Posts

Battle of the B-Sides:: NewJeans: Super Shy

-
Image
 Before anyone comes at me with pitchforks and torches and chases me up a rickety windmill before setting fire to it for me to dramatically fall in a blaze of heartrending glory (I've been thinking a lot about the end of Frankenstein 1932 if you cannot tell), I'm labeling this as a b-side because it was a pre-release of an album, not the actual title track. You may also be wondering why, at this point in the year, I'm covering a NewJeans song when according to my own rules, I won't listen to groups if they had too many members debut underage or if they had members debut too young, both of which actually still apply to this group for a few more months but will soon be removed from the U.P list so that I can actually dig into their discography. To which I say, Underage Protocol does not apply to the Greatest Hits or the Battle of the B-Sides. If you're also curious about the timing, it has been almost two years, two very long, stressful years. No matter what I or any...
Post a Comment
Read more

Song Review:: Catch the Young: EVOLVE- Amplify

-
Image
Release date: 2026 January 19 Album tracklist: Evolution : Prelude; Amplify ;  Stay In The Dream;  Sail;  Better Days;  28 Days;  From Now On; I'm Already In Love With You; Addicted; Hurricane; Alive; Reperio; To You, Standing Before Me; The Young Wave (2026 Remix) Album runtime: 51 minutes  Look at that runtime, everyone! Look at it! This was apparently supposed to be released last year, but getting all the songs together took longer than expected. Not that I'm complaining, especially because of that runtime. If they're going to put the effort in to having this many songs of this length, many if not all of them written by the members, then I'm going to be patiently happy. Also, generally, I just really love their songs, so I've been looking forward to this. They turned two in November, and you can already tell they've settled. I'm hoping that I love most of the songs in this album. I always leave room for ones I don't quite like as well in my expectatio...
Post a Comment
Read more

Music Show Wins:: Week of 01/14 - 01/20

-
Image
  This is an exciting week for the wins! We've got some first wins for songs, which I'm loving, but more excitingly, we had two different milestones happen! First up, we had a group's first win! Congrats to idntt on that all important first win! And with the subunit's debut as well! That's so cool! Second, we had a triple crown from Inkigayo! Congrats to Hwasa for that! It was also girl group domination this week, so that's pretty cool, ranging from second gen (Apink) to fifth gen (ILLIT). I like the range here. Continuing with my stubborn insistence on supporting the smaller groups, this week's After School Club re-run is ATBO on ep. 576 from 2023. I'm not happy that they've been disbanded, but I hope that the members are doing well despite this. For this episode, we didn't have the full list of members as two of them were participating in King of the Masked Singer at the time. I found a really interesting performance on The Show from earlier...
Post a Comment
Read more

Song Review:: Enhypen: THE SIN : VANISH- Knife

-
Image
Release date: 2026 January 16 Album tracklist: 사건의 발단, No Way Back (Fear. So!oON!), 도망자들, Knife , Stealer, 우리가 찾던 목소리, 목격자, Big Girls Don't Cry, Lost Island, Sleep Tight, 사건의 너머 Album runtime: 24 minutes  It was kind of funny when they announced their comeback because I was suddenly very excited and also exhausted. However, I also know that this group has had a problem in recent comebacks, through very little fault of their own, with having songs longer than three minutes. So, I took a look at the runtime and was horrified. But I wanted to see what was the cause of this. So I took notes. Of that tracklist, six of them are actual songs with singing by the members, not the speaking that's going on by I don't know who. Of those, only one of the six is over three minutes. But you know the most sickening thing? There's a song that's shorter that two minutes. That is so far from even pretending to be okay that I want to shake whoever decided that this was going to be how ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Song Review:: LNGSHOT: SHOT CALLERS- Moonwalkin' {Debut}

-
Image
Release date: 2026 January 13 Album tracklist: Backseat, Saucin' , Moonwalkin', FaceTime, Never Let Go Album runtime: 15 minutes  Okay, Jay Park's kids have offi cially debuted so congrats to them! Whoo! I saw a comment from him today that he thinks K-Pop has lost its romanticism, and LNGSHOT are his way of correcting that. Regardless of whether or not he's correct, and whether or not you agree with him, that's a bold statement to make and have be the mission statement, so to speak, for a group. It does give me a very specific forward facing expectation to what they're going to be doing in the future, but, for now, we've got this. And because of the maknae's age, this is going on Underage Protocol. But, even though I'm very disappointed in that, we've got an average of three minutes per song and the title track is a very healthy three-and-a-half minutes. It’s funny that you can hear Jay Park’s R&B roots in this song. It’s a very smooth song ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Song Review:: EXO: REVERXE- Crown

-
Image
Release date: 2026 January 19 Album tracklist: Crown , Back It Up, Crazy, Suffocate, Moonlight Shadows, Back Pocket, Touch & Go, Flatline, I'm Home Album runtime: 28 minutes  My first comeback with EXO coinciding with their first comeback is a delightful happenstance, and I'm excited to be here with the EXO-Ls for this. I'm so beyond frustrated with SM over this whole situation, but until SM decides to be completely nonsensical, I'm going to treat this as a simple hiatus for them from the group. They'll come back. And the average is over three minutes, so I am so, so happy. One of the more interesting things about the instrumental is that there are sirens going on through almost the entire thing, but they’re subtle enough that the song isn’t taken over by them and you’re unlikely to be jump-scared by them while you’re driving. But they’re there and they add a strong flavor to the song, which is otherwise majority a beat and rhythm, rather than having much of a m...
Post a Comment
Read more

Greatest Hits:: Dreamcatcher: BOCA

-
Image
 While I wait for The Form to fill up a little bit more, I'm going to return to the Tumblr poll I dropped that one time that gave me My Pace by Stray Kids to do because that's what y'all voted on. Second place was the lovely Dreamcatcher. I'm delighted by this. You mean I get to do one of my spooky girl groups? Yes, please. Always a pleasure. What's funny about this particular song (and the reason why I started looking into Dreamcatcher in the first place is that the very first time I heard this song, it was actually a stage from  The Show on the livestream that THE K-POP (AKA the YouTube channel that The Show was attached to) has running basically all the time. And it was only like the last fifteen seconds of the song, but I was hooked. Done. Sold. And now I'm hunting down their albums. It's crazy how things turn out. I know that one of the songs I've done recently had a producer or songwriter who has worked on a lot of Dreamcatcher songs (part of ...
Post a Comment
Read more