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Battle of the B-Sides:: Candy Shop: Candy#

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 I decided to spend some time this month on artists I haven't covered yet, which includes some younger and some older artists, and also on b-sides, because I've given a lot of attention to the title tracks the last couple of months and realistically, there are a lot more b-sides than there are title tracks floating out in the big wide world of music. People pay more attention to the title tracks for understandable reasons, but I really like the b-sides and they're a different side of groups than you get from the title tracks, you know? So, Candy Shop is a five-member girl group that debuted in 2024 under Brave Entertainment. One of the members is currently on hiatus, and I did review the last song they released, which was March of 2025, right after the maknae turned seventeen. So, as of this year, with the maknae eighteen years old, they're no longer on Underage Protocol for debuting with most of the group underage at debut, which means I get to sniff my way through th...
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Song Review:: ATEEZ: GOLDEN HOUR Part.5- BAD

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Release date: 2026 June 26 Album tracklist: BAD,  MAMACITA, TOXIN, Fallin', Body Album runtime: 14  minutes  I'm really, really curious about the music video for this song because I have theories. Despite YouTube pushing this music video on me every time I open the app or go to the website, but I've successfully avoided it so far so that I could watch it for the first time for this review. Which is a little late, but it's fine because it could be like all the other reviews I haven't been doing. (If I skipped a song you'd like my thoughts on, leave a comment somewhere in the blog, or you can use  The Form  because I do have a section for you to select that option. It's also an option to ask for a review of a song I covered for the Expanded Offerings. If you want.) This is a surprisingly sparse instrumental, but there are some weird little additional sound effect. There's a high level of repetition going on here that isn't changed much in texture when ...
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Song Review:: PRIMROSE: Cosmic- Cosmic

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Release date: 2026 June 24 Album tracklist: Cosmic , Ring Album runtime: 6 minutes  This is their first release for the year, and ideally (because I know that this is a smaller group, which stresses me out on principle), I'd like to see at least a mini album from them by the end of the year. Preferably a full album, but that's less likely to happen, so I'd be content to have a mini album from them. If this doesn't have some solid choreography, this instrumental is wasted on the song. We've got some sleek R&B music here with a strong beat that's quite repetitious, which I'm not overly a fan of to begin with as we know, and there is a tiny bit of a melody working its way through the song that we can hear, although it's not strong enough for my taste. Still, this is a very strong beat that doesn't send my nervous system into a complete tizzy, because it's not a set of multiple aggressive beats stacked and layered over each other to produce the i...
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Greatest Hits:: Seventeen: Not Alone {Japanese}

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 I have changed which song I want to do for Jeonghan's discharge song three times now. I considered Pretty U, because I love the bit of the choreography where he does the cheek tapping move. And I would consider it for Joshua because of his iconic mistake, but since he's an LA native born and raised, he won't be getting discharged. And I have the cheek tapping move attached to Jeonghan. It's very cute. Then I thought about doing one of the Japanese releases because he learned Japanese to talk to the Japanese Carats because English and Chinese were already covered. My second favorite Seventeen song is a Japanese release, but I also feel like I want to hold onto Ima for a different occasion. So then I switched to Power of Love , because I liked the symbolism of that and up until a couple of days ago, I had Power of Love locked. Until I suddenly decided, literally the day I finished my post for Something for Ren's discharge, that Power of Love was in fact wrong, and ...
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Song Review:: AxMxP: 24 Hours

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Release date: 2026 June 24 Album tracklist: 24 Hours Album runtime: 2  minutes  The maknae is currently on a medical hiatus for an inner ear issue related to vertigo. I hope he recovers quickly, that therapy goes well, and that he can return fully without having it come back and without needing surgery. He also turns sixteen in a couple of days, so happy birthday in advance (along with the two oldest members)! And even though he's not active with the group right now, I'm leaving them on Underage Protocol.  This is a surprisingly soft instrumental with a touch of something sultry and a bit of what feels like it could be longing. It's almost an acoustic version of a song with soft, floaty bits and spots where it's about 3% more active than the baseline of the song.  We've got a little bit of rapping, and a little bit of singing, and, like with the instrumental, everything is just really soft. There's no bite here, but there is a good amount of variation to vocals,...
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Song Review:: Ryeowook (Super Junior): Runaway- Runaway

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Release date: 2026 June 23 Album tracklist: Runaway , Defined, Chamomile Album runtime: 9  minutes  It's a single, but he's got a stunning voice. And congrats on the wedding last year, my dude! Ah, that's a strong guitar. It's easily the strongest and most prominent of the instruments going on here, but it's comfortingly country in a way that I personally really enjoy. I mean this is very country, but not honky-tonk, which is what I think a lot of people think of when they think of country music (I love honky tonk music, for the record, and you can pry Watermelon Crawl out of my cold, dead hands), but this feels more like your classic country love song. I'm fascinated that we're getting so many songs that have country music elements that feel like country music in K-Pop right now, because there's a very big difference between country music from someone who understands country and someone who knows what pieces should be included. Like, I could write a ro...
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Song Review:: BOYNEXTDOOR: HOME- ADIOS!

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Release date: 2026 June 08 Album tracklist: 06070, VIRAL , ddok ddok ddok , ADIOS! , Upside Down, DIVE, Forever You, I Wonder Album runtime: 25 minutes  I'm super behind but I'll hit this b-side all the same. This sounds like a summer pop song from the mid-2000s. Remember when everything was just a little bit alt-rock? That's what this instrumental is doing. It feels a bit brighter than you'd typically expect from a rock song, but the guitars are doing their job and alternating between being supportive and then aggressively emotional. We've got some variation going on with the drums as well with changes in their rhythms, so that they're not just doing the beat. And I love how it ends with just the vocals and cuts the instrumental out. That actually does a really good job of ending the song on a sense of goodbye, having it be just the vocals. After the amount of sound that the rest of the song has vocally, especially leading up into the ending, having there be a ...
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