with potential stringed together (by whistling, ugh) into something that never quite hits. One of K-pop’s strongest characteristics over the past decade is how single songs can effortlessly zoom across styles, but the secret there was it always revealed new dimensions to familiar trends. “DNA” — like a lot of K-pop in 2017 — just recreates this feeling, without any of the same excitement, acoustic guitar strums building up to a GarageBand EDM drop. The lyrics serve as saving grace, offering a simple and effective declaration of love, but the music aims for something more flashy but falls not flat but all over itself. It doesn’t matter, though — they’ve achieved actual chart success and can always count on coverage thanks to the click magic those three letters generate. But it’s deflating to know a group with plenty of great songs can just settle.
[4]
Alfred Soto: Now that BTS scored their first Billboard charting single, they can release less streamlined versions of the frantic tracks that made them among the most entertaining of K-pop acts. Even so, the wordless chorus, comprised of a rising/falling synth line over acoustic strums, would sound monstrous on the radio.
[6]
Alex Clifton: I don’t think anything’s going to beat “Blood Sweat & Tears” as BTS’s best comeback for a while, which took hold of the trop-house sound while still sounding electric. I was dead worried when I heard rumours of more EDM-ish music from BTS, and there are some points that miss for me: a bit too much Auto-Tune which masks Jungkook’s and Suga’s voices, the raps aren’t as attention-grabbing, and the chorus fizzes out. That whistling hook, though. I’ll give ten thousand ships for a good whistling hook. Dropping everything back for that bridge is another smart move, giving the vocal line much-needed time to shine away from the strong beat. It’s not the best work BTS have ever done, but on the whole, they manage to put their own twist on the song and make it sound more like them. (Also, Jin gets more than, like, two lines, so I’m happy.)
[7]
Will Adams: Whistle hooks have become enough of a distant memory that its use in “DNA” feels nostalgic instead of trend-chasing. The mushy, poorly mixed drop it leads to is less endearing.
[4]
Madeleine Lee: BTS’s major appeal, beyond the usual things that make a K-pop boy band appealing, is exceptionalism. For example, journalists and fans alike still celebrate the group for the social conscience demonstrated in their early singles as somehow set apart from the rest of the country’s pop artists, even though releasing a rap-heavy first single with a social message has been a K-pop tradition since the ’90s, because it just feels like no one is doing it like them. Exceptionalism means that an average song like “DNA” seems better because it’s BTS doing the whistling. It also means that I don’t know if I’m rating it higher than I should for that reason (the track never quite achieves liftoff, and did we really need to bring back rapping Jungkook in 2017?) or lower than I should just to be contrary (it manages to assemble familiar EDM sound clips without sounding immediately derivative, and the strength of the good performances makes up for the weak ones).
[6]
Jessica Doyle: If you’re conducting preliminary market research, Big Hit, then yes, I will eagerly await the debut of the TaeGiHope sub-unit. Especially if you’re going to blend the rest of vocal line into a bland soup for contrast.
[5]