Jimin returns with his sophomore solo album, MUSE, released while the BTS vocalist and dancer was in mandatory military service. The seven-track check-in is more light-hearted and lyrical than Jimin’s debut. Where FACE was stormy and cathartic, an intentional effort to accept and express the darker feelings evoked by the pandemic, superstardom and life in general, MUSE hews more closely to a specific, familiar theme: the search for a “good love, real love”, as Jimin calls it on “Rebirth (Intro)”, and the inspiration it can bring. In lead single “Who”, an energetic, Jon Bellion-produced pop track that lets Jimin’s emotive vocals loose, the artist is on the lookout for love: “We never met but she’s all I see at night/Never met but she’s always on my mind/Wanna give her the world/And so much more/Who is my heart waiting for?” “Who” is the only MUSE track on which Jimin does not have a writing credit, though Ghstloop and Pdogg, two of Jimin’s frequent collaborators, do. Along with Evan, the four songwriters make up the Smeraldo Garden Marching Band, a fictional band named after a fictional flower from BTS lore. The album’s third track, a Sgt. Pepper’s-inspired song featuring marching-band percussion and a rap from Korean artist Loco, takes its name from the Big Hit production team. “Be Mine”, with its Spanish guitar and unabashed sensuality (“Movin', comin', lovin', yeah, yeah, yeah/I want you to be mine”), feels like a spiritual successor to Jimin’s 2020 BTS solo track “Filter”, while the lilting R&B tune “Slow Dance” featuring Sofia Carson offers “a warm melody/Relax your mind to that rhythm.” The album comes to a close with “Closer Than This”, a gift to fans released after the singer left for the military in December 2023: “'Cause anytime you want me (I'll be)/Right here where you call me (I'll be)/I could never let you go.” In MUSE, it’s all inspiration. Here, the search for love is not arduous, but whimsical, warm and occasionally a bop—always a yearning worth singing about.