MUSE

The record

MUSE is Jimin’s second solo mini album, released on 19 July 2024 with seven tracks. The title track is ‘Who’. The album introduction states that its seven songs are tied together by the theme of love, and that where FACE was about facing himself, this record is a journey towards what inspires him. By the same introduction, the third track ‘Smeraldo Garden Marching Band’ was released ahead of the album on 28 June, and the closing Closer Than This had come out as a single in December 2023.

Reviews

NME’s Rhian Daly gave the record four stars out of five on the day of release. “‘Muse’, the second solo album from BTS star Jimin, opens with the heavy thump of a heartbeat,” she began, before setting out how the album speaks about love differently across its two halves. In her closing paragraph she wrote: “‘Muse’, then, is both a realistic and romantic search for something more.”

Billboard’s Jeff Benjamin reviewed the album five days after release, ranking its songs as he went. “Incorporating everything from R&B grooves and light hip-hop to Latin and Afrobeat flair, Muse flexes Jimin’s versatility as a genre-less artist,” he wrote, adding: “Meanwhile, the songwriting within the record feels intimate and introspective.”

IZM’s Kim Ho-hyun, reviewing the pre-release single, introduced it as “a pre-release single from BTS’s Jimin that calls to mind the cheerful march of a brass band”, and wrote that “the keyword in the title, the collaboration with the Yeoneum Boys and Girls Choir and other links back to earlier work that fans will recognise are the first things to catch the eye”.

Among the tracks

The pre-release track ‘Smeraldo Garden Marching Band’ features the rapper Loco. NME wrote that the song is “loosely inspired by The Beatles’ ‘Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band’” and “captures the former feeling, oozing joy and lightheartedness”.

Of ‘Slow Dance’, with Sofia Carson, Billboard wrote: “From the unexpected collaborator in Sofia Carson to a dazzling saxophone flourish at the end, ‘Slow Dance’ is a delightful duet delivering a sweet surprise at the halfway point of Muse.” NME also picked out the brass that enters at the end of that track and lifts it, for a moment, somewhere else.

Of the fifth track Billboard wrote that “another bold, musical departure with Latin and Afrobeat inspirations, ‘Be Mine’ could have easily served as the main single of Muse — or even a BTS track, given the many genre and style shifts throughout it”. NME read the title track as one that “travels back to the peak of noughties R&B as its creator tries to figure out who his heart is longing for”.