Monday, June 1st, 2015

BTS – I Need U

Who apparently also go by the fantastic name Bulletproof Boy Scouts…


[Video][Website]
[7.00]

Madeleine Lee: BTS has spent most of their 2-year career resisting the boy band label, either by redefining it or by running away from it. Even once their singles started being about relationships instead of social issues, they still brattily asserted their difference with distorted guitar squalls and shouty, tuneless hooks. “I Need U” is their first single to be a proper boy band song: a song that’s passive about love instead of aggressive, vulnerable, and angry about it. Perhaps because of this, it’s their first single that goes down smoothly. The angry grunts and yells are kept to the background, the falsetto bits swoop with the song instead of trying to punch a hole through it, and a whole break is given to the lush soundscape of trilling snares and synth chords and whistles. It explodes with a firework’s timing, and its brilliance.
[8]

Alfred Soto: The intro storm cloud of synths rumbles with conviction, complimenting the angst in the voices and the desperation of the percussion’s faint jungle skitter. The boys can’t contain themselves. A beautiful track.
[7]

Edward Okulicz: “I Need U” mashes the sounds and (most importantly) the spirits of a bunch of golden-age pop noises without leaning on them as crutches or using them as sound effects. It’s like this is some kind of window into a hypothetical 1980s in which K-pop invented the slow jam and then submerged it so the breakdown has this gorgeous aqueous sound to it. There’s actual need in the voices, too.
[9]

Thomas Inskeep: Rap Monster gets a lot of lead time here, which makes me awfully happy as I’ve yet to hear an album this year I love more than his R.M. The reference point for me for BTS, though, is ‘NSync, because at their best they made great pop singles that surpassed the boy band ghetto for flat-out pop brilliance. This is on par with ‘NSync’s “Pop”: not quite as aggressively uptempo, but just as stylistically diverse throughout its three-and-a-half minutes, with dubsteppy drops, sweet-as-cake harmonies, and great rapping. This is what boy bands should sound like in 2015.
[8]

Jessica Doyle: With the caveat that I am reviewing this improperly (i.e. without having seen the video): what I have found most charming about BTS so far — their ability to get political or personal, and in either case fairly detailed — isn’t in evidence here. The execution is fine, but “I Need U” feels generic, and by “generic” I mean a lot like EXO’s “Black Pearl.”
[5]

Ramzi Awn: You can’t argue with that chorus, but the verses could have been cleaned up a little. The breakdown is pure Janet.
[6]

Micha Cavaseno: An off-putting slow sink, like treading forward into a lake of pipe organ and whistles that totally belie the self-pitying and impotency of BTS here, but only to go into a chorus that just doesn’t seem suitable for how badly it wants to drive its point across. However intended this disconnect might be between the boys downward spiral and the track’s fanfare, it takes a few go rounds to really sink in, specifically for how badly the second verse can sound like those raps are intended to beat someone, or oneself, up.
[5]

Brad Shoup: It does sound like a daze; even the frontingest members have to deal with a squelchy, meandering backing track. Things get a bit more frantic in the refrain, with trap walls hemming everyone in. But when it’s done, everyone’s still holding his head.
[6]

Mo Kim: One of the things Korean pop does very, very well is mashing twenty different sounds together, but the maximalist approach works best when used to hint at emotional nuance. “I Need U” sounds like it’s barely holding together: it has scratchy talk-rapping, full-throated gang chants, seductive R&B crooning, and an explosive electronic reprise only restrained by taut pockets of trap percussion. Reflective rap passages build towards conclusions only to fall back into tumult every time the chorus hits, that declaration of need circumscribed with lingering questions. (“Why do I need you even when I know I’ll get hurt?”) Together, they paint a portrait of a relationship spinning out of control, and the devastation is something to behold.
[9]

Reader average: [8.4] (15 votes)

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3 Responses to “BTS – I Need U”

  1. Moses, your video links don’t seem to work (not for me anyway), except for the Bestie track (nice omg-they’re-gay! twist in the vid). Wondering what the other goodies could be…

  2. Ooops, HTML issue there. I’ve fixed it now – goodies revealed! The BESTie one was the only one I didn’t already know, but your mileage may vary.

  3. thanks! (my mileage = same)