BTS, Map of the Soul: Persona, review: The world’s favourite boyband add rock guitars and Ed Sheeran to their repertoire

Selling out Wembley Stadium is no easy feat but K-Pop’s biggest boyband, BTS, managed to do it twice in a day. When tickets went on sale for their second stint of UK live shows late last year, following their sell-out run at The O2, they managed to shift more than 180,000 seats in a matter of hours. Back in their home country, they’re rumoured to be the reason one in every 13 foreign tourists visits South Korea, injecting $3.6bn (£2.75bn) into the local economy every year.

But even synth-pop superstars can’t afford to sleep on their success in 2019. Just eight months after dropping their benchmark-setting third record Love Yourself: Answer (the first certified gold K-pop record in the US), Jungkook, Jimin, V, Suga, Jin, RM and J-Hope are back with its far more modest seven track follow-up.

Map of the Soul: Persona is a project rooted in the boys’ ongoing desire to find themselves. The kind of thing we usually denounce pop stars for is the lifeblood of BTS’s fame. A septet of young singers thrust into the spotlight six years ago, they’ve achieved mass appeal thanks to a willingness to appear vulnerable on record; fans relate to fragile emotional sincerity in the same way they were once lured to a bad-boy image.

It’s right there on the record’s opening track “Intro: Persona”: “Who am I? The question I had my whole life / The question which I probably won’t find an answer to my whole life”, frontman RM raps furiously over rock guitars, pitched choruses and Game Boy samples. It’s an all-guns blazing, theatrical gateway to a record that segues from busy pop-rap numbers into twinkling ballads and back again, while always remaining loyal to the BTS brand.

“작은 것들을 위한 시 (Boy With Luv)”, a sort-of sequel to the group’s 2014 track “Boy in Luv”, sees them enlist popstar-du-jour Halsey to lace a chorus about wanting “something stronger… than a moment, love” through a glistening dream-pop song that Carly Rae Jepsen is kicking herself for not getting hold of. It’s shallow and sweet but serves its purpose.

On “Make it Right”, a co-writing credit from Ed Sheeran should help bring the band a little closer to UK chart success. It’s a clever tactic we’re seeing a lot of lately (see Dua Lipa’s link-up with K-pop girl group Blackpink): associating with artists who already have a firm understanding of how to play the game in order to lure in a foreign language-averse crowd of pop fans. Regardless, “Make it Right” sounds and feels like the closest thing to a potential hit on here.

When they stand on their own two feet without the major co-stars, BTS are still fully confident of their own sound, even if they do seem unwilling to break new ground sonically. “Jamais Vu”, for example, is a fine ballad about heartbreak you’ll feel like you’ve heard before. But throughout Map of the Soul: Persona, production from the likes of Korea’s Pdogg and Brit duo Arcades is quite often cacophonous and lacking character, sort of karaoke-like at times, perhaps to make space for the multitude of voices involved. It’s forgivable right now but you get the impression that, in order for BTS to appease a crowd larger than their die-hard fanbase, a more ambitious approach to production to match their admirable one to songwriting would be a reassuring move.

They save their most cohesive form of energy for the closer “Dionysus”. Named after the Greek god of ritual madness and theatre, it’s a layered and loose party track that feels like a perfect number to open stadium shows: cue excessive amounts of confetti cannons and pyrotechnics, which is what they’ll be doing come this summer.

Nobody can deny the cultural impact of BTS as a band. They’ve formed their own blueprint in which the messages they purvey and the grandiose shows they stage are our main point of interest, but the music, production-wise, falls a little by the wayside when it comes to breaking new ground.

Nevertheless, it’s exciting to see a band from outside of the white, anglicised pop world pull off a stunt as astounding as two sell-out nights at Wembley and shifting more than three million worldwide pre-orders (as this record did) for an EP. Map of the Soul: Persona should be the start of something, though. For their tens of millions of fans, it’s another entry in the canon of pop songs they’ve come to know and love. For everybody else still waiting to catch on, know that this is everything that BTS – the world’s new favourite boy band you’d be silly to ignore – represent. This may well be what the future of pop looks like.