Just A Little Fangirl Love

 The final song of my little triptych of Sober songs to celebrate the twentieth anniversary of BIGBANG's debut, and I went with a contemporary soloist. Girls' Generation is only a year younger than BIGBANG and occupies much the same role as BIGBANG does in the canon, just on the girl group side. So it really worked out that there is a soloist from Girls' Generation that has a song with the same name as Sober because that also gives us a different texture to look at. Plus, I don't think it's too much of a stretch to say that the impact Girls' Generation and its members have had on the industry cannot be hyped enough, especially when their activity has slowed down a little and I've seen younger or newer fans mistakenly dismiss them just because they're not pulling the streaming or release numbers like the streaming farms for some of the other groups. But that's why I do the research and hand y'all the results: to make the context around the last 30...

Release date: 2026 August 19 Album tracklist: can't go back , Happy Album runtime: 5 minutes  My girls! If you're new here, I absolutely adore this group and the day I stop yelling about them is the day I need a wellness check. If this is not new information for you, are you as excited as I am? Hot Chicken and Spooky are still my favorites from them and I'm always happy to add to my collection of songs I love from them. Which is most of them, if I'm being honest, which is why I hunted down a poster of the group. I love how bright and energetic this song is, and it's positively brimming with second gen energy, which is delightful to be hearing. I can hear the Apink and the Girls' Generation and the Sistar and the Orange Caramel influence going on in this song, and it's got me toe-tapping to its summery brightness. It's got a couple of spots where it leans on the synth and the EDM of the elders, but there's also a little bit of the snare drum going on ...

Release date: 2026 July 16 Album tracklist:  Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter Korean ver. , Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter Japanese ver. Album runtime: 10 minutes  With DK now enlisted and Mingyu about to enlist, which tells you when I'm writing this regardless of when it actually gets posted, I'm feeling emotionally fragile, so I'm going to do this now. Since we're actually really close to getting him back. And this was for his birthday, which makes me happier. There's a violin. Instant approval. And five whole minutes of song. I love him. I love that he gave us this as a gift. The instrumental is softly cinematic with very distinct sections that allow for enough variation that it can actually move and flow. The piano is the most delicate instrument of the bunch, but it carries the weight of supporting his vocals more than any of the others. This is such a pretty instrumental, and I love that. You know how amusing it is that the deep-voiced rapper of Seventeen and their ...

Release date: 2026 May 04 Album tracklist: MOON , CHOOM , I LIKE IT , LOCKED IN Album runtime: 12 minutes  Last one of their b-sides to get a music video, I think. While I still can't technically listen to them because of the whole "they had a fourteen-year-old at debut" thing, this has been very handing in letting me hear basically the whole album, and let me tell you, there have been some of these I added to y playlist of song I can't listen to yet because the group is on Underage Protocol. Fingers crossed that this is another one. Oh, and also, as of the time of writing this, this was #92 globally on YouTube music. Oh, this is a slow and grindy instrumental. Even when more elements get added at the end, it still has a very heavy quality to it, and it never really gets more energetic. But the progression from the sparse opening to the not-overpopulated ending moves at a good pace and it's a logical progression as well. There aren't many big surprises here, w...

Release date: 2026 August 28 Album tracklist: FALLEN ANGEL , HEAVEN, Less than a Lover Album runtime: 9  minutes  Congrats on the wins! I forgot I needed to do this one! I think this is a pre-release, which is why I'm labelling it like I am.  One of my big complaints about a lot of songs lately is that the instrumental isn't particularly distinct, because so many of them, including this one, are largely two or three beats layered together through most of the song with very little variation. This one at least has the benefit of water plunks and plops, and I cannot express how briefly excited I was about twenty seconds from the end, but it just wasn't enough to overcompensate for the repetition. Now, I'll be the first to admit that R&B doesn't really do it for me normally because a lot of the modern R&B does an excellent job of having the kind of sound that lulls me a bit too much into drowsiness. This song is no different. Between the slow beat and the amount...

Release date: 2026 August 18 Album tracklist: Frequency Album runtime: 3  minutes  Hello, everyone! You all know how I feel about the debuting groups! There's so much hope and potential going on with them that I just want to throw them at people and say "WOULD YOU LIKE ANOTHER GROUP?" with all the aggression that the caps-lock implies. In this instance, before I've heard this song, I'm fully on board with supporting them because the maknae turns twenty this year. So we are good to go. The actual debut date is unknown for them, but hopefully we can get them a little bit of traction before they debut. You can help me out with that right? This instrumental has a very ZEROBASEONE vibe to it while also being oddly lo-fi elevator music. It's a bit of an interesting combination, but it's actually pretty mild through most of the instrumental, although we do have a late-song kick up of its heels where it pretends to be more energetic, but it's also got a drop r...