Following in his fellow bandmates’ footsteps, Korean singer Kim Taehyung, more commonly known as V, debuted his first solo album ‘Layover’. Layover marks V’s official debut as a solo artist following his bandmate Jungkook who debuted his single ‘Seven’ earlier in July.
Announced on August 7, 2023, ‘Layover’ released globally on September 8, 2023, with a total of six tracks that are sure to satisfy fans of BTS and K Pop alike. In ‘Layover’, Kim Taehyung lets his feelings soar in an emotional, yet relatable album that plays out almost like a romance film. The album feels like a mix of Jazz, R&B, and Pop, which makes for a smooth album, and overall, just makes you vibe along with the music. Over the course of the six tracks, V takes the audience on a romantic journey, with each song feeling like its own crucial phase of a relationship.
The album starts with the track ‘Rainy Days’, which gathered over 1 million views the first day the music video was released all the way back on August 11, 2023. If there were two songs that I told you to listen to from this album, they would be ‘Slow Dancing’ and ‘Rainy Days’. ‘Rainy Days’ explores the feeling you get right after meeting someone you like, and the anticipation that comes with seeing them again. The song is super relatable whether you’ve been in a relationship or not, which is a huge reason why this album stands out among others. Instead of making you roll your eyes as other artists singing about romance and heartbreak do, V filled his album with several relatable experiences that invite the listeners to experience the feelings with him instead of coming off as ‘whiny’ or ‘obnoxious’.
The other standout track in this album, as mentioned before, is ‘Slow Dancing’. This song captures the feeling of wanting to spend the rest of your life with someone, right before heartbreak. The song is filled with beautiful lyrics that are accompanied by even more beautiful instrumentals that help elevate this song to the next level. The album also revisits this song with ‘Slow Dancing’ (Piano Ver.) which closes out the album with a beautiful piano accompaniment.
The final song that I’ll go in depth about is ‘For Us’. ‘For Us’ is the second to last song in ‘Layover’, but in many ways this song marks the end of the journey that V took us on throughout this album. The song ends in an emotionally satisfying way, not necessarily giving us the happy ending to the relationship that we all want but leaves the listeners optimistic of a better future. The way I see it, ‘For Us’ ties all the messages and themes from the album all together to form an emotionally satisfying conclusion to the story.
If anything about the three songs I mentioned interested you at all, you should definitely go ahead and check out the full album. The songs ‘Blue’ and ‘Love Me Again’ are also fantastic additions that I didn’t go in depth about in this article, but you should definitely check them out if you are interested. At the time of writing this article, ‘Layover’ already has over 18 million streams on Spotify, with the album only being out for a little over a day. So, if you’re still upset about BTS going on a hiatus, go check out V’s ‘Layover’, until BTS’ “hopeful” reunion in 2025.
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