Just A Little Fangirl Love

As I can't tell that there's a discernable actual title track from this album beyond what I've already covered, I'm just going to pick my favorite track of the bunch to review. It's been bothering me that I haven't done one when I was so diligent with the tracks with the music videos. This album is a massive undertaking, and I genuinely don't know which ones are new songs and which are old. But I know at least this one is a b-side because there is absolutely no corresponding music video. Also, what a flex. Twentieth Japanese anniversary. King of Kings, indeed. Now, normally this would be the part where I go sniffing for them performing it, but it's literally such a new song, and I don't think they've had the opportunity to perform it. I thought that about Down too, from their last Korean album, and then I saw a clip a couple of days ago that about made me swallow my tongue. So you just get my thoughts on just the music, because I think that'

Release date: 2024 November 27 Album tracklist: Baby, if you, Make Me Right, Chosen, Take it easy, Crash , Preview, °C(Temperature), Right back, Inside, Cloud nine Album runtime: 34 minutes  Leader! Wasn't he part of the Don't Stop Me Now performance at the one Gayo Daejeon? That likely was the first time I heard his voice, and because he's the leader and I know how I am, if I ever spend much time getting to know the group, he'll end up my favorite. It's inevitable. There hasn't been a group that my instinct for leader selection has failed yet.  Well, okay, hello there, funky guitar. And audience participation snapping! But that guitar really takes the focus among the instrumentals, especially since it's varied between the low, bassy funk and the higher. The ebb and flow of the song is genuinely pleasant and utilizes rests incredibly well to highlight his voice in some places and to keep it well supported in others so that there isn't an energy drop dur

Release date: 2024 November 25 Album tracklist: IZNA , TIMEBOMB, IWALY - izna Version, DRIP, FAKE IT Album runtime: 13 minutes  The project group from I-Land 2 is finally debuting. I say finally. It's a little weird seeing names I actually recognize in the debut list. Unlike ZEROBASEONE and Kep1er, their survival show siblings under WAKEONE, izna has a standard contract so, assuming something weird doesn't happen, they should be around for more than a few years. And, because they're a newly debuted group, I get to take a look at their ages in slight trepidation because while I remember that there were some fairly young contestants, I don't remember them making it to the end. But I'm happy to report that they barely squeak by with the majority of age and the maknae turning seventeen pretty soon. Her birthday is in January. The runtime physically pains me though. The title track is barely over two and a half minutes, and only one of the songs is over three, and that&#

  Release date: 2024 March 11 Album tracklist: Wish You Hell , His Car Isn't Yours, Best Ever, Better Judgement, Queen Of The Party, Vermillion Album runtime: 9 minutes  Before I plunge into the laundry list of recent debuts because the amount panicked me for a moment, I'm going to do a March release to help fill that list out a little bit better and to ease me into the laundry list. Who better than Wendy to avoid doing the one that I'm most aware released last March? Plus, it's been eight-and-a-half months since this released. Also, the demon child (my cat named T'Challa who has intensely strong opinions about K-Pop and has both an ult group and a bias within that group, and yes, it's weird for me too) has settled into my lap because he's cold while I write this, so I'll have to let him take a listen. He's got surprisingly good taste. I don't know that I've ever had him listen to Red Velvet in either solo or group form, so I'm a little c

Wow, NCT DREAM has been sweeping the music shows this week. Congrats to them, and well done, fans. You worked hard successfully. Aespa caught another post-promotion win, which is good. There wasn't a showing of MCountdown this week, likely because of MAMA, which I just realized yesterday while I was looking at some BIGBANG stuff needs to be MAMA and not MAMA Awards because that's redundant and would be MNet Asian Music Awards Awards and all I can hear is that one guy from the Doctor Who episode being all weird about ATMOS System for the exact same reason. I really don't like the character, but he does have a point there. Everyday, there's something new to learn. On ASC, we had the project group The CrewOne from Ace of Ace , and they're still not fully cohesive, but the survival show helped as a trial by fire, I can guarantee it. It was nice seeing them and Cravity get to hang out sort of without it being a stressful situation like a survival show and without compet

Release date: 2024 November 25 Album tracklist: Be Alright Album runtime: 4 minutes  This is the second of BTOB's singles they're releasing at the end of the year. BTOB is just so cool. Like, I know I'm super biased about the whole thing, but it's been a whole year since they split from CUBE now, and they're doing ALL the things. You can't swing a dead catfish without hitting them doing something online, especially the four at BTOB company which are the ones who did this song, although I'd bet 100% that spots were written in for Changsub and Sungjae. That's what they do. They keep spots for their missing members (they did this on Kingdom with Show and Prove , with poor Changsub having to take the future low Hyunsik notes as well as the future high Sungjae notes. He complained. Endlessly. It's hilarious.) and then just give those parts to the members who can handle it.  Is it just me or does the song start almost the exact same way as Love, Money, Fam

Release date: 2024 November 1 Album tracklist: Hit The Floor Album runtime: 3 minutes  Considering Ace of Ace  has been over for weeks, I had no intention to do any reviews on the final tracks. But by the time this gets published, The CrewOne will have been on ASC, which means that I have to follow my rules. For the uninitiated, The CrewOne was a team put together for Ace of Ace  consisting of the fourth gen boy groups ATBO and JUST B. Apparently disbandment was in their future before the two groups got put together, which is completely ridiculous as JUST B debuted in 2021 and ATBO debuted in 2022. I'm sorry, there are a number of groups that went on to be very successful after three not-successful years and if their companies had disbanded them, the face of K-Pop would be radically different. And yes, one of those groups I'm talking about is in fact BTS, though I wouldn't be me if I didn't also mention NU'EST here. But, I digress. If The CrewOne are going to be an

  Release date: 2024 November 25 Album tracklist: Highlight, Last Festival , Comma, Album runtime: 9 minutes If you're new to this, I love NU'EST an exceeding amount, and that's why you're reading these words right now. If you aren't new, then you can likely guess what I'm about to say. I decided I was going to love this group as soon as it was announced that Pledis would be debuting a new boy group. Didn't hear a beat of music from them, knew nothing about them, and I decided I would love them for the sole and simple reason that they are NU'EST's grand-dongsaengs, and that they were introduced by Seventeen the same way that NU'EST introduced them. Though it took me until TWS's second mini album to get the music video-ed b-side that actually caught me as a fan outside of my simple loyalty to NU'EST, I'm very fond of them and continue to have tentatively high hopes for their music as the Powers That Be, be they Pledis or HYBE, give the

Release date: 2024 November 22 Album tracklist: Paper Cut, LaSalle Ave , Four Seasons, What You Need (feat. TAG) Album runtime: 13 minutes Ah, my boy, Jay. He's had a journey, hasn't he? And even though ONE PACT just had a comeback, he's with B.D.U, so he couldn't perform with his original group, and I'm a little curious about the fact that he is putting out a solo album while he's with B.D.U. Not that he couldn't, but with the short time frame of most project groups like this, I'm surprised he has the time. Unless the company isn't doing anything with them, in which case, shame on them. Who even has B.D.U? As is typical when I have questions like this, I went sniffing to find the answer is a company called Orca Music that I can find no information on. Is the company specifically for them? Does the company have another group? When was it founded? Inquiring minds want to know. This has a lovely jazzy vibe to it, but it's not 1940s jazz. It's a

Release date: 2024 November 22 Album tracklist: Intro, Official , Miami, Official (Instrumental Extended ver.)  Album runtime: 13 minutes I know next to nothing about the group so I'm just going to go stick my nose in places for a minute. Three-year-old group under KM Entertainment, they're the company's first group. There's a fan whose prediction for the group for this year included an Aron collaboration with one of the members, which makes me raise an eyebrow in surprise. I was not expecting to see that, and now I'm intrigued. But the group are all adults now, so if I like them, I can listen to them. And it's a three minute song, so I have to applaud that. There's a strong dance beat that took a second for me to adjust to the amount of sounds blasted right from the start. I deeply appreciate the commitment to the energy that drives the song forward the entire time. Even when the instrumentals drop the number of instruments happening at the same time at var

 Did I review two A.C.E songs in the same period? Yes. But this one was a request against some Savage  slander my Choice friend saw online, and there's absolutely no way I'm going to turn down a chance for an A.C.E song. Their voices are beyond incredible. I need them to come back here so I can go see them and get more time listening to those gorgeous, gorgeous voices. In the meantime, I've got their discography and the plethora of covers they've done over the last seven years. Group : A.C.E (Adventure Calling Emotions) Debut Date : 2017 May 23 Company : BEAT Interactive Status : Active Album : UNDER COVER : THE MAD SQUAD Song :  SAVAGE Release Date : 2019 October 29 This was one of the songs that made me fall in love with the group at KCON LA this year! The amount of energy and power that just radiates off of this group is alarmingly impressive. I just want you all to know this. I'll come back to this in a moment. The comments on that music video are absolutely hil

Release date: 2024 November 22 Album tracklist:  What Would You Do Album runtime: 3 minutes This is his first English single, right? Nice milestone for him to have, and other than an OST that he likely recorded pre-service, this is the thing he's done since being discharged, so congratulations to him for that! I'm glad he's still in the music business after all of that. Most of the instrumentals are dominated by science fiction warbling that is, for the most part, maintained at a single dynamic level, which creates a bit of a wall of sound. I genuinely don't know how much I like the instrumentals. There's a lot happening, and unfortunately the instrumentals hit my brain in just the wrong way. I tried listening to the song using a different output, different speakers, but it didn't change much to what was going on with my brain. It reminds me of when I have two different tabs playing music. I applaud the effort to go for interesting. I really do, but I personally

Release date: 2024 November 22 Album tracklist: number one girl , APT. Album runtime: 6 minutes  Hah! I figured out how to get the accent on the e. I'll retroactively go back and fix everything when I have a moment. I would have done what I did earlier, but I honestly didn't think it would work. More fool me. Also, I'll update this with the album's tracklist on release. Here comes the second of her singles leading up to her release in December. After the dominance of APT.  from last month, expecting the same explosive, worldwide obsession is unrealistic for this one as well (though lightning does sometimes strike twice), but I hope it does well at least. The solo piano throughout the first part of the song works well as a melancholy background, thematically appropriate given the topic of the lyrics. There are some very lovely, soft beats of rest. Sometimes rests in a song are pointed and aggressive, a continuous build of energy. For number one girl , they are actual of

Release date: 2024 November 21 Album tracklist: Ex Games , Ex Games - Chinese Version Album runtime: 6 minutes  As far as I can tell, he's still in the group, although I think he might only be part of their subunit Super Junior M, which is fine. SME seems to run on two models: all the subunits or absolutely no subunits. I genuinely don't know much about Zhoumi, and I'm not sure I've ever heard a Super Junior M song that I knew was a Super Junior M song, so I'm actually very curious about this. The tracks are just shy of 3 minutes. Why does this sound like a ballad the Backstreet Boys would have put out back in the 90s? If I didn't know this was Korean, I honestly would have thought from the sound that the song had been released about thirty years earlier. Wow, that just made me feel old. There are some delicious deep notes from the bass, grounding the higher skittering beat from the drums. Other sections of the instrumentals have a very underwater feel to them,

Release date: 2024 November 22 Album tracklist:  HOME SWEET HOME Album runtime: 3 minutes  So BIGBANG did in fact perform at the MAMAs. Sneaky, sneaky. I like that clever little loophole, and now I've got my finger on the kind of trickery I can expect from the group, should they continue to move back into the music industry as a group. I look forward to puzzling it out from them. It's still a little surreal writing that title, because I have mad respect for the older groups. They have gone through some insane things. I apologize for the slang. I don't know what happened there. So, welcome back, BIGBANG. Unofficially, of course. I look forward to your official comeback as a group. And the three-and-a-half minute runtime feels illegally extravagant in this day and age. The drums are so dramatic in this song. They're never on their own, but they do a good job at attempting to trick the listener into thinking there are sections where it's just the vocals and the drums

Release date: 2024 November 22 Album tracklist: FUNNY HONEY , FUNNY HONEY (inst.) Album runtime: 6 minutes  I'm doing the debut first because there are a number of other releases today that are significantly heavy hitters, and rather than prioritizing one over the others, I'll simply do this one today. Looks like the maknae might be eighteen already, which pleases me greatly, and there's a seven year gap between oldest and youngest. They're debuting under CMG Stars, which looks like it has been prioritizing duos over the last decade or so. Crush looks like he was a former artist of the company. There was a short-lived boy group that debuted in 2013 called M.Pire, and a slightly longer, short-lived girl-group that started out as a band called Kiwi Band, then BarbieD which debuted the end of 2014. The company currently has a duo called Minimani which debuted in 2021, and they apparently sing trot, among other things, which instantly piques my attention. You know I love so

Release date: 2024 November 11 Album tracklist: Achoo,  Stone,  You , Umm Umm Umm, Follow Me, Say My Name, Blue Album runtime: 20 minutes  So KAVE was a surprise I wasn't expecting to love, but I'm so into this album that I legitimately can't quite express it. This is unfortunate, because being able to articulate what is going on with a song is kind of the point of a music review blog. If you missed my review of You , the title track, the link is available above this paragraph, and I cannot recommend the song enough. It is so good. Anyway, if You  was sedate, Stone  is a chunk of castle wall being launched from a trebuchet into the besieging army, Lord of the Rings  style. I just realized the pun. It was likely subconsciously deliberate, but that's the kind of pun I like anyway, so I'm going to own it. But that does not change the fact that this song just goes so hard, I'm left a little stunned. The guitar and drums obviously lead the charge, and they're ama

Release date: 2024 November 21 Album tracklist: Let's get it Album runtime: 3 minutes  This is the only song on the single. Please let me really like this one. I'm just waiting for a title track to love. For those of you who don't know the group, they're CUBE's newest boy group, debuted at the beginning of the year, and they were all full adults at debut. They've covered a B2ST song, which I absolutely loved, but I have yet to fall in love with one of their own title tracks. I know it'll happen. I'm just waiting for that day. I'm also waiting for them to release a title track that would round up to three-and-a-half minutes, again other than the B2ST remake, but I feel like I'm just being picky at that point. Not going to lie, from the first little bit, I was expecting something more like APT.  to come out of them, which would have been fine, but instead it went the exact opposite direction into very traditional, and now I'm thinking of old gh

Release date: 2024 November 20 Album tracklist: Intro: Recuerda, Recuerda; PINATA ; PINATA - English version; PINATA (Inst.) Album runtime: 3 minutes  I have been waiting for this for a while. Will I ever shut up about their voices? No. And in fact I went down an A.C.E rabbit hole last night because my Choice friend sent me a reel of one of them doing a Beautiful Things  cover and didn't emerge for almost an hour even though I was supposed to be doing a review. Not that I was having a hard time with the review. I'm just always happy to listen to them and will easily get distracted by their. Also, the concept photos for this single? Wow. I'm not just saying that because that's one of their names. And I fully have to plug Intro  because, again, I'm not saying he specifically needs to be mentioned, but wow . Their dancing is incredible. Top tier.  My Choice friend also requested Savage  be covered as a GH post, so expect that by the end of the week. Piñata  goes so har

Release date: 2024 November 21 Album tracklist: Lullaby , Lullaby - Inst. Album runtime: 5 minutes  Before anyone gets grumpy, if I know a solo artist is or was in a group, I include it, even if they haven't been with the group in years and even if the group is disbanded, unless I know that it was a bad break-up (like the case with Stray Kids). I'll respect the group's feelings and follow their lead. But given that I know at least one of the members liked the announcement post on Instagram, that clearly isn't exactly the case. So, until one of the members tells me to change it, I'm going to follow my pattern.  Messy administrative details out of the way, ILHOON IS BACK, BABY! Five years. Most of those years were, to use his words, a time of healing for him. He seems happy. He seems smiley. He seems healthy. That's all I can ask for. And I think I was trying to stay up until the release, but I forced myself to go to sleep because I need it today specifically. And

Release date: 2024 November 19 Album tracklist: ZOOM Album runtime: 3 minutes  I didn't pay attention to the group when they debuted because I was busy with one of the groups I already listen to. I want to say it was ATEEZ, which makes it hilarious that once again, ATEEZ is dropping an album shortly before BADVILLAIN dropped a single. It's simply the timing. Doesn't make it any less funny. And, I was expecting the maknae to be younger (can't imagine why I'd think that), but she turned eighteen shortly after debut, which is a nice change of pace. The run time is rounded up. And this is a weird nitpick, but I really like the album artwork for the first two singles. This one feels less creative, and that little stomping heart with the horns and a devil tail is flipping adorable. I'm going to give myself a little bit of a pat on the back because I figured out which Stray Kids song those instrumentals remind me of on my own despite Stray Kids not being one of the gro

Release date: 2024 November 19 / November 25 Album tracklist: FREQUENCY - Korean Version, HIGH FIVE , TWIST, Filthy Rich, Call Me, Frequency Album runtime: 17 minutes  Because the city I live in doesn't have K-Pop come to it very often (read: almost never, I think we've had three total groups and that's only been in the last year or so), any time a concert is shown in theaters, I definitely go to it, even if the group isn't one I necessarily see. Did I see the NCT mega-concert in theaters? Yes. Could I name all the subunits? I think I could have at that point, but I always worry that I'm forgetting one, still. How many members did I know their names? I knew Mark, Johnny, Yuta, and Ten. That's it. That number has gone up some, but I'd describe myself as "vaguely familiar". Still, I have a member in WayV that I know and can identify on sight, and that's good enough for right now until I decide to start looking into them more. But WayV is also one

 My first BBS request! I just saw some of the memes being made about their performance and the amount of space between Wendy and Jin, and I just have to say that they're hilarious and the amount of trolling I'm seeing from the fans gives me life. The timing is actually really helpful for me to get into fan mindset. This request comes from a user on Reddit, who simply said there was too much, they were obsessed, and then linked me to an appreciation post they'd done. This is what I like to see, and it gave me a very good place to start: Jin and Wendy's voices. As a side note, Jin really does have the perfect trot voice. This isn't even in that genre or anywhere approaching it, but that honestly doesn't change this fact about him. If he's willing to give us more trot or trot-adjacent, I'd be a happy camper and eat it up. Heart on the Window comes from Jin's debut album and is the fifth track between a soft rock ballad and a full fat ballad. With the t

Release date: 2024 November 18 Album tracklist: HARD, NALLINA, Net Zeneration, Eye to Eye, Keep on Moving (Korean Ver.) Album runtime: 14 minutes  Hello, group that's supposed to be the next Stray Kids, which is a ridiculous moniker to slap a rookie group with before they'd even debuted, especially when they aren't even in the same division at JYPE. I'm still so annoyed that they were called that. When this post comes out, they'll have hit their six month mark, barely, so congrats to them for that!! Also, congrats to me for this being my 200th post!! 🎉 It's a serendipitous alignment of the stars, and I am pleased by this. I don't think I've heard any of their songs yet, either from their Korean debut or their Japanese debut a couple of months ago, so I'm interested and a little excited to be seeing what they're doing. Why are the songs so short on this album? That's, what, two and a half minutes on average? A little over that? I really want