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Song Review:: Eric Nam: How the Fire Started

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Release date: 2026 March 03 Album track list: How the Fire Started Album runtime: 3 mi nutes  I swear, Eric has been everywhere the last little bit, and now he's dropping a single. Is it a pre-release single? I have no idea, but here we are.  This feels like country music, but it doesn't feel like agricultural country music, if that makes sense. Western, but not farmer. While the guitar functions almost like a percussion instrument providing the backbone of the instrumental, there are enough quiet little additions layered onto the guitar with subtle changes to the rhythm that keep the whole thing from being somewhat monotonous. One of the spots where that's most obvious is, interestingly, during the bridge, a section of section that typically gets a little bit more stripped down.  This is an all-English track, which did make me consider if I wanted to do this review or not, but this is Eric Nam. He gets a pass. He could drop a song in French and I'd be surprised, but I...
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Song Review:: TUNEXX: SET BY US ONLY- I'm Alive {Debut}

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Release date: 2026 March 03 Album track list: 100%, I'm Alive , Obsessed, Twenty Something Album runtime: 11 mi nutes  Well, well, well. This is the new boy group for IST Entertainment, former home of The Boyz. And because this is a debut group, I need to check the ages, which I did before I started writing this and I found something hilarious. So this is a seven member group, with like four of them from Boy's Planet 2. Which is fine. Use the trainees you have and since most of them made it close to the end, they're likely that special blend of well-trained and slightly skittish that you often see with trainees that go through survival shows like that. But the thing I noticed, which made me laugh is that their birthdays range from January to November. Now, you may be asking yourself, "Fangirl, why is that funny? That's how birthdays work." It is exactly how birthdays work, which is why this is so funny. All of them, except for the maknae, were born in 2005, wh...
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February 2026 Wrap-Up: Requiem

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 Two months down! My apricot tree has started to form the blossom buds which is concerning, but maybe I'll take a picture for the March wrap-up so you can see how pretty it is.  Okay, let's take a look at these debuts, shall we? The groups that I covered were NAVILLERA ,  Daily:Direction . I covered two subunit debuts for QQQ (OnlyOneOf) and NCT JNJM (NCT) . For soloists, I covered Jiwoo (KARD ,  Lee Daeyeol (Golden Child) and Lee Jiham (A.C.E) 's debuts. If I can find a better list of debuts, then I'll include the ones I missed. Songs I was looking forward to:  ATEEZ: I'm deeply curious about where the lore is going to go with this, and also the b-sides because they've got some b-sides that I want tattooed onto my brain Monsta X: I love that they're getting more active again, although I am a little sad that they now have to wait for their maknae to get discharged NOWZ: We've had a streak of songs that I've really liked. I'm okay now if they sw...
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Song Review:: EVERGLOW: CODE- CODE

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Release date: 2026 March 03 Album track list: BREAKOUT, FOCUS, CODE , Can't Be Broken Album runtime: 10 mi nutes  I'm glad to see that they're still mostly together and still releasing music after leaving their company last year. They had me worried because I kind of like them and I'm kind of a curse on girl groups, it feels like. Their new company has an amusing name because it looks very censored. I'm generally less pleased about the song lengths for the album, because there isn't a single one that's three minutes long and one that's exactly two minutes. Still, in their case, I won't be too picky this time because transitioning to a new company can be incredibly stressful and I understand if song length was the thing they decided to drop.  We've got a good beat with this song. It took me three listens to figure out what the instrumental reminds me of, at which point I promptly choked on my water because I inhaled in excitement at the wrong mome...
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The World of K-Pop in 2025

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 Come one, come all to the 2025 recap from your 15th favorite Fangirl! We had a lot of very fun and special moments throughout the year and some absolutely killer albums dropped. This is going to be a beast of a post, so please buckle up. I will attempt to be entertaining, but that means there may be puns and quips involved. I'm also going to scatter random stages from this year throughout the post, just to break things up, and so you can have some music, although I did include that big playlist that I was forming throughout the year. I also included the pet tax, because I talk about them often across all sorts of posts, so you can look forward to that.  Here's your first brain break! Make sure that you've got something to drink! Reading is thirsty work! I'm going to break this up into sections so you can Ctrl+F your way through to each section depending on your interests and how much time you have. And I'll give you a table of contents, because I love table of cont...
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