Butter

The song

‘Butter’ is the digital single BTS released on 21 May 2021. It carries the song, three remixes and an instrumental. BIGHIT MUSIC’s album introduction on Bugs calls it addictive dance pop, marked by a bass line that catches the ear from the opening bar and a bright synth sound. The same text says it is the group’s second English-language song after Dynamite, and that Rob Grimaldi, Stephen Kirk, Ron Perry, Jenna Andrews, Alex Bilowitz and Sebastian Garcia wrote the words and music with RM taking part.

Reviews

IZM’s Park Su-jin took the song’s materials apart in a single review dated May 2021. She wrote that “like ‘Dynamite’ it keeps the funk alive and takes an approach of clear melody that any age can sing along to, so that anyone can enjoy a BTS song”, and that “it opens with a spare drum beat, lays over it a bass line that calls up Queen’s ‘Another one bites the dust’ and Chic’s ‘Good times’, and colours the synthesiser thickly in between to make a melody that is good to enjoy”. Of the lyrics that bend Michael Jackson’s song titles slightly, she wrote that “the wit half-hidden in the metaphor plainly aims at the overseas market, and beyond it at the taste of an older generation”.

Idology’s (아이돌로지) Yemi wrote in the outlet’s page on May 2021 singles that “‘Butter’ runs along the same line as its predecessor ‘Dynamite’ in that it builds on the long-accumulated grammar of disco melting into pop, and folds the retro codes of American popular culture into its lyrics and performance in pursuit of fun”.

Clash took the song up on the day of release and wrote that “slick and expertly pieced together, ‘Butter’ utilises airy but punchy production, with its light-footed percussive interplay weaving its way around the superbly choreographed visualiser”. The same piece closed: “A delicious, immediately addictive return, ‘Butter’ places BTS further into a league of their own.” In January 2026 The Guardian’s Alexis Petridis ranked BTS’s 20 best songs and put this one fourth, writing that “it achieved its aim via hook-laden 80s-inspired funk: there’s a tang of classic Jam and Lewis productions to the synths, a touch of Daft Punk to its sound”.

What came with it

Besides the song and its instrumental, the release carries three remixes — hotter, sweeter and cooler. The music video went up on the official channel the day of release, and the album introduction says the choreography is built on a passage where the seven play together and a point move done in front of a mirror. Petridis wrote in the same piece that the song was made, in Jimin’s words, with nothing loftier in mind than being easy to listen to.

Numbers

The label’s own distribution metadata prints the song as the standalone single Butter, dated 21 May 2021. Each remix sits there as a single of its own, and a mini album gathering the three is dated 4 June. Two months later a single CD carrying this song together with Permission to Dance followed.

What came after

BTS released Permission to Dance two months later, and the following year closed the first disc of the anthology album Proof with this song. Before it came the mini album BE, six months earlier, and before that Dynamite.