Song Review::BTS: ARIRANG- Merry Go Round

• 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, Come Over

• Album runtime: 41 minutes

 I don't know if they also dropped a music video for Come Over, but here we are, behind, as per usual.

I actually love the instrumental for this song, and it's not just because this is an almost four-minute long song, which is wildly rare these days and also an outlier in the album as a whole given that about thirty seconds were removed from each song. It's got a very specific aesthetic that reminds me of Bioshock. Everything about the instrumental sounds vaguely like it was recorded either underwater or through water, using technology from the thirties (which I know isn't the time period for Bioshock, but bear with me). It's wonderful. There's a bit of a melody to accompany the beat that has this haunting weakness to it that I adore. Realistically, there isn't all that much variation to the song, but at the same time, there's enough movement that even though it's pretty repetitive, it doesn't feel like it is. Which is slightly ironic considering everything about this song is meant to be cyclical and even the way the song ends reflects that. One of my favorite church hymns is actually designed to repeat, so there isn't actually an ending to the song. And every time we finish it, or only sing one verse because no one else seems to appreciate how amazing that song is, it hits me wrong because the song is incomplete if it ends. Merry Go Round does the exact same thing at the end. The end doesn't finish; it's incomplete in the chords, but if you listen on repeat like I do, the end links to the beginning so it doesn't actually end. Brilliant.

I'm not overly fond of the breathiness, as you can guess, but the harmonies and the vocal layers are more than enough to make up for it. It's also so high that V's lovely lower voices is not as distinct as it could be in the chorus. However, the rappers do their job to balance out the high notes, so V not spending as much as part of the low end of the balancing act is forgiven. The vocal effects on top of the breathiness, again, give the song a strong water aesthetic, which funnily enough matches a title track called "Swim".

So the only way to watch the music video is with a Spotify Premium account. So officially, I'm only going to give you the official track. However, I'm definitely not also going to link an upload of the video. I'm only going to say a few things here. First, does Jin have a dimple? Second, the gray scale of the music video contributes very well to the sense of loneliness of the song, despite the community and togetherness shown in the music video. Third, I love the goo. Fourth, I love the various bits of symbolism going on here.