Just A Little Fangirl Love

 It's not that I delayed this on purpose, but I needed to settle from the 3/10 star weekend I had at the beginning of the month. Sixty hours of stress, anxiety, and frustration. I will also never be going back to El Paso. NU'EST could literally come back and do a single concert, only in El Paso, and I would not go back. I would be begging Aron to add literally any other stop, but I would not be going back to El Paso. The city hates me. The people are lovely, but like I said. 3/10 stars. One of those stars was the pizza I got, because wow that was delicious. Okay, debut time. Group debuts I covered: KEYVITUP , hertz.wav , MODYSSEY , UNCHILD . Soloists who debuted that I covered: Somin (APRIL/KARD) , ALL'N , Kangin (Super Junior) , Vari (NINE.i) . Songs I was looking forward to: TOP (BIGBANG): TOP IS BACK, BABY! KickFlip: I was a little shaky with them on debut, but they have since won me over strongly. I like these kids. TOMORROW X TOGETHER: Do they get songs of a decent len...

Release date: 2026 May 11 Album tracklist:  ddok ddok ddok Album runtime: 3 minutes  I am so far behind, everyone! Pre-release! Album comes out in a few days! This does not sound like a BOYNEXTDOOR song. Where is the fun? Where is the playful loud vibrancy inherent in their title tracks? Why is this song so serious? I had a lot of hope because having a doorbell effect was an interesting start to the song, and it was quickly dashed. There's one spot that perks my ears up every time I hear it, the spot with the background choir because oh, that's interesting, but it's not enough to save the rest of the song from the gray-scale that is this instrumental. There's a stretch of the song that reminds me of Red Light, Green Light by TFN , but that's basically the only place where the vocals approach the normal fun. I'm glad that they're getting to show versatility, and I'm equally glad that this is a b-side and not the title track. This sounds more like Cortis ...

Release date: 2026 May 22 Album tracklist: PERMISSION Album runtime: 3 minutes   So funny story, when I was typing this up, I accidentally called this song “Possession”. I heard once that Taemin’s songs are religious trauma as a song, and I have to say that the instrumental at the beginning of the song reminds me a lot of that. There’s ghostly wailing in the instrumental, and I love it. There's also kind of a funky, musical vibe to the instrumental, wherein the character is just slinking around the stage, bonus points if it's a villain or a morally grey character. There's a high level of drama inherent here, and while there isn't really a lot of variation technically, the song is very sticky because of the prevalence of the bass guitar. Kai and Taemin really do circle the same sounds for their songs, don't they? Hashtag, Best Friends Things. This is still very much a Taemin song, don't get me wrong, and while it's settled in that sing-song style during the c...

 This is why I laughed last month during the month of chaos when Love Shot was chosen because this was the first song I picked when I decided on the theme for the month. I wouldn't have done two EXO songs back to back because I like more variation than that. The other really funny thing is Love Shot is the title track from the repackaged album and Tempo is the title track from the original. The other reason why I laughed. There were a lot of EXO songs available and that one was picked. I don't know what to tell us. But! This song is the focal point of this month's theme because there's something very specific about this song that is the most known thing about this song. It's the first thing I learned about this song. I listened to it because of that thing I learned about it and swooned . EXO originally debuted in 2012 under SM with twelve members split between two subunits. Fun fact, I have a friend who used to be an EXOL back in the day (AKA when we were in high s...

 Okay, so. I actually decided I was going to do this song now back in January, I think, because I have a friend who is a teacher and has been sharing K-Pop with her students this year. They're remarkably resistant to a lot of songs (they hate Girls' Generation specifically, love VOODOO DOLL and OKay , and tolerate Chase Me and Mr. Simple , but also tolerate Red Velvet, Hearts2Hearts, and aespa) and have generally poor taste because they refuse to give girl groups an actual chance and what do you mean that they didn't like Zombie Party by SPEED? They can however sing almost the entirety of Gangnam Style and CUPID . But up until OKay was released, BOUNCY and VOODOO DOLL were the crowned kings of the class. Which makes it wildly hilarious to me that xikers has now dethroned ATEEZ. But I obviously can't cover OKay yet because it's not two years old, and I obviously can't cover VOODOO DOLL because I already did that one. So, even though they'll likely ne...

Release date: 2026 May 18 Album tracklist: Intro., TOP 5 , V for Vision, Customize, Exotic, Changes, Zero to Hundred Album runtime: 19 minutes   This is their first release after the contracts ended for some of them and we now have the new version of ZEROBASEONE. It’s not going to be fun for them to have to rearrange all of their songs for choreography and singing, but unlikely many of their MNET survival show group seniors, they didn’t disband by the end of their initial contract period, so we’re in a little bit of an unfamiliar territory with them in some ways. And I'm appalled at the title track run time. It's barely longer than the intro song. The instrumental is largely a collection of beats. We occasionally get an instrument that gives a little bit of a melody, but it’s not the basis of the instrumental. Which is fine. This feels a little 90s boy group in spots, and I’m cool with that, but I’m not currently over inspired about this instrumental, other than to note that we...