I wouldn't even really call this a K-pop tune.
I think this is quite straight down the line
pop.
You know, they do things so well in the K-pop world.
It is so slick, and BTS are really slickness personified.
We knew that BTS were looking for what would be
their first, big, breakout, English-spoken single.
No one knew where to go with it.
So it was a bit of a stab in the dark,
but we did know they wanted something fun with tempo.
The song was written over Zoom
with myself and my writing partner, Jessica Gamba.
We're both British.
We're both from London.
Jess is from East London.
I'm from West London.
She's proper Cockney, she talks like that.
She's a total character.
There was certain references that we used, for example,
I think we say something about pass the paracetamol
Paracetamol in the UK is like a painkiller, like a Tylenol.
We were just writing it from our point of view,
rather than writing it from a Korean point of view
or from a US point of view.
We just wrote what felt kind of right to us.
We sent it over to Ron Perry with a batch of other songs.
I get a call,
a FaceTime from Ron Perry,
and he was like, "Dude, they're taking Dynamite,
and we're going full steam ahead with it."
We started with a tempo.
What feels good?
So I was literally just clicking.
Click, click, click, click.
Because I felt,
as soon as I can start doing that in my head,
like that kind of chicken bop,
I can start almost hearing where I need to take it.
I bring up a bunch of sounds,
start to feel what's you know,
play around what's feeling good.
And then I land on this sound.
That's the butter.
That's kind of what holds the whole thing together really.
Another big element of it
is this live bass.
We had to bring some energy to the pre-chorus.
We've got synth line like a pad that opens up,
and we've got like a high held thing that comes in.
This really, I think, gives it a kind of a bit more weight
on the bottom end, which again just kind of gives
it a bit more body and makes it swell a bit more.
We then have two kicks.
We've got a bottom kick.
We've got a
top kick which is just literally giving you click.
We've got a punchy snare.
We've got a fatter snare.
And we've got like a disco clap here.
We also have like a
Each section, the base kind of opens up more and more.
So it's kind of low fight in the first verse.
It opens up a bit more in the pre-chorus,
and then in the chorus,
I layered
the live bass with a Moog bass.
That makes the base in the hook brighter
and just cut through a touch more
and also give it some more bottom end.
Because it's a Moog.
I then
bring in
two
sets of
keys
which are played together,
which is like a rock piano,
like a kind of almost like an Elton John,
really hard, glossy, kind of 80's sounding piano.
Another little guitar note comes in here,
just running through it.
So in the second verse, I don't bring too much else in,
apart from a shaker loop that adds on top of the drums.
Second
pre-chorus
we bring in two new guitars.
The second guitar is playing a bit more of
like a reverb-ed out kind of riff.
The main thing that changed
in the second hook to the first hook
is that you've got all those
second pre-chorus elements in your second chorus.
Now
I bring in
the horns.
So the horns
are
a combination of
samples
which I played in.
and then I also have real live horns
by a guy called Johnny Thirkell,
who played the horns on Uptown Funk
and 24 other number ones.
This was his 25th number one.
(joyful music)
My stacked one has given me a bit more brightness
and a bit more kind of like bite to them.
There's a couple of little kind of like bangs and whooshes.
At that point, I don't think I had the key change in.
I think it was just kind of a bit of a Eureka moment.
It was a bit of a trial and error,
but it really just works.
And because they can sing so well,
it takes the whole thing over the top of it.
After we add all these elements together,
we end up with something that sounds
like this.
Only RM
speaks really fluent English,
and they all sing it so well.
I mean, I'm just putting myself into their shoes.
And if someone came to me and said,
you've got to sing a song in Korean.
I would just be like,
"How on Earth am I supposed to do?"
I wouldn't even know where to start.
I'm a small part of what this is,
but it's like I've been embraced as like one of their own,
which is like incredible and very humbling,
and lovely to
to experience.
I've made everything up to now that you would have heard
in my bedroom
in my parents' house.
I'm not there now.
I'm in a studio now.
And I've only been in here for six weeks,
and I still look back like it's a new girlfriend.
You know, that kind of like look back
when you just meet your new girlfriend
or boyfriend or whatever.