His newest album D-Day starts with the lyrics, “future’s gonna be okay,” and for the first time in weeks, I believe it.
In a room of light sticks and chanting fans, I can see clearly what has recently been so clouded. This garbled, grey, mess that lurks in front of me at all times—the uncertainty of the future—feels certain. Like he’s promising me, and I’m promising myself, that I’ll figure it out.
Future’s gonna be okay.
Perhaps it’s because I’m working a job I don’t feel passionately about, or maybe it’s just an unavoidable part of being in your twenties, but lately I feel like my life is spiraling out of control. That I’m just a player in this game, that all the autonomy I thought I possessed has been stolen away. Like I’m just a cog in some big wheel.
I think Min Yoongi has felt like this, too. I believe he thinks about the world like I do—and I think he’s disheartened and disappointed by the state of it all, like I am. I think he knows about it, so he writes about it, sings about it, and creates space where it can melt away.
That’s what his concert feels like: an escape from it all.
Which is funny because he sings about the things that plague so many of us heavily: capitalism, trauma, hierarchy, hypocrisy, greed, confusion. So why then, surrounded by these words and sentiments, does the concert feel like freedom?
The simple answer is that Min Yoongi is a source of comfort for so many of us. From making some of our favorite kitschy songs about love to critiquing society to expressing his trauma, there’s so many types of comfort within this one man. His words are there for you when you want to go for a walk in the summer; his words are there for you when you’re sobbing on the bathroom floor.
The concert itself feels like a release of all those moments—all the times we clutched our chests hearing his songs in our headphones. All the memories we’ve shared, different experiences but the same feelings. Every summertime walk, every bathroom sob, is in the air at this concert.
The room is charged with these memories; like we’re all offering them up and letting them swirl around in the air. Like we’re letting Min Yoongi himself suck them out of the air, swallow them whole, and spit them back out, renewed, through his rapping.
Every second here feels precious and unrepeatable. Like something is being healed and reborn in thousands of souls all at once.
It’s a public purging: we let these lyrics fill us, we let our love for BTS and Yoongi fill us, and we send those feelings back to him tenfold. And he promptly devours them, and then smiles wide, and the process repeats itself. It’s a cycle of gratitude and love and understanding.
The whole concert seems like an elegy to Amygdala’s lyrics: “The never-ending trials failed to kill me, and once again I bloom a lotus flower.” Lotus flowers bloom in muddy waters, and the whole show is a reminder of that. As someone who feels like they’re in muddy waters more often than not these days, Min Yoongi manages to capture that feeling—then let it flutter away.
Something about him serving as a reminder that we will all surely bloom.