A very moody retreat, a spectacular solo advance

The last member of the K-Pop group to drop a solo album is also the first to demonstrate a distinctly different musical identity.

Layover, the debut solo EP from BTS member V, might be the most fitting soundtrack to this extended monsoon we’re having right now. V, aka Kim Tae-hyung, dropped his six track EP on September 8, and it quickly became the first album by a K-Pop artist to debut on No. 2 on the Billboard 200 charts. For a change, this is a metric not just of the Korean pop group’s outsized popularity, but also of the simple fact that good music will travel, perhaps because it is such a total break from expectation.

Expectations have certainly been high of V—BTS’s baritone who is the last of the seven members to debut a solo venture. Group leader and rapper RM put out his self-titled 11-track mixtape via Soundcloud back in 2015.

Jungkook, the youngest of the lot, became the first Korean artist to perform at the FIFA World Cup opening ceremony, and amassed 1 million views in less than 10 minutes on the pop single “Seven”, when it arrived earlier this year.

Before heading off for his mandatory South Korean military service, Jin collaborated with Coldplay on “Astronaut”. Rapper-producer SUGA has produced for artists from around the world, including IU, PSY and Coldplay, and became the first to embark on a solo tour earlier this April. J-hope and Jimin’s debut solo albums, Jack In The Box and FACE, arrived in April and March 2023, respectively. BTS may be on hiatus, but their ARMY of fans has not been starved of new material to feed on.

Layover might be V’s first solo album, but he has in the past released solo material with the band—such as “Stigma” in 2016 and “Inner Child” in 2020. This EP has V coming into his own—meandering into the dulcet terrain of jazz and R&B—which, as his fans will tell you, was always going to happen.

V has for long shown an inclination for these genres, admired by his fans as the academic, soulful one in the group, with an unusual affinity for music from worlds distant and past. On his Instagram, you’ll find videos of V covering iconic Bing Crosby and Ella Fitzgerald songs. In real life, he has been known to hang out at New York jazz bars. He has even picked up the trumpet.

V’s vocal flex on previous tracks like “Sweet Night” and “Christmas Tree” was a sign of things to come. And in Layover, we hear (and see) that musical avatar form fully, through six songs that are doused in a languid R&B and bedroom pop soundscape, over which V’s husky voice floats, full of yearning for lost loves and times.

Layover is a skipless album, which might not sound extraordinary given that it is a sum total of 18 minutes. But what is remarkable is the smoothness with which it flows, and the moods it can transport listeners to. The sleepy opening notes of “Rainy Day”, a classic seductive piano melody, are interrupted by the zing of very 2023 digital noise. On “Blue”, V croons—in English and Korean—about the possibility of going “on and on and on” over a production that marries old school R&B with a more contemporary beat.

Wasting no time, “Love Me Again” takes a somewhat aggressive stance, with a chorus in English tapping into the rawness and pain of fresh heartbreak. “Slow Dancing” captures the essence of that teenage dream of being wrapped up in another’s arms, grooving on a dancefloor in some prom-like setting—its most memorable part being the meditative flute solo interlude towards the end.

“For Us” might be the most experimental track in terms of both lyrical dexterity and production. V’s pitched-up vocals sit hauntingly on a score that, unlike the rest of the songs, doesn’t lull you into a sense of complacence by changing gears midway. It adds some much-needed sonic diversity on this album—even if the theme of heartbreak stays consistent on instantly meme-worthy writing like “You went from my home to/ It was nice to know you/ And it breaks my heart/ That we gave it our best shot.”

Each of these tracks has been thrown into the universe with their own high-production music videos, each its own world and vibe. But the thing about this little EP is this: You don’t need storytelling to help you visualize these songs. They’re dreamy enough to do that on their own. You don’t even need to be a BTS fan—or a Gen Z music consumer—to relish it. In its essence and message, Layover is universal and timeless.

Picture this: Raindrops splash against your window. Wisps of steam escape from a mug of coffee. There is noise: the click clack of keyboards. There is traffic: the whooshes of messages flying across the internet. It’s the sort of day when your bed is an untraversable continent. You’re alone, and yet you’re not. This is both you and V in “Rainy Day”: partaking of sultry, seductive music for sultry, seductive weather; coping with heaving emotions in a lo-fi world.