The oldest of the BTS members, Jin, was the first to complete his military duties, having enlisted on 13th December 2022. On his return, he released Happy (15 November 2024), his debut solo EP, which consisted of six tracks. His second album, Echo, is made up of seven tracks – the lead single and only English track, Don’t Say You Love Me, Nothing Without Your Love, Loser (feat. YENA), Rope It, With the Clouds, Background, and To Me, Today.

The sophomore album is always a tricky one, with artists having to live up to or exceed the success of the first. With Echo, Jin does not disappoint, and it is clear to see the type of solo artist he is becoming and aspires to be. From a myriad of musical reference points from across the world – including Brit Rock, US Country, lyrical Japanese rock, through to the more typical Korean ballad – Jin’s warm voice is a sonic hug that comforts the listener through shared experiences of being-in-the-world and the struggle that this existential existence is, oscillating as it does between sorrow and joy.

Recording with a live band allows Jin to shine, shifting between the anthemic and the melodramatic, in an album that takes love lost as its unifying theme.

The word “Echo” gained its meaning from Greek mythology. A mountain nymph, Echo, was cursed by Hera for distracting her from Zeus’s infidelities, leaving her only able to repeat back the last words spoken to her. Mesmerised by Narcissus, Echo was unable to declare her love, leaving him to fall in love with his own reflection. Echo slowly faded away, unloved and alone, with only her voice persisting as a mnemonic trace of a life lost and the love that consumed it.

As the title of the album, Echo has a multitude of meanings, including bearing witness to Jin’s struggle for identity as a man and an artist. Like all performers, Jin’s relationship with his audience is crucial; the connections between idol and fan are what enable the artist to shine brightly and give external meaning to his existence as a musician. And like other successful performers, the fear that one day the fans will move on is omnipresent.

It is this recognition of fame’s fragility that unifies the seven tracks, which are structured through a series of antinomies: love and loss, remembering and forgetting, satisfaction and regret, and finally, noise and silence, interposing the personal with the universal.

The lead single, Don’t Say You Love Me, a pop track, tells of a love lost, the lingering regrets that accompany such painful break-ups, and a desire for a clean break unhampered by memories of what once was: “Don’t say that you love me ’cause it hurts the most (The most) / You just gotta let me go”.  In the music video, filmed on location in Singapore, directed by Yongseok Choi (LUMPENS), acclaimed South Korean actress Shin Se-kyung stars as the love lost. As the couple tries to go their separate ways, Jin is haunted by remembrance of times past, the mnemonic traces of their relationship adhering to the spaces that they inhabited together. Singapore provides a stunning backdrop to this break-up tale (it is not surprising that it was filmed in partnership with the Singapore Tourism Board). In just under three and a half minutes, we are treated to a concise edition of a K-drama, albeit without the heart-fluttering romantic end. 

This is followed by Nothing Without Your Love, in which Jin laments loss: “I’m nothing without your love / You are my life / You’re all of me”. A soaring anthemic rock-inflected ballad, Jin shows off his emotionality and expressiveness, utilising his vocal range fully, switching between tenor and falsetto effortlessly. The third track featuring YENA switches things up by providing Jin with a vocal and thematic foil, to continue the mediation on love lost, tinged with sorrow and pain. Jin’s verse “Like a habit, every time you / Spit out words to end thing / You’ll regret it / You can’t leave me easily” is countered by YENA’s: “No matter what you say / It just sounds like noise, oh / Who was the one who liked me first? / I know that you know”. The joint chorus utilises figurative language and sonic alliteration by which loss and loser, one external and the other internal, collapse: “I’m too precious to lose / Like a loser (Loser) loser (Loser) / Loser (You’re a loser, if you lose me, loser). 

The fourth track sees Jin easily switch from pop rock to country music with the rousing Rope It, one of the highlights from an album with many. The track moves from the regrets of the first three to an entreaty to seize the day. It utilises rope as a metaphor for being-in-the-world as connectedness, stressing the importance of climbing and not falling over any of the hurdles that life throws at us as we navigate the precarious nature of living in a society marked by disconnection and machinic technologies which threaten the continued existence of humanity. The opening stanza stresses the importance of moving on: “The moment I leaped over with both feet (Oh-oh-oh-oh) / I  danced high above the rope (Oh-oh-oh-oh) / My body takes over the goal / Just think of it easily / Alright”. Leaving regret behind and embracing the uncertainty of the future moves the story on from past mess to embrace futureness. The future self, the “I” marked by becoming and futurity, while haunted by the past, represents a zone of possibility.  

With the Clouds, the fifth track, a stirring ballad, returns to mediate on the nature of loss through memories of the past: “In faint memories / Embracing me / That longing touch /Is coloring me /On the traces left / At the end of the passing breeze / Quietly making me cry / Leading me with a small whisper”. This is followed by “Background”, which articulates a desire for eternal return in which at a crossroad, a different path is chosen: “Maybe in another place, another time / If I could turn it back /Would I be by your side then? / Me, waiting for you, I’ll be here in the background“. The final track To Me, Today, like Pandora’s box, offers hope for the future;  optimism in the face of adversity telling the listener: “The sunlit morning / The scorched me of yesterday / Today’s mayfly / One day I could fly /Useless thoughts /Don’t be afraid / I’ll leave it to / The me of tomorrow and go”. This comforting end closes Jin’s successful sophomore effort.

Echo sees Jin growing in confidence and artistry, taking an active role in the composition of most tracks, including Nothing Without Your Love, Loser (feat. YENA), Rope It, and With the Clouds, and easily switching genres. Serving as a preamble to his upcoming #RUNSEOKJIN_EP.TOUR, a nine-city world tour kicking off in Goyang, South Korea, on June 28th and 29th and heading to London for two nights at the O2 (August 5th and 6th), Echo assures the audience that they are in for a great experience.

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Written by Dr Colette Balmain

Featured image © BIGHIT MUSIC

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