Inside BTS’ ‘ARIRANG’ Studio Sessions With Producer Tyler Spry: ‘We Were Trying to Capture Some Kind of Magic’

How does a producer follow up crafting a Billboard Hot 100 No. 1 hit for a decade-defining global superstar? For Tyler Spry — who was part of the elite creative team that brought Bad Bunny’s Grammy-winning album DeBÍ TiRAR MáS FOToS to life, including a writing/producing credit on record-breaking title track “DtMF” — the answer is to do it again, this time for another of the biggest acts in the world: BTS.

After four years of solo exploration by Jin, SUGA, j-hope, RM, Jimin, V and Jung Kook while the members completed their individual military conscription, the South Korean boy band’s shapeshifting first project since 2022, ARIRANG, regroups by rooting itself in cultural heritage — while also tapping talent (Diplo, Ryan Tedder, Kevin Parker, El Guicho, JPEGMAFIA and more) from all over the map. “I’m so fortunate to have been able to work on these two albums that feel bigger than just bodies of music,” Spry tells Billboard from his studio in Silver Lake.

The producer started work on the more recent project not too long after Bad Bunny’s album was released, pitching ideas to BTS’ team at the beginning of 2025. Spry struck gold with the R&B track “Please,” which would ultimately make it onto ARIRANG‘s lighter-weight second half; it earned him a spot at an L.A. writing camp held last summer, along with collaborators from Tedder’s publishing company Runner Music. During those studio sessions — captured in small part by Netflix documentary BTS: The Return — trance-like lead single “Swim” came into being.

“Some of the best songs just fall out of thin air,” Spry says. “It’s like they’ve always existed somewhere, and you just need to be in the right headspace to reach out and grab them.” For “Swim,” that spark “just happened so effortlessly,” he adds. “A lot of times, you have to fight for a song. There’s something there that’s really good, but you just can’t crack it.” Here, the composition was fleshed out in fewer than 30 minutes.

After Spry and Diplo signee Leclair got down that rough beat, Tedder quickly freestyled the second verse and then handed off the track for a longer tinkering process. “That was when RM came in, and I think they started to get more serious about the record,” Spry says. “He was trying to figure out how to make it fit the vision they had for the lead single.”

It wasn’t until the septet returned to Seoul to finish recording that the pressure of the group’s self-imposed March deadline really started to ramp up. Because they were working halfway around the world, Spry would get vocals from longtime BTS collaborator Pdogg back in the middle of the night; he recalls stepping out of a friend’s birthday party to listen to a mix of “Please” with the HYBE crew. “It was chaotic,” he laughs. “But I love the chaos. I thrive in the chaos. It’s my job as a producer.”

Below, Spry talks to Billboard about the stress and “magic” of creating ARIRANG tracks — plus a few “really good” songs that just might surface on future BTS projects — during the L.A. studio sessions and beyond.

ARIRANG is now a Billboard 200 No. 1 album, with “Swim” topping the Billboard Hot 100, Global 200 and Global Excl. US charts. How are you feeling about the reception? 

Honestly, I’m amazed by the response. I am aware that BTS is one of the biggest artists in the world, but when we set out to make this project, it was very ambitious, and it’s definitely a sound that I don’t think the fans or the general public were expecting.

It was so cool to see them perform [“Swim”] live. I hadn’t seen it yet. Everything related to BTS is very secretive and on lockdown, so I didn’t see any music videos or performance videos before they happened. It was really exciting to see these legends out there dancing and singing a record that we made in a little studio in L.A.

How did you get involved with the album? 

At the beginning of last year, I was sitting down with my publisher, Ryan Tedder, and we were talking about who we wanted to collaborate with. He mentioned that BTS was going to be making a comeback. Honestly, it felt like a lofty, almost unattainable goal to have a record with BTS. But I love a challenge, so we decided to swing for the fences.

We spent a few weeks at Ryan’s studio in West Hollywood, starting ideas, sending them to the team, trying to find something that would stick. Some of it was probably too pop, too close to their earlier English-language records like “Dynamite” and “Butter.” But we caught our stride and started finding a sound that felt fresh and exciting.

And this was before the L.A. studio sessions?

Yeah. I wouldn’t say I came onto the project in any official capacity before that. My team and I were just sketching, painting, trying to find sounds that would be exciting for the label and for the band. Before the L.A. writing sessions, we found something like that. That ended up being a song called “Please,” which, after some changes, landed on the album. It was our ticket into the writing camp that they were hosting at Conway Studios.

The crew [from Runner Music] was mostly me, James Essien, Sean Foreman, Ryan Tedder and Sam Homaee. And then there was a whole gang of incredible songwriters and producers, a revolving door of people at Conway. That was June or July of last year. But initially, we weren’t in the room with the band. They invited us out, and there were a lot of people making ideas to present to them.

Tell me more about the process of making “Please.”

We weren’t necessarily writing full, finished, polished ideas from scratch every day. Rather, we were trying to capture some kind of magic, like lightning in a bottle. “Please” ended up being one of those. I was just chopping up these keyboards and guitars that sounded like old soul sounds and putting together some off-the-grid hip-hop drums. It’s the only song on the album with a single producer credit, so it means a lot that the guys and [HYBE chairman] Bang [Si-Hyuk] trusted me to carry that one across the line.

The day we wrote the song, I came home and my friend Dawson from the band Almost Monday and my wife and I all sang gang vocals around the dining room table in my kitchen. The band decided to keep them in because there was just this raw texture that they connected with. You can hear it really quiet in the background on the chorus. 

What was your first impression of BTS as collaborators? 

We weren’t working with them all at one time. It would be chaos to have that many voices in the room. But I got to work with them one-on-one.

Jung Kook is an amazing songwriter, and he is an incredible singer. He can sing with no Auto-Tune and hit all the notes. V is so warm and sweet and has an incredible tone. He’s really funny too, even though there’s a bit of a language barrier. We were cracking jokes and having fun in the studio.

RM feels almost like the older brother of the group. He knows what he wants. He helps bring the guys in and get them excited about things. It was a good energy. Honestly, they’re some of the nicest guys I’ve met, let alone just artists. It was really a privilege working with them.

There are some songs that we made with them that they were really creatively involved in that have not seen the light of day. So I hope — it’s not up to me — but I do hope that those get to come out into the world.

They did mention that they’ve already claimed some of the unused songs from the studio sessions for upcoming solo projects.

Yeah. [Laughs] I would definitely like to know who’s claiming which songs. There are some really good ones. 

How did BTS mediate disagreements while working on the album? 

They’ve done a really great job making sure that every voice is heard, every opinion is respected. The final album, once they whittled it down, is such a distilled version of what every member really wanted.

When working with the guys, the best music that we made was when we created a space where we were free to try anything. Like, SUGA could jump onto the mic and feel comfortable freestyling a rap in front of songwriters and producers that he’d only known for a few days. Or, Jung Kook could tell us that a lyric concept that we have sucks, and he doesn’t like it. [Laughs] But in a nice way, in a kind way. Or RM saying, “Oh, that verse is cool, but we wouldn’t say that,” or, “That’s not our flow.”

It seems like some of the lyrics on “Please” were a result of that calibration.

Are the original lyrics out there?

No, but there’s speculation that the line “Hold me from the front, back, left, right” might have been something else originally. Something less PG.

Perhaps it could have been something else originally. [Laughs] No comment.

I mean, some of the best songwriters and producers are also artists, but you’re wearing a different hat when you’re writing music for other people. Our job was to build a room that they could exist in.

But they’re the stars; once they step into the room, that’s what brings it to life. On a song like “Please,” you set the mood with the chords and the drums and the melodies, and then they come in and figure out what they want to say and how they want to perform it.

Tell me about how “Swim” was chosen as the lead single. 

“Swim” is a subtle song. They’re not singing at the top of their range. The melody isn’t particularly athletic, but it’s an earworm. It sneaks up on you. I think that’s what ended up happening with them. 

That day, we were paired with Leclair, who’s signed to Diplo. When we were working, we’d write two or three songs because we weren’t trying to deliver a finished, polished thought. There weren’t any references. Leclair and I just put together the rough beat while James and Sean were freestyling on the couch. The chorus just fell out of thin air.

I think everyone was afraid of it, because it’s such a subtle song. It didn’t feel like, “Here’s ‘Dynamite.’ Here’s the smash.” But I remember two weeks after we wrote it, I was going to the lounge to make myself a coffee. I walked past V, and he was humming to himself, “Swim, swim.” I don’t even think he knew that I could hear him. That was when I knew, “OK, I think we’re on to something. I think this is probably going to be the song.”

It’s interesting that you contrast the two songs, because when they were discussing “Swim,” BTS said it reminded them of “Dynamite,” mostly in that it was such an unexpected choice.

BTS has such an incredible team around them with Pdogg and Bang, and they’re obviously incredible writers on their own. They come to people like us to help contextualize them to the world in a new way.

That’s why I use a reference like “Dynamite,” because, at that point in time, that was what introduced them to a whole new demographic of people and built new fans. We had the task of trying to do that now, while honoring their core fan base and where they come from.

They are fundamentally different people than they were before they took a break. They grew a lot. Their tastes changed, their voices changed. It was daunting to steward that process, but I’m really proud of what we ended up doing. I mean, look at the response. There’s a whole bunch of people listening to BTS that weren’t listening to BTS a few months ago.

“Swim” is also one of three English-language songs on the album. Were there larger conversations about that?

More than ever, the language that a song is in does not necessarily affect how large the audience for that song is. I had the fortune of having a No. 1 six weeks ago with Bad Bunny’s “DTMF” being the first Spanish-language single to top [the Billboard Hot 100, Global 200 and Global Exclu. US charts simultaneously]. Now — granted, it is in English — “Swim” is the No. 1 song on the Hot 100. A Korean act on an American chart.

I’m really proud to be a part of this album because, like DeBÍ TiRAR MáS FOToS, it feels like such a deep representation of who they [BTS] are as artists and the country that they come from. I think it’s pretty bada– that they decided to do a lot of the album in Korean — not just make a project that was focusing on being a large commercial venture, but rather a snapshot of who they are creatively at this point in their lives.

It seemed like ARIRANG was produced on a tight timeline. Did you feel that pressure in the studio?

At the writing camp, while the stakes were really high, none of us were made to feel pressured or competitive. Obviously, we all wanted to write the BTS comeback single, but on any given day, we’d show up and, like, my friends are in Studio B, my friends are in Studio A. We all get to have lunch together, high-five each other and listen to the songs that we made.

Once they had “Swim,” “Normal” and “Please” — once they had the bulk of the earlier songs on the project — and they started to really assemble the album, that was when pressure started to set in. Getting the vocal performances right, getting the mixes right — that’s where we were really under the gun, especially to make the vinyl and CD deadlines.

Was there a particularly memorable moment working with the members on this album?

There’s a video that’s gone around on the Internet when I was writing with V, James Essien and Sean Foreman. That video is not the making of any of the songs that made the album, but it was one of the most fun days I had in the studio with the guys. We were just jumping up and down, singing the songs. I think that it was one of the freest days we had in the studio, creatively. So I do hope that song gets to see the light of day.

I’m glad there were those fun times, because the Netflix documentary shows a lot of creative anguish.

We had so much fun with the members in the studio. Like I said earlier, there were definitely times where SUGA would jump off the couch like a bolt of lightning, run into the booth and freestyle a verse out of nowhere. Or Jung Kook would say, “I think I have an idea. Can I get on the mic?” And then he’d get on the SM7 and go stupid, just completely crush the most angelic melody. We were really trying to create a space where they felt safe to try anything. And I think we accomplished that.