Just A Little Fangirl Love

  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...

Release date: 2026 July 24 Album tracklist: Summer Night 2026 , Summer Night 2026 - Instrumental Album runtime: 3 minutes  Okay. So. I'm sure you're all aware that I try to pay specific attention to the first Gen groups when they drop new music. And this isn't technically new music in the way we might think, but it is a new edition, so to speak, from their 2017 song. Oh, and they're a co-ed group. We need the co-ed groups to stay active because there are so few of them. Ah, listen to that saxophone at the beginning. I wish it lingered a little bit more throughout the song, but it pops up enough that I'm okay with it not being present throughout. Funnily enough, when the saxophone isn't around, it sounds like video game menu music for something that's brightly colored with cute animals. It's kind of Viva Pinata, you know? The saxophone ages it up a little and turns it into easy listening, and it's really nice, and then it goes back to the menu music. ...

Release date: 2026 July 08 Album tracklist:  Pretty Girl Album runtime: 3 minutes  We are on Underage Protocol for this group until November, so they're so close to being taken off the list. Also, congrats on the win! It did not take ong for me to add this song to the playlist I keep to keep track of which song get released this year that I really enjoy. There's a bright intensity to the instrumental that is slow enough that it doesn't feel aggressive or frenetic. Most of this is due to the electric guitar and the drums being as steady and present as they are, and honestly, even though there isn't a lot of variation going on in the instrumental, it's not gratingly repetitive in a way that makes me twitchy, which is a good thing. I'm loving the rock. I wish that there was either a big uptick in energy or a very soft downturn, but what's here is still good. What flow in energy that there is for the song allows both instrumental and vocals to match well in term...