Jin has always been his own kind of romantic within the BTS universe, with his own style. This is the guy you go to for epic swoon-worthy love songs about space travel through the cosmos of the heart, in classics like “Epiphany” and “Moon.” (Especially “Moon.”) He summed up his sound with his official solo debut single “The Astronaut,” his 2022 duet with Coldplay, where he kept hitting high notes from outer space. (But still — especially “Moon.” What a song, right?) Jin pushes his signature style even further with Echo, his new 7-song EP, with emotional ballads and glossy rock moves that give him a chance to shine bright on his own, all open-hearted charm.
Jin is heavily into ripped jeans, leather jackets, long hair, and black nail polish these days, playing up his rock & roll flash, even sporting a Tom Petty t-shirt. It’s a change from his previous clean-cut look, but he’s obviously embracing his newfound freedom, after two years of mandatory military service. No star has made such a flamboyant celebration out of taking off the solider’s uniform since Elvis Presley escaped the Army and returned with the rowdy sex stomp of Elvis Is Back!, the album where Elvis invented the Stones and the Doors.
But for Jin, it’s just a fresh way of flexing his beloved “Worldwide Handsome” person. “The Astronaut” was his temporary farewell to the pop scene, as he and his BTS bandmates went on their hiatus to fulfill their military duties. But as soon as he got out of the service last year, he jumped back into music with his solo debut Happy. He’s also stepped out as a budding TV star, on the weirder-than-weird hit Kian’s Bizarre B&B, where he manages a bed-and-breakfast on a remote South Korean island, helping a string of wacky guests learn some life lessons. It says a lot about Jin that he’d pick such an unusual project for his big return. (Among other things, he gets to live up to his reputation as as one of the music world’s supreme chefs.)
All the BTS men have stretched out in different musical directions on their solo projects since the hiatus—his fellow rocker Jimin went for a psychedelic Sgt. Pepper concept on Muse, with “Smeraldo Garden Marching Band,” while Jungkook threw down with Jack Harlow on Golden and RM duetted with Erykah Badu on Indigo. For Jin, Echo is expansively romantic, full of Eighties-style synth-pop, led by the single “Don’t Say You Love Me,” the ballad of a fragile relationship coming to a messy end. “Don’t tell me that you’re gonna miss me,” he sings. “Just tell me that you wanna kill me.”
He tries out some new tricks on Echo, most smashingly on “Rope It,” his first country song. It begins with horses neighing over a Wild West motif from The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly, breaking into a boot-scootin’ line dance with guitar twang and harmonica. Jin struts with pure cowboy swagger, and it’s safe to say we’re all here for his Yeehaw Era. It proves that “Seoul Town Road” was just the beginning. “Rope It” has to be the best BTS-related country moment since J-Hope learned to say “Howdy, y’all!” for his Texas gig in March.
Another highlight is “Loser,” a high-energy slice of glam-metal that sounds like Jin is gunning to join Def Leppard. He plays half of a bickering couple in a hilarious duet with Yena, formerly of the girl group Iz*One. (She also did the awesome 2023 single “Hate Rodrigo,” the affectionately cheeky tribute to idolizing a certain so-American pop megastar, which would make a great mash-up with Olivia’s “Obsessed.”) “With the Clouds” has a Bon Jovi-style guitar break. All over Echo, Jin sounds refreshed to be throwing himself back into music, but with the confidence of a star who’d never been away. As his boy Tom Petty would say, may he stay the wild one forever.
