Battle of the B-Sides: Jin (BTS): Heart on the Window

- November 20, 2024

My first BBS request! I just saw some of the memes being made about their performance and the amount of space between Wendy and Jin, and I just have to say that they're hilarious and the amount of trolling I'm seeing from the fans gives me life. The timing is actually really helpful for me to get into fan mindset. This request comes from a user on Reddit, who simply said there was too much, they were obsessed, and then linked me to an appreciation post they'd done. This is what I like to see, and it gave me a very good place to start: Jin and Wendy's voices.

As a side note, Jin really does have the perfect trot voice. This isn't even in that genre or anywhere approaching it, but that honestly doesn't change this fact about him. If he's willing to give us more trot or trot-adjacent, I'd be a happy camper and eat it up.

Heart on the Window comes from Jin's debut album and is the fifth track between a soft rock ballad and a full fat ballad. With the two rock tracks he released as the pre-release single and the title track, it's pretty clear where his musical tastes lay, which hilariously aligns with my own and that excites me for the future. The presence of a duet with Wendy, who is, as I understand it, a heavyweight in the world of vocals, on his debut album says a lot. HYBE has some great female vocalists in their groups, but Jin got Wendy. Oh, to be a fly on the wall for that conversation. (I found a clip where he talks about it, and honestly, that's even funnier than what I was picturing).

Jin opens the song, which does firmly establish it as his song, and Wendy gets her own verse, but the fact that most of the song other than this is an actual duet between the two of them is incidental to those details. And what a duet it is. I'm fascinated by some of the harmonies that they've got going on. It's obvious in places that they're both singing the same note, just an octave or two apart, but when they break from that and transition into true harmonies, the song becomes absolutely gorgeous. Sometimes they have the same tone. Sometimes they opt for different ones. What that does is create interesting textures within the song.

Most of the song is dedicated to finding out how many different ways the chorus and pre-chorus can be shaped and delivered by the two voices, which is something I can absolutely get behind.

The times when Jin and Wendy are on the same note in different octaves, that creates a warm crème brulée situation, sweet and a little thick (in a good way), but the instrumentals provide a little bit of a crust down at the bottom for the custard. The harmonizing is a brookie situation. Brownies are good. Cookies are good. When you mix the two together, you get a delicious treat where you don't have to choose which one, but instead get to enjoy two delicious, similar but not identical, desserts at the same time.

The instrumentals are good and enjoyable, but because they stay predominately the same through the entire song except for the bridge, where they fade to specifically highlight the voices there, the instrumentals are simply there to provide structure.

I have to give major props to the pair of them. I hunted down a fan cam of the performance because I didn't like the live stream version vocals and something seemed off about them. So I wanted comfirmation. The good thing about the livestream was seeing Jin mess with his inner ear when they started the duet proper, which confirms that I think hers wasn't working right. Or his wasn't working right. Or both of them. Something was wrong. There were also some nerves, yes, as any performer worth their salt still gets nervous before a performance, but because the pair of them kept managing to find each other's notes? I'd guess it was a tech issue and their skills as artists are on full display with the little snafu. When they lock in together, the resulting sound is nothing short of magical. 1+1=3. I'd need to go back to the Livestream and watch them for inner ear checks to fully confirm that, but honestly I keep getting so distracted by their voices that I don't think I'll be able to unless I mute it, and then what's the point?

But I'll share that anyway.