in the mood for love

July 19, 2024

“Muse,” the second solo album from BTS star Jimin, begins with the heavy thump of a heartbeat. As that pulse continues to contract and throb, notes sparkle and twinkle around it as if casting a spell on the singer. It’s an introduction full of magic, the acoustic equivalent of Jennifer Garner’s magic dust in 30 over nightHowever, it is not age that interests Jimin here, but romance. “Yes, I want a really good love,” He sings “Rebirth (Intro)” a few moments later. “I’m trying to find that love.”

Coming nearly a year and a half after his record-breaking debut solo album, Muse feels like it flipped the switch for Face. That first record was much moodier, charting the rollercoaster ride of facing your inner self and tackling the good and bad sides of that struggle. It was marked by a push and pull between light and darkness that’s largely absent here, but Muse still captures an ambivalent tension, albeit much more subtly.

You can feel it in the way Jimin sings about love, which is very different in the two halves of this album. In the first half, he is caught in the initial, dizzying throes of a relationship, and lets that flow in songs that range from hilarious to tender. “Smeraldo Garden Marching Band” – loosely inspired by the Beatles’ “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” – captures that first feeling and is bursting with joy and lightheartedness.

Distant cheers often accompany Jimin’s lines, and there are little silly moments, like when he shares an invitation to “Tell us about us” in a strained voice that reflects the silliness that comes when love makes you dizzy. Another subtle nod to the Fab Four is his admission of “I want to hold your hand”while the dynamic guest verse from rapper Loco underlines the boundless, cheerful character of the song.

This playfulness begins before the Smeraldo Garden Marching Band enters the picture. It is preceded by an intertitle, “Showtime,” which recalls “Face”’s “Face-off” with its brass band melody and ends with Jimin taking on the role of a flamboyant MC introducing his fictional band.

The brass also plays a restrained but divine role in the final track of the first half of “Muse.” Until the last minute, “Slow Dance” is a pleasant R&B track that circles around a finger-plucked guitar line and finds Jimin trading verses with US singer Sofia Carson. “Cheek to Cheek” while passing through a “Last Romance” At the end of Carson’s breathless delivery, the brass strikes, lifting the song – just for a moment – to heavenly realms.

The second half of “Muse” takes a different path, both in the way it talks about love and the hope it contains. The dreamy, happy sounds are gone and replaced by something more sultry. “Be Mine” takes a more direct route, Jimin confidently saying to a partner: “I know what you want / Baby, I want the same thing”before he ordered them “Baby, come, baby, come / Show me something, show me what love is”Latin American guitars intertwine with a deep Afrobeat foundation and carry the singer’s hunt into the night.

“Who,” meanwhile, travels back to the height of 2000s R&B as its creator tries to figure out who his heart longs for. It is full of confusion – “Is she something I see every day? / Is she somewhere a thousand miles away?” he muses at one point – and you can feel the first moments of despair creeping into the mix. “When I think about her every day (…) Then tell me, why haven’t I found her?” Jimin asks, undoubtedly reflecting the thoughts of a society that is constantly swiping left and right and yet has difficulty finding the right one.

The whole thing ends with a brief detour back to the heartfelt feeling of the first half with the fan song “Closer Than This” – a sweet, if saccharine, ode to BTS fans ARMY. On the surface, it doesn’t quite fit the narrative of the rest of the record – the search for love and the mess of finding it. But amidst Jimin’s promise, “I will never let you go”Perhaps we can all learn a lesson from this: there are many kinds of love that we should encourage, not just passionate love.

So, Muse is both a realistic and romantic search for something bigger. It takes fewer risks than Face, but forms a cohesive, polished whole, guided by Jimin and his cohort of producers—from close collaborators like Pdogg, GHSTLOOP, and EVAN to big names like Jon Bellion and Ryan Tedder. Coming around the same time as his solo debut, it can hardly be called a step forward; rather, it digs deeper into another side of where his sound could end up.