BTS's outstanding GQ cover story serves as a reintroduction to the band and a deep dive into who they are

It’s been reported that ahead of their live comeback show in Seoul on March 21, one day after the release of ARIRANG, their highly anticipated comeback album, BTS will make their way to the stage via what’s called the King’s Road, a historic path that was used for royal processions. Needless to say, city officials wouldn’t grant this privilege to just anyone, but it’s now an undisputed fact that RM, Jin, Suga, j-hope, Jimin, V, and Jung Kook are the modern pop culture sovereigns of their nation, whose influence has extended beyond Korea and the entire region to become global entertainment titans.

So it’s fitting that the concept of a pop act’s “imperial phase” comes up in the new profile of BTS in GQ, just released today. This is the theory that artists have one era of creative and commercial supremacy, a finite stretch of time that takes them to a peak that can never be reached again. As noted in GQ, though there are always exceptions, very few artists experience multiple imperial phases – and yet, the idea of the imperial phase up to this point has only been applied to artists from the west, and when the expression was coined, it was unimaginable that seven young men from Korea would go on to conquer pop music.

BTS soared to unprecedented summits prior to 2020, and then the world stopped. During the pandemic, somehow they flew even higher as they figured out how to not only remain connected to their existing fans but actually grow their fanbase. In 2022, when they paused group activities so that they could begin staggering their military service over the next two and a half years, they were already at a level of success that no one could have foretold.

Now it’s 2026, all of them have completed their service, we are a month away from their attempt to go imperial once again. And given the record breaking pre-sales for ARIRANG and that the tour is already sold out, we can probably just call it now – imperial phase number three, confirmed. So, yes, of course, they can walk the King’s Road in Seoul before they make their way around the world, again. And, most importantly, TOGETHER.

That’s my biggest takeaway from their GQ cover story, and by the way, it’s a global cover story. BTS isn’t just covering GQ in one territory, it’s all the territories.