For years, one number seemed inseparable from BTS.
Seven.
Seven members.
Seven different personalities.
Seven different voices.
But one group.
That was part of the attraction.
Then something interesting happened.
The members began showing us much more clearly who they were without the other six standing beside them.
RM sounded like RM.
SUGA sounded like SUGA.
j-hope sounded like j-hope.
Jin, Jimin, V and Jung Kook each began building musical worlds that could not simply be described as “BTS songs without BTS.”
And I started thinking about a strange question.
Did BTS need to separate for a while in order to become stronger together?
Because something else happened at the same time.
The fans began separating too.
Seven Members Were Never Seven Copies of the Same Artist
This connects directly to something I wrote about BTS’s changing sound.
We sometimes talk about “the BTS sound” as if seven people naturally want to make exactly the same music.
But why would they?
They aren’t seven copies of one musician.
Even before the solo era, their different musical instincts were visible.
BTS’s official history notes that by The Most Beautiful Moment in Life Pt.1, participation in songwriting and production had expanded beyond RM, SUGA and j-hope to the vocal members as well.
As the years passed, those individual tastes became increasingly obvious.
And eventually there was enough room for each member to say:
This is what I sound like.
That may have been necessary.
A Group Can Also Become a Limitation
Being in a successful group must be an extraordinary opportunity.
But I imagine it can also create artistic compromises.
There are seven voices to consider.
Seven personalities.
Seven sets of strengths.
A BTS song has to work as a BTS song.
That doesn’t mean every member can fully explore every musical idea he personally wants to explore within it.
This is why I find the solo era so interesting.
For the first time, we could hear those differences without requiring them to fit inside one song.
And the differences were much larger than I expected.
That tells me something.
Maybe BTS never had one musical color in the first place.
Maybe what we called “BTS’s color” was the color created when seven very different colors were mixed together.
Perhaps Solo Music Actually Explains BTS
This changed the way I thought about the group.
Sometimes you understand a mixture better after separating its ingredients.
Listen to the members individually, and certain parts of BTS begin making more sense.
You begin to recognize where particular emotions, rhythms, vocal colors or musical instincts may come from.
Then when those seven people stand together again, you don’t necessarily hear them as one object.
You hear seven individuals creating an eighth thing:
BTS.
That may ultimately make the group more interesting, not less.
But there is a problem.
The Members Became More Individual — And So Did the Fans
This is where things become complicated.
Once seven members release very different music, fans will naturally prefer some of it over others.
Someone might love one member’s solo album and rarely listen to another’s.
Someone may discover BTS because of Jung Kook.
Someone else because of Jimin.
Someone else through RM or SUGA.
And there’s nothing inherently wrong with that.
Even an OT7 fan doesn’t have to like every song equally.
But individual preference can become individual competition.
And that is where the solo era created tension.
Reddit Fans Have Noticed the Change
This isn’t just my imagination.
In a 2025 Reddit discussion, fans debated whether the fandom had become more divided since individual projects expanded.
Some described increased solo stanning, comparisons between members and separate fan bubbles.
Others argued that ARMY had simply become too enormous to appear completely unified, and that the absence of regular full-group activity during military service made those divisions more visible.
What’s especially interesting is that concerns about solo stans existed before the full solo era.
Back in 2021, moderators of the main BTS subreddit addressed what they described as an increase in antagonistic solo-stan behavior, while carefully distinguishing between simply having a favorite member and attacking or diminishing the others.
So the solo era didn’t invent this problem.
Perhaps it simply gave it more room to grow.
Having a Favorite Member Isn’t the Problem
This distinction matters.
Having a bias is normal.
Preferring one member’s voice is normal.
Loving one solo album more than another is normal.
Even becoming interested in BTS because of only one member is normal.
The problem begins when:
“I love this member”
turns into:
“Therefore the other members are his competition.”
That’s a completely different relationship with the group.
And once fans begin comparing sales, streams, promotions, chart positions and opportunities between members, seven people who spent years creating together can begin to look like seven rival companies.
Whether the members themselves see their relationship that way is a separate question.
Fans can create competitions that the artists never asked for.
But Solo Fans Can Also Walk in the Opposite Direction
Here’s why the story isn’t simple.
Solo activity can divide a fandom.
But it can also expand it.
A recent Reddit post offered almost the reverse story: a listener first became interested specifically in Jung Kook, consumed his solo work, and then gradually moved toward BTS as a whole.
That’s important.
The doorway doesn’t always work like this:
BTS → favorite member.
It can also work:
favorite member → BTS.
Seven solo careers therefore create seven different entrances into the same house.
Someone who would never have discovered BTS through an older group track might hear one member’s solo song and become curious:
Who are the other six?
And There Is One Small Detail I Find Fascinating
Even during their individual activities, BTS members continued using the name ARMY for their fans.
Fans themselves noticed this.
A 2023 r/bangtan discussion focused specifically on how unusual and meaningful some fans found it that members pursuing individual careers continued addressing supporters with the group’s fandom name rather than creating entirely separate fandom identities.
I don’t want to read the members’ private intentions into that.
Only they can explain exactly what it means to them.
But symbolically, I find it interesting.
Seven individual artists emerged.
Yet the old name remained.
ARMY.
Maybe BTS Needed the Solo Era More Than ARMY Did
From an artistic perspective, I increasingly think this period made sense.
Imagine reaching your late twenties or thirties after spending almost your entire adult life inside one enormously successful group.
Wouldn’t you eventually wonder:
What does my music sound like when I make something primarily as myself?
That isn’t necessarily rejection of the group.
It may simply be part of becoming an adult artist.
And perhaps allowing each member that space makes staying together more sustainable.
A group held together because its members have nowhere else to go is one thing.
A group made of people who can stand alone but still choose to return is something different.
That idea interests me much more.
Seven Stronger Individuals Could Create a Different BTS
This brings us back to the question from my previous article.
I don’t necessarily want BTS to recreate the BTS of ten years ago.
The members aren’t those people anymore.
Their solo work has probably made that even more obvious.
They’ve had opportunities to discover what works for them individually.
So when they create music together again, why should they pretend none of that happened?
I’d rather hear those experiences enter BTS.
Not erase them.
Because perhaps the next version of BTS won’t come from seven people suppressing their individual colors.
Perhaps it will come from seven people bringing those colors back to the same table.
And seeing what happens when they mix again.
But ARMY Faces the Same Test
There is a strange irony here.
The solo era may have taught BTS members how to become stronger individuals.
But it may also have taught some fans to think more individually.
My member.
My album.
My streaming numbers.
My chart position.
My favorite versus yours.
So perhaps the biggest question isn’t whether BTS can come back together.
Maybe it’s whether the fandom can accept that supporting seven people does not require pretending all seven are identical.
You can prefer one member’s music.
Someone else can prefer another.
That difference doesn’t automatically have to become a war.
Seven different artists can still be BTS.
And seven different preferences can still exist inside ARMY.
Maybe “OT7” Has to Mean Something Different Now
When BTS were younger, OT7 could feel simple.
Seven members standing on one stage.
One album.
One tour.
One group.
But after the solo era, perhaps OT7 has to become more mature.
It cannot mean:
“I must like everything equally.”
That’s unrealistic.
Maybe it means:
“I can appreciate each member as an individual without needing his success to come at the expense of another member.”
That is a harder version of OT7.
But perhaps it’s also a healthier one.
So Did Solo Careers Divide BTS?
I don’t think that’s the most interesting question.
The members were always individuals.
Solo work simply allowed us to see those differences more clearly.
And yes, those differences may have contributed to divisions within parts of the fandom.
But they also created new music, new audiences and new ways to discover BTS.
So I keep returning to another thought:
Maybe becoming seven individual artists was not the opposite of being BTS.
Maybe it was the next stage of becoming BTS.
Because after more than a decade together, unity shouldn’t require seven people to remain the same.
Real unity might mean something much harder:
Growing differently.
Standing independently.
And then still finding a reason to stand together.
Perhaps that’s the real test of BTS’s next chapter.
Not whether they can become the seven young men they once were.
But whether seven grown artists—with seven careers, seven musical identities and seven different lives—
can create something that still sounds like BTS.