[MV] BTS - Permission to Dance

Oh boy... the polarizer. Seems like this was the last straw for a lot of folks who are tired of Bangtan's commercial English pop tracks. I did like Butter, but I share some of that frustration. The thing is, I'm pretty unbothered if BTS continues to throw out a couple cutesy pop songs in English every summer. It's a specific kind of project. This one might stand out since it is one of the most basic/generic tracks BTS has ever released. It's pure Ed Sheeran and his team. No BigHit input really.

The BE album wasn't that long ago, but it also felt unusual since it was an unexpected product of the pandemic. Understandable some are getting restless when BTS has been so regularly prolific with a ton of solid music up until then. Maybe not enough patience for everything being thrown out of whack.

My personal frustration with the company's vocal production choices continues. However, I've noticed that the pre-recorded live performances for various shows have sounded quite different recently. Like they're experimenting with the levels/mix, the amount of pitch correction, backing stuff, etc. Some of the Butter performances sounded very free of that tinny compression that was nearly constant for both recordings and lives for the last few years. Then they just did a thing for Naver Now. Performed Permission To Dance for the first time along with Butter and Spring Day.

And the sound is totally freakin' different! You can hear their voices! Their actual voices! Obviously there's always polish and post-production to make things sound pretty, but those effects that squeeze all life out of their tone is almost gone! These will probably get taken down for copyright, but very worth checking out since PTD sounds vastly better here than it does in the studio recording just because you can actually hear the character of their voices. Even Spring Day is a revelation since lives of it haven't sounded that beautiful in a long while. Really makes it clear that whatever effect/filter they've been using squeezes out the whole bottom range of their voices. Turn that shit down/off and all that richness and life comes right back into their music. Now if only they'd employ this for studio tracks!