A Look at RM’s mono. Four Years Later
I was eighteen when the album — affectionately and knowingly dubbed as a “playlist” — dropped in the year 2018. It was only days before the track list for mono. had dropped, all seven titles written on a grey slate. Years later, mono. for millions across the world have become synonymous with the words “healing”, “love” and “solitude”. We look at mono. and what it means to its listeners four years later.
In a review I had written a month later after its release, I’d describe the album as “a gentle but quite firm reminder that it is okay to feel, to venture out and wander uselessly before coming back home.” Years later, the album attests to the same sentiment but something more profound. The sentiment had to do with the years that went by and how mono. was an album that felt more human, as the years went by. At first you would feel comforted by it. Then the understanding would sink in.
The playlist would begin with Tokyo. When I first listened to it, the words would remind me of Japan’s biggest city and later, I’d learn the word was similar to the Korean words for loneliness and yearning. The song begins with the rumbling of a train, it is easy to imagine one walking down the train tracks as the city unfolded behind them on a sleepless night.
The lyrics are poignant — RM speaks of “wake up in Tokyo, feel like a tourist so.” making a clever comparison to the city that is not yours to waking up in yearning and feeling alienated in your own body. The next lyrics go “I see Pinocchio wearing a poncho, that’s me some time ago”, a nod to the wooden boy who only dreamt of being human.
Tokyo’s lyrics speak of life being a foreboding wave one cannot tell the end of but speaks of humans returning to dust at the end, as a surety and the one thing that will happen. A particular favorite lyric of mine is when RM goes, “why do love and hate sound just the same to me?”.
seoul is the track that follows after. Again, RM’s wordplay comes to light with the words “Seoul” for the capital of his country to the word soul, the human spirit in English. In a live stream where RM spoke more about his album, he’d said he listened to the beat sent by producer duo every day, wondering what he could do with it. He’d realize it would be the most perfect way to describe Seoul, his home away from his home (Ilsan, South Korea).
seoul is a love letter to the bustling city. He describes it as an undeniable part of him, embedded deep under his skin. He asks the city what soul it possesses and wonders what holds him tethered to it. He is sick of the city, its “same old, ashy facial expression”, speaking of the dullness that comes with the monotony of a city. He talks of love and hate being the same words again and professes he hates Seoul but he loves it too. He is both the city and it’s inhabitant, his days of youth long gone and now full of buildings and cars.
RM speaks of both the solitude and pulsing awareness of its existence that can only come with living in a city. “A bus that changes it’s scenery even when I’m still” that speaks of a world that would not stop if you did and the Han rivers full of han, the Korean concept for an emotion full of grief, pain and nostalgia. In his live stream, RM speaks of seoul as a song that he cherishes and took two whole years to accomplish, a tribute to the city he grew into an artist.
The song that follows is moonchild. A fan favorite for many reasons, particularly as RM affectionately calls them his “moonchildren”. RM spoke of how the song is an ode to people who longed for the night and felt suffocated when there was light. The song speaks of the freedom that comes with the moonlight.
RM goes, “In the moon’s hours, look at the night sky through the eyes of your soul. It will show you your window and your time. Did you know? That streetlamp has many thorns.” RM pulls us closer and tells us to see the light closely. “A splendid view unfolded before us that is made up of someone’s thorns.” He reassures us someone will be comforted by looking at our thorns too. “We are each other’s night scenery, each other’s moon.”
If Tokyo is an introduction to the city, seoul speaks of its pulsing life and moonchild when everyone finally goes to sleep.
The next track that follows is badbye. RM collaborates here with Korean group, Mot’s lead singer, eAeon. RM would later work with him again for Don’t in 2021. The title expresses a juxtaposition of truth already. Saying bye isn’t always so good — RM calls it for what it is. The lyrics talk of wanting to be taken away and killed “softly” and shattered into pieces assumably by someone they love and someone who is not good for them.
uhgood comes next. The original title of the song translates into 어긋 (uh-geut). Described by ARMY translator doolset to either “fall short of expectations” or “miss each other by taking different routes”, there is already a dichotomy of difference between the English and Korean title.
uhgood describes RM’s torment within himself and the bridging between his ideal self and who he really is. He feels everything and nothing at once, stuck at the cross-roads between wanting to be better and realizing he needs himself too.
uhgood is followed by everythinggoes. Here RM uses the passing of winter and spring as a metaphor for the temporariness of pain and how it is nothing more than a guest. “Like morning comes after night goes, would summer come after spring goes? Like fruits ripen after flowers wither away, everything must suffer.” The temporariness of everything we go through is often used to belittle the human experience. Instead, RM says it shall pass, like everything. Everything goes but it comes back too.
Our last and final track is forever rain. The track begins with the light pattering of the rain and ends with gentle piano keys. The song is described as RM as a song he wishes played in his funeral. The title is interesting, “forever” as something permanent and “rain” which shouldn’t last forever. To RM, the rain is given life as a friend, “it keeps knocking on my windows and asks me how I’m doing”.
RM answers that he is still a hostage to life. He wonders for a moment if he could take the place of the rain and kiss the whole world deeply, would the world welcome him? Would someone hold him close? RM says he wants to live in a world, knowing there is nothing as forever. There is something comforting about the world going on, long after us and the legacies we leave behind.
The first time one listens to mono., it is easy to feel a catharsis and even, understanding. Over the years, the playlist has been described as an album that gives its listeners comfort that they are not alone in what they feel. Four years later and the album is something you no longer listen to when you feel blue but something you listen to remember what you are. After all, what else does it mean to be human than to feel what everyone else does?
mono. speaks of solitude but not entirely loneliness (the difference is its purpose, what it tells you), it talks of being an observer in your own life, seeing everyone walk around you and wonder why your legs aren’t moving. It tells you to take a step. It speaks of what we mean to each other, how we have never truly been alone in what we feel and isn’t that something that should matter?
mono. speaks of what it means to be, to wish you were better and how this is something you will spend your life trying to be. It speaks of the thorn of life and how it will prick you, how the temporariness of everything you feel shouldn’t alarm you, it just is. There are trees and moons that will exist long after we are gone — for now, it is okay to be.
In his livestream, RM described mono. as a friend. Perhaps, it is the friend we all need to aspire to be or really deserve in all our lives — to listen in those moments that feel too much or nothing at all. mono. ushers you in — it says, this is what means to be human, and this is what you always have been, remember it.
