MORE

Yeah... we need to talk about this immediately.

So it has been exactly 12 hours since 'More', the first single off of j-hope's upcoming album Jack In The Box dropped. And I do not think I've been capable of thinking of anything else since midnight last night. I would love to be an eloquent professional reviewer here, but all I can say to start this off is holy fucking SHIT. 

I guess to start, we should go back to when the MV teaser photos were posted earlier this week. I was at work and the notification pops up on my little apple watch screen, where I can only really see the first photo in the set. I lost it. Never in my wildest dreams would I have expected this, even just from the pictures. Hoseok had mentioned in the Festa dinner that this album was gonna be more personal and raw, and often times that does lead to a little darkness, but I absolutely was not prepared to see him in all black with eye makup, a (fake) bridge piercing, and in the second set of pictures acting as the frontman of a garage band. Obviously, Hoseok is a person and not a character, so it's not like he is only made up of tropes such as "sunshine" etc. But still, over the years he's kinda created this persona and style that people refer to as "Hobicore," and that's why it's so incredible exciting to see him get out of that "box" and try something entirely new. So my hype levels were out the roof, and I was so curious what on earth this song was going to sound like. BTS are also big advocates for keeping their music diverse; they talk frequently about how they don't want to do the same thing twice with their music. In a world where so much of fandom is made up of people who pull the "Their new sound sucks, I want their old music back", it's really nice to see that BTS couldn't care less about that. Their discography is already so diverse, and I have a very strong feeling that this Chapter 2 is going to bring even more brand new sounds and styles that we've never seen from the members before. And in turn, I think this is going to make their next OT7 music, whenever that may be, on another level entirely. 

Now, let me just say that I absolutely love Hope World. It's a fantastic album and the lyrics, sound, album art, and music videos have such a distinct vibe that really does create its own world, like the title. The music is fantastic, and I think it aligns with the other solo songs Hoseok has made such as MAMA and Ego. But let me also say that I am a huge alt rock/indie/whatever the fuck you want to label it fan. 3 years later, and I still think it's pretty funny how unexpected it was that I'm such a huge fan of BTS, just because basically everything else I listen to is under the alt umbrella. It was out of left field, even to myself. Anyway, because of that I've always been on the bandwagon for what we like to call Rocktan (rock + Bangtan, pretty self explanatory). Because of that, I will say that although I haven't really seen any yet, I'm sure there are people who are on the fence about More. And I get that, especially if you don't listen to rock music. HOWEVER, I do. :P so this shit was love at first sight for me... or love at first hear? Sucks for the rest of y'all ig (kidding...)

OK. So now we're at midnight 12 hours ago, and the music video was just posted. First off, the video itself is insane. The color palette, the camerawork, the styling, the settings, the scene during the second prechorus where everything is frozen and then falls down suddenly, it's all gorgeous. The X-ray scene in particular is super awesome, and I love how at the end it shows how the whole little world of whom I suppose we're calling "Jack" is contained in the cardboard box. 

So I'm bopping to the song, his voice sounds so good, the flow and the beat is amazing. (And side note, I think despite how new this song is, the lyrics are very much quintessential j-hope, especially all the references to things like water and Kit-Kats). So I'm listening, I'm enjoying, and then the prechorus hits, and I'm like "holy shit", this is a new flow new vocal tone. AND THEN THE CAMERA PANS TO THE GARAGE BAND. AND THE CHORUS HITS. AND I'M LIKE "HOLY SHIT". Except I didn't actually say that because my jaw was on the floor and I was speechless. Like this is not even an exaggeration, my mouth was wide open for the whole rest of the song. (I find I've been reacting like that a lot to BTS content lately... first the Grammys performance, then Run BTS, then an influx of shirtless pictures, now this... this era is going to ruin me) I just... I don't even have coherent thoughts about the chorus other than it's fucking insane, but I've used that descriptor too many times already. Every time I listen to the song again, I swear to god it somehow gets even better. Which makes no sense considering I already loved it from the very first listen, but I don't know! It just gets better and better! After catching my breath, I went back to rewatch the video, but with lyric subs on of course. And when it got to the chorus, I physically could not stop myself from rewinding it 10 seconds to watch that same part again and again and again. But eventually like 5 rewinds later I did watch the rest. Don't worry. 

One of the things I love about BTS is how relatable so many of their songs are, on numerous different levels. I love that they have SO MANY songs that aren't about romantic/sexual love whatsoever, because in today's pop music world I feel like every single song on the radio is about those subjects. And I'm not saying songs about dating/breakups are inherently bad. I personally usually primarily focus on a song's sound, anyway. I'm just saying that as someone who identifies the way I do, it's a breath of fresh air to hear song lyrics that I can genuinely see myself in. One of the topics I love to hear them sing about is art and passion and burnout and all that good (and bad) stuff. Like Dionysus has an incredible metaphor of being drunk on art, Black Swan discusses the fear of loosing your passion, Dis-ease is about losing motivation to work, to name a few. I think More's lyrics really touch on how Hoseok has been feeling lately regarding his art. The beginning talks about his musical journey from debut (and like others, I noticed that in this scene he really does resemble his debut self, especially the hair), and how making music is his life's "driving force, pushing me to carry on". And as the song title goes, he wants more of it: he loves the process, receiving feedback, performing, it's all a "win-win" to him. And speaking of Dionysus, there's also a lyric here that goes "Drunk on art that makes you feel its art, Dali always on my mind". Our very kind translators (I'm using btstranslation7's right now) have also pointed out that 'Dali' in Korean sounds like a word meaning "different", so aside from Salvador Dali it could also refer to Hoseok creating these different sides to himself/his music. 

Okay honestly I think that's it out of my hopefully coherent ramblings. I am SO SO SO EVEN MORE SO excited to learn more about Jack In The Box... ugh it's gonna be so fun to get the tracklist and everything AHHHH. It's also incredibly exciting that Hoseok feels comfortable enough to take the leap of showing us an entirely new side of himself, and I am welcoming it with wide open arms. Bring it on, Jack :P