As anticipated earlier this week, RM dropped a new single with a music video, “Come Back To Me”, today, collaborating with an all-star team behind and in front of the camera. Pachinko’s Kim Minha is his co-star, and the short film was directed by Emmy winner Lee Sung Jin whose series, Beef, pretty much swept award season. Now that we’ve seen it, the partnership makes total sense.
Beef isn’t really about two people who hate each other, it’s about frustration and anger and disappointment with oneself, it’s about life purpose, the push-pull between our expectations for ourselves and what we really want.
"You're born. You make choices. Then suddenly you're here." This is what Danny, Steven Yeun’s character, says in the last episode. This is what we’re seeing RM process in his video. It applies to his relationships, but it could also relate to his art, his career, especially at this stage in his career, after a decade of whirlwind success with BTS, and now fulfilling military duty, after which – as BTS has promised – another chapter in their journey, whatever that looks like.
RM has always been the most outwardly ruminative member of the group, often candidly sharing with fans his uncertainties about the direction of his own creative process and how it does and doesn’t line up with the group’s goals overall – all of that on top of navigating his personal and professional identity in the eye of a fame hurricane. RM, or rather Kim Namjoon, seems to be reflecting on all that past and present in this song, in this video, and also seems to reveal that he’s arrived at a better understanding of who he is in order to move forward.
Beef’s vibe is also reflected in the set for RM’s “Come Back To Me” music video. Much thought was put into the spaces occupied by each of the series’ characters; the way those spaces changed over the course of show illuminated the characters’ the impact of their external and internal conflicts. Here’s a great article from last year about the Beef design team’s vision for what they wanted to achieve with the sets.
In “Come Back To Me”, RM moves through a series of rooms, each of them representing where he’s at emotionally – like Beef, “Come Back To Me” is deeply concerned with spaces, and how each space has its own personality constructed to either camouflage or expose what RM is either unwilling to or helpless to confront.
It’s the marriage of BTS and Beef, I love it, but there’s more. In his Instagram post for the short film, Lee Sung Jin thanks Jake Schreir.
Jake also posted about the video, sharing that he travelled with the team to Korea to help with the production; he is credited as one of the producers and he has a lot of experience with music videos, having directed videos for Chance The Rapper, Kendrick Lamar, Kanye West, Selena Gomez, Haim, and so many more.
Jake worked on Beef with Sonny; but also, Sonny is one of the credited writers on Marvel’s upcoming Thunderbolts! Which Jake is currently directing! It’s the intersection of the BTS Universe and the MCU! And it’s huge, for RM to have the director of a huge movie helping out with his video assisting another director who’s fresh off one of the most acclaimed television series in recent years.
Above all, though, it’s a good song, and he’s a good actor!
