This week, my chosen song is The Truth Untold, a beautifully sad composition created and performed by the international K-pop phenomenon BTS for their sixth album, Love Yourself: Tear, released on May 18, 2018. Understood in Italian as ‘Non potevo dire la verità’ or ‘A truth that can never be told,’ imagery of the smeraldo, a fictional flower commonly used to convey heartache and troubled feelings, is used throughout the song to portray an unrequited love and longing that arises from an unshared truth. Throughout the composition, the band expresses the perspective of a man who has fallen hopelessly in love with a girl who, like a flower grown in a garden of thorns, emerged within his broken life of loneliness, bringing him hope and love. As the song progresses, the man’s love grows, and while it does, he expresses his desire to give the woman a flower that resembles her beauty. However, despite this, he hides his face, believing that his flaws and “ugliness” would push her away and taint her beauty like a thorn tainting the innocence and purity of a rose. The piece ends with the man never sharing the truth of his love for the girl and her marrying someone else. However, the man expresses how he continues to love her despite this and wonders what could have been, stating, “I still want you.”

Through the musical components of the composition, the band further conveys the feelings embedded in the story due to the melancholy timbre of the piano that accompanies the melodic singing of BTS’s vocal line throughout the song. This timbre, along with the growing dynamics and introduction of drums at the end of the piece, conveys the building emotions expressed within the composition that, at the end of the song, level into a sorrowful acceptance, which is voiced by slowing the tempo, removing the instruments, but maintaining the somber vocals.

I chose this song because I absolutely love BTS. Having been a fan of them for about three years and loving every moment of being an ARMY, I decided to pick one of their songs for this week’s song share assignment to share the band I love that brings joy to my life. I chose The Truth Untold because it is one of my favorite compositions of theirs, not only because the vocal and musical aspects are beautiful but because the story the band created within the song is so genuine and sorrowful that one cannot help but feel an emotional connection to the message.