BTS Songs to Cry To
Sorted by which kind of bad night it is, because "sad songs" covers about six different feelings.
12 songs · press play on any of them, no account needed
A large part of why this band matters to people is that they wrote about being unwell before it was safe for a Korean idol group to do so, and kept doing it after it stopped being novel. There is a lot of this in the catalogue.
So it is worth sorting. A song for grief is no use during burnout, and the one that helps at 3am is rarely the one that helps in daylight.
For missing someone
↗Spring Day
BTS · YOU NEVER WALK ALONE
The one. About waiting for someone through a winter that will not end. It has been read as a memorial and the group has never over-explained it, which is part of why it holds.
↗Still With You
Jung Kook · Still With You - Single
Jung Kook, recorded almost alone, over a jazz-ish guitar. It sounds like a voice memo and that is the whole appeal.
↗Winter Ahead
V & Park Hyo Shin · Winter Ahead - Single
V with Park Hyo Shin. Warm rather than devastating — the version of missing someone you can survive.
For the low with no reason attached
↗Blue & Grey
BTS · BE
The most precise thing on this list. Not grief, not a crisis — the flat grey that arrives without an event and does not lift on schedule.
↗The Truth Untold (feat. Steve Aoki)
BTS · Love Yourself 結 'Answer'
For the version of it where the problem is that you never said the thing.
↗Polar Night
Agust D · D-DAY
Agust D, from D-DAY — named for the weeks at high latitudes when the sun does not come up at all. That is the metaphor and it is exact.
For burnout
↗Black Swan
BTS · MAP OF THE SOUL : 7
Specifically about losing the feeling for the thing you organised your life around. If work has stopped meaning anything, this is the one.
- ↗
Dis-Ease
BTS · BE
About not knowing how to stop. It has a groove, which somehow makes it worse.
↗NORMAL
BTS · ARIRANG
From ARIRANG, and the plainest thing any of them has said about wanting an ordinary life back.
For afterwards
The ones that go at the end, when you want to stop crying rather than keep going.
- ↗
Life Goes On
BTS · BE
It does not promise anything gets better. It says the day is going to continue regardless, which on some nights is the more useful sentence.
- ↗
Magic Shop
BTS · Love Yourself 結 'Answer'
Written by a member of the band, for the people listening to it. Very few songs are that literally addressed to you.
↗Mikrokosmos
BTS · MAP OF THE SOUL : PERSONA
One person, one light, several billion of them. It is a closing song and it works as one.
One thing worth saying plainly: a playlist is not treatment. BTS have been unusually direct about therapy and about asking for help, and several of these songs exist because their writers did. If a bad night is not passing, tell someone — that is the same advice the band has given from a stage more than once.
Keep this list
Turn it into a playlist you can play end to end and share, or write your own version and say why — everything here comes across, and you change whatever you disagree with.
More recommendations
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- BTS Deep CutsNone of these was a single. Several of them are better than the singles, and ARMY will fight about which.Open