LOVE MYSELF CAMPAIGN: EXPLORING BRANDEN’S SIX PILLARS OF SELF-ESTEEM IN BTS SONGS

Abstract

On November 2017, 7-member Korean idol group BTS (Bangtan Sonyeondan) launched the LOVE MYSELF campaign, partnering with UNICEF #ENDviolence program. This campaign was presented to build the young generation’s belief that “true love first begins with loving myself”. As a part of this campaign, BTS released the Love Yourself trilogy albums, and the recent one is titled Love Yourself: Answer. This research aims to discover the self-esteem expressions used in the lyrics of each song according to Branden’s Six Pillars of Self-esteem (1994) and also to analyze the connection between the four songs in the album, namely: Epiphany, I’m Fine, Idol and Answer: Love Myself, and the campaign. A qualitative method with literary study was used to collect the data from the lyrics of the four songs. The result found out that three songs: I’m Fine, Idol and Answer: Love Myself, contain all Branden’s Six Pillars of Self-esteem, namely: living consciously, self-acceptance, self-responsibility, self-assertiveness, living purposefully and personal integrity. While Epiphany also contains all of the pillars except self-responsibility. It can be concluded that all four songs matched with the LOVE MYSELF campaign. The findings of this study should give a support to the campaign and persuade the listeners about love and respect oneself.