The Astronaut

The song

‘The Astronaut’ is a solo single Jin released on 28 October 2022. The album introduction on Bugs calls it a pop-rock song that uses acoustic guitar and synth sound together, and says Jin took part in writing the lyrics and that Coldplay worked on it with him.

Idology’s Yemi introduced it as “a solo song Jin of BTS made together with Coldplay”, and named Kygo among the people who worked on it. NME’s Rhian Daly reported that the British band gifted the song to Jin, co-wrote it and played on it.

Reviews

Idology (아이돌로지) reviewed the single in ‘Monthly’, its round-up of that month’s releases, on 28 November 2022. Yemi wrote that “Kygo and Coldplay, the people on this record, have long shown a fine command of staging a sense of space through synthesisers and dissolving lyricism into it, and that strength of theirs comes through without reserve on ‘The Astronaut’ too”. He added that the song “makes its difference from the earlier collaboration through Korean lyrics that set out the mood of the sound concretely, and through a delivery that keeps the sense of space alive”, and closed by calling it “a collaboration that melts the strengths of everyone on it into one, and grows more interesting the better you know them”.

NME’s Rhian Daly gave the song four stars out of five on the day of release. She wrote that “the dreamy new song pays tribute to a loved one — or a group of them — by casting its gaze skyward and rocketing into outer space”, and that “so it’s fitting the lyrics of ‘The Astronaut’ are shot through with wide-eyed romanticism”. Her review closes: “In the meantime, we can savour ‘The Astronaut’, a starry-eyed gem that sparkles with love.”

Billboard placed the song 14th on its 25 best K-pop songs of 2022. The entry, signed by Joe Lynch, says that “Jin soars into a celestial orbit with this gorgeous romantic anthem that sounds like a distant cousin of BTS and Coldplay’s No. 1 ‘My Universe’ — except this relative is more turned on by 2010s indie faves such as Passion Pit and MGMT than Top 40 radio”.

Numbers

Billboard reported that the song gave Jin his first standalone entry on the Billboard Hot 100.

What came after

Jin’s first solo record, Happy, followed on 15 November 2024, and the second mini album, Echo, on 16 May 2025.