Just A Little Fangirl Love

Release date: 2026 October 08 Album tracklist: Fairy Tale Album runtime: 4 minutes  Holy crap, y'all. If I'm looking at this correctly, it has been six years since their last comeback, and they turned ten this year. Wow. We're also down to three members of the original six, but  Listen to that piano. Honestly, the vibe of "fairy tale" was nailed with a sledgehammer with this instrumental. It's got spots where it's a little sparkly but it's just soft and pretty for so much of it. We don't even have drums for most of the first part of the song. We get a little bit of a violin before we get any sort of drum set, which I am here for. I love violins in the instrumental. But this is genuinely just so soft and I love it. The piano is doing all of the heavy-lifting here.  They've got amazing voices. Why didn't they blow up? I'm genuinely asking that question because their last comeback was before I even started listening to K-Pop. Also, T'C...

Release date: 2026 October 09 Album tracklist: Treading Water Album runtime: 3 minutes  It's been a hot minute since they released something, so I'm kind of stoked about this. I love their debut song, if you weren't here for this back then or you ignored it. It's pretty awesome. It's one of the most Backstreet Boys things I've heard in recent years. And also, the eldest one loves BTOB, so we already know he's a man of taste for top-tier vocals, and I can say that objectively because of how the other five groups reacted to BTOB on Kingdom (one of my favorite responses was "If they decide to dance too, we're done") and because of what they've won with those vocals. So the fact that one of them loves BTOB tells us his vocal standard, and it will likely continue to influence the vocals of this group because of the emulation thing humans do that's so fun. This feels like it might be leaning a little afrobeats, but I don't think that...

 Alrighty-roo. I went back and took a look at some of the songs I shared with y'all in the other Halloween posts, and decided that I'd put this one on the short list for October this year. The shortlist is twenty songs long, for the record, so I'm not going to cover all of them right now, but I thought that this would be a good one to follow a behemoth of a group. As I said in the Halloween post in 2024, I wouldn't have discovered this group and this song if they hadn't released a new song. Ish. Seriously, this is an underrated group and it's impressive they survived as long as they did. They made it the full seven years of their contract, which is four more than the average girl group, so I just want that acknowledgement for them. Also, their fandom colors are Joyful Green and Cheerful Yellow, and that's just so precious that they actually have colors and what those colors are called. I know that's a bit weird with how dark this song is, but most of th...

Release date: 2026 August 05 Album tracklist: PAGES OF US, CHERRY PIE , MOTTO, CAN'T STOP=NOT FOUND Album runtime: 16 minutes  This is one of the reviews that I do because I'm including a stage of this song for the music show wins post as one of the extra songs. Still, this is a smaller group that needs the attention, so I'm still fine with this, even though I already know I'm behind. It's fine. Oh, this is very pretty. This is a very pretty introduction with the whistling. I'm not going to lie that the instrumental reminds me of something a girl group would do (which isn't an issue, but it's just something interesting that I'm noting), but specifically a warm, summery sort of song from a girl group. It's a little late in the season for something this summery, but there's always next year to listen to it in the summer playlists. The whistling also reminds me of another song and I'm not sure which one it is, but I have a positive associati...

Release date: 2026 August 07 Album tracklist: RUN IT , THIS & THAT , After You, FARMING , I Do, Way Out, Back Then, This & That - (Festival Version) Album runtime: 25 minutes  Wow, I've managed to be so late in doing this one that they've dropped another single. I'm just perpetually behind. It's fine. I'm telling you, every time I'm not immediately enamoured with a title track of theirs, the b-sides hit me in the brain perfectly. Most of this song is balanced in such a way that the verses have a song instrumental, so the vocals don't have sound competition, the chorus gets a big burst followed by an even bigger burst. And it's very well-balanced. But then, there's a late stage complete tonal shift that sounds nothing like the rest of the song. That's where we get the experimental, Stray Kids patented noise music. It's brief and discordant and I find it very charming because it's brief. This works as a b-side very well. I think eve...

Release date: 2026 October 01 Album tracklist: Tell Me, Five Hours in Pieces , I'll Be Okay, fool Album runtime: 14 minutes  I'm going to try my very hardest not to be as behind in October as I was in July, August, and September. Starting with TIOT.  I left this on repeat while I got up to go grab some salami because I just wanted to enjoy the song for a moment before I got all scrunchy between my eyebrows from listening. The answer is that I really just like this song. It's comfortingly energetic, which is a weird combination of words, but this is definitely a rock song with a comforting pat to the head. It's also very pretty, especially the very introduction, which is why I wanted to just spend some time with it. Like, genuinely, even though I'm not super paying attention to it, I've literally had it on repeat for roughly forty-five minutes and I'm just chilling with it. Alright. The rapping is very intense compared to the rest of the vocals, but it's ...