MAP OF THE SOUL : 7

The record

MAP OF THE SOUL : 7 is BTS’s fourth full-length album, released on 21 February 2020 with 20 tracks. The title track is ‘ON’. Five songs from the preceding mini album MAP OF THE SOUL : PERSONA open the record again, and the new material begins with the sixth track, ‘Interlude : Shadow’. BIGHIT MUSIC’s album introduction on Bugs says the record holds a story about finding one’s whole self.

Reviews

IZM’s Kim Do-heon took up the record in an album review dated March 2020, writing that “the ‘map of the soul’ BTS have gathered here closes a page on the seven years the members have walked since their debut”. On where the record’s newness comes from, he wrote that “what makes MAP OF THE SOUL : 7 new is, paradoxically, that the album is designed on the past”, and read it as building the group’s past and its coming days together on the blueprint of the 2013 school series. He wrote that “for a BTS who mean to move on past K-pop and further, MAP OF THE SOUL : 7 is a work of settling and ordering an identity, which was indispensable for whatever they become in the 2020s”, and closed that “the many people and groups of the K-pop industry will first have to consult this monumental album many times over, and pass it, before they can see what comes next”.

NME’s Rhian Daly gave the record four stars out of five and wrote that “‘7’ arrives after the longest gap between BTS releases (10 months in all) but, as an album full of big ideas, strong conviction and unguarded emotion, it’s more than worth the wait”. Having noted the darker moments, she wrote that “the record is a monument to strength – after all, as Jung’s work spells out, acknowledging your shadow is the only way to access your true self”.

Clash’s Deb Aderinkomi gave the record 8 out of 10 and wrote that “although the sound of the album is wide-ranging, it holds continuity through its lyrics and general sentiment”. Idology (아이돌로지) picked the record for its 20 albums of 2020, where Randy wrote that it “gathers the seven-year journey — the writing and performing skill BTS have built since their debut, and the way they have grown as people and come to see the world — and pours it into 20 tracks, more than full”.

Among the tracks

‘ON’ is the song with a music video here, and the official channel’s upload is dated 27 February 2020. IZM took the song up just before release as short notes by several critics. Park Su-jin wrote “an explosive arc of energy, and the trademark performance you cannot look away from. BTS, bigger and harder and stronger”, and gave it four stars out of five; Cho Ji-hyun wrote “a song only BTS can switch ‘ON’. They are already past Hallyu stardom and walking the road of pop stars”, and gave it four as well.

Of ‘Black Swan’, released earlier, IZM’s Kim So-seung-geun wrote that “the opening guitar, starting on five notes, sounds like a gayageum, and the rapping of Suga and RM flowing calmly over the emo hip-hop beat that follows pulls the whole song into seriousness and colours it dark”. He wrote that the song “shapes an inner self that wants to leave a position grown too large — where the classical East and the newest Western trend stand side by side and tangle — and fly off like a feather”. Idology picked the same song for its 20 songs of 2020, where Randy wrote that “the sequence with ‘Interlude: Shadow’, placed immediately before it on the album, is excellent”, and that “the flat confession that follows the thud of the bass could be called the most important moment on a 20-track album of that scale”.

Suga’s solo ‘Interlude : Shadow’ and J-Hope’s solo ‘Outro : Ego’ are the record’s two poles. Clash’s Aderinkomi wrote that the first “starts off with a medium paced beat with some electric guitar in the mix” and reads its blending of rap with a little rock as the thing K-pop does best, and of the second that “‘Outro: Ego’ appropriately serves as an opposite to ‘Interlude: Shadow’”. NME’s Daly wrote that ‘Outro : Ego’ flips the usual reading of the ego as a negative concept with bright Afro-pop, tracing the journey from Gwangju’s Jung Hoseok to a globally known rap star’s alter ego.

Numbers

The label’s own distribution metadata prints the record as MAP OF THE SOUL : 7, dated 21 February 2020. The English song titles come from the same place: ‘시차’ is My Time, ‘친구’ is Friends and ‘욱’ is UGH!. The album introduction says the closing ‘ON (Feat. Sia)’ is a digital-only track.

What came after

After this record BTS released the digital single Dynamite in August of the same year and the mini album BE in November. Before it came MAP OF THE SOUL : PERSONA, ten months earlier, and before that Love Yourself 結 ‘Answer’.