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Battle of the B-Sides:: G-Dragon (BIGBANG): A Boy

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 Back when I was trying to fully plan out July, foolish creature that I am, I wanted a big name to help balance out what was, at the time, a lot of smaller groups and artists. And, love them or hate them, BIGBANG is one of the biggest names you can do in the world of K-Pop, and they have been for at least fifteen years. But I didn't want to do one of the group songs yet because my instinct tells me that if I'm going to do a BIGBANG song, that's going to be an event. So I planned an event that will be coming up somewhat soon. I also recognize that of the Big 3, SM is definitely overrepresented and I hadn't done anything YG yet (you may remember that I did CL last month, but I decided on her after I'd decided on BIGBANG for the YG representation) (interestingly, I technically had done something YG related much, much earlier, because YG the Dude was part of Seotaiji and Boys, and I have covered a Seotaiji song ). Instead, I asked my friend who has been listening to K-P...
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Song Review:: i-dle: We made- Crow {Pre-Release}

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Release date: 2026 July 06 Album tracklist: Mono (feat. Ska water) , Gimme Dat Love , Morning, Crow , Love Is Pain Album runtime: 13 minutes  It took me so long to do this song that the whole album came out. It's fine. It's fine. And you know what? Funnily enough there are so many kpop songs called "Love Is Pain" that I could almost do an entire month of them for the Expanded Offerings. Interesting way to start this song. I would love how the electric guitar is used to provide an interesting grindy and grungy texture to the song, but it's also very repetitious through much of the song. I say that, but I also acknowledge that the song instrumentally has a very hard change of texture halfway through that cleverly uses rests to provide an aural reset so that switch isn't nearly as jarring as it could be. And then we get an organ? And audience participation clapping? And a synth being used like a violin? There are some bold choices being made here. Every time this...
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Music Show Wins:: Week of 06/10 - 06/16

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  No notes! I'm just going to have this on the record so that it's done because I'm about a month behind. As always, links in the chart go to my reviews. Show Champion: tripleS "Baby Flower" MCountdown: Treasure "IF I" Music Bank: tripleS "Baby Flower" Show! Music Core: I.O.I "Suddenly" Inkigayo: ILLIT "It's Me" ASC Performance: N/A The Show: N/A The Extra Stage: Samuel "ZIGI-ZIGI-ZIGI"
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Song Review:: Samuel: SAMUELiTO- ZIGI-ZIGI-ZIGI

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Release date: 2026 June 08 Album tracklist: HOLA!, ZIGI-ZIGI-ZIGI , NEVER SAY GOODBYE..., DDOOK DDAK Album runtime: 9 minutes  I've got a soft spot the size of Kentucky for Samuel, which doesn't compare to Seventeen's soft spot for him, which is the size of Alaska.  I hit play on this song and immediately twitched because that first note startled me. Big power right from the start. I'm not even going to call this Latin-esque, because it's just straight Latin music. The beat has a very specific timing to it that uses rests and eighth notes to give the beat a distinct rhythm, and there are two separate rhythms taking up the majority of the instrumental from two different percussion instruments, or maybe one of those is a synthesizer. I'm not sure. It doesn't really matter to me one way or the other. One complaint I have about the song, is that there isn't really a good and clear indication when the song starts and when it ends if you've got it on repea...
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Song Review:: Hoshi (Seventeen): Snapback

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Release date: 2026 June 15 Album tracklist: Snapback Album runtime: 2 minutes  I figured I'd just hit both of the Seventeen songs that I didn't do in June. Happy late birthday, Hoshi. Less than a year left until you're back. This is your classic beat going on here and it sounds so much like Love Money Fame (am I the only one that remembers that order because it's the opposite of FML ?) that I had to stop and sing past the beginning part to figure out which song this sounded like, which is interesting that this doesn't share any songwriters with that song (not even a wild Woozi, so Hoshi apparently gave him a bit of a break). But there are some interesting sound effects going on in the instrumental occasionally, and we occasionally get rests in there to help interrupt the sound. Which is good. It's what we want. This is a lot of English for Hoshi. I'm proud of him. There's a lot of yearning going on in this song, which, as we know is something that I lov...
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Song Review:: V8 (Seventeen): V8- singasong {Debut}

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Release date: 2026 June 30 Album tracklist: Friend, BEAT, singasong , mia, coloring, girlsnboys, 8DM, rat race Album runtime: 22 minutes  When this subunit was first announced, I posted on Threads about how I needed them to call their subunit "V8" because of how funny it was. And then we got the subunit name. And I felt so pleased with myself. I still feel pleased with myself. Very validated. And I know I said I was going to focus on the July releases, which I've done a terrible job of so far, but they got a win, so I need to get this post done. It's not that I was neglecting them on purpose, I promise. This is 8-bit video game in the best way possible. Like, I've had this on repeat for, I think, an hour at this point while I read a Wiki on Five Nights at Freddy's  and I've just been vibing to it. It's very electronic, and that isn't one of my reliable yes types, though I do like some aspects of it fairly reliably. However, because of the aesthetic...
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Battle of the B-Sides:: Pentagon: When I Was In Love

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 Continuing with my July theme of "B-Sides From Artists I Haven't Covered Yet", I've only actually decided on the first three songs. I've got a doc that has a list of songs I kind of want to cover but am horribly indecisive about because I've switched July's setlist about four times now before I gave up. The doc is going to be a roulette wheel when it's time. So, if you've got a song for me, I've got a lot of room in the back two-thirds of the month for it and am happy to slot it right in there. The other solidified song is from an artist who is actually a pretty controversial figure, but also undeniably impactful on K-Pop as a whole.  Pentagon debuted in 2016 under Cube Entertainment as a ten-member boy group. They're currently down to at most nine members, but until we get a comeback from them to clarify, I'm not sure exactly how many we have left. But they're not disbanded! And a lot of their songs were written by the members (ma...
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