‘Muse’, the second solo album from BTS star Jimin, opens with the heavy thump of a heartbeat. As that pulse continues to contract and thud, notes twinkle and sparkle around it as if they’re casting a spell over the singer. It’s an introduction loaded with magic, the aural equivalent of Jennifer Garner being sprinkled with enchanted dust in 13 Going On 30. It’s not ageing that Jimin’s after here, though, but romance. “Yeah, I want a real good love,” he sings moments later on ‘Rebirth (intro)’. “I’m trying to find that love.”
Arriving nearly a year-and-a-half after his record-breaking debut solo album, ‘Muse’ feels like it’s flipped the switch on ‘Face’. That first record was far moodier, charting the rollercoaster journey of facing up to your inner self and tackling the good and bad of that tussle. It was characterised by a push and pull between light and dark that’s largely absent here, but ‘Muse’ still captures an ambivalent tension, if far more subtle.
You can feel it in the way Jimin sings of love, distinctly different between the two halves of this album. On the first, he’s caught up in the giddy first throes of a relationship and pours that into songs that veer from exuberant to tender. ‘Smeraldo Garden Marching Band’ – loosely inspired by The Beatles’ ‘Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band’ – captures the former feeling, oozing joy and lightheartedness.
Often, distant cheers punctuate Jimin’s lines, and there are little goofy moments, like when he shares an invitation to “talk about us” in a pinched voice, that mirrors the silliness that comes when love has got you dizzy. There’s another lowkey nod to the Fab Four in his admission of “I wanna hold your hand”, while rapper Loco’s dynamic guest verse adds to the song’s boundless, bright nature.
That playfulness begins before ‘Smeraldo Garden Marching Band’ comes into view. It’s preceded by an interlude track, ‘Showtime’, that calls back to ‘Face’’s ‘Face-off’ in its oompah brass melody and ends with Jimin taking on the role of an extravagant MC introducing his fictional band.
Brass also plays a lowkey but divine role in the final track of ‘Muse’’s first half. Until its final minute, ‘Slow Dance’ takes the form of a pleasant R&B track, coursing on a fingerpicked guitar line and seeing Jimin swap verses with US singer Sofia Carson, “cheek to cheek” as they glide through a “last romance” together. At the end of Carson’s breathily delivered contribution, the brass hits and – just for a moment – lifts the song into heavenly territory.
The second half of ‘Muse’ takes a different tact, both in the way it speaks about love and in how much hope it contains. Gone are the dreamy, cheerful sounds, replaced by something sultrier. ‘Be Mine’ takes a direct path, Jimin confidently telling a partner, “I know what you want / Baby, I want the same”, before commanding them to “Baby come, baby come / Show me what, show me what love is”. As he does so, Latin guitars intertwine with a low-slung Afrobeat foundation, taking the singer’s hunt into the night.
‘Who’, meanwhile, travels back to the peak of noughties R&B as its creator tries to figure out who his heart is longing for. It’s rife with confusion – “Is she something that I see every day? / Is she somewhere a thousand miles away?” he ponders at one point – and you can feel the first moments of despair creeping into the mix. “If every day I think about her […] Then tell me why haven’t I found her?” Jimin asks, no doubt echoing the thoughts of a society constantly swiping left and right but still struggling to find the one.
It all ends with a quick detour back to the heartfelt feeling of the first half with fan song ‘Closer Than This’ – a sweet, if saccharine, ode to BTS’ fans, ARMY. On the surface, it doesn’t quite fit the narrative across the rest of the record – the pursuit of love and getting mixed up on your mission to find it. But, amid Jimin’s promises to “never let you go”, perhaps there’s a lesson for all of us: there are many kinds of love we should nurture, not just the ardent type.
‘Muse’, then, is both a realistic and romantic search for something more. It takes fewer risks than ‘Face’ but forms a cohesive, polished whole, guided by Jimin and his cohort of producers – from close collaborators Pdogg, GHSTLOOP and EVAN to big names like Jon Bellion and Ryan Tedder. Given it was created around the same time as his solo debut, it’s hard to call it a step on, but instead digs deeper into another side of where his sound could end up.
