Everything We Know And Loved About The New BTS New Album
From "Swim" to "Body to Body", here are all the songs we love from Arirang
There are pop comebacks, and then there is BTS coming back. These two are not the same thing.
When the seven-member South Korean finally dropped their fifth studio album ARIRANG yesterday, it was a cultural reckoning we’d been waiting for. With 260,000 people gathered to see the group perform after four years, the streets in Seoul literally had to come to standstill. In fact, it was so intense that Mexico's president had formally written to the South Korean government requesting more tour dates. More tour dates. From a head of state! Imagine.
If you need a cleaner summary of BTS's global footprint than that, you're not going to find one.
ARIRANG arrives nearly four years after the group's last full-length, BE (2020). In the intervening years, all seven members completed South Korea's mandatory military service while also releasing solo bodies of work. Suga was the last to be discharged, in June 2025. And almost immediately after, they were back in a Los Angeles house together, living as a unit for the first time since 2019, making an album.
And here, is everything they gave us.
BTS Comeback After Nearly 4 Years
To understand ARIRANG, you need to understand the gap — and what happened inside it.
BTS debuted in 2013.
By 2020, they were the biggest band on earth: the first K-pop act to top Billboard's Hot 100, with "Dynamite" and "Life Goes On," followed by "Butter," "Permission to Dance," and "My Universe" with Coldplay. At the height of this dominance, the group announced that each member would enlist in the military — a decision that was, legally, inevitable, but one that still sent a fissure through global pop culture.
During that time, the solo releases came thick: RM's introspective Indigo, J-Hope's era-defining Jack in the Box, Jimin's FACE, V's Layover, Jin's work, Suga's prolifically dark releases under the name Agust D.
"During my time in the military, I couldn't work on music even when I wanted to," Jungkook told Rolling Stone UK ahead of the album's release. "That built up a sense of longing. It made me want to do better and deliver something great."
J-Hope, speaking on the Zach Sang Show, framed it differently. "We each go through personal growth and growing pains," he said. "When we reunite after doing our own things, these experiences fill us with new strength and energy."
Album Overview
The album's name comes from a Korean folk song. "Arirang" is often called South Korea's unofficial national anthem, a melody about longing and separation that has survived colonial rule, war, and partition. Its earliest documented recording dates to 1896, when Korean students in the United States sang it for American ethnologist Alice Fletcher.
"We gave deep thought to our identity and how best to express ourselves authentically across the entirety of our music and performances," Jimin said ahead of the release. "As an extension of that process, we also revisited the significance of our background as a group comprised entirely of Korean members."
The album was recorded largely in Los Angeles, where all seven members lived together in a shared house for two months. The producer list is dizzyingly eclectic: Diplo, Ryan Tedder of OneRepublic, Mike WiLL Made-It, Flume, Kevin Parker (Tame Impala), El Guincho, JPEGMAFIA, Pdogg, and Teezo Touchdown, among others.
Full Track List of BTS New Album: ARIRANG
"Body to Body"
"Hooligan"
"Aliens"
"FYA"
"2.0"
"No. 29" (Interlude)
"Swim" (Lead Single)
"Merry Go Round"
"Normal"
"Like Animals"
"They Don't Know 'Bout Us"
"One More Night"
"Please"
"Into the Sun"
Where to Listen
ARIRANG is on Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube Music, and everywhere else online (literally).