#4YearsWithFirstLove

- a somewhat gushy love letter to First Love, the Song Request connection, and to Min Yoongi himself @BTS_twt

I've tried clumsily before to explain how cinematic Yoongi's music feels - how he creates a narrative that's so powerful & raw to the senses +

+ that you don't need the eyes to picture it perfectly. First Love is a beautiful example of this.

The slow-build of the song, both Yoongi's deliveries & the instrumentals building & building from the distant wistfulness of childhood memories to the raging fire of emotion +

+ he feels now, in the present, feels like you start off in that distant corner of a memory first, that brown piano.

Tinged with nostalgia, we look up at that piano, bigger than Yoongi then, truly too big to fully grasp, yet, in that tender, innocent age, but the pureness of +

+ that wonder, that awe, present in his mellow delivery, in the still but tender simplicity of the piano notes early on in the song [ "When the brown piano that's so much taller than me guided me / I looked up to you and admired you / When stroking you with my small fingers / +

+ "I feel so nice, mom, I feel so nice / My fingers walked on the keys on their own / Back then I didn't know the meaning of you / Back then it felt nice just looking at you"

There's something so innocuous & sweet about this image, the expression of the most pure & simple +

+ form of love - that of childhood.

I love how the piano grows more complex as he reminisces now about adolescence; the simplicity of childhood has faded, there are other distractions - he's taller than the piano now, its keys have gathered dust, but it's still there. +

+ I love that here, Yoongi speaks with the knowledge of hindsight. He speaks as the piano - "I remember when I first met you" it says, a soft little smile in the voice that makes my heart hurt, "Without my noticing, you grew up so much / Although we're putting an end to our +

+ relationship / Don't ever feel sorry for me / You'll see me again in any form / Greet me again then"

I've always interpreted, like many, that the piano is a symbol of Yoongi's unconditional, beautiful relationship with music. That "You'll see me again in any form" +

+ bears all the gravity of the most unconditional of promises - the most ardent of vows, befitting of one's first love - the purest, the most innocent kind.

At age 14, Yoongi faces the piano again - his delivery speeds up, the intensity of emotion leaking through as strings +

+ pick up in the background. "without you I'm nothing" he confesses - the reciprocation, vulnerable & fiery, every bit as tempestuous as you'd expect first love to be.

I love that Yoongi's voice echoes as he raps "Don't let go of my hand forever / Because I won't let go of you +

+ either" - it's as though it's a promise he and his piano are making to each other, echoing one another's words. Vows of first love, every bit as personal, intimate, profound.

It was around this age, I think, that Yoongi personally approached his music teacher in school +

+ this period of his life where he truly began to understand the meaning of his piano, of music, that at a younger age he had only known the whispers of. He began to devote himself to it - going above and beyond to keep his promise. "Without you, I'm nothing...So don't ever let +

+ go of my hand"

Then we get to his trainee years, terroritory we'd only recently traversed a few months before this song came out, through Agust D. Where Agust D was HIS journey, the origin story, the inciting incident, the heart-rending climax, https://twitter.com/anotherunperson/status/1294637870250987521?s=19 +

+ First Love feels to me like a love letter of devotion to what got him through those times, even at their darkest. Yoongi's voice grows hoarse, rough with raw emotion, the instrumentals in a frenzy mirroring his emotion as they rise into fever pitch, & as he affirms his +

+ promise once more, "Even though I pushed you away and hated meeting you / You were always by my side even when I didn't ask / So don't ever let go of my hand / Because I'm not letting go of you ever again" the electric guitars kick in, intense, powerful, a certainty +

+ no longer the young naive promises of his childhood or adolescence but this...expression of devotion that is well aware of the price & has chosen to pledge himself to it nevertheless. The purest, most unconditional love - the piano, the symbol of his music that has taken +

+ other forms by now, has kept its promise ["You were always by my side even when I didn't ask"] and now Yoongi, older, having tasted what it means to have this steadying, unrelenting, unequivocally loving force welcoming him back through every episode of darkness +

+ reaffirms his own promise, just as unwavering, even more meaningful, ripe with knowledge & experience

Yoongi mentioned, with the same levity with which he described ppl saying Honsool was creepy & being happy about it, that he cried a bit recording First Love +

+ in the Wings Concept Book, he also mentions that he would tear up recording especially the second half (translated here by doolsetbangtan) & recently mentioned during his D-2 live that Agust D & First Love together were emotionally demanding. +

+ and it's not surprising considering just how much of himself Yoongi poured into every inch of this track, into every performance of First Love. There's the technical aspect of it, which doesn't just take us down memory lane; it feels like we're in +

+ Yoongi's mind, reliving that first encounter with the piano, too big physically & in concept, in what it represented, for us to understand, & growing up with its relentless presence by our sides even as it felt as though the world was falling apart around us, a lifeline +

+ there's the way every choice in the production tells that story, and how Yoongi opens himself up & practically bleeds with the power of his emotion, wrings out his soul into his voice, into his delivery. Every performance of First Love like a declaration, +

+ a reaffirmation of the most immutable, the most unconditional vows of love, in front of thousands to see.

I remember hearing First Love 4 years ago. I remember being intrigued by the title at first, surprised to know it's Yoongi's solo, in tears, sobbing & moved, before +

+ knowing what the lyrics even meant. In the 3.09 minutes of this song's duration - Yoongi's birthday, March 9th & the lines "My beginning & end, you are the one who's going to witness it all" - I feel the closest I ever am to feeling the love Yoongi feels for music +

+ & it is disarming, all consuming, fiery, it is the most pure and powerful thing I could possibly feel. And that's really it - Yoongi doesn't merely tell us about his first love; somehow, like a sorcerer, he makes us feel the pangs of it, our hearts & breaths losing rhythm +

+ reduced to our basest emotions, unravelling right along with Yoongi. And ticking away steadily in the background, with the same relentless steadiness that kept Yoongi afloat, the metronome ticks away, keeping the listener grounded as well. Such an ingenious, poignant choice. +

+ Which brings me round now to Song Request. Although Song Request was only released last year, Yoongi admitted during a vlive that he had been working on it during Wings Tour - in other words, it was born during the time Yoongi was laying his heart bare on stage, every night +

+ where before, the personification of the piano, of music, spoke to Yoongi, warm words & promises, reassurance & comfort, [ "every time that I wanted to give up, you told me by my side / Kid, you can really do it" ], now as the radio, as music, Yoongi speaks to /us/ +

+ he's "a corner, a fragment, as well as your emotions' companion" just like that brown piano in a corner of Yoongi's childhood home; just as music, as the piano, is Yoongi's "beginning & end", Yoongi as music promises us that "I'll be with you, from your birth & you end" +

+ in other words, the very comfort, the very reassurance & steadiness he always experienced through music, the purest form of love that saw him through some of the hardest times of his life, he is now that to us - he is the brown piano, making that very same promise of selfless +

+ eternal devotion.

Where through First Love we experienced the unraveling of Yoongi's immense & inexplicably beautiful love for music, through Song Request he gives us the opportunity to feel it for ourselves. I cannot begin to explain how much that means to me, personally +

+ because music, and since several years now, Yoongi's music, Bangtan's music, has been my safe haven when NOTHING else was right in my life, when there was no hope & no light. To have that voice tell me, the same way music once spoke to Yoongi, to lean on him & rest sometimes +

+ was a shock to my system I can't describe. I spent so long running that the notion of being allowed to rest, to deserve it, to allow myself to curl away from the emotions picking me apart & just rest in the warm, reliable comfort of music, was astonishing. All the more, I +

+ think, because it's given so directly - because it's Yoongi, speaking right to us. This is something he's done every time he has featured on another artist's song as well - he speaks directly to us; gives us real, honest, but genuine & warm comfort + https://twitter.com/anotherunperson/status/1296061300104077318?s=19

+ Song Request feels, to quote Yoongi's words from Your Eyes Tell, like a safe place for my heart - always there, always kind & warm & patient, waiting, listening. Forever. Is this how Yoongi feels for his first love? This endless relief, this almost crippling gratitude to have +

+ something so certain, so sure, in one's life? I can never fully grasp the full depth of his emotions, of course I can't because they are truly his, the essence of him, but I feel honoured beyond measure to be allowed a taste - I am honoured beyond measure that he chose +

+ to give us, in each our own ways, what music gave him.

To leave off, I'm recalling how when doing the Wings album review, Joonie fell into reminiscing about pre debut Yoongi when speaking of First Love +

+ and I think I understand the sentiment. First Love forms such an integral core to the very essence of Min Yoongi. It's been 4 years and I still can't grasp how we get to be, in some way, a witness of it

+ the translations I used :

First Love https://www.google.com/amp/s/doolsetbangtan.wordpress.com/2018/06/01/first-love/amp/

Song Request https://www.google.com/amp/s/doyoubangtan.wordpress.com/2019/01/22/song-request-by-lee-sora-ft-suga/amp/