BTS – Stay (English Translation and Ramblings)

Track 07 on BE album.

Written by:  Arston, Jin, Jungkook, RM

 

This is a fairly simple song, but I thought I should translate it because it felt like a closure for the previous songs in the album.

BTS – Dis-ease (English Translation and Ramblings)

Track No. 06 on BE Album.

Written by:  Ivan Jackson Rosenberg, j-hope, Ghstloop, RM, Pdogg, Suga, Jimin, Randy Runyon.  Produced by Brasstracks.

“Dis-ease” is an interesting title for this song.  Obviously, it’s a play on words where feeling at “ease” is feeling comfortable.  And “Dis-ease” is that feeling of not being at ease and not so comfortable.

And then it also refers to the pandemic, that influenced the release of this song and album.

The repetitiveness of the word “ill” in the lyrics that works as a synonym for “disease” and homonym for “일 (pronounced “ill”, meaning work/one) is interesting too.

The Korean title for this song is “병 (pronounced byeong)”, which means disease or bottle.

I didn’t mean to ramble on quite so much for this song.  Some of the lines seemed like I could just translate them into English, so I thought this wouldn’t be hard.  I don’t know why I always end up rambling so much.

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BTS – Telepathy (English Translation and Ramblings)

Track 05 of BE album. 

Written by:  Suga, EL CAPITXN, Hiss noise, RM, Jung Kook

 

The Korean title for this song is 잠시, while the English title of the song is Telepathy. 

잠시 means “a moment.”   

If you look at the characters separately, 잠 means “sleep” and 시 means “time (or poem).”  However, they do not use 잠시 to mean sleepy time or anything like that. I just thought it was interesting that the word broke up like that, because song has a bit of “dreaming together” quality to it. 

We’re not actually together on an island in the middle of a blue ocean.  We’re all far apart.  But I guess we can dream together.

Another thing I found interesting about this song is that the previous song (not counting the Skit) Blue & Grey, ends with falling asleep. 

 

 

Although just the title of this track is so interesting, I was not going to translate this song on the first listen.  Until I looked closely at the “Bibilly Hills.”  I was like, “is that a typo?”

I assure you, that was not a typo.  RM’s so funny and weird with his word play – I just had to translate this song, for that line alone. 

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BTS – Blue & Grey (English Translation and Ramblings)

Track 03 on BE album.

Produced by:  Ji Soo Park, Levi, V, Hiss Noise
Written by: Hiss Noise, J-Hope, Ji Soo Park, Levi, Metaphor, RM, Suga, V

It’s kind of poetic, philosophical and somewhat confusing.

The general impression I got is that the song starts off more blue (sadness, pain, cold) and progress to more grey (numbness)…that it was too cold and painful being blue, that they welcome the grey numbness.

It’s a very strange song, but very lovely and haunting at the same time.

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BTS – Life Goes On (English Translation and Ramblings)

Track 01 on BE album

Written by: Pdogg, RM, Ruuth, Chris James, Antonina Armato, Suga, j-hope

The meaning of the lyrics are fairly clear, so I’ll just ramble on about the choice of their words and their tone.

Reading the English CC on the MV, I thought the lyrics were quite sad although hopeful.

The Korean lyrics sound a little bit… cuter. There is personification of things like Spring, Time and the World, talking about them like they’re friends. There is a friendly rueful feeling to the tone of lyrics.

The lyrics themselves though (and I don’t know if I’m reading too much into the lyrics) actually seem sadder in Korean. The lyrics are sadder, but sung in more lighthearted way.

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BTS – Black Swan (English Translation and Ramblings)

Track 06 of Map Of The Soul: 7 album.

Watch the Music Video and Art Film!  They have quite good subs.

Written by:
Pdogg, RM, August Rigo, Vince Nantes, Clyde Kelly

 

I think the lyrics to this is fairly straight forward, but I translated Jamais Vu and it just didn’t seem complete without doing Black Swan as well, since the two songs share some imagery.   So here it is. :)

As it says in the beginning of their Art Film, this is based on the quote from Martha Graham:

“a dancer dies twice  – once when they stop dancing and this first death is the more painful.”

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BTS – Jamais Vu (English Translation and Ramblings)

Track 06 on MOTS: Persona album and Track 04 on MOTS: 7 album.

Written by:
Marcus McCoan, Owen Roberts, Matty Thomson, Max Lynedoch Graham, Camilla Anne Stewart, RM, j-hope, Hitman Bang

I’ve always liked this song, especially its lyrics.  The game metaphor that runs throughout the song was really nice.  It’s strange that games resemble real life so much – you overcome one level of struggles and then another harder level appears.  And you repeat…

In addition, now I have a new appreciation for this song after listening to the Map of the Soul:  7 album, especially the song “Black Swan.”    Both songs talk about the heart no longer beating, and the overlap of the imagery is only a little bit, but enough to give the album a feeling of cohesive continuation.  It’s also interesting that the two songs deal with this idea very differently.

 

BTS – Outro: Ego (English Translation and Ramblings)

Track 19 of the Map of the Soul: 7 album.
Written by:
j-hope, Hiss Noise, Supreme Boi
This is the last song of the Map of the Soul series (outside of the digital ON version).? Really interesting that the song starts with the same intro as the “Intro:? 2 Cool 4 Skool” which starts of their debut album.

 

The CC on their MV are quite good these days! :D
Mine’s a bit more literal but there’s really not that much to add.

BTS – ON (English Translation and Ramblings)

Track 11 of the Map of the Soul: 7 album.

Written by:
Pdogg, RM, August Rigo, Melanie Joy Fontana, Michel ‘Lindgren’ Schulz, Suga, j-hope, Antonina Armato, Krysta Youngs, Julia Ross

 

I haven’t had time to listen to the album carefully yet (curse you, real-life work~!!!), but I got too excited about the lyrics of this song so I had to do this quickly.

 

The song is weirdly straight forward with fairly direct translation to English possible… and yet, subtly not quite the same in English.  Oh, the fun.  I love this stuff. : )

The MV and the official subs are quite good!

 

 

BTS – Best Of Me (English Translation and Ramblings)

 

Track 03 on Love Yourself 承 ‘Her’ album.

Written by: Andrew Taggart, Pdogg, Rap Monster, Suga, J-Hope, “hitman” bang, Ray Michael Djan Jr, Ashton Foster, ADORA, Sam Klempner

 

They left the song vague enough to be interpreted as a love song but I think the common consensus is that this is a song to the ARMYs.

 

I really love the HER album because it feels different every time I listen to it.  Personally, I feel like it’s a very complex album and I get sad when people think it has less depth than the TEAR album.

It’s an album that’s masquerading as a simple and happy album of love and devotion.  And then when you delve deeper, a lot of the songs feel quite a bit darker with hidden pain.  But then you listen to it even more, and it feels really not that dark because it’s not like BTS is crying over the pain.  They seem to accept the bits of pain and darkness, in a matter of fact way, and embrace the love and positivity.

But you know what happens when someone who gets hurt smiles at you like it’s okay?  It makes you really want to hug them in a tight hug.  HER album evokes these types of emotions..