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BTS Talks "ON" and New Album in Apple Music Interview With Zane Lowe

"The sufferings that we have are all similar."

It’s real: BTS has brought their new album Map of the Soul: 7 into the world. Now, BTS themselves are opening up about what inspired the record — and how far they’ve come since debuting in 2013.

In an interview with Zane Lowe for Apple Music’s New Music Daily, BTS member RM (Kim Namjoon) explained that "ON" functions as a documentation of their career journey thus far. “It's like a big diary for our past seven years,” he told New Music Daily. “Like, [a] shrink version of the whole BTS identity. It's, it's kind of about that, you know, we could stumble from time to time but we got back up.”

The high-energy “ON,” which the group previewed on TikTok on Feb. 20, embodies that narrative. “It’s very brief," he said. "When we say ‘On’ it's like, we on, or, like, on air. It's like, bring it on. We could like imagine it [as] many things. Yeah, so it's like a declaration for that we have admitted our destiny, you know, all the pains and all the shadows.” And while those themes of destiny, of togetherness through trial and the power of BTS and their ARMY, are present all over the album, they're also especially apparent on new track "We Are Bulletproof: The Eternal," which features the lyrics (per Genius), "We were only seven/But we have you all now/After seven winters and springs/At the tips of our entwined fingers/Yeah, we got to heaven."

Elsewhere in the interview, BTS answered the quintessential western interview question about who they'd like to collaborate with next (The Weeknd) and gushed about how fun it was to work with Halsey on "Boy With Luv." ("She was the nicest artist that we ever seen," RM said. "She was so honest. Very down to earth. She's very adorable.")

In the flood of U.S. press this week, RM has also been inclined to joke about the seven members' glow-ups since 2013. When The Today Show asked RM to explain why BTS has become a "global sensation," the rapper replied, "There could be many reasons, but you know all the members, they're so cute and attractive..." But he was quick to follow up the accurate quip with a bigger reason: "Music truly transcends languages and nationalities and races," he told Today.

A similar moment happened in the Apple Music interview. When reflecting on BTS's success over the past seven years, RM said, "Many things changed. Members got really handsome," to which his fellow bandmates nodded in agreement. But everything about BTS has grown and expanded over the course of their career. "Everything has been up scaled," he added, "like in 2013 we had a performance in front of, like, 300 people, 500 people. But now we're doing the stadium tour. So I think everything got bigger and happier.”

The explanation for that, according to the band, comes down to relatability — the idea that what BTS has created (and will continue to create) can be for everyone. “I think there are so many people in the world that experience same thing with us and that's why they can relate to us and our message," he said. "I think the sufferings that we have are all similar."

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Originally Appeared on Teen Vogue