BTS's Arirang Tour: A Spectacle of Art, Commerce, and Fan Devotion

The 2001 film Josie and the Pussycats is about America’s conflation of art and consumerism at the turn of the millennium. But it could just as easily be about the K-pop industrial complex, grinding out act after act to see what sticks (sometimes with a lack of care for the art or the artists). The film culminates with nefarious label execs selling branded headsets that broadcast subliminal advertising messages directly into fans’ brains.

It’s a film that comes to mind while watching BTS play their first UK show in seven years, an unbelievably enjoyable spectacle of pyro and panoptical staging, and the purest distillation of what makes a boyband precision-engineered to capture fans’ hearts. BTS are the biggest K-pop group in the world. With more than 40m albums sold, they have a fanbase so fervent it is called the Army. This is the band’s first tour since a three-year hiatus for each member to complete 18 months of compulsory military service – marked by a new album, Arirang – and it’s hailed by activations across the capital including a London Eye takeover. A cynical mind might think the in-the-round staging provides more opportunity to sell expensive pit tickets. A cynical mind might see the brands blacked out on the water bottles onstage and think … “clearly Fiji Water didn’t cough up sponsorship”. A cynical mind might behold the light-up “Army Bomb sticks” wielded by the crowd and think … “are those mind-control devices?”

But the Arirang tour makes it as hard to be cynical about the BTS operation as it is to hear after two hours of the Army’s eardrum-bursting screams. It starts hard, all black outfits, wraparound sunglasses and pyro from the off. BTS scowl into the cameras broadcasting them to giant screens above the stage and seem like caricatures, far removed from the crowd and barely interacting with each other. But gradually, it softens into something more communal and relaxed: lads larking their way through a catalogue of tracks that ricochet from hard rap to buttery pop.

No matter how drilled we know K-pop bands to be, BTS’s versatility is still astonishing. The stands literally shake as they thunder through pop-rap crossover Hooligan; the Tame Impala-indebted Like Animals cements their prowess with balladry, soft and floaty enough to feel like it’s being sung directly to each of the 62,000 people in the room. The industrial-level bangers mid-show are a thrilling energy release and the surprise songs that aren’t usual setlist fixtures seem to delight even the band, who grin and sing along to each other’s parts.

The joy onstage is reflected back approximately one million-fold. It reverberates through the wall of screams and the sea of lit-up Bomb sticks. Girls have photos of their favourite members woven into their hair and dangling off handbags. They end on a gentle note, motioning to each other to take out their in-ear monitors to hear fans sing Into the Sun back to them. I started the show ambivalent and by the end I had a favourite member (Jimin) and an urge to learn Korean. I wanted to make them my wallpaper and bump into them at Duck & Waffle. I didn’t even have a Bomb stick so if they were controlling my mind it was through other means. Whatever BTS has, it’s potent.