The Heartbreaking Meaning Behind BTS Suga’s “AMYGDALA” Lyrics
Recently, BTS Suga‘s Disney+ documentary Road To D-DAY showcased his “journey to find new stories and inspire new dreams” as he creates his solo album.
One particular scene involved the writing process of his new music that ARMYs may recognize as a behind-the-scenes moment from BTS’s In The Soop Season 2. Jimin enters the camper as Suga is working and recording new music.
The song Suga is in the process of recording is none other than “AMYGDALA.”
Revealing it to Jimin, he shares that it’s one of his favorite songs at this point in the writing process.
However, as Suga goes in depth about the song’s true meaning, fans can understand just how emotional the lyrics are for him.
There’s a thing called an ‘amygdala.’ Your brain stores all of your unpleasant memories in the amygdala.
— Suga
The amygdala holds on to sad or unpleasant memories as a way to protect you against those situations in the future.
So you can prepare yourself for those types of situations in the future.
— Suga
As the lyrical content references some of his traumatic memories, including his own accident, his mother’s heart surgery, and his father’s cancer diagnosis, he begs his amygdala to release him from this pain.
I have massive mood swings whenever I’m working on this song. To work on it, I have to bring up some of my unpleasant memories.
— Suga
However, rather than running from them, he faces them head on by writing about them in a song in order to overcome and “control” the memories in his head.
But this is actually a very important process to learn to control those memories.
— Suga
Immediately, the song resonated with many fans for its raw and emotional lyrical content in dealing with painful or traumatic memories.
too overwhelmed to do full translations but in amygdala, yoongi mentions his mother's heart surgery, his shoulder injury/accident, and his father's liver cancer diagnosis and then the chorus is him saying to his amygdala let's erase everything, save me, set me free…
— 🍬 (@thejoonmoon) April 21, 2023
For anyone confused, the amygdala is the part of our brains that allows us encode memories, process emotions, and identify and defend ourselves from frightening or threatening stimuli. So in the song he’s essentially begging his brain to forget the pain and fear he’s experienced.
— ✨🌸Bambi🌸✨ (@fuzzyseok) April 21, 2023
As Suga refers to himself as a lotus flower, he shows strength by “blooming” amidst the unfortunate situations.
Yoongi referring to himself as a lotus flower that blooms after he describes in Amygdala is so meaningful bc lotus flowers bloom beautifully despite being in muddy waters.
This is exactly what Yoongi did – he wasn’t in an “ideal” environment to grow and thrive, but he still did.
— 제시⁷ 🐳 (@jessikatsu) April 21, 2023
Watch the full clip below.
jimin came to see yoongi because he heard yoongi was working "furiously" and yoongi let him listen to and told him about amygdala 😭 pic.twitter.com/O67qogeYPv
— 슙짐 (@syubjim) April 21, 2023
