The BTS member is known for many things — his mix of athleticism and delicacy onstage, honed by years of ballet and modern dance training, makes him one of the most fascinating performers working right now. His airy, acrobatic voice has him responsible for many of the most memorable high notes and harmonies throughout BTS’s extensive discography. By any account, he’s notoriously kindhearted and thoughtful, and strikes as the kind of creative who feels things deeply. FACE is a whole new game, though, and posits a question for longtime listeners and more recent BTS fans alike: Who is Jimin, when he’s on his own?
FACE begins, maybe a bit surprisingly, with a circus-type melody on “Face-off.” The world of entertainment is a wild one; the experience of existing so intensely in the public eye might sometimes feel akin to wearing a full face of makeup and putting on a performance for the sake of everyone in the vicinity.
In the notes that accompanied the stream of the album, though, Jimin specifies that this opening track is about finding resilience after feelings of doubt and disappointment. It lands like an Ariana Grande sweetener-era song distilled through the expert, hard-hitting lens of a BTS recording session (the highest of compliments from this writer); in short, the song absolutely slays. “Tonight I’m gonna not be sober… It’s all fucking over,” Jimin growls. Jimin wrote lyrics on every track of the album, and his bandmate, BTS leader RM, is credited as a co-writer on two of the highlights of the overall strong project, “Face-off” and “Like Crazy.”
The only downside to FACE is its length. Many of Jimin’s solo tracks in BTS’s extensive discography are sweet, tender, or more in the ballad space; it’s absurdly fun getting to see him prioritize harder edges, beat drops, and R&B influences with this project. Its six tracks wrap all too quickly, and while it was specified that Jimin doesn’t consider this a full-length project, it does leave the listener craving more music in this vein somewhere down the road — it’s worth repeating that the energy of “Face-off” is one that he should consider chasing most of all.
But back to that key point Jimin shared — the idea of freedom feels relevant to every song on the project, and maybe even floats to the top as the biggest takeaway by the time FACE ends. Throughout, Jimin sounds mature and confident, unafraid of themes or lyrics people might not have associated with him until this point. “Did I come too far to find the me that I used to know?” he asks on “Like Crazy.” “I’m feelin’ so alive.” When BTS announced a second chapter, one with space designated for the members of the band to explore individual endeavors, it was hard to imagine what could have come next — the mood of “Face-off,” choreography and styling in “Set Me Free Pt.2,” and the lyrics in “Like Crazy” feel like expansions, rather than course-corrections, of the artist Jimin has been growing into over the last decade.
- Mary Siroky - consequence.net
