Just A Little Fangirl Love

 Welcome to August and the beginning of songs that could be considered "Events" in some way. It's what I'm calling this month, anyway. And we're starting with one of the technically milder songs, but still one of the bigger ones because of what this song did for the group. Cultural impact, not just a dinosaur-killing asteroid impact crater in terms of group popularity counts here in August, so you'll be seeing a range. Also, I'm going to quietly admit that I have fallen into my tendencies again for August, so you can expect boy groups to be b-sides and the girl groups to be title tracks and I really don't mean to do that as consistently as I do, so while I'm looking at the rest of the year, I'm going to have to be thinking about that tendency. Case in point, we have a girl group's title track to start out the month of August (my VIP friend picked this one from my list I was thinking about for August). AOA debuted in 2012 as an eight-member ...

 And here's our closer to the b-side month I decided to do. You know what's kind of funny? The first songs I reviewed are about to become eligible for Greatest Hits posts. Some of them are practically those posts in length already, so it would be interesting to see what I do with them now, especially now that I've had time to sit with some of them and performances have had time to happen. In the meantime, we've got a song that comes with mcuh recommendation from the K-Pop community at large and kind of a perfect way to bridge what I've been doing with July and the events that are going to happen in August. Because this kind of is an event on its own, but it's also a b-side by an artist I haven't covered. Win-win. Best of both worlds. Perfect bridge. And it has a bridge, which is a throwback to May. WJSN, also known as Cosmic Girls, debuted as a twelve-member group under Starship Entertainment back in 2016. I've actually got a pretty big soft spot for thi...

  I'm getting closer to being caught up.  The links down in the chart, as always, go to my reviews I've written for the songs. Show Champion: Hearts2Hearts "Lemon Tang" MCountdown: LE SSERAFIM + ILLIT + KATSEYE "ICONIC BY MISTAKE" Music Bank: ATEEZ "BAD" Show! Music Core: aespa "LEMONADE" Inkigayo: I.O.I "Suddenly" ASC Performance: N/A The Show:  N/A The Extra Stage: BABYMONSTER "I LIKE IT"

Release date: 2026 July 19 Album tracklist:  I made a mistake , I made a mistake - instrumental Album runtime: 8 minutes  We just got DK and Vernon's military enlistment announcement. I have to do something to take my mind off it, even though logically I know the sooner they leave, the sooner they come back, and so far I'm 2/2 in my prediction that they'd be enlisting after Dino debuted. I'm also happy to note that the big worry I had, that they'd have to do birthday lives separately, is not a concern because if the math is mathing correctly, DK should get back in March and Vernon in May. So I'm going to hope that V.O.S, as a first gen group very removed from all of that, can distract me. It's a tall order, but if anyone can, it's first gen vocals. I may have made a miscalculation, looking at the title of the song, but it's fine. We've got my beloved strings and the guitar is soft, beautiful, and non-obtrusive, even when it's more noticeably ...

Release date: 2026 July 21 Album tracklist: Stagefright , 8PM Album runtime: 5 minutes  I'm so excited that they're coming back to my city. They put on a pretty good concert, even with how small that venue was, and I like a lot of their music. EXCEL is still my favorite song of theirs, but even then, they've released a few other songs I like nearly as well. I'm just happy that they're still active. I really am. There is a specific level of sultry drama in the instrumental. While the instrumental has the slow beat that lets the ong have a little bit of an inherent weight, the actual instruments being used are largely light and high. The instrumental uses the heavy weight of a lone percussion as punctuation for the song instead of letting the ong ahve a swagger weight through the whole thing. I imagine that we're going to get some very smooth choreography with this song. I also mostly love how the instrumental falls out from underneath the rapping to let him stan...

 Two big powerhouse vocalists back to back. Nice. We're continuing with July's "I'm doing b-sides by artists that I haven't covered yet" theme, I suppose you could call it. I've had a few months of writing a lot of Greatest Hits posts for the Expanded Offerings, so I thought I'd forcibly balance that out a bit to compensate for that a little and for what will be happening in the short term that I know about. Which isn't a lot because I keep changing my mind about exactly what songs I'm going to do although the topic has been fairly stable once I decide it. Next month is "Events". For the record. With a tiny three post arc in the middle that's slightly unrelated. That mini arc is the only one that's one hundred percent locked though.  Ailee debuted in 2012 as a soloist, which makes her one of my beloved 2012 debuts, and congrats to her because she got married in 2024! I wish her a long and happy life with her husband. And you w...