Just A Little Fangirl Love

 We just had a whole lot of b-sides for July, but a bunch of those were buried tracks. This one, this one is iconic, so iconic, in fact, that when I was thinking about what songs to do for August, that was when I found out that this and another one that I'm planning are both b-sides. I genuinely thought it was a title track. These two songs are also songs that you regularly see pop up in the K-Pop compilation videos that get posted on YouTube, so if you're like me and watch those regularly but also haven't actually heard this song yet, here's your chance to find out why it's in all of those videos delivered to you on a silver platter. I've done all the groundwork for you here. The other kind of funny thing is that both songs I was considering started off life as a b-side and then became a Japanese debut for the group. What's the other song I'm talking about? You'll find out. You can blame the order of these posts on my EXO-L friend (and now Baby Stay...

  I thought I'd be able to get these done so I could go into August caught up. Alas. As always, links in the spreadsheet go to my reviews. Show Champion: AHOF "Run To You" MCountdown: ATEEZ "BAD" Music Bank: Yeonjun "Ice Cream" Show! Music Core: Yeonjun "Ice Cream" Inkigayo: I.O.I "Suddenly" ASC Performance: N/A The Show: N/A The Extra Stage: UDTT "Viper"

Release date: 2026 July 08 Album tracklist: RUN TO YOU , Sugar High, JUST SAY YES, You're the Reason, Our Story Album runtime: 15 minutes  I can listen to AHOF like I want to December of 2028 when the maknae turns eighteen. He was fifteen at debut, which unfortunately puts the group in Underage Protocol. Although he is currently sixteen, so if you're not quite as stubborn as I am and sixteen is your only hard limit, the group is good to go for you now. The group being in Underage Protocol does not change the fact that I have several of their songs sitting waiting in the playlist I have for songs by groups I can't listen to yet.  If this instrumental was slightly more acoustic, we'd have a country song on our hands. As it is, this song is also still so "boy groups" that I'm not surprised it's gotten a win already. The beat holds the song in place while the other pieces move around it, and while there is a dramatic late song interruption with specifical...

Release date: 2026 August 03 Album tracklist:  SODA SODA;  Palm Tree; If I'm S, Can You Be My N? - Japanese ver. Album runtime: 8 minutes  There are a few boy groups that debuted within the last couple of years that just scream summer to me, three of them being BOYNEXTDOOR, NCT Wish, and TWS, which is ironic given that two of them debuted in January. Japanese releases tend towards that bright sound anyway, so here's hoping the patterns are repeated. I was not expecting the disco today. I'm not complaining because this is bright and summery, perfect for a festival or a fan meeting, or once their discography gets a bit bigger, perfect for their inevitable fun section of a concert. The instrumental has everything from brass instruments to chimes and a very funky little guitar.  I love the "S-O-D-A" chant that pops up periodically. It's recognizable enough to make it a point of familiarity, but it's not so repetitive that it takes over the song. The song has h...

 [Insert the upside down smiley face here] In all seriousness, I know I'm very late, but I think I got through most of the reviews I wanted to do and it's time to do this. Otherwise I'll just keep putting it off and end up having to write it in December so that I can write my year-end wrap-up. Like last year. We're trying to avoid the stress I put myself through in December again. And spoiler for the songs I was listening to this month, it was a lot of NU'EST, so I'm only going to include the one I listened to the most rather than the four that would be included. For once, my top NU'EST listen was not FACE.  Debut time! Debuts I covered: NAZE , YUHZ , HEART OF WOMAN , AND2BLE , and H//PE PRINCESS . Debuts I didn't cover: FLARE U . Soloists whose debut I did not cover: J.Seph (KARD) (note: this is actually a draft so this will likely be finished at some point so this will be edited when I do) and Gabee (JAESSBEE) .  Songs I was looking forward to: I.O.I-...

Release date: 2026 July 24 Album tracklist: Ain't No Party Album runtime: 2 minutes  I know you all enjoy getting random updates about K-Pop in these introduction paragraphs. Or at least no one tells me they hate them (saying that would not make me stop doing this, by the way). Good news is that Spotify is getting better about telling me when the groups are releasing new music. The algorithm is finally figuring this out. Unfortunately, a lot of the "new songs" are AI and don't actually belong to the group. Ghost9, for instance, had 33 of them uploaded over a single weekend, and the weekend I started this review, I saw AI tracks that need to be reported for HotShot, LABOUM, BAE173, TIOT, and TFN. That just makes it harder for the legitimate songs and releases to get attention, especially with the older groups because if I was trying to get into K-Pop now, I'd be so confused and I might be a bit turned off from K-Pop as a whole. (Notice that I've also done a Gre...