I have been an ARMY since 2014. I have spent almost an entire decade with BTS, starting from my mid teens up until my early 20s. When we get lots of awards like that... it got ridiculous. Because we’d said only the things we thought we could never achieve, and then we achieved all of them. I think it’s strange.” The limited information released drove fan discussions on social media about the author and subject of the book. [8] Some noted the book's unusual release date, July 9, falls on a Sunday, when most books are traditionally released on Tuesdays. [9] Others predicted that the book's massive initial print run of 1 million and short period of time between announcement and publication suggests a famous author. [8]

SUGA recalled that their American television debut, in 2017, had been on the same stage for the same awards show (at the Microsoft Theater in Los Angeles). When the group won artist of the year, he couldn’t help thinking someone had made a mistake — or the world was playing a prank on him. At the end of the day, BTS has seven members. I believed the team couldn’t stay together if even one of us left.”

10-Year Record of BTS

I really appreciated how the focus was put on music and how the author retraced every step they took in the industry by constantly mentioning albums, songs, concepts and eras, while also including their personal struggles, aspirations and dreams in the process. Moreover, the idea of providing links to basically everything they were discussing was so useful and really made the whole book interactive and much more cohesive. I highly suggest you open these links to fully appreciate Bangtan's career and also how much work was put into this book in general. From their war with anti-fans emerged the ARMYs, the faithful BTS fandom. The more they were denied their place in the K-Pop industry which is said to work in a formulaic sense, the more determined they became to prove others wrong. What set them apart from other groups was the fact that they weren’t censored by their company and instead of talking about the glamour of the K-Pop industry, they focussed on their own experiences in their songs. They also posted videos of struggles and moments of happiness like Jin’s Mukbang (food eating) show, Eat Jin. The band’s attitude towards hardships can be summarised in two lines Kim Taehyung said in the book, “So, I fell down, no big deal”. The sentiment also appears in their third-English single, Permission to Dance, created in 2021, at the height of the pandemic. “’Cause when we fall, we know how to land”.

I had such a great time reading this! It was wonderful to hear the members’ perspectives on the different ups and downs they’ve had as a group. There’s also a big emphasis on explaining their thought process behind different songs and their lyrics, which I really appreciated. The book isn’t all celebratory, it definitely does touch on moments of other people in the industry being disrespectful towards them, targeted hate campaigns, and also moments where BTS made mistakes, but that doesn’t overwhelm the story. They also go in depth with explaining how overwhelming their international success became and why they almost decided to disband at the beginning of 2018.

Table of Contents

Positives, though. Despite me not being a big fan of the author, he does seem to know the subject well. If only the framing would have been shifted from the growth in success to the personal growth the members have gone through during the time the book spans, it could have been much better. As things are, this is left mostly to the sidelines despite the book's unearned sentimentality. I had to do a little better, but I didn’t have the ability, but I still wanted to do something.... that’s what it was like at the time.” As ARMY, I loved how this book strove to portray everything fans love about BTS and to describe not just how unfairly they were treated but how unprecedented their path and subsequent success was. This is very much a book for ARMY, in that it is a loving portrait of BTS, but in that same vein, I found I learned almost nothing new about the band in spite of the detailed history. It felt like a nostalgic recap. a b "BTS book 'Beyond the Story,' source of Internet speculation, to be published July 9". Associated Press. May 12, 2023 . Retrieved May 13, 2023.