I promise that this whole thing isn’t about BTS. However, I did want to reflect on some of the weird reactions I encountered after writing about them for The Times on Friday. If you missed that, you can find it here. (Don’t be cross with me if it’s paywalled though, journalists need to make money too.)
The editor of the paper’s T2 section, Nicola Jeal, is a friend of mine who knows all about my relatively new fixation and phoned me to ask if I would write about it. They were putting together a package of reports in the wake of the group announcing that they were taking time to work on solo rather than band projects. Huge news for BTS and Army - all of whom have been in a state of grief and panic ever since.
Nicola’s brief was that I should be tongue-in-cheek/funny about how I know it’s ridiculous to be a 52-year-old woman fan-girling over a bunch of pop stars half her age. I asked my husband Ross to read it before I sent it to her, as I think he’s a brilliant copy editor and always gives good notes. I said to him, ‘She wants it to be a bit silly.’ He said, ‘Well it’s certainly fucking that’, which made me really laugh. As you can imagine, he is very eye-rolly about my newfound obsession, politely minding his own business as my eyes are out on stalks watching this video of their dance rehearsal for On, for the 700th time.
Anyway, I really have no problem with sending myself up on any given day so I didn’t even mind when the picture desk at the paper said they wanted to use the leaving card I was given from You magazine to accompany my words: It’s the picture at the top of this piece - me photoshopped standing with the group.
All good, the piece ran, I plugged it on Instagram. All my friends who already laugh at my BTS love laughed again. My friend Sarah, the woman who first led me down the BTS rabbit hole, shared the piece on a Facebook group dedicated to the group,
I got lots of nice feedback from them. Soon some of these lovely people alerted me to the comments my article was getting on the Times website. I don’t know why, but I broke my self-imposed rule to never read the comments. You can’t fight all human curiosity instincts every damn day, what can I say.
I’ve read way worse about myself than was on here, to be honest. It wasn’t a pile-on by any means at all, just the sort of sneerig I was already expecting.
I want to stress, I am pretty good at not letting nasty online comments bother me, generally speaking. I get the occasional vileness on Twitter or Instagram and I just block and move on. Strangers’ opinions are not facts. It’s not great, and it’s not nice to have your feelings hurt in this way, even if it only lasts a few seconds, but I think I’m largely philosophical about it. So I really don’t care what a few strangers have to say about me liking a pop group.
But I wanted to talk about the thing that I can’t wrap my head around: Why would me liking a pop band be cause for anger? Why does me saying ‘BTS are fabulous’ have to be a statement that whips up cranky debate?
Someone said, ‘Call me old fashioned but I do prefer my music groups to have some ability rather than good looks.’ Someone retorted for me that my article did discuss the many ways in which they are talented. Which prompted another person to say:
‘There wasn’t a jot about their songwriting, their instrumental and arranging prowess or their mastery of the studio. These are the things that matter in music.’
Actually there were at least a couple of jots about their songwriting, but perhaps this person was too busy to read the article they felt was so poor. And call me old-fashioned but when was the last time you read about any music star’s ‘mastery of the studio’? That really made me laugh out loud because I can’t imagine an editor alive letting that boring guff get published.
‘Let’s face it,’ came another. ‘You have no musical taste. You probably also like Take That, The Spice Girls, X-Factor and Mariah Carey.’ I do, actually. And?
There are some wildly popular things in our culture that leave me unmoved: Everything Harry Potter*, Dua Lipa and Love Island to name just a few. But I can’t imagine ever getting annoyed if you like them.
The most telling comment was this: ‘You’re competing with gay men and 12-year-old girls!’
Not sure what it is I’m ‘competing’ with, with regards to either of those camps, but there’s the whole crux of this snobbery right there: Anything perceived to be liked by young girls or women is automatically labelled ‘crap’.
It’s a view that insults the artists - and as I said in the piece, the appeal of BTS spans generations and genders. You don’t amass multiple millions of global fans if you’re appealing to one demographic.
And it insults teenage girls, which is something that should make us way more furious than it does. It’s code for dismissing young women as stupid, hysterical, irrationally hormonal. It’s the not at all subtle beginnings of the undermining misogyny that those teenage girls will go on to experience as adult women. It’s so embedded into societal thought processes that I even felt moved in The Times piece to stress that it’s ‘not just girls’ who like BTS. And then I was disappointed in myself because I’d accidentally leant into the accepted narrative that ‘something women like = inherently inferior’.
And so while I couldn’t care less that someone who won’t even use their real name has a flung a shitty comment my way, it’s this self-righteous snobbery and sexism that seriously pisses me off.
The writer Stacey Heale also wrote about BTS this week, for The Guardian. Unlike my piece, hers was not silly at all. I found it incredibly moving, as she spoke about how BTS have helped her through the grief of losing her husband to cancer late last year. His name was Greg Gilbert and he was the lead singer of a noughties-era indie band, Delays.
Here’s what Stacey had to say about her cool indie band husband and pop culture:
‘Greg believed there are no guilty pleasures in music; you either like something or you don’t. His musical tastes were varied; he would spend hours listening to Gregorian monks chanting, but he also believed wholeheartedly in the power of a perfect pop song, citing The La’s’ There She Goes or The Beatles’ Strawberry Fields Forever as prime examples. He would always return to Carly Rae Jepsen’s Call Me Maybe or Teg and Sara’s Closer, marvelling at their almost mathematical mastery of pop.’
I really recommend Stacey’s piece, it’s a beautiful, honest account of the hell of grief and the unexpected discoveries that make navigating it that little bit easier. For her, BTS have been a salve, and I’m not surprised. I messaged Stacey to say I love that despite our articles being so different in tone, we’d both used the same word to describe them: ‘delightful’.
Everyone is welcome to find my BTS love a bit lame. But why would it make anyone angry? And why would shouting ‘You’re wrong!’ in any way make me change my mind?
I’d love to hear your thoughts and if you’ve had any similar experiences. I also might put together a Spotify of my commuting playlist. I promise it’s not just BTS!
* Except for the Harry Potter ride at Universal Studios which was, honest to god, the best four minutes of my entire life.
I recently wrote on my Substack about emerging from weeks of covid to the unexpected joy of Harry Styles. I'm 43, and was very much the insufferable indie kid when younger.
I've since doubled down on my new found Styles appreciation, making the case to two friends, a seasoned music journo and equally seasoned music broadcaster that Styles is on a Beatles trajectory. From tight pop songs with One Direction to more nuanced and eclectic solo pop output (his latest outing having some solo McCartney vibes to it).
I think some readers thought I was taking the piss, with a few DM's, and a suggestion that I should stay in my lane of food and drink. I think the point about you like it or you don't really hits home with me. My listening in an average day could be Max Richter, Liam Gallagher, Taylor Swift, Portico Quartet, Leonard Cohen, The Unthanks, Take That (who I despised as a kid), but not yet BTS... maybe it's time?
Nothing as weird as human reaction - very unnecessary! Out of bad though you have introduced me to a new band!! 😂😂 do the playlist - I feel like my parents saying I’ve never heard of them… 🤦♀️X