This is an incredible week to be a Jimin biased ARMY. I've been obsessed with FACE since it came out – every track on this album is packed with so much emotion. Jimin knew exactly what he wanted to share with us, and he and RM and PDogg and everyone else who worked on this album did an incredible job conveying that message. The layers of gorgeous vocals, the twists and turns of the lyrics, the shifts in tone and genre from song to song, and despite how wildly different each track is the whole thing still comes together as one cohesive story – this is art. This might actually be my favorite BTS album to date, and that is saying a LOT.

I love all of the songs, but the one that's really grabbed hold of my heart is Like Crazy. That feeling of desperation as you try to keep a superficial happiness intact, try to keep the party going to distract you from emotions that you can't deal with – I've been there. Eventually you do have to face yourself. The night before the album dropped I watched the movie "Like Crazy" since I'd heard that Jimin was inspired by it, and there's a similar sort of desperation in the film. A young couple are head over heels in love, all they want is to be together, but they're separated by circumstances outside of their control. They try and try to get back together, but keep hitting roadblocks. They try to find happiness with other people, but it's just not the same. And finally, years later, they do get back together – but their relationship has changed. The ending scene is ambiguous, but the sense I got was that he was still in love with her, but she no longer felt the same way about him.

Jimin said in an interview with Spotify that this song is about "the painful feeling of losing oneself while searching for a loved one in a dream, but still wanting to stay in the dream forever". And when he was asked what dream he wants to stay in forever, he said that the dream is BTS. He wants to keep performing with them for as long as possible. So putting all of these pieces together, here's my theory about Like Crazy: I think this song is about how much Jimin loves performing, and about how he felt during the pandemic when BTS couldn't perform for a live audience for a long period of time, with no clear end in sight.

Somewhere out there – I wish I could find it – is a video clip of the happiest, smiliest, bounciest little bean right after a concert, and he says something like, "I wish I could describe this feeling to you". There's no one on earth who loves performing more than Park Jimin. And there's another clip that I do know how to find, but I'll spare you the pain, if you want to cry again you can look it up yourself. In his MOTS ON:E ending ments Jimin said that all he wanted was to be together with the BTS members and ARMY and experience the shared joy of a concert. When he figured out that ARMY were there with the members, virtually, but still able to interact at least a little bit, that was enough to make him cry.

"I'd rather be lost in the lights" – stage lights. Or ARMY bombs, maybe. In the MV Jimin is at home alone, but he's dreaming of a party. And at the party everyone is having a great time together, but Jimin is the center of attention – just like at a concert. He's the one pouring the drinks. He's the one up on the bartop. "Each night, you spin me up high" – he's the one held up by the crowd.

He looks happy at first, but this party isn't real. It's just a dream, or some memory from the past. Reality keeps intruding, mud running down the walls. Jimin looks more tired and lost as time goes by, and in the end he can't contain or ignore his real emotions any more. "This is gonna break me." "I want to stay in this dream, don't save me." "I need a way we can dream on." Those fears and pleas were there from the very beginning of the song, but they were just a whisper to start with. At the end they take over.

I had thought that the lines spoken at the beginning and end of the MV were taken directly from the Like Crazy film, but they actually weren't. They were written specifically for the MV and were read by two voice actors, one of whom posted about it here. The actors are mirroring the two main characters in the film – the couple who are madly in love with each other. The dialogue starts with her saying, "I think we could last forever." And he says, "I'm afraid that everything will disappear." To which she replies, "Just trust me." But at the end of the MV the male character is on his own, and he says, "Alone again. What's the point?"

Going back to that Spotify interview, Jimin's message to ARMY was that he's grateful to us just for showing up, just for listening to the tannies' music and watching their performances. Because what's the point for a performer who doesn't have an audience? "I'm so thankful that you always wait for us. I mean, our members and I, if there were no one to listen to us and no one to watch our performances, we wouldn't be able to exist."

So who is the "she" from the first lyrics of the song? Who is the loved one Jimin was searching for in a dream? I bet you've figured it out by now. We know that the members were worried about losing us during the pandemic. I was at one of the PTD LA concerts, the first set of post-COVID shows where BTS were able to meet ARMY in person, and I remember them saying during the ments that they'd been afraid no one would show up for those concerts. Which, at the time I thought that was a bit hilarious, because I'm a Butter ARMY. The exact opposite of their fears is what came to pass. So many new people discovered them during the isolation of the pandemic and found joy and comfort in their music. But they really were scared that ARMY would forget about them, or that by the time they were able to meet us again our feelings would have changed, that we would have fallen out of love with them.

The reason this song touches my heart so much is that the way Jimin feels about performing is the same way I feel about seeing him perform. He's an absolute joy to watch. I get lost in the lights with him, and that's exactly where I want to be. So just trust me, Jimin. I'm not going anywhere. I'm not disappearing from this fandom. Not now, not ever. I want this dream to last the rest of my life.

"Forever you and I" – ARMY forever, Bangtan forever.

There's one detail I really love that I couldn't figure out how to work into this essay, so I'll just tack it on at the end here. My favorite lyric in Like Crazy is only in the Korean version of the song. 너를 품은 달 – "the moon embraces you" or "the moon with you in its arms". It's a really intriguing line, I'd love to know more about the meaning behind it and how it came to be part of the song. And this may or may not be related, but… Jimin's first moon tattoo was his own idea, but the rest were inspired by an ARMY's fanart of him. And ARMYs were begging to see those tattoos, but Jimin said no, just wait. He gave us the tattoos at the same time as the album. I thought that was interesting. =)

Edit: thank you so much for all the awards, everyone! 🥰 💜

by chesari