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.
I love when I get suggestions for groups that I've heard of but haven't actively listened to. I know that f(x) has several songs that are on the list of K-Pop influential songs that pretty much everyone should be familiar with, if they don't know them. I don't think this is one of them, because this is a b-side, but I could also be wrong. Which is why I like being able to dig into the albums and the songs a little bit. So, this comes from their second studio album Pink Tape, released in 2013, which won a bonsaeng in 2014 at the GDAs, and hit number 1 on multiple music charts worldwide. One of the songs on the album was originally supposed to be Ariana Grande's song, and f(x) got it instead. So that's pretty cool. It's the second track on the album and is described as creepy pop, which I am down for entirely and that was one of the reasons why this song was suggested for me to do as the suggestion included the note that I seem to really like eerie or otherw...
Release date: 2025 November 25 Album tracklist: Heart Drop, Bloom , Love Echo, Hello XO, MVP Album runtime: 15 minutes I know, I know. The album has already come out and that's probably what you were expecting me to do, but I apparently didn't get to this one, but both songs are on Underage Protocol because the maknae is far too young. It's really unfortunate. I feel like we've moved from the light and milquetoast to roughly the same instrumental that would simply be the milquetoast of old if we removed the percussion from it. On the one hand, it's no longer a single note scent, which I deeply appreciate, but on the other, it still feels a little too safe. But it's nice. Even if it doesn't completely catch my attention, I'm not bored, which sounds like a backhanded compliment, but I promise that it's a good thing in my head. Instead, we've still got some layers to the song, which is good, and it sticks a little, which is also good. They have su...
Whichever LOVE sent this in and specifically requested I time this release to come out when Minhyun gets out, I love you. GUESS WHAT EVERYONE! MINHYUN HAS BEEN DISCHARGED. I try to avoid the caps lock, but I'm honestly so happy I could cry. Thank You (Evening by Evening) is the fourth track from their fifth mini album, Canvas, which sold a grand total of 10 first day units and was released in 2016. I'll let that sink in for a second. The things you learn, and honestly, I couldn't be prouder of their survival with that little factoid. Writing credits include Bumzu, who recently won Legendary Producer at the 2025 AAAs and is most well-known for being Seventeen's producer alongside Woozi but also has done songs for Jin (BTS), Block B, TWS, 2PM, fromis_9, NCT Dream, Pristin, EXO, and Rain among others. Also with the writing credits is Jo Jayoung, who along with Seventeen and NU'EST songs as well, also has songs for UP10TION. And then the most surprising credit and I...
I decided to have my first one of these for 2026 be something upbeat. Plus, considering they had their tenth anniversary last year and I didn’t do anything for them then (because that was during my lean months), I figure that this would be a good one to go with now. I’m pretty sure that this isn’t one of their softer songs, but I like the idea of starting off the year with a song called “Beautiful” anyway because it taps into the romantic and sentimental bit of my soul that attaches like a barnacle to some of these groups. So, this is the title track, and second track, for their first album, The Clan Pt. 2.5: The Final Chapter, which was released in 2017, and what do you mean it was produced by someone whose stage name is Star Wars? I’m completely delighted. Anyway, some other artists that Star Wars ( I can't stop smiling in delight over that name) has worked on songs with are Wanna One, WJSN, Cravity, Billlie, Rania, BAE173, ITZY, TWICE, Sistar, TOMORROW X TOGETHER, and ZER...
Release date: 2026 January 19 Album tracklist: Crown , Back It Up, Crazy, Suffocate, Moonlight Shadows, Back Pocket, Touch & Go, Flatline, I'm Home Album runtime: 28 minutes My first comeback with EXO coinciding with their first comeback is a delightful happenstance, and I'm excited to be here with the EXO-Ls for this. I'm so beyond frustrated with SM over this whole situation, but until SM decides to be completely nonsensical, I'm going to treat this as a simple hiatus for them from the group. They'll come back. And the average is over three minutes, so I am so, so happy. One of the more interesting things about the instrumental is that there are sirens going on through almost the entire thing, but they’re subtle enough that the song isn’t taken over by them and you’re unlikely to be jump-scared by them while you’re driving. But they’re there and they add a strong flavor to the song, which is otherwise majority a beat and rhythm, rather than having much of a m...
Before anyone comes at me with pitchforks and torches and chases me up a rickety windmill before setting fire to it for me to dramatically fall in a blaze of heartrending glory (I've been thinking a lot about the end of Frankenstein 1932 if you cannot tell), I'm labeling this as a b-side because it was a pre-release of an album, not the actual title track. You may also be wondering why, at this point in the year, I'm covering a NewJeans song when according to my own rules, I won't listen to groups if they had too many members debut underage or if they had members debut too young, both of which actually still apply to this group for a few more months but will soon be removed from the U.P list so that I can actually dig into their discography. To which I say, Underage Protocol does not apply to the Greatest Hits or the Battle of the B-Sides. If you're also curious about the timing, it has been almost two years, two very long, stressful years. No matter what I or any...
Release date: 2026 January 14 Album tracklist: Ferris wheel Album runtime: 7 minutes Well, well, everyone. Hello! The ever so lovely band ONEWE has dropped a new single! I've enjoyed what I've heard from them so far, though they're not one that I've actively sought out to listen bigger chunks of their discography yet. But I am glad that I went digging through upcoming releases, because I found out that this is actually a pre-release! I love that we get the instrumental for this. The use of the bells makes it sound almost a little Christmassy, but at the same time there's a very festival vibe to that opening. It actually reminds me of when I was little when we lived on the farm, and the neighborhood kids would get to go on sleigh rides because my neighbor two miles down the highway had a gorgeous sleigh his grandfather had made by hand that he'd have his (award-winning) Belgian draft horses pull. So there's a very nostalgic sense to the song for me, but at t...
So this was a request I got that made me smile and I'm doing this one here because I think it'll pair well with the last Greatest Hits post I did. The person who submitted it said they were at Taemin's concert in Vegas and saw this performed for the first time. They found my blog a few days ago and when they found out that I take submissions for this, they wanted to know if I'd do this one. The answer is, of course! I'll send you a message with it as soon as I've got this posted! Taemin, maknae of the second gen boy group SHINee, debuted under SM Entertainment in 2008 with his group and 2014 as a soloist. He's generally regarded as one of the best dancers in K-Pop and also has the nickname "Idol of Idols" because of the number of younger idols who cite him as their inspiration and the reason they decided to go into K-Pop. Advice (the song) is the title track for Taemin's third mini album, Advice (the album), which was released roughly two wee...
And that's it, folks! That's a full year of the music show wins! Which means it's now time for the recap and data analysis! Delicious, delicious data. Now this is on the assumption that I counted correctly. I did double check my numbers to make sure, but I could have had a mental blip somewhere at the exact same time or skipped something twice. It's possible. I am however about 97.35% positive that I have correct numbers in the raw data and that I did the math correctly before dumping it into the spreadsheet for chart creation. Because I like charts and numbers. Not enough to take any math classes in college, but enough that I've always done well in and enjoyed math. Also, because I do not want the thumbnail of this to be a graph, I'm going to share a stage I really liked. (There's also a reason for it, but you'll have to read on to find out what that is.) Enjoy some Seventeen. Now, just some interesting numbers and points of interest before I fully ge...
Release date: 2025 December 30 Album tracklist: Bad Idea, UFO (ATTENT!ION) , Delulu Solulu, Hard to Love, SAY MY NAME Album runtime: 14 minutes This set of song titles brings me so much joy. First of all, the title track? I think that's actually a password, and I love that. I also am wholly in love with the song title "Delulu Solulu". Plus, this feels like an important note, we've had a new member added to the group since the last time I wrote something for this group, and she is not a minor. I still can't listen to them because the maknae is fifteen, but, you know. One day she won't be and hopefully the company won't debut someone that young again. But in the meantime, their reviews are on Underage Review, and I have a playlist just for songs I can't listen to yet but that I like. That opening has no business going as hard as it does. They're ending the year with rock, and it's glorious. I'm actually kind of sad that I can't listen t...
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