I just want to say how impressed I am with the way Face works as a complete story. Jimin said it was a chronological depiction of his feelings during the pandemic, but I didn’t expect that to be so ACCURATE. It really told the full scope, back to back, and I’m still reeling from it.
We start off with Face-off and it’s anger personified, it has a reactive, volatile energy. It’s harsh and hard-hitting and aggressive and at the core it’s just Jimin so so so hurt.
We move into this tranquil, but haunting interlude with the sounds of running/panicking, the last concert all the boys had together, shuffling around as you come home from a long day, and ending with a drink to numb it all. It just feels like getting lost in a trance and trying to cover up all the mixing emotions, bury them away and ignore them but they’re all fighting for dominance in your head.
Then we lead into Like Crazy, which is in every single way the embodiment of a dream. This fantasy that he doesn’t want to end, saying he wants to stay in the light, feels better in the light, begging to not be saved, to not be woken up. It starts with that line from the movie, saying “I’m afraid of everything disappearing” and it’s so clear that’s the core of this song. Jimin said in an interview his dream is BTS, that he wants to keep that going as long as he can. I don’t think it’s a reach to say this song is about wanting to be on stage, be in the light, be performing, and being afraid of it all going away.
Alone starts with an alarm, being torn from that dream, forcibly awoken as it’s pulled out from underneath you and you have to face the consequences of reality and your self. Here, more than any other song, Jimin seems to grapple with truly facing his emotions and fears head on and hoping to come out the other side the victor. In his Rolling Stones interview he talks about how this album came about after talking to the members, after they encouraged him to harness his emotions and heal through creating music, after he confessed to feeling like he wasn’t doing well, to being lost, and that he was worried he was the odd man out, that everyone else was doing fine while he was struggling to keep up the mask of being fine. I wouldn’t be surprised if this was the first song he worked on, when he got back. The lyrics sound so similar to the things he describes in that interview.
And finally, Set Me Free Pt. 2, the culmination of it all, the victory. He comes out on top, reborn. He faced everything in Alone and stepped out the other side with a new outlook and strength. He’s healing, he’s fighting, he’s not discouraged in the way he was at the start of this all. We’ve all seen it, too, how much happier he seems, how he said he felt like he was really, truly happy, how this album was FOR HIM and he just hopes we all like it. He really used this as therapy, to work through all those complicated feelings, and now here he is smiling, laughing, giddy with excitement and I don’t know about you guys but he just feels so much brighter than he did a year ago.
I’m so proud of him. I’m so proud of him, not just for making an incredible album that lets us into such a raw and real place, but for trying. For facing everything dark and twisted in him and taking back control and repurposing it as something beautiful and triumphant. I’m so glad this helped him heal and I’m so glad he’s allowed us to experience it with him.
Oh, and let’s not forget that hidden track, eh? Because above all else Jimin has always been and will always be our sweet, tenderhearted angel who loves us 10x more than we could ever love him. I cried, you cried, we’re all going to continue to cry every time we hear it. It was absolutely beautiful.
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