A Closer Look at TXT’s 7TH YEAR

An analysis of the recurring themes and evergreen lessons throughout 7TH YEAR: A Moment of Stillness in the Thorns

View the Substack version of this piece here!

As thoroughly documented in this deep-dive essay, it is never quite accurate to say that TXT’s musical universe is focused on one thing over another. One can never disentangle all of the threads TXT are constantly weaving; the art project’s ongoing nature is the point, and every emotion is treated with such care and nuance that words are not enough, hence the musical world-building. To say that the latest TXT era is a departure from their fantastical storytelling into something more down-to-earth and realistic is reductive. This analysis covers the many ways the videos, songs, and even marketing materials for 7TH YEAR stay true to TXT’s richly-layered narrative, one that might be less overtly like a fairy tale this time, but one that remains full of the same mix of wisdom and expansive, imaginative thinking.

From Products of Imagination to Physical Products 
One of the purposes of art is to give intangibles — feelings, thoughts, instincts — visual representations. Once something abstract and complex takes on a physical form, it becomes “something” and therefore not just “anything” or “everything.” It stops seeming overwhelming once it has a shape and definition. This is one of the reasons why some children fear there are monsters under the bed when the lights go out, and why some children’s books turn fears into easy-to-visualize allegories, like friendly animals. With 7TH YEAR, TXT do something comparable, using a faceless, spiky creature as its mascot. They give their anxiety this form, as well as the form of an anonymous “other man” in the “Stick With You” music video. Whether in the more “realistic” or more cartoonish form, giving their anxiety contours gives TXT a starting point for filling in and redrawing its details. The first part of tackling a fear is being able to describe it.

To rid a child of the fear of monsters in the bedroom, a parent or babysitter might turn on the lights to prove no monsters are present. What is even better is handing the child a flashlight or something the parent or babysitter calls the “monster repellant,” so that the child feels empowered to be the one who eradicates the perceived threat. Rather than internalizing “My fear was silly,” they internalize “My fear was valid, but I overcame it and can do so again.” Honoring someone’s feelings means more when coupled with a reminder of that person’s ability to change those feelings. Through the limited-time website established prior to the album release, TXT equipped viewers and listeners with comparable tools, validating fears without buying into them. Fans could “buy” the following and then some:

• An “Anxiety Disposal Bag”
• An “Anxiety Metronome”
• An “Anxiety Extinguisher”
• An “Anxiety Trap Candle”
• A “Mental Control Cone”
• A “Spiky Inner Peace Singing Bowl”
• A “Shut-Down Switch”
• A “Deep Sleep Defense” (aka an eye mask!)
• “R.I.P Thorn Man” (aka a coffin to put him in!)

When visiting the “online store” for the “ANTI-ANXIETY CLUB” merchandise, fans saw messages ceaselessly running across the screen like “CHILL OUT” and “YOUR ANXIETY IS LYING TO YOU.” The use of the word “club” emphasized the “together” aspect of combatting anxiety, as did the all-caps formatting. It is ironic to yell at someone to “CHILL OUT” and shows that the TXT members themselves still need that reminder! They also still benefit from the reminder that their minds can play tricks on them, so buying supplies to fend off that trickery pays dividends.

Dealing with anxiety and phobias is an ongoing battle, so rather than aiming to eradicate them, they aim to manage them by stopping them from seeming so all-powerful. Anxiety sounds much less daunting if one can just toss it into an “Anxiety Disposal Bag,” for example! Ironically, by commodifying things like nerves and insomnia, TXT devalued them. 

The website was both fake and not fake. Legitimate 7TH YEAR-era merchandise has been sold, like physical album copies, but the advertisements for things like a literal bed of thorns were obviously illegitimate! The gimmick’s fleeting and farcical nature showed the under-recognized ease with which presence becomes absence, and with which the most unnerving images in one’s mind can be shooed away. The website showed how easily transferable the contents of one’s internal world are onto the visible world, and that one’s sense of reality is all projections, for better and worse.

It is simultaneously a big deal and no big deal to change from belief to disbelief. Considering the “child fearing monsters are hiding in the bedroom” example, it is huge when that child’s fear goes away, and on a practical level, nothing changes but a state of mind. All it takes is a little “monster repellant” or the flick of a light switch to make the material surroundings lose their sense of danger! Likewise, it is both a huge deal and fundamentally not to go from swimming in confusion to having a moment of clarity upon seeing one’s inner turmoil be given a name and image on a web page. All it took for users to join TXT’s “ANTI-ANXIETY CLUB” and reclaim the upper hand in their battles against their fears was an online purchase! And in the “Stick With You” music video, nothing fundamentally changes and everything changes when TXT’s internal worlds are rocked (it turns out that what they thought were signs of being cheated on are nothing of the sort).

The 7TH YEAR era parallels previous TXT eras in the ways it exposes the hiding places of imagined circumstances within reality. While exposing those places and then renaming and reclaiming them, they realize much more can happen there. Eradicating a perceived threat and shrinking a fear opens up a surprising amount of cognitive room for better things, like more courage and bigger aspirations! 

Real-Time Reality Construction
When flipping their perceptions upside-down, TXT learn that those perceptions do not simply turn into their opposites, so the job is never done when it comes to going from belief to disbelief or from seeming “real” to “make-believe.” Treating “the little things” as “a huge deal” and vice versa is another example of their ongoing subversion.

Some of life’s largest impacts come in the quickest moments: the blink-of-an-eye times when rage or fear turns to relief and recognition, when larger-than-life stakes reveal themselves to be all in one’s head, when roles reverse between the more and less powerful entities in an internal struggle… As the text on the screen in the “Deja Vu” music video puts it:

“Since some things are precious, but invisible to the eye, we forget them as life passes by.”

By honoring “little things” that are “invisible,” like made-up fears of monsters, TXT honor the big things, like the moment those fears either evaporate or turn into weakened foes. Seeing immense value in what outsiders might not see at all is central to an ongoing source of TXT’s literary inspiration, The Little Prince, which includes this quote:

“[T]he eyes are blind. One must look with the heart.” 

Beyond recognizing that what one sees should not equate to what one automatically believes, one might need to entirely redefine what “seeing” even means. To really “see” something, one need not literally look at it. This message is central to the worldview of the TXT Universe. It’s why in the “Ghost Girl” music video, YEONJUN paints a lover while blindfolded and “finishes” when all he has done is made an outline of her figure. It’s why one of HUENINGKAI’s era-spanning symbols is an eye patch, and why the members draw attention to covering each other’s eyes in “Deja Vu.” It’s why BEOMGYU finds empty spaces the most beautiful ones in “Take My Half,” like empty boxes (or at least boxes with irrelevant contents that are not shown to viewers). It is why the “true name” of Viken, a main character in TXT’s related Webtoon, is “What was in the deepest corner of the box,” aka what was in the corner of Pandora’s box in the Greek myth, aka something felt yet unseen: hope. And it is why this essay argues that an abyss is the best metaphor for TXT’s story. (Please note that “The Abyss” as applied to TXT’s world ignores the original philosophical conceptualization.) 

An abyss is the presence of absence, a clearly-defined state of emptiness, something that is somehow both made-up and monumental. Weaving every single TXT era together is an exploration and embrace of an abyss. Whether their characters sink into it willingly, run and hide from it, stare down into it, fill it with tokens of memories, or anything else, they are always mesmerized and terrified by it. Some eras focus more on what terrors could be lurking within it, while eras like 7TH YEAR are actually more radical by being more realistic, focused on what never-before-conceived ideas could come out of it. TXT never claim that seeing the abyss as full of more potential blessings than potential curses is easy. But one day at a time — one “tomorrow” after another — they insist that this optimistic view is the one in which it is more worth believing. 

Like in previous eras, the songs on 7TH YEAR combine the “see beyond literal sight” and “consider the abyss in all its terrifying and beautiful possibilities” goals. In “Stick With You,” they mention “facing each other,” but not being “in [their former lover’s] eyes” anymore. They still look at each other, but that is different from seeing each other, and they yearn to do the latter like old times. 

In “Bed of Thorns,” they see a covetable personal respite where others see nothingness: “The deeper I sink, the more peaceful this moment, all miiiine…” 

“Take Me to Nirvana” describes how to picture the ultimate “sweet escape”: “Just close your eyes and open your heart.” They go on to sing, “Sinking into this moment… Shedding the shell of my mind.” 

In “21st Century Romance,” they sing, “With my eyes closed, I tune the frequency… I follow the faint signal,” and “We, who even embrace emptiness / Among the endless noise of the world… I listen to the voice within me.” Also in “21st Century Romance,” they sing allusions to “the abyss” concept:

“I become numb / Swiping has become a habit / Inside this emptiness… I surrender to the world of zeroes and ones / In all this overload… I can’t find anything.”

They previously sang about a “world of zero” in “0X1=LOVESONG (I Know I Love You)”:

“In this world of zero / I know you’re my one and only / In this endless darkness… Everything runs far away / My life before you was a mess / Couldn’t win one round of this chess.”

This bleak moment was seen as inevitable in “Trust Fund Baby”:

“It doesn’t work even if you add and multiply / For me, who’s a zero…”

Feeling a lack of control was also a source of stress in “What if I had been that PUMA”:

 “Pick your answer, A or B… Jaded in this endless game… Falling into a dilemma… my head is already overloaded.”

TXT seek an alternative to a society full of black-and-white thinking, with winners and losers, “zeros” and “ones,” dreams and dichotomously-depicted realities. If they have to live in a black-and-white society, though, and the choice is to either live in an “overloaded” and metaphorically closed-door way or to live with an “empty” and open mind, they choose the latter. Clarity and a sense of purpose are likelier to crystallize when not vying for mental space and attention, when they make a habit of cleaning up and throwing out their cognitive clutter! One of life’s many contradictions is that a sense of fullness comes from simplification and elimination, from removing negatives to make room for positives. As explained in this essay:

“Once all preconceived notions are gone, what is left is a blank space, unanswered questions, a void to be filled with past memories and future-focused promises. The meaning of life comes from actively working to fill this void.”

In several 7TH YEAR songs, TXT sing about enjoying the active effort of filling in blanks:

“That question mark is the dream that leads me / When fear spreads underneath, excitement [is] painted over it.” (“Dream of Mine”)

“Let go… Throw away worries… On this endless road / We keep running.” (“So What”)

Once TXT see situations as not predetermined zero-sum ordeals but as empty spaces where the choices are infinite and theirs to make, “the abyss” stops looking like confinement and starts looking like a playroom! When nothing is preordained, everything is possible, and living as a true dreamer requires this attitude. 

Daring to dream is the wisest way to live, and living that way is much easier when one can dream alongside other people. TXT touch on that message in “PRELUDE: The Thorn Tree”:  

“[When there’s] too much of me inside me… There’s no space left for you”! 

Making space for confidence and open-mindedness ends up making space for other people to share that attitude with, and in the 7TH YEAR era and past eras alike, TXT create that room for present-day companions by revisiting their pasts. Their inclinations towards subversion and shades-of-gray appreciation allow them to eagerly envision and manifest environments that incorporate all of their most valuable companions and life lessons. They can live as full-time dreamers by basking in the chances they are hands-on in creating.

Treating Timelines as Living Documents
This message appears on the screen at the end of the “Eternally” short film:

“In the blink of an eye, the boys felt they’ve returned from a long journey. The widening space between us, scribbles that unfold before our eyes, wade again through this dream.”

Each element is worth noting: the implication that a transformative journey has taken place but is entirely internal, the mixed uses of past and present tense, mentioning “widening space” and “scribbles,” and “wading again” through dreams and memories. (Like in prior TXT chapters, which are which, dreams or memories, remains unclear and beside the point.) 

Like how the narrator in The Little Prince worries he has lost the ability to “go hand-in-hand” with his friend and thus has lost his place on a shared plane of understanding, TXT worry in the 7TH YEAR song “Stick With You” about “A distance [they] can’t reach” anymore: “If I let go of your hand, I know it’s going to be over.” But like everything else about both The Little Prince and TXT’s narrative, things are not as mutually exclusive as they seem. They not only can but should feel the desire to “stick with” some people from their past and bring those people into their present and future — into “Just one more day, then one more,” as they put it in “Stick With You.”

A potential cognitive roadblock towards bringing the past into the present and future: the fear that doing so will taint and disrupt the past. But in the 7TH YEAR song “So What,” TXT decide:

“Some people say my dreams are too big / ‘If they shatter, what will you do?’ / No thanks… My huge dreams, even the pieces are bigger… Dreams that grew without answers.” 

Something that makes outsiders think “My dreams are shattered!” makes TXT think “Well, time to pick up the pieces and cherish what remains of the original dreams!” Besides, the shards are more valuable than the original whole item. The broken lines in physical representations of their experiences are what add color and character. They are the signs of a life that is truly lived, like photos with fingerprint-smudged details and heirlooms that appear the opposite of untouched. Memories change upon revisiting them, but it is still important to revisit them, because while some particulars slip away, the emotional core of each memory endures.

The ultimate reason why TXT keep “wading again” through dreams and memories, year after year and era after era, is because it is better to actively retrieve those thoughts and disrupt them, changing their meanings, than to passively pick them up and put them back. They repeatedly “wade again” both despite and because of the fact those dreams and memories consist of messy “scribbles,” ones that “unfold” in bits and pieces (much like the vignette style of The Little Prince). They are empowered when they view their pasts as interactive materials, always-updating stories that double as advice books and sources of connection. They permit themselves to grow and change while honoring where they’ve been.

By appreciating the fragments of dreams and memories, TXT internalize and appreciate their big-picture takeaways more than they would if they had just looked at the whole. Something “real life” and dreams have in common is how they are bigger than the sums of their parts. They look more beautiful when fully seen, rather than allowed to dart away in the blink of an eye, before a “moment of stillness” allows for the “flaws” to be spotted.

Painting Bigger, Messier Pictures
Embracing a “flaw”-filled life goes hand-in-hand with being content with unanswered questions. TXT do not want to show people how to eliminate all of life’s frictions; they want to convince people that life is much better if some friction remains. That is why 7TH YEAR begins with a song called “Bed of Thorns” that is all about indulging in the present moment in part because of its thorniness: 

“A spreading sense of relief… a fleeting stillness… this stinging pain…” 

“The source of the pain / That once shook me… Everything I will face with my whole body.”

“Hurt… pain… Brilliantly flowing / Tears… Soak the thorn bushes / Even as I am endlessly scratched and hurt / Proof that I am who I am now…”

7TH YEAR ends with “Dream of Mine,” in which TXT sing:

“Even if I wander, I draw my own path.” 

The album and song end with this outro:

“Someday, toward the tomorrow I once drew, even if it turns out different / I will go further, to what comes after this.” 

It is vague yet firm: TXT will use the present moment to both look to the past and be pleasantly surprised by the future. Its specifics are irrelevant when they stop looking for them. Instead, they try to truly see their futures, by pausing to take stock and look inwards. BEOMGYU sings about doing this in his solo song from The Star Chapter: TOGETHER, “Take My Half”:

“The empty space I gave… The more I have, the emptier I feel… I won’t be confused about what I really want anymore.”

The greater the number of times TXT wade back through dreams and memories, the metaphorically richer they get, and the firmer their sense of purpose and resolve becomes. They find solutions in an experience (revisiting memories and dreams) that reminds them of the lack of finite solutions. They keep “going back” because it takes them forward; they keep looking for answers because each one makes space for more questions. 

Conscious Creation
Besides lessons like (to paraphrase) “It is important to see beyond literal sight” and “Endless roads are the best kind of roads,” The Little Prince has several other lessons that remain very relevant to TXT’s story, mainly (again, to paraphrase) “Actions speak louder than words” and “Consistent actions speak louder than one-off actions.” 

The Prince befriends a magical fox who explains that their visits only become special once they become routine, once the Prince has shown a loyal commitment to relationship maintenance. It doesn’t matter how many times the Prince vocalizes an intent to visit. In fact, the fox implies it would be fine if the Prince showed up without ever vocalizing the intent to do so, calling language “the source of misunderstandings”! The moments that will take up the most substance and space in the fox’s and Prince’s memories are moments like the burst of anticipation as the scheduled visiting hour approaches, and the joy that swells in both of them upon locking eyes and reaffirming that someone cares about and has shown up for them. The most meaningful aspects of their get-togethers are the intangible ones.

There are countless examples of moments between TXT’s music video characters that replicate the dynamic described above, and one in “Beautiful Strangers” is particularly illustrative when analyzing 7TH YEAR. YEONJUN and TAEHYUN stand alone in a space that was filled with panicking people mere seconds ago. In that quiet moment, YEONJUN gently adjusts the vines covering TAEHYUN. They lock eyes, YEONJUN takes his arm, and they flee together. They have a moment of seeing each other beyond literal sight, which comes after scenes in which they look at each other with expressions that say “Have we met before? You look familiar…” Notably, the “A-ha!” moment comes after touching vines, bringing to mind the “putting down roots” metaphor that appears in both TXT’s music videos and songs (like in “Resist (Not Gonna Run Away)”: “I’m putting down roots next to you”). 

Neither a lack of thorns nor active resistance to them would make life better; a life well-spent is one involving “putting down roots” as one moves through it. This lesson takes the form of characterizing Earth’s inhabitants in The Little Prince as lost souls:

“I saw them, several years ago. But one never knows where to find them. The wind blows them away. They have no roots, and that makes their [lives] very difficult."

The clarity that comes from a moment of stillness amidst chaos in “Beautiful Strangers” requires a sense of togetherness that could not come without deep thought. The Prince and the fox being in each other’s vicinity would mean nothing if they had not bonded over time. TXT’s music video characters would never exchange looks and gestures that speak louder than words if they did not have a history. And the relationship endurance in both cases is what is lacking in the lives of the train passengers who are pitied in The Little Prince, the people who never “put down roots.”

The Little Prince wonders where trains full of people are headed, and the conductor essentially tells him that they are going “anywhere but here.” “They are pursuing nothing at all,” treating train rides as the means to an end and not spending much time thinking about what that end entails. The Prince is left to wonder what the point is of going on a journey if one does not plan to plant certain roots at the destination. It might seem hypocritical in a story about journeys mattering more than destinations to also see people without destinations in mind as poor saps! But it actually shows why the journeys matter in the first place. Before a journey can “mean more” than a destination, it needs to be associated with a destination! “Today” means nothing without “Tomorrow,” and treating the past, present, and future as divorced from one another is erroneous. Where train passengers end up means nothing to them if that endpoint is chosen without factoring in aspects of the past and present, like what location comes to mind when reminiscing about happy times, or what the ideal trip looks like given the environmental and activity preferences that person has formed over time. The ones who “have no roots,” which makes their lives “very difficult,” are the ones who have lost touch with their former selves and forgotten about the companions who have been a part of their life stories. They are the ones who never consciously pause to create an introspective “moment of stillness in the thorns,” a moment in which they stop taking for granted everything that has and continues to shape them.

Life happens, but people also need to make it happen. Moments of “stillness” have to be initiated, and the stamina and strength needed to make those moments happen on a regular basis come from the interlinked variables of companionship, creativity, and memory. People do not just magically overcome fears, but it can seem magical once they take the necessary leap of faith to do so! The Little Prince does not just naturally gain insights and form relationships; he has to travel for and commit to those. And life does not just passively teach TXT lessons; their music video characters are only comfortable “putting down roots” as a result of their enduring efforts to see and understand those who are trying to put down roots beside them.

The “Stick With You” music video is a strong example of purposefully putting themselves in each other’s shoes. Each TXT member plays the exact same character, just in different scenes, demonstrating what they all have in common: a tendency to project one’s worst fears onto people, like the incorrect assumption that they are being cheated on; an impulse to cast someone in the role of a villain, like the “other man” they are convinced is the reason for their breakup; and the ways events are never observed in a wholly objective and isolated way.

Sonic Storytelling
7TH YEAR deserves this close reading, but a more traditional album review is also in order! 

The album is an aced assignment when it comes to turning its emotions and themes into music. TXT’s interest in fully sinking into each self-defined moment is apparent right away, thanks to “Bed of Thorns.” The song is their iteration of the “You made your bed, now lie in it” expression, which can be associated with good karma and reaping deserved punishments. It also speaks to the autonomy that prompts accountability; they sound like they are succumbing to fate yet recognizing their active roles in shaping fate (“I made my bed of thorns / I willingly lay my body down”). By starting the album with a symbol of a place for nightmares and sweet dreams — not to mention the emphasis placed on each syllable when they repeat “I made my bed of thorns” — they stress their interest in living fully in every shade of every color. They must take the bad with the good, because they must take the past with the present to make the endless journey that is life worth their while.

The songs after “Bed of Thorns” are addictively transporting, with techno, pop, and punk waves carrying people through the listening experience yet ever-shifting vocals conveying those experiences as all part of a multifaceted climax. The way notes build on each other in “Stick With You” is particularly infectious in its anticipation, and “Stick With You” and “Take Me to Nirvana” both commit to the concept of an emotional and spiritual high. This high is in part thanks to “you,” hence the song titles that imply they cannot do this alone. 

Listeners ride a slightly chiller wave once the Miami bass kicks in for “So What,” a song that simultaneously stresses TXT’s disinterest in other people’s projections and interest in the projections of someone special: “Everyone else but us is extra.” It is a deceptively straightforward song that maintains nuance in its message.

“21st Century Romance” represents intentional forward movement (even the title commits to the concept of togetherness across time!), with the noise of an engine starting as the perfect finishing touch.

Lastly, the “drawing new roads for ourselves” mentality meets its musical match in “Dream of Mine,” a grunge detour from an otherwise-clubbier soundtrack. They sing both “I’m not afraid to love” and “I’m not afraid to fall,” bringing to mind the “abyss” symbolism and the related theme of the chances of falling and of falling in love being more similar than people assume. Like how TXT sing about their real feelings in a song called “Dream of Mine,” they sing about flying instead of falling when they are on an edge-of-cliff moment mentally as if that “far-fetched” notion (that they will fly when they jump) is actually the more realistic one (compared to the odds they will fall). 

While many might see 7TH YEAR as a generic pop project, those who truly see it for what it is, in the context of TXT’s ongoing story, know that it is far from it! What poses as musical mundaneness is slyly a sophisticated and philosophically dense musical journey. What presents itself to be one thing is actually something else, and playing with presumed contradictions and showing ambiguities where others see none is the quintessential TXT chess move!

Conclusion 
TXT’s story has always revealed how reality really is all projection! It is not some concrete and readily-available product; it is an endless blankness onto which people project thoughts and feelings. By demonstrating the many ways people can do this — identifying and labeling intangibles, like phobias; pulling a memory of someone into the present day, so that person no longer resembles a stranger; drawing new “scribbles” of roads yet to be traveled or even previously thought of; consciously revising interpretations upon recognizing errors, like in “Stick With You” — TXT’s story is underhandedly empowering. In clever and collective ways, it shows that life is what one makes it.

It is accurate for TXT to describe life as one on “overload” and a numbing experience, a sensory explosion and desensitization. It is during the times they recognize these extremes and the chances to fill the gaps between them with a more colorful way of living that they find the “real” meanings within themselves. Then and now, it is in the seemingly contradictory moments — moments of “stillness in the thorns” — that make TXT feel like the most active and inspired meaning-makers. 

7TH YEAR: A Moment of Stillness in the Thorns compounds the characterization of TXT’s musical universe as a place where adventures abound, where the meaning of life is to open one’s mind to more and more potential meanings of it, and where the sky is the limit as a result. This speaks to how the stuff of fairy tales and “real life” are not so different after all, and 7TH YEAR is the latest vehicle through which TOMORROW X TOGETHER bring “magical” and "realistic" thinking “together”!

Check out more deep-dive essays here and here!