From a cluster of dancers dressed in gray and black, Suga emerges in beaming white.
As he performs "Interlude: Shadow," we watch this mob around him film him, follow him, and crowd him. The song is about his fame, loneliness, and fears. The dancers stand around the stage holding up their phones, an action which is mirrored by the fans doing the same on the floor of the arena. He finishes the song to the sound of endless camera clicks.
As a member of BTS, Suga has been under the microscope for much of his career. Paparazzi, fans, haters, rivals, and an industry waiting for BTS to fall or fail have scrutinized his every move. But what sets apart his D-Day world tour concert (launched by his new album D-Day under his rap performance moniker Agust D), is that the examination he undertakes here is one of his own making.
Observing, reflecting, interrogating, and setting fire to the identities that make up the man on stage--Suga of BTS, Agust D, and the name of his birth, Min Yoongi.
The dramaturgical structure of the show is remarkable. Starting with this traumatic incident he delves into chapters of his past. Talent, skill, and confidence can only carry you so far with trauma. It can demonstrate to everyone you are one of the greatest rappers alive. But it won’t change the storm inside your head.
In the concert, he shows off both his talent and recreates that storm for us. Beginning with the sound of his motorbike crash, and from the moment of impact, time moves backwards to childhood and forward to his time in BTS. And through the VCRs and projections over the course of the evening there are flashes of his different personas and famous moments in his career. We sometimes see him between the cracked lines of mirrors or with a camera lens target upon him. Image, identity, reflection, and refraction are constant themes of the show.
Looking at three of his music videos, "Daechwita," "Haegeum," and "Amygdala," he’s given us a rich text of his multiple identities, scarred and not that interact. This imagery carries through the show as well. Versions of himself scrutinize the others. Sometimes they are trying to understand him, track him, or catalog him. But at other times they seem to want to erase or destroy him.
The D-Day album all together feels like a work that is trying to comfort, validate, and recognize these difficulties that he has borne. But he acknowledges others may carry similar weight as well. He wants to ease everyone’s burden and perhaps self-soothe too.
One of his gifts as a lyricist and artist is not to minimize that which has come before. He juxtaposes honest, truthful melancholy with ebullient hope. His rendition of "Life Goes On" was not used on the BTS BE album. He released his more pensive version on D-Day. It is not as bright as the BTS mix. But it delivers a different kind of comfort.
At almost every concert there was a sign that said “Your music saved my life.” His choice to speak and sing openly about his mental health over the years has been an act of generosity and kindness to fans. But during one show in Chicago he said the smiles in the audience made him happy. "That's the reason I'm alive," he said.
There are many powerful moments in the concert but seeing him perform "Burn It" live, amped it up to another level. With unbelievable grace and dexterity he leaps up and down throughout the song. His Tigger-like bounces catch so much air. He's soaring and yet he calls forth in Korean "Let burn the past me." With each bounding jump is more release.
He sings from his Agust D album trilogy (Agust D, D-2 and D-Day) and includes some Suga solo songs and BTS songs as well. While D-Day was released under the name Agust D, Suga has spoken about how he’s not sure he needs the persona anymore. There was a time when it made sense to say things through a character who wasn’t an idol. But now there is a unification of these identities and calm that he exudes in his post-pandemic self.
He re-emphasizes this as he welcomes us to call him "Suga, Agust D, or Yoongi." He appears at peace with all three. And whoever is standing before us on stage is magnetic, authentic, and happy.
For years he has been haunted by his past and as a younger man fixated on his future. He said he wanted D-Day to be about trying to live in the present. When he takes in the crowds screams and hears them singing along to his lyrics in English and Korean, you can see him doing exactly that.
It’s the most joyous and beautiful thing. He is amused, tickled, and thrilled by everything unfolding in front of him. No matter how raucous or searing the songs are, this man is at home here on this stage with his long-time fans.
And spends a good deal of the night just tearing up that stage, confidently singing, rapping, and moving like a wild bit of tumbleweed. He's a headbanging whirligig with sweeping arms and tumbling legs. The music just surges through him like electricity and he's an unstoppable force for two hours.
The most stunning dichotomy of the show is the marriage of his present joy mixed with the dark material he excavates from his past. He has invited us to join him in a therapeutic purge of demons.
He surprisingly structures the show around his famous motorbike accident. It happened when he was a trainee and it nearly derailed his career. He injured his shoulder. Shoulder pain plagued him for years as a performer until he had surgery recently.
In the concert, he shows off both his talent and recreates that storm for us. Beginning with the sound of his motorbike crash, and from the moment of impact, time moves backwards to childhood and forward to his time in BTS. And through the VCRs and projections over the course of the evening there are flashes of his different personas and famous moments in his career. We sometimes see him between the cracked lines of mirrors or with a camera lens target upon him. Image, identity, reflection, and refraction are constant themes of the show.
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At the start of the first half, he is carried on stage by the group of dancers. He is wearing all black and is laid on the floor on his back, mirroring the image we see in the first VCR where he is prone on the street in the pouring rain with his motorbike next to him. But in the VCR, the scarred version of his character Agust D, watches this injured version of pre-debut Min Yoongi. It is the first of many meetings between his personas we will in the course of the concert.
Looking at three of his music videos, "Daechwita," "Haegeum," and "Amygdala," he’s given us a rich text of his multiple identities, scarred and not that interact. This imagery carries through the show as well. Versions of himself scrutinize the others. Sometimes they are trying to understand him, track him, or catalog him. But at other times they seem to want to erase or destroy him.
The show gives ample space to think about his public performance identities, what these personas mean to him and to us, and the internal process one undergoes as one gets older to make sense of self, pain, trauma, and recovery.
It seems impossible that the show can be all so wild, furious, and fiery while at the same time being this introspective platform to explore his inner self and his complicated past. Ultimately, the catharsis of the concert is evidenced by his healing. As he heralds in his title track, "D-Day," "Future's gonna be okay." When we see this man before us who exudes such inner peace after so much pain, it's possible to believe that.
The D-Day album all together feels like a work that is trying to comfort, validate, and recognize these difficulties that he has borne. But he acknowledges others may carry similar weight as well. He wants to ease everyone’s burden and perhaps self-soothe too.
At almost every concert there was a sign that said “Your music saved my life.” His choice to speak and sing openly about his mental health over the years has been an act of generosity and kindness to fans. But during one show in Chicago he said the smiles in the audience made him happy. "That's the reason I'm alive," he said.
In moments like these, one wonders which way the parasocial relationship flows. But more importantly he is quite serious about his need to make music and share that with others. The heavy and the light. The darkness and the joy. It is all from the same man and it's incomplete without an audience to share it with.
He says during the shows that he's a bit lonely being up on stage without his fellow members but he encourages and leans on the audience to sing the songs for him or with him. When he’s pleased with the audience’s work, he gives us the thumbs up. He has spoken about how much the cheers give him energy. And he revvs up the crowd repeatedly calling for us to scream louder or more. And we oblige. It's so jarring to see him out there on his own when we are so used to seeing him as part of a team. Of course, we want to provide whatever support we can. But he also looks comfortable taking control on his own.
He says during the shows that he's a bit lonely being up on stage without his fellow members but he encourages and leans on the audience to sing the songs for him or with him. When he’s pleased with the audience’s work, he gives us the thumbs up. He has spoken about how much the cheers give him energy. And he revvs up the crowd repeatedly calling for us to scream louder or more. And we oblige. It's so jarring to see him out there on his own when we are so used to seeing him as part of a team. Of course, we want to provide whatever support we can. But he also looks comfortable taking control on his own.
In his lyrics, we circle back to a moment of identity in crisis.
“I see the ashes falling out your window. There’s someone in the mirror that you don’t know. And everything was all wrong. So burn it till it’s all gone"
Our Army Bombs (synced by the show) glow red and with this cathartic explosion of fire and music. But there is also some kind of peace. It is this song that ends the first half of the show and he exits in complete control--a phoenix who rises from the ashes.
After burning it all down, when he returns to the stage he’s dressed all in white (although this costuming varied a little city by city, night by night).
The show has two distinct halves. Yet, the second half feels, in part, more directly tied to BTS and the challenges he and the group faced together through his song selection.
He begins with the narrative paparazzi staging of "Interlude: Shadow." He then does a blistering rap medley where BTS’s messages to haters and critics over the years become apparent. Here he (and the audience) shout Cypher 3's “But I don’t care. you can’t control my shit” and Cypher 4’s “I love I love I love myself. I know I know I know myself. Ya playa haters you should love yourself." He even has us repeat that last bit acapella with him during his comments afterwards. These are not empty platitudes or rambunctious nonsense but an ethos woven into BTS's discography.
The medley (which also included BTS's Ugh! and Ddaeng) evidences the years of BTS’s frustration and fury with those out to tear them down. Extracted from the longer songs and taken in the full context of the show, these touts and warnings by BTS feel like prescient words from their youth that still apply as they move on towards maturity.
That too is a theme of the show--integrating these moments of Suga's anxiety-plagued youth with his gentler mature perspective.
That said D-Day does include the recent song "Huh?!" where the refrain is, "Fuck that shit, you think you know ’bout me." So perhaps there's still space in his maturity to push back at antis and internet rumors.
Suga shows off his musical versatility through the evening by playing acoustic guitar and the piano at times. There is moment where he shares some video of his meeting with his musical hero Ryuichi Sakamoto before the legendary artist passed away. Suga then plays the piano and sings "Snooze" the song Sakamoto played on for the D-Day album.
Suga shows off his musical versatility through the evening by playing acoustic guitar and the piano at times. There is moment where he shares some video of his meeting with his musical hero Ryuichi Sakamoto before the legendary artist passed away. Suga then plays the piano and sings "Snooze" the song Sakamoto played on for the D-Day album.
Suga has said "Snooze" was written for young artists coming up behind him. He wants them to know that the hardships they are experiencing are ones he’s gone through as well. And he wants to ease their pain. But he also is willing to be there for them.
"If you’re afraid of falling, I’ll gladly catch you. So don’t suffer like I did. You, surviving on snoozes to get closer to your dream, it’s okay to rest."
As a man who has spent a lifetime singing about his dreams, he knows the double-edged sword of those dreams. They give and they take so much. So he encourages his juniors to both have a dream and rest.
"Today at least, don’t even dream."
For 16 bars in "Snooze" he sings, "It’s all gonna be all right." There were times where he stopped singing along in this part and let the backing track carry him as he leaned on the mic stand and hung his head. Perhaps, these reassurances are not just for his juniors but for himself as well. The "thorny path" he speaks of in the song is not entirely in his past either.
He boldly closes out the show with "Amygdala": the song directly about his traumas. In it, he references his mother heart surgery, his father’s cancer diagnosis, and the MV for the song squarely focuses on the bike accident and his non-stop shoulder pain.
He boldly closes out the show with "Amygdala": the song directly about his traumas. In it, he references his mother heart surgery, his father’s cancer diagnosis, and the MV for the song squarely focuses on the bike accident and his non-stop shoulder pain.
The chorus, “I don’t know your name,” continues the theme of his blurred journey finding himself. On stage, the flames rise up around him as he sings. It's such a raw and beautiful act to close out the main show with this song he has said he struggled to write as it was so painful.
When he finishes, he collapses in the same pose on the stage as he started and he’s carried off by the dancers.
But with each segment of the show, he demonstrates none of this has defeated him. He re-emerges for an encore starting with the upbeat, reassuring "D-Day."
Throughout the show, segments of the stage rise into the rafters. Over time, the sliver of space Suga has to stand gets smaller and smaller. By the end, they have all disappeared. Like layers of self-protection, all that's left for the end of the show is a microphone and that's all he ever needs.
From that final microphone, he ends the show with another painfully honest song from his first album, "The Last." In it he discusses his depression, social anxiety, and makes references to suicidal ideation. In the song, he is focused on the conflicts between his dream of making music and his reality. His hardships, agonies, and crises of self stack up. He even says, "Min Yoongi has already died (I killed him)."
I had wondered what it would be like for him to return to these thoughts of himself as teen and a trainee and how he would process them on stage as a 30 year-old-man. Of course, we all carry our inner children with us forever. But one hopes he's miles away from those days in his head.
But the song ends with his trademark defiance.
"Those who used to sell us out, it’s not that you didn’t do it, you couldn’t do it shit."
He has this sense of fight no matter the setbacks and struggles. As he winds up, there are small stage explosions as he gets closer to the crescendo of the song. These pops are like short circuiting. Tiny jabs pushing back against anyone who crosses him. Perhaps they are the persistent flame of Min Yoongi who will get knocked down but still find his feet again no matter what.
The concert as a whole demonstrates his lifetime of resilience when faced with physical pain, media scrutiny, industry skeptics, and mental health struggles all while squarely having to live in the public eye. We only know what he has shared but from songs like Amygdala and The Last, he opens up about a lot. He may be a charismatic performer and skilled rapper but this emotional vulnerability remains central in the concert.
In a show where there are so many big moments, Suga chooses to close with straightforward truth. When he finishes "The Last" there is no fanfare. He just walks off the stage with the room lights up. Before he’s even off the stage, the crew comes out to reset or remove the staging.
All stage artifice is briskly eliminated. The song quickly recedes into the past.
We are swiftly ushered into the present. The now. The right now.
And where is Suga, Agust D, or Yoongi?
This incandescent performer who has held us in his grip for two hours becomes, before our eyes, just a man who comfortably walks away from all he has wrought. Most importantly, he’s standing tall.
Note: All lyric translations are used with credit to Doolset
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