lyric hour: 'fly to my room' by bts

(written may 8 2022)
with the recent announcement of their new anthology album, 'proof', i've been doing some thinking about BTS' lyrics. this isn't a rare occasion, because i wholeheartedly think BTS have some of the best lyrics in the game so i will often dive into various song lyrics of theirs. i do not know korean, so i rely on the lovely translators who put so much (so much!) of their time and effort into helping us international fans out for free(!!). for this entry i am using the english translation by doolset.

 

'Fly To My Room' is the second track off of BTS' 2020 album BE, and it's written by Cosmo’s Midnight (an aussie music duo), Joe Femi, Griffith, RM, SUGA, and j-hope. the song itself is a unit track, sung by members SUGA, j-hope, V, and Jimin. something that i really admire about this song is how creative and unique the premise and theme is. as the title suggests, 'fly to my room' is about an experience that i think a lot of us had during the inital covid-19 lockdown—being stuck in your room. since travel was difficult, especially at the time this album was created and released, they wanted to convey the feeling of sort of rediscovering, or traveling, to your very own bedroom. i think this is just an extremely cool thing to write an entire song about! it's a very real feeling, at least in my opinion. there were plenty of times where i'd get out of bed and just kinda take things off my shelves that i never really focused on, even though i'm in there every single day, and look at them with fresh eyes. literally just mundane things, like my old ds lite or my box of memories from elementary school. i had been amused by myself for doing this, and bts were basically able to put that experience into words. 

 

verse 1/chorus

the song as a whole is very 'product of the times'-esque, but right away we get into it: the evil, sick and twisted, covid. BE as an album was self-directed wholly by the members, so as fans we got a lot of insight into the process through livestreams, behind the scenes videos, etc. this started around april 2020, so literally right at the beginning of the pandemic. right off the bat, jimin sings It’s so suffocating that I’m going crazy / Feel like it’s still day one which... is extremely real. seriously, who wasn't feeling like that at the time? reminds me of when you see those tweets from march 2020 that were like "man the coronavirus sucks i hope this is over soon" and all you can do is laugh out of pain because no, it was not over soon and is still not over. 'suffocating' is really the perfect word to encompass the inital lockdown. was i forced on family walks outside every single day? yes. did i still feel suffocated in my house? yes. it continues with The whole year got stolen which: Yup. it sure was, and i still think about that two (?!?) years later. i still can't fully let go of how good my life was going pre-pandemic in jan/feb 2020, and how abruptly the rest of my junior and senior years of high school were changed forever. i think this song is extremely situational, as i mentioned, so it wouldn't make sense if covid had never happened, pretty much making it a direct byproduct of the pandemic. covid may be my mortal enemy but at least it gave us this song, i guess? silver linings. after lamenting about how much the pandemic fucking sucks, which once again is extremely relatable, we transition to our theme of "flying", traveling, to our room. V sings Well, then I’ll just change this place to my world, and we launch into the chorus, where we are getting out of our blues and feelin' brand new.

 

verse 2

this verse has my favorite line in the whole song, but before we get to that, this verse is continuing our journey of rediscovery within the confines of our bedroom. we're looking at everything with new eyes, and we start to wonder if it’s been like this the whole time. things feel unfamiliar, but a good kind of unfamiliar! it's something to do within the constant boredom! we're lost in memory, and even the old desk and the changing sunlight feel special. that's my favorite line, by the way. finding beauty in even the most mundane of things is very poetic, and i think its rare to find a song that has lyrics that genuinely feel like poetry. i personally am a lover of reading and writing poetry, so seeing and hearing these lyrics was very special to me, even beyond the relatability factor. it's another reminder of just how talented bts truly are. anyway, we're in our room, things are looking up and we're not feeling so alone anymore, and jimin reminds us that Sometimes we get to know / Broken is beautiful which is just a lovely little lyric. 

verse 3/4

this starts with suga's verse, and i think that if you know his work, you can tell just by reading it. while bts as a whole heavily feature the theme of 'dreams' in their music, i also strongly associate that with suga's rap parts, and he starts his verse here with This room is too small, yeah, to contain my dream which to me is just very yoongi-like. he also uses the metaphor of a trash can of emotions to describe his room at this moment in time, which i love. our room is our safe place, and it holds every emotion we have, good or bad. it then segues into j-hope's verse, and in an extremely similar way, this verse is just SO hoseok. he describes his room in more of a physical sense, saying 'hi' to the toys on his shelves (or maybe the toys are saying hi to him?) and the sounds of the TV. this experience is a travel that only I can enjoy, complete with the fullness of eating delivery food, a staple of lockdown. his verse is so engaging as a listener because of the little sound effect ad-libs he adds in! if you know anything about hoseok, he is infamous for his constant stream of sound effects, even off camera according to the other members, so this is very him.

 

the song ends with a few repeats of the chorus, so that's the end of my lyrical "analysis". however, i do want to mention the live performance of this song. it's only been performed once, at a fully virtual live performance in 2021 as part of the annual concert they do for their, in this case 8th, anniversary. the set in the background is a bedroom, which, of course it is. most of the items in the "room" actually aren't real, either larger than life or made to look like a drawing. prior to this concert, bts had posted on twitter a website where the group curated a bedroom for army to fly away to. each member drew in a few items that they thought was necessary for such a special room, ranging from a record player, perfume, a bookshelf, and a dog (bangtani the beloved). for this stage, they recreated this room in real life, and the 4 walk around the room as they sing. i thought the website alone was a cute idea, but it was so clever to see that they made it look like as if the members themselves were transported into the room. the level of care and thought bts puts into every single aspect of their music and live performances is so so admirable.