Song Review:: BTS: ARIRANG- 2.0

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  • Release date: 2026 March 20
  • Album tracklist: Body to Body, Hooligan, Aliens, FYA, 2.0, No. 29, SWIM, Merry Go Round, NORMAL, Like Animals, they don't know 'bout us, One More Night, Please, Into the Sun
  • Album runtime: 41 minutes

 Since it had a music video release, I figured I'd do it now while I was thinking about it. I don't think this is one of the ones that I've saved to a few of my playlists, but I could be wrong. I'll know in a moment. But even if it isn't, I've found songs from the album that I really like and as, per usual, these are mostly the b-sides. My favorite BTS song overall is Coffee, and that pretty much has set the tone for how I interact with this group.

This was not one of them. That's fine. This song has a very clean beat to it that isn't quite a skittering beat, but it's at a similar pitch for most of the song. There are spots where the instrumental cuts out to let the vocals go a cappella, and we've also got spots where that beat gets a second or a third added to it that is much lower to weight the song down. This is a surprisingly weighty song because of it, with almost industrial undertones to the instrumental, but, crucially, not city. 

Oh, I do not dig the amount of repetition on the vocals on this song. I don't want to risk this tipping into dislike because I'm leaving this on repeat and can't just tune it out, so this part might be short. The song has a very low ceiling for the pitch, even with the higher voiced members, which feels very restrictive, but I do appreciate the fact that they do dip lower than you would expect for a couple of points, especially when it's a full group chant. It helps with the texture of the song a lot. I love it when men have lower voices though. (Case in point, my love of V's voice and how much I'd like to somehow turn it into a blanket and turn myself into a taquito in it).

Ooh, I like this choreography. The styling at the very beginning is ridiculous enough that I had to pause and take a second to just giggle, but then it turned into very nice styling that I very much appreciate. RM in particularly looks exceptionally good with his hair two-toned like that, almost 90s frosted tips but not quite. Same general ballpark though. And then I had to pause it again to giggle. There was a little bit of whiplash going on here; I'm not going to lie. They're swaggering up all cool with that choreography, and then RM gets tangled in toilet paper. The dichotomy is just great. Also, I mentioned before in a music video for a girl group, not sure which one, but I absolutely think it's the funniest thing when music videos are filmed in bathrooms. 

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