"Dream Glow" is a reworked version of an unreleased Charli XCX song that was titled "Glow". "Glow" was written in 2016 during writing sessions for XCX's unreleased third studio album.[1] XCX initially planned to include the song on the album, but ultimately decided not to as she stated that "it never quite fit in my world in its original form".[3][4]
In 2017, Charli XCX met BTS in Seoul, South Korea, when she was in the country performing for a festival. During their meeting, they decided to work on a song together. XCX would later send them her version of "Glow" as a potential song to use, and it was eventually chosen as the song for their collaboration. The group "sat with it for a while" in order to tweak the song and also adapt it to fit the Korean language.[3][4]
Charli XCX's version of the song leaked in 2018,[5] XCX stated that the song was originally about "falling in love with someone in the club [because] they had that "glow" about them".[3]
The song is credited as being "part one" of the soundtrack to the Netmarble mobile game BTS World.[6][2]
Sheldon Pearce of Pitchfork gave the track a positive review, saying Jin, Jimin and Jungkook "don't miss a beat, with Charli filling the vacant spaces to maintain their carefully arranged synchronicity". Pearce also said that the four "sing vaguely but assuredly, in English and Korean, about the yet-to-be-realized potential of dreams", calling it "starry-eyed but not fanciful", "nearly pessimist-proof" and "pristine EDM-lite".[1]
