Hello
안녕하세요
(Annyeonghaseyo)
こんにちは
(Konnichiwa)
你好
(Ni Hao)
I think my last BTS post has worked out really well seen as their Skool Luv Affair album connects with their latest release Map of the Soul: Persona.
Map of the Soul: Persona is BTS' 6th mini album, back in 2018, an introductory video played right before their performance at the 2018 Mnet Asian Music Awards in Hong Kong, which teased unbeknownst to ARMY teased their next album title as well as their title tracks name stating; "You gave me power, you gave me me love, so now I'm a hero! So now I'm a boy with love. I'll show you the map of the soul, I'll show you the dream!"
On the 27th of March 2019, the Map of the Soul: Persona 'Persona' Comeback Trailer was released, which caused ARMY's excitement to increase even more for their return as it sampled music from their earlier mini album Skool Luv Affair's Intro track as it seemed to connect the two albums as well as showcase old Bangtan.
Owned by Big Hit Entertainment
On the 1st of April, the concept photo's were released for version 1 and version 2.
On the 3rd of April, the concept photo's for version 3 and version 4 were released.
On the 7th of April, the title track 작은 것들을 위한 시 (Boy With Luv) Feat. Halsey Official Teaser 1 was released.
Owned by Big Hit Entertainment
On the 10th of April, the 작은 것들을 위한 시 (Boy With Luv) Feat. Halsey Official Teaser 2 was released.
Owned by Big Hit Entertainment
On the 12th of April, the M/V for 작은 것들을 위한 시 (Boy With Luv) Feat. Halsey was released, along with the digital and physical release of their 6th mini album Map of the Soul: Persona.
Owned by Big Hit Entertainment
On the 26th of April, 작은 것들을 위한 시 (Boy With Luv) Feat. Halsey (ARMY With Luv Ver.) M/V was released, which used more behind the scenes footage, as well as using the album version of the track and featured more of Halsey, including RM and Halsey's full handshake.
Owned by Big Hit Entertainment
Map of the Soul: Persona is based on the book Jung's Map of the Soul, about the theories Carl Jung created for psychology.
Their title track 작은 것들을 위한 시 (Boy With Luv) serves as a parallel to their earlier track 상남자 (Boy In Luv). In the comeback trailer for Persona, words such as "persona", "shadow" and "ego" were seen, which directly references Carl Jung's theories. It has also been described as a song that is trying to answer the question of "who am I?"
Their tracks 소우주 (Mikrokosmos) a Home are songs that are dedicated to their fans, as they are the home that that comforts them when they are tired and lonely. BTS also described 소우주 (Mikrokosmos) by saying it would "paint the world through human interest". Their track Make It Right is a collaboration between BTS and Ed Sheeran, don't be disappointed on not hearing his voice as it's a collaboration in writing and composing.
On the 13th of April, BTS became the first Asian act to perform live and appear as the musical guest on American show Saturday Night Live aka SNL performing 작은 것들을 위한 시 (Boy With Luv) for the first time as well as performing the Steve Aoki Remix of Mic Drop.
On the 1st of May, BTS attended and performed 작은 것들을 위한 시 (Boy With Luv) with Halsey for the first time at the 2019 Billboard Music Awards, where they also won the 2 awards they were nominated for, winning Top Social Artist for the 3rd year running and Top Duo/Group.
Map of the Soul: Persona received generally positive reviews from critics; Metacritic's average score for Persona was 74 out of 100, based on 11 reviews, indicating from mainstream critics "generally favourable reviews". Neil Z. Young of AllMusic gave the album a positive review, stating "although it's only the first piece of the puzzle, on it's own Map of the Soul: Persona is a fitting celebration for a group at the top of their game". Rhian Daly of NME wrote that "Map of the Soul: Persona impressively and cohesively flies from genre to genre, but sounds more confident than ever". While Douglas Greenwood of The Independent, gave a mixed review, pointing out that "when they stand on their own two feet without the major co-stars. BTS are still fully confident of their own sound" but "the music, production-wise, falls a little by the wayside when it comes to breaking new ground".
According to iriver Inc, the distributor for the album, stock pre-orders for the mini album surpassed 2.68 million copies over the first 5 days of the pre-order period, that number was later updated to 3.07 million on the 11th of April, just as day before it's official release.
In South Korea, the mini album recorded 2.13 million first-week sales, the highest number for an artist in the country since the Hanteo chart began tracking weekly sales. In the UK, Persona's midweek sales were higher than the first week sales of their previous Top 20 releases combined, including Love Yourself: Tear, the only album to enter the UK Top 10. Map of the Soul: Persona eventually became BTS' first No.1 UK album, as well as the first Korean musical act to reach No.1, with 26,500 album-equivalent units, 68% of which (roughly 18,020 albums) came from pure sales (physical sales). Title track 작은 것들을 위한 시 (Boy With Luv) Feat. Halsey debuted at No.13 on the UK Singles Chart, making it their highest charting single in the UK to date.
In the US, the album debuted at No.1 on the Billboard 200 with 232,000 album-equivalent units, including 196,000 pure album sales. It is BTS' third No.1 album in roughly 11 months, making them the first band to achieve 3 No.1 albums in a year since The Beatles in 1995-1996.
작은 것들을 위한 시 (Boy With Luv) has so far won BTS 8 music show trophies, taking 3 wins on Music Bank, 2 wins on Music Core, 1 win on Show Champion, 1 win on M Countdown and 1 win on Inkigayo.
RM, Suga and J-hope co-wrote on tracks 소우주 (Mikrokosmos), Home, Dionysus, Make It Right and title track 작은 것들을 위한 시 (Boy With Luv), which Halsey is also credited on with writing her parts on the track.
RM and J-hope co-wrote on Jamais Vu.
RM co-wrote on his solo track Inro: Persona.
Map of the Soul: Persona peaked at No.1 on the Gaon Albums Chart, No.2 on the Oricon Albums Chart, No.1 on the Australian Albums Chart, No.1 on the UK Albums Chart, No.1 on the Billboard World Albums Chart and No.1 on the Billboard 200 to name a few.
Gaon Sales:
2,130,480+
Oricon Sales:
263,336+
Chinese Sales:
412,093+
UK Sales:
18.050+
US Sales:
196,000+
Giving the album a total sales so far of 3,019,959+.
*YouTube views are correct at time of writing post*
The M/V for 작은 것들을 위한 시 (Boy With Luv) has so far gained 259,324,633 million views in just 3 weeks and 2 days, with the views increasing drastically with each day.
Map of the Soul: Persona is set out in a paperback book style case set in a dust jacket like a hardback book. The album is available in 4 versions labelled version 1, version 2, version 3 and version 4.
All 4 versions covers are a different shade of pink and come with Cd, poster, photo and lyric book, The Notes mini book, photo film, random member photo card and random member postcard.
The photo books are different for all 4 versions, with Version 1 showing them playing around taking pictures, Version 2 showing them in a bathroom getting ready, Version 3 showing them posing with a rose and Version 4 showing them posing with grapes and strawberries.
Track List:
Intro: Persona
작은 것들을 위한 시 (Boy With Luv) (Feat. Halsey)
소우주 (Mikrokosmos)
Make It Right
HOME
Jamais Vu
Dionysus
Version 01
"I want to eat wine".
Version 02
"So that you will, no matter what, lean on me & sometimes take a break".
Version 03
"Enjoy life like Dionysus".
Version 04
"People that you feel like you have seen each other for a while/often, but you still want to know them better".
As you can see I have all 4 versions of Map of the Soul: Persona and you may also notice that for Version 04 I have a Jungkook photocard while in the picture with all the goodies, it's a Jin photocard, that's because I was a good ARMY mum and swapped my Jin card for her Jungkook card as she's not been lucky in pulling her favourite's card. If I had to pick one of the versions that is my favourite in terms of the photo book, then it has to be Version 02, from the teasers release I knew that I mainly wanted that version as I love the colours and photo's they're stunning. Overall I love the colours used for all the albums as they make the pictures even more breathtaking.
The album itself is not only my favourite mini album from them, it's overall my favourite BTS release to date, the album flows really well, with each track sounding different from the previous. I screamed way too loud when I first heard the start of Intro: Persona as I was transported back to old Bangtan and Skool Luv Affair, it made me extremely excited for this album to be released and I was not disappointed.
I'm not really familiar with Halsey, unbeknownst to me I do sing along to one of her tracks on the radio but other that I knew/know nothing of her, but I have to admit she is a perfect fit for the title track 작은 것들을 위한 시 (Boy With Luv), I would pick the album version over the M/V version any and everyday, I think she adds so much more to the song and I have to say it's one of my favourite title tracks from BTS.
소우주 (Mikrokosmos) reminds me of something that would be released in the 80's but at the same time it gives me Fleetwood Mac feels.
Make It Right, as soon as I heard it I could tell it had Ed Sheeran's influence as it sounded like something that would fit perfectly on one of his albums.
I love that HOME is a song dedicated to ARMY as I'm sure we feel the same as BTS, in that when we feel lonely, tired or in need of wisdom and guidance one of the things we turn to for that little slice of solace is BTS.
Never did I think I'd see the day where we got to see a new unit song with J-hope, Jin and Jungkook, this time round we got that with Jamais Vu and if any song could bring me to tears is this track, personally for me this album is Jin's era to shine vocally and Jamais Vu proves yet again that Jin can stand on his own two feet and vocally blow us away.
Dionysus has to be my favourite track from the album, the way I describe it is, it's old bangtan with a present bangtan twist, the chorus and Jin's "rocking ad libs" make this song even better for me.
I feel proud to be part of the reason that BTS have their 1st UK No.1 album which I'm sure they didn't see happening anytime soon as they thought we were harder to crack and seeing them more widely available in stores makes me smile even more, they're proving again that there is no language barrier in music and no matter your age, skin colour, sex or the language you speak you can always rely and lean on them to get you through your hard times as their fans do for them.
Intro: Persona
작은 것들을 위한 시 (Boy With Luv) (Feat. Halsey)
소우주 (Mikrokosmos)
Make It Right
Lemoring
Home
Jamais Vu
Dionysus
Mnet K-POP
On the 3rd of May both Map of the Soul: Persona and 작은 것들을 위한 시 (Boy With Luv) (Feat. Halsey) made a new achievement by spending their 3rd week in the UK charts with the album now sitting at No.11, making them the only Korean artists to chart in the albums for 3 weeks in a row and the single being a non-mover at No.29.
I think the UK is definitely starting to become a bit more acceptable when it comes to K-pop and I can't wait to see who will be the next to break it's "high wall".
Are you a fan of Map of the Soul: Persona?
Are you a fan of 작은 것들을 위한 시 (Boy With Luv)?
Which version do you have/want?
Do you have a favourite track?
Let me know in the comments below.
See you soon!
안녕
(Annyeong)
さようなら
(Sayonara)
再见
(ZaiJian)
Bye
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