Just A Little Fangirl Love

Release date: 2025 March 05 Album track list: Alice, The Starry Night , EVILDOER, Traffic Love, Coincidence, Endless, Rise Again, Dreamcatcher, All the things I love, Indelible, Sole Star Album runtime: 38 mi nutes So I'm excited for this. ONEWE has been added to my list of "artists whose songs I enjoy when I've run into them in the wild, even if I haven't actively looked up their discography". As I've said before with them, rock bands are my jam. So here we are with them dropping more music for me, and many others, to enjoy. And I was quite surprised to see this was a full album with an average run time of three and a half minutes, give or take. I'm eyeballing it. I'm getting a little bit of an anime-esque intro theme to this. This is a big explosion of energy that, delightfully, starts off softly, gently, and then booms before settling a little only for a gorgeous, shredded guitar solo to absolute make its way, screaming, through the song. That guita...

Release date: 2025 March 17 Album track list:  High Horse , KNOW ABOUT ME, Slingshot (<★), Golden Recipe, Papillon, Ocean Album runtime:  mi nutes   Okay, pre-release. Album comes out on March 17th. I'm not going to be a mess that day at all given what comes two and three days earlier, but it's fine. I'll have this blog to distract me this year and I don't have Minhyun doing his whole thing this year. So! Thank you, NMIXX. I appreciate the timing if nothing else. Also, and this might just be me being weird, but the word papillon doesn't look like it's spelled right. I know it is. But it doesn't look like it. If you didn't know, a papillon is a butterfly in French. Also a type of dog.  I thought this was going to be in the ballad sphere, but this is moody and surprisingly gothic, swinging between the more layered instrumentals and a quiet solo piano. It's almost like gothic dubstep. I don't even know if that's a thing or if I'm just com...

Release date: 2025 March 05 Album track list:  Please Stay , LOVE TODAY , Starry Night, Say Yes, Be Alright , Hi Beautiful Album runtime: 19 mi nutes  I'm going to go out of order because I need a dopamine hit desperately, and I am, generally speaking, guaranteed that with BTOB. So, BTOB. This is their first mini album released under their own company. It does lack Changsub and Sungjae currently, but as with the songs they've already released from it, I'm anticipating sections built in for them for when they can perform together as a full group again. That time should be coming up soon if the New Year's message is any indication. Changsub and Sungjae seemed a little displeased. But that's good news for the fans because there were profuse apologies, and I trust that they'll do better. Just for the record, and I don't know how much of it is because of the emotional news of the last couple of days regarding Wonwoo and Baekho on top of the thing that I really di...

Release date: 2025 February 28 Album track list: Carnival Album runtime: 4 mi nutes  Well, I'm pretty excited about the fact that they dropped another single. I'm tentatively hopeful by the title that this is going to be a fun song. For those of you who didn't catch my previous Nomad review, Nomad is pretty close to being an indie K-Pop group. The leader and the CEO were the ones to pick up the other four members. They were all adults at debut (thankfully because the photoshoot for their debut album was...a thing), but several of them trained at other companies, one of which was SM. Two of them were on different survival shows. And I deeply admire them for filming their struggles at debut because it was a lot harder than they expected it to be. The leader is also their producer and he is very exacting and deliberate, but he's got a great ear and the members seem to trust him. Okay. I was expecting something a bit more energetic and instead we've got a ballad. I will...

 The Korean spelling of their name (뉴비트) is kind of like a mix of NU'EST's (뉴이스트) and BTOB's (비투비). So big plus from me. At least four points on principle. They're going to be a March debut, which is when most of my favorite groups debuted (I don't know how I can pick out March debuts like that, but it's a thing). And, AND best of all, Beat Interactive is debuting this group with a full album. We're getting a substantial sample of them and I literally couldn't be more excited for this. I've been waiting for this for months for them to debut. Eldest turns twenty-three this year. Maknae is currently sixteen, turning seventeen in a few months. You may already know of my deep love and admiration for A.C.E, and these are their younger brothers, several of whom were their backup dancers for earlier songs, so they do already have idol stage performance, and they've been doing so much busking for months that I'm cautiously optimistic that these guys ...

 This month has been me scrambling to catch up after my bout of flu at the very start of the month, which set me back about a week. Which is why I'm so late in posting this one. Hello, friends! I'm still not fully caught up, but I'm counting myself as close enough that I can get this done. Also, why were so many releases on February 24th?  So. Debuts. Didn't cover a lot of them. I did cover NouerA and Hearts2Hearts . The other debuts that I didn't cover but I'm still going to mention are BLINGONE China , NEEZ , AWIN , DearALICE , and 3WAY . Moonbyul had her Japanese debut. As did ILLIT , DAYCHILD , WE;NA , and BXB .  Releases that I was looking forward to are as follows: ALL(H)OURS- I surprisingly really liked Graffiti  a lot. I don't know why I was so surprised by how much I liked it. but the vibes reminded me of 2PM which is something that I can fully get behind ONF- I just really like these guys.  Changsub (BTOB)- He's my cat's bias. We both lov...

  Is anyone else as excited for ONF as I am? Because I'm really, really  excited for ONF. These are wins three and four for their entire career. Also excitingly, The Show  has resumed! First show of the year was this week! Whoo! This week actually had three first wins for songs, which is super cool. And curiously, though understandably considering their upcoming tour, 8TURN was on ASC before their song actually came out, so they couldn't perform it. They also revealed that they've been scolded quite a bit by the company for spoiling too much, but it kind of seemed like they didn't particularly care. There were some audio issues that caused some timing issues, but they were figured out fairly quickly. Or at least a workaround was figured out quickly. I'm very excited to see them on tour.  As always, links in the chart go to my reviews if you missed them. And the links for After School club go to the episode. Good times, friends. Show Champion: ONF "The Stranger...

Release date: 2025 March 04 Album track list: LEGGO Album runtime: 6 mi nutes  I have to have this one set up so that I can just do the review Tuesday morning so it can be added to the graph in a timely manner. By the time this comes out, they'll have been on ASC, so look for the Weekly Music Reviews post later today for that link. I didn't even realize they were dropping a new something. I suppose I should have anticipated it given that they're going on tour soon, but I just spaced it. Also, I'm incredibly excited to see them because they're actually coming to my city. Third K-Pop group to come here and second to come here on tour. I'm very excited to see them, and not just because I want to support the K-Pop coming here when we have decent sized venues. I really don't like that their maknae was fifteen at debut and doesn't turn eighteen until shortly after the concert, but he was also only one of two that were underage at debut.  They weren't lying...

Release date: 2025 February 24 Album track list: The Chase , Butterflies Album runtime: 6 mi nutes  I still think it was a wasted opportunity not to have them debut on Valentine's Day with a group name like that, but what do I know? I have no control over marketing of any kind. I also have no control over when the idols debut, because this one has their maknae at the ripe age of fourteen. She's practically an nonagenarian. But, with some less opinionated facts, Hearts2Hearts is an eight member girl group that has debuted under SM entertainment, which is the second largest girl group they've debuted after Girls' Generation. What has become the group called Hearts2Hearts was originally slated to debut in August 2023 (checks maknae's age again, hopefully she's a new addition), but had several debut delays resulting in the debut date they now enjoy. One benefit of doing a debut review so late is that I can add that they've had an apparently successful debut, so ...

Release date: 2025 February 14 Album track list:  earthquake , Your Love, TEARS, Hugs & Kisses Album runtime: 12 mi nutes  There's a bit of a ramble that I  think is interesting, but you fully have my permission to stop reading this next paragraph at any point and just get down to the reviewing part. Not that you needed my permission. I can't control how much you read or don't read. I can just try to make things interesting foe me and hopefully someone else finds them interesting as well. I was hoping to be able to push this one off for a little bit longer, but Earthquake  has gotten wins, so here we are. It's literally nothing against Jisoo, but with my backlog, in an effort to catch up, I'm dumping songs into my drafts so that I remember to review them when I'm less slammed, but trying to focus on groups, with bigger profile releases getting the front of the line. As of this post and not  including it, I have 23 songs sitting in my drafts waiting to be rev...

Release date: 2025 February 24 Album track list: BLUE , Devil Game, Doctor! Doctor! , Out of Love, Step Back, Cruel Album runtime: 17 mi nutes  Okay, I think I'm getting closer to being caught up, so this is good. However, I think I may also be developing a little bit of a migraine, which isn't ideal for anyone. But, I've been looking forward to this album since Doctor! Doctor ! came out, even if I couldn't remember precisely when. And also, I believe one of the members just had a birthday. Or the maknae graduated. Or both things happened. The album runtime is a little bit uncomfy for me, though. There's another song that I'm reminded of. It's from a girl group. It's a little bit older, but still recent. Probably last five years or so. Ah, well. It'll come to me eventually.  I'm a little fascinated by the difference between the instrumentals and vocals. I don't know why, but it sounds like a mashup with two songs playing at the same time. And...

Release date: 2025 February 23 Album track list:  Twilight Album runtime: 3 mi nutes  I'm fine with them being on hiatus. They have enlistments coming up as well as continuing to heal emotionally, but I'm taking it as a good sign that they are still releasing anniversary songs. As a side note, I was looking through the March birthdays for my birthday wall of photocards and learned that Fantagio formed this group of members whose birthdays are all in the first three months and debuted the group in the middle of those months. So by the time April hits, unless the Aroha have a birthday as well, Astro is done with the birthdays for the year. That's insane.  Starting the song out the way it does, with the sound of a cassette tape and the ticking clock, it masterfully pulls this sense of nostalgia and the past, which is fitting for an anniversary song. The instrumentals to this song are in that nebulous area where if it never has choreography, that would be fitting, but if it d...

Release date: 2025 February 19 Album track list: Butterfly Album runtime: 3 mi nutes  I have a random photocard from this group that I don't know where I picked it up from. It's a single photcard of a random member. But I'm pretty sure this is a younger group, which means I need to go take a quick look-see. And we are good on that end. Both the former maknae and the current maknae are adults. Eunseop, I hope your future endeavors go as well as you hope. Welcome to the group, Yuma! This is the kind of song that you'd do a modern dance showcase with. There's a fluidity to the instrumentals (and a violin which helps) that, while you could do something with sharp angles, it's much more fitting for grace and bonelessness and flowing like water. The only part that would be more appropriate to have be sharper would be during the chorus when the baseline is more active. Also, you'll notice one of my other favorite things in songs. So we have a violin, which is what ...

 Summoned for you directly from The Form, it's ironically a song from the same album that I've already done a BBS post from. I chose to do Darling  because of the roulette wheel and shuffle, so that one's on me. But apparently someone out there in the world really likes this album to slide the title track my way as well.  So, I was technically focusing on the repackage album of this for Darling , so you get sort of new information. Released in 2011, this was their first full album. Containing a grand total of thirteen tracks and a runtime of 43 minutes, which averages out to a little more than three minutes a song, it's at a good length, even with the first track dropping the average. It did pretty well on the charts, peaking at second on the Gaon weekly chart and third on the Gaon monthly chart. No music show wins with it, but that doesn't matter because music show wins are not the final dictator of love for a song.  Flashing Lights warning for the music video. Gro...

Release date: 2025 February 26 Album track list: Sparkle, N.I.N (New is Now) , Bring the Crunk, MU, Jet Stream, Pairing Album runtime: 3 mi nutes  Okay. Technically I'm pulling this out of the draft line, but this is a debut and I'd like to make sure I get this one done before too much time has passed on it. Oh! I was watching this survival show! And then I got distracted! This is the debut group from MakeMate1! And everyone in the group is seventeen or older! I remember a couple of the members as the trainees, which is impressive because I only watched a couple of episodes before getting distracted. This should be interesting.  Five seconds in and I am in love. These instrumentals at the beginning feel exactly like an old theme song from the 60s, specifically for Batman or Scooby-Doo. Or Scooby-Doo and Batman, but that didn't happen until 1972. It's a little jazzy, a little disco, and all drama. Also. Hold on. Do my ears deceive me or is that an EDM dance break? In th...

Release date: 2023 April 17 Album track list: Perfume , Kiss, Dive, Strawberry Sunday, Can We Go Back, Ordinary Album runtime: 19 mi nutes  The Form Submission! This came from The Form! As you can see, this song has not quite turned two, it needs a couple more months, so it was correctly submitted for a regular review. Well done. Or I could have held onto it for a few more months if the submitter wanted a GH post. That was an option (if the submitter would like that as well, just let me know somehow, I'd be happy to do it). This was also next in my draft list, so I will get this written for the lovely submitter and then resume the new releases. Thank you very much, you lovely (I'm assuming) human. NCT DoJaeJung debuted as a subunit (surprisingly without Mark, who is in all the NCT subunits as we all know) with this mini album and it is to date their only one, and will likely be their only one for a while as, unfortunately, Doyoung is going to be enlisting this year. Soon, actua...