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BTS‘ long-awaited comeback is loading, with new album Arirang slated to drop this spring. And in a new cover story interview with GQ published Friday (Feb. 13), the members of the band opened up about what ARMY can expect from the LP and whether winning a Grammy for the project is something that’s important to them.
Arriving March 20, Arirang will mark the septet’s first full-length since 2020’s Billboard 200-topping Be. According to Suga, it’ll also showcase a “more mature side of BTS this time around,” featuring a “diversity of genres.”
“What I can tell you is that it’s going to be quite different from the BTS albums and sounds that you’ve been listening to,” he told the publication. “Being idol groups and boy bands and girl groups in the K-pop industry, it might feel like it’s a little bit restraining about the negative sides of life. But I think as artists and as individuals, you have to be able to express both the positive and the negative sides of life.”
“I think we are slowly heading that way because this album has a lot of introspection and thoughts,” he continued. “Things have changed, and we are still changing.”
It’s hard to overstate just how excited BTS fans are for the group’s return. Suga and bandmates RM, Jin, J-Hope, Jimin, V and Jung Kook have spent the past three years or so taking turns releasing solo projects while completing their mandatory enlistment periods in the South Korean military, finally coming back together last summer to promise fans in a Weverse livestream that a new album and world tour would happen in 2026.
Despite the break, BTS is picking up right where it left off with seemingly no momentum lost — but is a Grammy something the members are still working toward after becoming the first K-pop group to be nominated for one in 2021, but losing both best pop duo/group performance that year and again in 2022?
“I don’t know,” RM told GQ candidly. “Time has passed. There are a lot of K-pop-related nominees you see in the general field and, really, I want to send big applause for them.” (In 2026, ROSÉ of BLACKPINK became the first K-pop soloist to be nominated in a general field category at the Grammys.)
“I mean, we’ll try,” he added. “Maybe we’ll submit our album to the Grammys again. But I don’t know — we don’t want to be desperately eager for it … We don’t want to say anymore like, ‘Ah, man, we want the Grammys.’ I mean, it doesn’t mean that we really don’t want it — but we’ll try. But if not, then OK.”
See BTS on the cover of GQ below.
