Welcome to my K-Pop review blog! Kick up your feet! Relax a moment! Find a new favorite song or remember an old favorite. And remember, you can't spell NU'EST without LOVE.
Christmas Caroling: 2024 Edition
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This will be updated throughout the month as I'm going to include as many of the new holiday or winter songs as are released as I can find. If I missed any, which is likely, please yell at me. I'm also going to include ten "oldies" just for a little bit of variety in age in no particular order. Hope you find one you haven't heard before. (Also, the Country Kko Kko album that song comes from has Feliz Navidad in Korean on it and when I tell you that I giggled, my dog was worried because I haven't laughed that hard in a while. It's a glorious song and breaks my brain a little.)
JUST KIDDING! I'm actually including a bonus 11th because I've been very good about not blabbing about NU'EST constantly, and I'm going to reward myself with sharing the Christmas song they did with Orange Caramel. Babies. It was the year they debuted, and they were all seventeen except for the elderly Aron at the ripe age of nineteen. This will be a staple in all of the Christmas posts because I love it so much, and it's my Christmas gift to me and you.
Orange Caramel, NU'EST
Dashing through the snow in highheels
Now, that I've gotten that out of my system here are the Christmas/holiday/winter songs released in (mostly) December 2024. If I did a review of it, I'll also include it just for sake of ease and completion's sake.
Well, friends, as this is a new debut (or near enough), I need to take a look at the ages and verify that what I heard was correct. And it was! The maknae, Donghyeon, turns eighteen in a couple of months, so if I like the sound, I can like the group. Four of the seven were contestants on Loud , which also produced TNX (THE NEW SIX) back in 2021, including the maknae, so I'm honestly grateful that they took so long to debut because Donghyeon would have have been fourteen. Three more years of training? I have tentatively high hopes for the group, as well as the fact that a lot of other people (including my Stay friend whose judgement I trust) are talking about this song. She actually brought the song up just as I was sitting down to write this after I finished reading my book. They'll be officially debuting later this month on the 20th. So, let's see what the buzz is about. I'll add the info when the debut happens, and I link everything. The runtime. Why. Ooh, we've...
Release date: 2025 July 8 Album tracklist: Express Mode , Haircut, Air, Delight, I Know, Say Less, D.N.A, Finale, Stuck With You Album runtime: 28 minutes Average runtime of over three minutes, which is aided by the four minute song, but there are only two that are under three minutes. This is all good. Congrats on your almost 20th anniversary, SuJu! The fun thing about this group is that the group and me almost share a birthday. Just as a fun fact, The Incredibles movie is almost exactly one year older than the group. The introduction of this song is one of the funniest things I've heard in a while. Oh, my gosh. I thought I'd accidentally hit a radio somehow. Ah, we've got a skittering beat. Good stuff. I'm a little amused that for what I'm assuming is their 20th anniversary album, they went more hip-hop than they normally go, but you know what? The second gen groups adapting to the times is a good sign. They are keeping it in the family, though, because it...
Release date: 2025 February 04 Album tracklist: Smoke Point, Graffiti , GIMME GIMME , Kings & Queens, Freaky Fresh Album runtime: 12 minutes I am aware that this group exists. I know they're a fairly recent boy group, but have no idea their company, the number of members, or debut year, and I do have two of their songs in one of my playlists, but they're my Junk Drawer playlist and haven't gotten to them yet. Ah! Seven member group under Eden Entertainment (which is now sort of a subsidiary of JYPE, I think?) that just had their one year anniversary. And because they're a recent debut, I have to check the ages, but they pass! As of December, they're all eighteen or older. So, if I like the song, I can add it to the playlists! Nice! This song has a lot going on. I don't know why I'm getting strong tropical vibes with clanging metal, which sounds a little like an oxymoron as the associations with clanging metal are more industrial and the ones with jung...
Release date: 2025 October 27 Album tracklist: Legacy, Beat-Boxer , I'm Him , Co-Star, Next To Me Album runtime: 14 minutes There are a whole lot of pre-releases that have all dropped at the same time, belonging to albums that are not all dropping on the same day. Fascinating. Also, that means that you all have lots to look forward to. Happily, the maknae is eighteen as of a couple of weeks ago. Happy birthday, Yuki! Also, this album looks like it's going to be longer than the last one I covered, so I am very happy about that one. Title track is questionably short, but this one is within acceptable limits. My only question here is if that sound at the beginning of the music video is in the actual audio track or not. If it's not, I'm sad. The general thing the instrumental is doing is interesting, and I kinda vibe with it because there are textures to the song and I really like that. However, the opening sound? I was catapulted back to childhood with the similarity to ...
If you haven't heard the news, The Show is set to be canceled in the first half of November, which is infuriating. The Show , while probably the least frequently occurring of the music shows, was the one that the younger/less well-known groups had the best shot of getting wins on, especially that all important first win. And, related to that, it appears that After School Club may also have been canceled. It's listed as a previous show on the website, and I cannot begin to express my displeasure in this. Again, this was a good space for the rookies and the smaller groups to start. Some groups that got very big eventually started out as rookies or young, struggling groups on ASC (BTS, Seventeen, and Stray Kids, to name a few), and it filled a niche for those groups to have more much-needed exposure. Hopefully, we get something to replace the shows, especially since I think they were on the same broadcasting network. Okay. Bad news over. Good news. NMIXX. Almost a clean swe...
Release date: 2025 November 28 Album tracklist: SUGAR Album runtime: 3 minutes Another NCT member debuting as a soloist! How exciting! He's dropping this shortly before his military enlistment begins, where he'll be a part of the band, so at least he gets a little bit of time to enjoy being a soloist before that takes place. That will make all three members of DoJaeJung who will be in the military as fellow subunit member Doyoung will also be enlisting that day, and that will make two of the three in the band. That's pretty cool, you know? And the good news is that even though it's not at the desired three-minute mark, this is close enough. Most of the song is consistent with some cute little slides predominately in the second half of the song. The start of the past chorus, and some other little points of change provide a welcome shift There's a smooth lightness to it that reminds me a little bit of butterscotch. I've got kind of an idea about what the choreog...
Release date: 2024 December 13 Album tracklist: A New Chapter , A New Chapter (Inst.) Album runtime: 6 minutes Just the simple fact that Lucy released a new single is enough for me to take notice. The fact that they did an OST? This delights me to no end. I love this band. They're incredible and another of my healers that I've been collecting. The background vocals are actually included with the instrumentals, which means I don't have to feel guilty about including them in this section. You don't normally hear this much energy from an OST, even though there's still something ludicrously comforting about their sound. Apparently they've done quite a few OSTs over the last four years since they debuted, and I'm curious to know if they managed to bring this same energy each and every time. I don't understand how they do it. There's a long stretch where it's just the bass guitar and the drums, mostly just pulsing out the beat, but they don't go ...
Release date: 2024 August 31 Album tracklist: You're pitiful , You're pitiful - inst. Album runtime: 8 minutes Having never heard the original, I am interested to see what the difference is when I get around to listening to it. As for this one, it is a proper single according to my woefully uninformed standards. I've mentioned before. I'll likely mention it again. I really like Final Fantasy sounding background instrumentals. This one in particular reminds me generally of a water level, and specifically of the water level from Gagazet in FFX . So, am I happy that we have an instrumental version? Heck yes. I am absolutely adding the instrumental to a couple of my instrumental playlists. Might even use this when I DM. I like it that much. Because of the nature of the background instrumentals, the vocals sound super chill. It just occurred to me that the last time I heard Fiestar singing was from Weekly Idol back in 2014 when they were on it with NU'EST. Even thou...
Release date: 2024 October 16 Album tracklist: remembrance c andy , trampoline, Bluerose, BTTB (Back to the Basics), shame, dream diary ~ etching mémoires of midnight rêverie Album runtime: 20 minutes I'm aware of one of the members of the group by name and know she and one of the other members came off hiatus earlier in the year. I'm always relieved when a member on hiatus for whatever reason becomes active again, and I hope she is doing well. I also believe this is the first full group album in a while, so that's also an exciting moment. I'm also aware of the recent controversy of the use of AI in promotional/album artwork for this album, or this particular single. I'm not entirely sure. I also do not condone the use of generative AI in artwork. But that's something to be aware of. Audience participation snapping? Be still, my soul. There are a couple of sections where you could actually have audience participation clapping as well, which ...
Happy anniversary, BIGBANG!! I am so late with this, but I was not going to skip this because it's the big 2-0 and I would have to make an entire other post to talk about why BIGBANG requires acknowledgement as one of the biggest playmakers in shaping what K-Pop became. I find it amusingly fitting that their company was founded by a member of the boy group generally acknowledged to be the first K-Pop group: SeoTaiji and Boys. Also, fun fact, I went to a cupsleeve event yesterday (as of writing this paragraph) for their anniversary and I really liked that they included TOP in the design, even if he was on one side and the three current members were on the other. Some related bookkeeping first though. There is a prison-striped elephant in the room with this group. If you are OT5 for this group, you may want to skip this post. If I acknowledge him, it will be with begrudging frustration and a curled lip, and only if I have no choice. I'd be lying if I said his immoral choices and...
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