Wait I actually have been thinking a lot about this. I once ran a BTS and The Beatles parallel in terms of how they are portrayed in the media artistically (more on that later in my podcast its coming in less than 24 hrs promise ♡) but I also think with the tour being halted--

there's another shift in The Beatles' career that redefined how they are ultimately remembered: halfway through their career, they stopped touring. At that moment in their career, they were mostly famous singing typical love songs as performed by boybands of their time.

Admittedly, they were restless with the stereotype. John and Paul were writing a bunch of songs that didn't really fit with their whole thing. Around '65/'66, they stopped touring due to logistics concern. Whenever they perform at a venue, the audience screams overpowered the--

sound system, which means the band themselves cannot hear themselves performing. They considered touring/public engagement to be pretty much useless and decided to dedicate their time composing. Enter Rubber Soul. This album immediately followed Help! and you can clearly--

hear the sound shift. They weren't obliged anymore to write & produce songs that are fit for touring purposes or radio/tv engagements. This means they are free to produce sounds that they don't have to replicate live. While Rubber Soul was very much more on the folksy-rock sound-

The next albums get progressively bolder in terms of sound experimentation. They incorporated orchestra, they rewinded the tapes and recorded the sounds, they put a bunch of sounds that are unconventional at the time in the western pop landscape.

Recently, I've been wondering--

if there's a similar trajectory for BTS. Currently they aren't under any obligation to perform live, this removes several constraints when producing an album. They don't have to be bogged down by thinking about whether there's a choreo to be created or visuals to be made--

I did think they might drop another album. While The Beatles is very much more on the songwriters' side of the spectrum, BTS is a strong mix of both songwriters & performers. Currently they cannot perform, I wonder if this means they might dedicate their entire time experimenting

in the studio. After all, they're no longer bogged down commercially (we buy everything they sell), they're already tv darlings and radio can go to hell. I think we might hear something truly fresh from them (i.e: something they've never tried before) in this period of time.

This thread is a mess and I'm probably misremembering some details about The Beatles and I'm definitely oversimplifying some things but hopefully you get the idea ^♡^