A beautifully written article!
[I managed to translate a bit of it]
Crazy and ecstatic
In the formula of popular music, completing good music and performance is only half the success. What fills the other half is the artist’s capabilities. Stars have the power to make audiences dream. So their stage has a dreamlike sparkle and excitement. However, the icons of popular music who transcend borders and command the times have one additional ability. They make you want to. His first solo album FACE, created with Jimin's breath and heat, answers the question of how much fans want him. Like crazy. David Bowie once quoted Nietzsche's concept of 'God is dead' and asked, "If we cannot replace God, how will we fill the space he has created within us?" Jimin fills the empty space in his soul that only the highest value of sanctity can take over with his crazy feelings for him.
Jimin is ecstatic. Ecstasy is paradoxical. He simultaneously embraces despair as much as joy, danger as heavy as an anchor, and fire in ice. [FACE] expresses the paradox that only an ecstatic and upright being can show. The title , which topped the Billboard Hot 100 chart upon its debut, depicts Jimin's solitude amidst cheers and the direct gaze of floating through Jimin's alluring vocals and elegant moves, making you feel him with all your senses and gaze. The double title depicts Jimin's narrative of freeing himself from transparent chaos and oppression through primitive gestures. Jimin's dance, which has the softness and agility of a feather and the powerful vibration and intensity of a storm, causes catharsis and allows us to be swept away by his extremely personal truth. [FACE] amplifies the paradox of ecstasy through the dimension of Jimin and brings it into the inner self of the audience. It is no exaggeration to say that that sweet and hot experience is a joy that only Jimin can provide.
In his book , which created the 'Stendhal Syndrome', which refers to the shock and excitement felt when viewing an outstanding work of art, Stendhal defined it as "the degree of ecstasy is the only measure of beauty in music." [FACE] is as ecstatic as Jimin. This is why we can discover a high level of aesthetics in [FACE], an album that Jimin created with his breath and soul, and in which Jimin reborn himself.
Crazy fantastic
In [FACE], Jimin becomes the moon. The plot of the moon tattooed on his body, the presence of Jimin, who has a coldly shining gaze on stage, a mythical dynamism, and a subtle and mysterious aura that dispels the darkness, are represented by the moon and expanded into the entire world view of the album. The sacred fate of the waxing and waning of the moon has been the inspiration for numerous works of art throughout history. [FACE] creates a new grammar of K-pop by organically shaping the ecstasy, chaos, and vitality created by the moon with Jimin's music, dance, language, and images. Jimin elegantly grasps and holds these huge chunks of metaphysics with the power of existence, and at the same time overturns them with a sincerity that cannot be approached through interpretation.
The most dominant symbol of the moon in [FACE] is vitality. No matter how dark the moon goes through, it rises brightly again. This album sequentially deals with Jimin's journey to face and find freedom by confessing the betrayal, anger, wandering, and emptiness he experienced during the night of the pandemic. It starts with , where you look back with an angry face at the reality you want to escape from, , where you suddenly wake up from a dream to a loud knock on the door and face the present, and , where you walk alone in a room with the lights off. After passing the lonely peak of 'Set Me Free Pt.2', the last track, he declares to himself "Finally free". Through [FACE], Jimin learns how to coexist with the night and is reborn in a new light as a solo artist with his own narrative and sensitivity.
This narrative of recovery and regeneration is again visualized as waves originating from the moon, adding a layer to [FACE] as an artistic text. The concept trailer that announced the birth of the album is the basis of [FACE]'s visual worldview and depicts the passion of water created by the moon's gravity. This wave, created by light and darkness, above and below, water droplets and the sea, facing each other and reversing, spreads to all visible places, including [FACE]'s music video, artwork, and styling, condensing and resonating the lunar world view. The music video for the title literary depicts the highs and lows of Jimin's anxiety and isolation as he struggles in the waters of drunkenness and emptiness by comparing it to the dynamics of the tide. And with this rhetoric, we are submerged in the sorrowful joy of . The music video for focuses on the shape of the moon. On the stage of a circular prison, the poem from Rilke's “The Widening Circle” is engraved on the body and the bondage of life is expressed.
[FACE]’s moon world view is excellent and clever. It overwhelmingly satisfies the demands of ‘What should we tell?’ and ‘What should we show?’ that are particularly harsh to K-pop artists, and presents a new philosophy of popular art. As you explore the world of [FACE], which has been elaborately built with new imagination and grammar, you will fall into a daydream as if you are previewing Jimin dancing and singing dreamily under a pale light as bright as moonlight at a solo concert he will one day hold. The sense of synesthetic unity provided by this worldview that extends and is complete from Jimin also extends to the driving force and possibility of Jimin's success as he takes his first steps as a soloist. [FACE] The musical foundation Jimin has laid with just one album is so broad and strong.
Crazy violent
Jimin is a person who smiles at moments when he needs to grit his teeth and creates a rhythm at the breaking point. Jimin's beautiful and intense sense of rhythm, which simultaneously pierces and surpasses the anchor, and even leisurely looks back, bends even the universe to flow through his stage.
[FACE] was created with the impetus of that rhythm. [FACE] is an unexpected album. Even Jimin himself thought that he would be promoting conceptual music like an idol. Jimin in BTS music, who embodies his charm, lyricism, and performance ability in the best image, is powerful and brilliant. Even if he had released a solo album to follow up that appearance, the outcome of his predestined success would not have changed. However, Jimin quit street dancing and started modern dance, starting again from square one like in the past when he chose to become an idol trainee again. Among Jimin's many talents, his ability to judge when it is time to start over and push forward is the most crucial. He believes in himself that he will eventually do it.
[FACE] is bold like Jimin. At a time when the world, and perhaps even Jimin himself, were most urging him to show something right away ahead of his enlistment, he produced an album using a self-producing method that required a long time and pains. It would not have been easy for an idol loved by everyone to express through music the futility of a drunken night and the distress of human relationships. However, Jimin recorded the process in a documentary and even included a lyric note as an appendix, which included words that would make fans' hearts ache, such as "Even if you stab me." Jimin, who has always shown himself to be optimistic and cautious, must have had a lot of thoughts and concerns before making this decision. Nevertheless, the reason Jimin made this choice was probably because he had to.
Jimin created the album in-house for 10 months, writing lyrics while facing head on the ego he wanted to liberate through music, counting countless nights and dawns, and composing the melody with every note and breath. I tried to find the essence of Jimin's music by re-recording it countless times. Because they faced and jumped into the process so fiercely, there is no core in [FACE], even though it talks about sharp emotions that cannot be refined. Jimin's calm and elegant vocals as he sings the song convey the calm and contemplation unique to a creation that has been rethought and reworked countless times.
This album does not only contain the fierceness and sincerity of facing internal wounds. The title , created by adding sweet imagination to Jimin's sensitivity and narrative, may be the most honest song in [FACE]. This song, which is dizzyingly intertwined with Jee Man's deep and elastic vocals that pull at the depths of your heart and a climactic groove that makes you unable to take your eyes off, is a very bold display of Jimin's special charm, which has been expressed passively as 'knowing something'. Implement. The reason why that temptation is so powerful is because music and performance mix and explode violently within Jimin's mood. Because he started his career in music through dance, for Jimin, performance is not an afterthought to music, but a companion to it. Because Jimin created the title, wrote the melody and lyrics, and suggested the choreography, is filled with Jimin's own aesthetic rhyme from the origin to the lingering sound. is a song that only Jimin can express accurately. There aren't many artists who have songs that only they can complete.
Jimin was reborn as a solo artist with a new history and dreams as his story and inspiration matured and his album was created. He must have spent time working with thoughtful producers who understood what it was like to be Jimin, as if embracing each other, and realizing anew how joyful and great music is. So Jimin says that even if he could turn back time, he would work on the album the same way. Creation is painful, but only through that pain can an artist gain life. Being harsh on oneself is an artist's instinct and destiny. And Jimin has always faced that fate.
There is this phrase in Rilke’s poem “The Widening Circle,” which Jimin tattoos on his body in the music video for . “I live in a wide circle / The circle is getting wider and wider in the world / I probably won’t complete the last circle / But I give my whole being to the cause.” [FACE] is a song about Jimin giving his whole being. It is a ‘wide circle’ created. As if there were no limits to moonlight, the beautiful and true wave of circles created by Jimin will spread wider and farther.