Just A Little Fangirl Love

Release date: 2026 April 20 Album tracklist: 2.0 (TWO POINT O), Ode to Love , Sticky, Feel The Beat, Crush, Street (2AM), Glow Up, Everglow, Don't Say You Love Me, Voyage Album runtime: 30 minutes  Congrats on the first full album! Title track over three minutes? Check! Average runtime over three minutes? Check! Maknae who is eighteen? Check! I am a happy fangirl for this moment.  This is a pretty mild instrumental, more so than I was expecting. We've got the skittering beat that usually promises high danceability, but combined with the relatively low BPM (I've only just now realized that what I consider a low BPM is actually pretty fast because this feels like it's in the low 130s, so ignore me on that point), it allows the song to to translate its softness to lightness. We don't have any big bursts of drama with the instrumental, though we do have a softening dip that allows there to be a good contrast of energy with the song at equilibrium. It's nice. This wi...

Release date: 2026 April 21 Album tracklist:  UNCHILD , ENERGY Album runtime: 4 minutes  Well, everyone, we've come to the age of two-minute tracks. Literally. And the title track is better, but still under two-and-a-half minutes. I will say that the group has a pretty cool logo. I'll give them that. But with a freshly debuted group, I have to check. I'm holding out no hope. I have been pleasantly surprised. There are three members (including the maknae) who are seventeen and of those, two are turning eighteen in a few months. Because of that and because the maknae will turn eighteen before their first year is up, I'm not going to put them on Underage Protocol, tentatively. I reserve the right to put them back on if I find out the company is abusive and garbage in the next year. So despite the runtime that makes me frustrated, I hope I like them. Two things are going to be simultaneously true about this song. I really like the instrumental. The song makes the most for t...

Release date: 2026 April 20 Album tracklist: Backtalk , STAY Album runtime: 6 minutes  I have no quips or comments or stories for this one, other than I really liked Keita when he was on Boys Planet . That is an interesting instrumental. It's very 80s techno for quite a bit of it, and while it doesn't have the science fiction warbling, it does have the science fiction sparkling. We've also got some distortion and crackling fuzz to the instrumental that gives the song an aesthetic age that you don't hear in music very often anymore. I'm listening to the aural equivalent of something filmed on Super8 film to give it that very distinct home movie feel. I'm not overly fond, just because the pitch of the sustained notes is bothering me a little, but as a choice, it's kind of a bold one, and I love that for the song. It knows what it is trying to do, and I think it's doing it successfully. There's a lot of variation going on in the vocals, and they all fee...

  I had wondered a little what would happen with Inkigayo as that is the wildcard of the music shows. You can get some very interesting wins from there. Congrats on the triple crown! Congrats to the groups that got first wins for the songs! For the After School Club episode, I decided to not just go really far back in the history of the show (Ep. 15), but also with a gentleman who debuted before nearly every idol was born. Pretty much only the first gen groups had members who were alive when Lee Seungchul debuted as a singer. This man is old school and a legend. The amount of fanboying that Hanbyul (LEDApple) does the entire time is adorable, but his vocals are completely insane. (I'm definitely not thinking about doing one of his songs for my GH and BBS posts... Nope...) For The Show, I went with a performance from 2023 and the magnificent Kwon Eunbi. And then for the extra stage, as promised, I went with ALL'N, a new soloist who has a song that uses a violin. I'd be fully...

Release date: 2026 April 20 Album tracklist: ALIVE (SKIT), EAST COAST, Good Day (feat. Jay Park & 1iL) , HAErise , RACE, HELP, ROCKET, Goodbye (feat. Tablo), TOO LATE, FLOWER, TO YOU (SKIT), HBD, BEAUTIFUL Album runtime: 36 minutes  I'm going to stick with the second gen for a minute because I just want to settle before I get back to the younger groups who will have so many struggles and so many successes ahead of them. Congrats on the first album, Donghae! There's an interestingly modern version of traditional music at the beginning there. Actually, you want to know what this instrumental kind of reminds me a little bit of in some very specific spots? PTT by LOONA, though it doesn't get nearly as dramatic as that. It's a pretty steady instrumental with a few soft spots to add a bit of a different texture, but I'm not really feeling a strong climactic moment, which is a shame. The vibes are there, though.  We get a little bit of everything from here, which I lo...

Release date: 2026 April 19 Album tracklist:  15th Season Album runtime: 4 minutes  Happy anniversary, Apink! I'm glad you've made it this long and that you're still doing what you're doing! I like how playful the piano is during this instrumental. I mean, the instrumental in general is just really pretty, but we've got a melody going on with both the guitar and the piano to reinforce and support the melody that the vocals have got going on, rather than simply providing something for the vocals to push off against. This is so pretty, but there's substance and weight to it instead of just being a gossamer fluff piece of a song, which is as expected of a second gen group. Their vocals are gorgeous. Oh, I love how you can hear the maturity there, even when they're hitting the higher notes because it just gives the vocals a richness that you don't get from teenagers or even the recently adult aged singers. We've got vibrato aplenty, and I'm basking i...