BTS’s Jimin Turns Heads Worldwide With Musehis ambitious and experimental new solo album. One of the tracks that draws the most attention is the stunning single “Smeraldo Garden Marching Band,” featuring South Korean rapper Loco. Jimin draws explicit inspiration from the Beatles’ 1967 psychedelic masterpiece, Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Orchestrawith an experimental and playful theme song for a fictional band, while brass instruments blare. The video is also a Sergeant Pepper homage. But the Beatles connection makes sense on a much deeper level. It’s an appropriate reference point for an artist on a path of self-discovery like Jimin, as he transitions from youthful pop star to adult artist.
Sergeant Pepper It was a turning point for the Beatles: they were done touring, they were eager to put an end to the hysterical part of their story, and they were determined to let everyone know that they were going to continue to evolve and experiment. They fantasized about abandoning their identity and starting over with a new secret identity, pretending to be a brand new band led by the legendary Sergeant PepperPaul McCartney got the idea after seeing the ‘S’ and ‘P’ written on salt and pepper packets while he was on a plane, a very Macca way of stumbling upon a hugely influential artistic concept.
The Beatles’ theme song “Sgt. Pepper” had the feel of an old-school English marching band, with snazzy new uniforms to match. The concept included one of the most innovative and influential album covers of all time. But what a folly! Sergeant Pepper A classic was that the Beatles embraced the concept with wildly imaginative songs like “A Day in the Life,” “Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds,” “Fixing a Hole” and “Sgt. Pepper” itself.
Jimin does the same thing here in “Smeraldo Garden Marching Band.” It’s a light march that echoes the style of a South Korean brass band. He sings about the imaginary flower Smeraldo, which to him symbolizes the personal secrets people keep to themselves because they’re too afraid to tell the truth. It’s a whimsical image, but it has an emotional reach, which also fits the spirit of Sergeant Pepper — there’s so much adult pain and loneliness on this album. “Lucy in the Sky” may be a drugged-out fantasy about “the girl with the kaleidoscopic eyes,” but it’s also John dreaming of Yoko, before he finally meets her.
Muse is Jimin’s unified suite of seven songs, exploring themes of experimentation and self-discovery in adulthood, from the opener “Rebirth (Intro)” to the climax “Who.” He released his first solo album last year with To confrontbut Muse is more complex. Like the rest of his BTS bandmates, Jimin had to put music on hold for his mandatory military service. So he returns to his art and his audience, but as an older, different person. He continues to sing about people stuck in isolation because they are too afraid to share their secrets—in other words, it’s music for a lonely hearts club.
Sergeant Pepper Pop art holds a unique place in pop iconography because it’s a place where artists go to transform themselves. It’s a sanctuary they can enter and come out different. That spirit is echoed in the way Paul McCartney sings in “A Day in the Life” about getting on a double-decker bus, lighting a cigarette, until “somebody speaks and I’m in a dream.” It’s not a musical reference because artists want to copy or imitate it. It’s a place they go because they want to get in touch with the more experimental and adventurous sides of themselves.
That’s why the Beatles still embody that spirit for pop artists looking to move forward. This spring, as Ariana Grande crafted her ambitious, introspective breakup album, her avowed inspiration was Rubber soul, the 1965 classic in which the Beatles made their definitive shift from moptops singing about girls to artists singing about women.
The prince made the most famous Sergeant Pepper movement of all time with Around the world in one day in 1985 — after the phenomenon of Purple rainHe wanted to prove that he would never settle for repeating himself. So he shocked everyone by coming back with the Pepper-style flower-power plush Around the world in a day, with the tube “Raspberry Beret”. It was nothing like Purple rain Or 1999, but for him that was the goal. “You know how easy it would have been to open Around the world in one day with the guitar solo at the end of “Let’s Go Crazy”? he said to Rolling stone in 1985. “I don’t to want “To make an album like the previous ones. Wouldn’t it be cool to be able to release your albums back to back without getting bored, you know?”
Sergeant Pepper Moves are a tradition for pop stars who want to take that “yeah, yeah, yeah” energy to a more adult level. In the late ’80s, when New Kids on the Block were the hottest boy band, they decided to show their serious side with their cheeky side. Sergeant Pepper homage to “Tonight.” Around the same time, Tears for Fears did exactly the same thing with “Sowing the Seeds of Love.” And who can forget when Panic! at the Disco went from emo punk to psychedelic flower power with Weird enough?
Like BTS, the Beatles were a pop group of dazzling originality from the beginning, even as the world tried to reduce them to a teenage fad, a gum-based product for fans. And like BTS, the Beatles proved that the fans were absolutely right. The Fab Four exploded with hits like “I Want to Hold Your Hand,” “Love Me Do,” and “She Loves You,” with its iconic “yeah, yeah, yeah” refrain. Some things never change: People tried to simplify the Beatles the same way they’ve simplified BTS 50 years later.
BTS has always been a fan of very ambitious concept albums. Even before their solo career, they were always going somewhere new with their ambitious concepts, like in the always incredible Map of the soul series, drawing on the psychological theories of Carl Jung as well as the philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche. But even at the time, with an explicitly intellectual bent, they were still misunderstood in the United States as mere teen pop smoothies. They were compared to Beatlemania in the most superficial and clumsy ways, most notably in the infamous and appalling Tonight’s show appearance where Jimmy Fallon dressed them in wigs and costumes from 1964. He meant it as a compliment – comparing BTS’s explosion to the Beatles’ explosion on The Ed Sullivan Show — but it was condescending to BTS, who had their own undeniably original style.
This is where Jimin comes from Muse and “Smeraldo Garden Marching Band,” as he enters a new era in his life and art. It’s not about imitating the Beatles. It’s about finding the new version of yourself, leaving the past behind and looking to the future.