Just A Little Fangirl Love

Release date: 2025 October 31 Album tracklist: ICONIC, See You Play (S'il vous plaît), SUPERPOWER (peak), blurry, Right In Album runtime: 15 minutes  It never stops entertaining me how they have no capitals in their name and all the capitals in the album titles. And often in the songs as well. So. Let's see if I like the title track as well as I love Witch . There is something amusing about this album though. I like an average of at least three minutes per song. Which, technically the album reaches. However, if not all the songs hit that, then I want at least the title track to be there. ICONIC , which came out earlier as their first full English track, is at almost three-and-a-half. Which made me very happy, and now that the whole album is out? The two singles we've got so far ( ICONIC and the title track) are both about there. Everything else is under three minutes. So, the album is satisfying by using technicalities and if I've learned nothing from watching their co...

Release date: 2025 October 21 Album tracklist: The Call of the Wild, Close To You , Champagne Poppin' , Body Talk, Best For Me Album runtime: 13 minutes  I still need to do Champagne Poppin' because it's both his debut song and on this album. That's right, he debuted as a soloist back in July and I never covered it. Still, despite how infuriatingly short the songs on this mini album are, I'm happy to see him and to cover this. And I also see that another of the songs got a music video, so I'll add that to the extensive list. I'm deeply annoyed by the album runtime though.  Close To You has a lot of potential for an acoustic version, which is delightful. Some of the synthy bits remind me a little bit of Stranger Things, the instrumental soundtrack music not the pop soundtrack music. It's not a very strong reminder, but some of the flavor notes are the same, even if the dishes are completely different. We've got a bit of a skittering beat, which is ni...

Release date: 2025 October 27 Album tracklist: In The Dark , nocturnal, CHILL, Silly Kid, How deep is your love? Album runtime: 16 minutes  Yes, TEMPEST. Y'all, I really kind of like this group, and I know I haven't had a ton of comebacks with them yet, but I still look forward to their releases when I get one. Lighthouse is still one of my favorites that they've done and I was so excited that they performed it on Road to Kingdom: Ace of Ace . That beginning bit of the song before the vocals step in remind me a little bit of FML by Seventeen, which did initially have me expecting something a lot heavier, but the song splits its time between a grounded but not weighted sound and something a lot airier. The verses get the grounding bass and the chorus gets the lightness, which I thought was an interesting choice. I also like the way that the synth is very distinct in places, even though it isn't necessarily the main star. In other places, the synth sounds a little bit li...

 Well, well. Considering what time of year this is (less than a week before Halloween), I was looking through my To Do playlist, looking for something a little spooky, and while this isn't my favorite song from the album, I did recognize the album artwork and took a listen out of curiosity. It was not a suggestion on The Form , which is fine, but it was a message on Tumblr. So, as soon as this is finished, I'll be forwarding that to you. I hope you enjoy it! Impurities  is the third track on their second mini album, released in October of 2022. So, hilariously, that's actually suitable for this as well. It's a really long list of people given writing credit, so I'll worry about them in a moment, but who is recognized as the producer is really interesting: 13. 13 is a producer team comprised of Score (who spent a lot of time at SM for Taemin and Jonghyun, but also for LE SSERAFIM in general), Megatone (also quite a bit of time with Score for SM, Block B, and also LE ...

Release date: 2025 October 27 Album tracklist: Legacy, Beat-Boxer , I'm Him , Co-Star, Next To Me Album runtime: 14 minutes  Okay, time for the title track. I'm looking at the title runtime and just being a little disappointed in it, although there is a song that's over three minutes so after I write this, I'm going to be taking a look at that one in hope that one specifically is really good. Not that I'm not also hoping to really like Beat-Boxer, but it's the length, you know? This is a surprisingly sparce instrumental for a lot of the song. It's got moments where it gets a bit more energetic and full, but for the most part, it's at most a quiet beat behind the vocals, which is a lot of rapping. There are also some interesting science fiction warbles and what sounds faintly like alarm sirens. It's an interesting combination, I'm not going to lie, but at the same time, as much as this would probably make a great workout song (ignoring the title f...

Release date: 2025 October 26 Album tracklist: Rise & Shine , Still thinking about you Album runtime: 13 minutes  In my quest for Halloween songs, I came across the group's music video for Burn It . No spoilers, but that's a full movie, and y'all need to see it. Anyway. Joochan is a busy beaver. Multiple musicals, several OSTs, radio DJ. He is very active, and it's really rather impressive. This isn't his debut (he's actually on year 7 of being a soloist), but I do really like Golden Child and want to make sure to highlight them. I may not know any of their names (except for Joochan now), but when I run across their music, I expect to like it. And I usually do. So, the run time looks good, but the title track is under three minutes. It's a hilarious contrast to the other two songs on the single, which are both nearly four minutes long.  This instrumental had me physically bopping and bobbing to it almost immediately. That guitar is doing good work with t...

  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 October 16 Album tracklist:  TIME CAPSULE Album runtime: 4 minutes  Davichi are practically at legendary status at this point. Second gen icons the same age as SHINee and 2PM. Seventeen full years together with no significant breaks and three companies. That's really impressive. There aren't that many groups that can say the same. And a four minute song to boot. That's nice. That's really nice. TIME CAPSULE has a lot of fun guitar to it, and its playfulness is one of the first things that you hear in the song. I don't think there's a point where the song doesn't have the guitar, even if it's only being strummed on the stressed beat, but there are little spikes of cheer to it. I'm pretty sure that this is going to end up being one of those songs where it's deceptively cheerful until you look at the lyrics (or have them translated in this case since I think they're entirely in Korean, which is nice), and then it becomes a bit...

 Hello, everyone! At some point, I'm going to feel confident enough in my Korean skills to have part of this in Korean, but today and this month is not that point.  So the fabulous, amazing debuts for the month. The ones I covered were AxMxP and IDID for the groups, CxM for the Seventeen subunit, and soloists Haechan of NCT , Jinny of Secret Number , Junhee of A.C.E , and Nana of After School . The only group I didn't cover was DNA , which is a co-ed group. Songs I was looking forward to: CxM- You mean my Seventeen bias is debuting in an official subunit? You're expecting me not to be excited about this? Junhee- I've been looking forward to his solo debut since he dropped the Your Idol cover.  Woodz- First release post-military service I've covered because I was very lazy over the summer? Yes, please. izna- These are my girls, y'all. Strong rappers. Vocals that are consistently supported. Exactly what I'm always looking for. Catch the Young- Y'all, I ...

Release date: 2025 September 17 Album tracklist: Love Your Flower Album runtime: 3 minutes  Girl group time! Because I'm late on doing this, but it seems that I don't want to finish the September review without having done this one first. I think I could probably really like this group if I spent more time with them, but then we run the risk of what happens to girl groups when I really like them. I seriously have the worst luck, but unfortunately, I adored Steal Heart .  Ooh, that guitar is fun. The energy is good to keep the song going without it straying too close to being active. What I will say is that sudden energy drop was highly unexpected, especially because the song felt like it was going the route of consistency. Steady beat, a little bit of the grungy guitar, largely non-distracting to support the vocals. The chorus got the predictable uptick in energy, but then the way the instrumental just kind of gets cut out from underneath the song at the start of the second ve...

Release date: 2025 October 22 Album tracklist: Like the First time, In Between Love and Farewell (With Lyn), Trickle Down , ENDAND Spotlight Album runtime: 20 minutes  So this was a surprise. I love his habit of just throwing songs at us with little to no warning, as stressful as it also is, because those surprises mean we're getting a gift of great vocals, strong storytelling, and clear emotions. Though, to be honest, that's a strength of the entire group, even when it's only one or part of them releasing the music. And bless Changsub for giving us an album where the average runtime is just  under four minutes. That feels extravagant in this day and age. The song starts off so gently. The entire thing is gentle, but the beginning folds you into the song like a warm hug. We've got strings to lend a certain epicness, but at the same time, they're never so overpowering that you want to go marching off to war. Instead, it's the sweeping landscapes, the warmth of fr...

Release date: 2025 October 20 Album tracklist: Overdrop , Fireflies Album runtime: 6 minutes  We likely won't have too many solo works more until we get the full group comeback (hopefully). I'm so looking forward to that. In the meantime, we have subunits and soloists, which is another benefit of having a fairly large group, including Xiumin here! Although, a single is less time consuming than even a minu album, so he should be able to still have time for group prep. I'm talking a lot about the group, but in the unlikely event that anyone at SME sees this, it's a teeny, tiny reminder that he and the other members of CBX are still part of EXO. The title track is less than three minutes long, which is a bit irksome, if you can imagine. If you're new here, welcome! I like songs that are at least three minutes long, or at least within a few seconds of that mark. One of the interesting parts of this instrumental is that there are a couple of points where the song is majo...

 Am I slightly delaying doing the reviews for today? Yes. But you know what else? I'm genuinely looking forward to doing this one. They were technically one of the first groups I listened to (their song, Hello Hello  is the sixteenth song added to my workout playlist out of one hundred eighteen and most of the first twenty are NU'EST and BTOB), and I didn't even realize they were actually a band for months. I just really like that song. So, why am I doing this? Because some lovely, lovely soul left this for me in The Form, which means it needs some celebration due to it. First band to go into this list that I've done as well, so that's fun and exciting. Wind is the title track of their tenth anniversary album, which is a special album and could be considered their seventh Korean album. It was written and composed by Lee Honggi, and composed by Illusion, otherwise known as Ki Hyun Il, or Ray if we're talking about his C-Clown days. Lee Honggi is the lead singer ...

Release date: 2025 October 20 Album tracklist: FOCUS , Apple Pie, Pretty Please , Flutter, Blue Moon Album runtime: 15 minutes  Up front, we're on Underage Protocol. Great. Now that that's out of the way, this is their first mini album released. Everything else has been singles since they debuted back in February (still disappointed in the date because that was an ignored opportunity; although fun fact, everyone, that was the day back in 1848 that King Louis-Phillipe abdicated the throne.) There is one review that I'm missing for them, but the time is coming when I'll have few releases so I can do some of the backlog. I really liked Pretty Please , so I'm tentatively crossing my fingers that I'll like FOCUS . I'm also really curious about Apple Pie , because that's an interesting title, but unless we get a music video for it, I can't listen to it until 2028. If you were already planning on listening to the whole album, or already have, please let me ...

Release date: 2025 October 20 Album tracklist: Live In Paris, Hollywood Action , JAM!, Bathroom, As Time Goes By Album runtime: 13 minutes  Y'all, I'm really excited for the music video for this song. I, and I cannot stress this strongly enough, absolutely adore movies and filmmaking and the process, and the significance of Hollywood as a cultural and technological center (as a related side note, I highly recommend the book Moving Pictures  by Terry Pratchett if you too love movies, and it's delightfully funny). So anytime there's something related to Hollywood or filmmaking in general, I am all about that and would like more. In this case, I'm really really hoping for the music video to be related. Although I just looked at the album run time (which you already know because I put it right up front) and I'm aghast. It would be a lot shorter if that last song wasn't almost 4 minutes long. I was hoping a little bit for an older sound, but this one is fun. It...

Release date: 2025 October 20 Album tracklist: Freak (feat. B.I) , Ooh, View, Move, Stay Mad, Freak (feat. B.I) (Inst.) Album runtime: 17 minutes  Big Matthew! I've got a lot of affection for him and his group because of Dive Studios (as well as the fact that they're one of the few co-ed groups currently active right now), and even though I have a strong suspicion this is not going to be a preferred genre for me, I'm still excited for this. However. There isn't a single song at three minutes and most of them are closer to two-and-a-half minutes. I imagine that if I listen to this on repeat for too long, then the police and/or referee whistle will become a little grating. Well, we might have an answer to that depending on how long it take for me to write this. Although, I will say this for that whistle: it's not entirely regular. When it's happening, it tends to be on repeat, but it's not on the beat. It sounds like it's an eighth note off, between beats ...

  With Chuseok well and truly over for the year, we have all the music shows giving us first place winners on their charts! This hasn't happened in over a month! Also, now that triple crowns have been won, I got to share other performances from other groups! We've got four  first song wins, and one of those is a first time win for the group as a whole! Yay! Baksu! And even though those aren't recent performances for the two IVE wins, I shared them anyway because I like having a full set of performances. Also, with After School Club still on hiatus as far as I know, I decided to give y'all a group I've started listening to more because they've got some nice Halloween-y songs: episode 537 with TRI.BE! They spend a lot of time dancing, and not just to their own songs. This was a fun episode. Not that most of them aren't fun, but the vibes are with this group. As always, the links in the chart below go to my reviews of the songs. Show Champion: ONEWE "MAZE...

Release date: 2025 October 03 Album tracklist: What's wrong? Album runtime: 4 minutes   So apparently neither of these two pre-releases are actually on the mini album. That’s a bit of a surprise and I don’t understand why, but whatever. It’s fine. Also, this is almost a four minute song, so I am happy as a clam right now.  This has a very 80s sound, and I love that for it. What I love more is that there’s a very distinct EDM dance break that completely changes the sound of the song, and there are two separate sections for the dance break. I didn’t like EDM dance breaks until I started listening to K-Pop and now here I am being excited over them. Crazy how your musical taste can change. But what I love most is the even rarer key change. I adore key changes, and it’s not very often that recent K-Pop has a key change. It’s rare enough in music, but recently it’s been harder to find than a Millennial without a crippling caffeine addiction. They really elevate both complexity and v...

Release date: 2025 October 06 Album tracklist: HAPPY , A-HA! , PAGE, GROSS, CHARIZZMA Album runtime: 13 minutes  Another girl group that I cannot listen to. When I saw them at KCon, I looked up the group because a couple of them looked about twelve and I was alarmed. There is exactly one member who is over eighteen right now, the maknae turned fifteen shortly before they debuted, but I'm going to be honest, they don't look that old. Again, I was very alarmed, and I recognize that they're going to look younger than most of the older teens I'm usually around because of the make-up and whatnot, but a couple of them looked closer in ag e to the ten-year-olds I'm around in terms of their physicality. So, needless to say, this is going on Underage Protocol, and I really hope no one is lying about age, because it has happened before in kpop. Also, even though they've released three singles before this, because I was so very behind, this is the first one I'm doing. ...

Release date: 2025 November 05 Album tracklist:  Set In Stone, Body Language,  Stretch , Spotlight2, Waterfalls, Leader, Premium, Fever, Let You Go, Take-off (26) Album runtime: 31 minutes   I’m really excited for the full release of the album or mini album or whatever it is because of when it’s releasing. Very excited. I’m also excited about this because I think this will be the first time that I hear one of his solo songs. I’ve heard a couple of Max Changmin’s and obviously I love the group songs, but I don’t think I’ve heard one by just him. This’ll be fun. Also, just so everyone knows, he is incredibly smart.  I was not kidding when I said this was going to be fun. A harmonica? Really? A harmonica? I definitely did not have a harmonica in K-Pop music on my 2025 Bingo sheet. The cool bit, from my end, is that the harmonica is not forced to be only an interesting gimmick to hook the listener in from the novelty of it at the beginning. My only complaint about t...

Release date: 2025 October 14 Album tracklist: BURNING UP Album runtime: 3 minutes   Not quite a three minute song, and it does round up, but that’s a little lower than I’m comfortable with usually. Oof. Hi, there. Bet you weren’t expecting this many reviews to be posted today. This is apparently what happens when you trap me in a car in the dark for four-and-a-half hours with nothing else to do and the ability to read in the car and feel completely fine. But I’ll just keep going. I was working on NMIXX’s and Spotify told me that I should listen to this one because it was also a new review. Well, I can’t listen to them because they’re too young. But. I still find it really funny that BABYMONSTER and MEOVV regularly have similar comeback schedules and they’re not from the same company, but I do call The BlackLabel “YGE Lite”. They’re affiliated in a way that makes me consider BABYMONSTER and MEOVV to be sister groups, which is why it’s just funny how often the two groups have releas...

Release date: 2025 October 13 Album tracklist: Blue Valentine, SPINNIN' ON IT , Phoenix, Reality Hurts, RICO, Game Face, PODIUM, Crush On You, ADORE U, Shape of Love, O.O Part 1 (Baila), O.O Part 2 (Superhero) Album runtime: 34 minutes   Honestly, I’m a little surprised by how quickly I’m getting to the actual release when it feels like I just posted the pre-release, but I suppose that’s what happens when I’m behind and get into a good space where I can just go. The album runtime is a little bit short for my tastes, but the title track is over three minutes long, so I’m okay with it.  Soft punk rock was not where I was expecting this song to be at, but you know what? I’m down with this. It’s got some very spunky drums in places where the song kicks up its heels a little and shows off some attitude, but there are some spots where it’s a very soft song, and I love the contrast there.  This is like soft Avril Lavigne, or maybe a similar artist, but it feels enough like tha...

Release date: 2025 October 10 Album tracklist: ME+YOU , MEEEEEE (Nayeon), FIX A DRINK (Jeongyeon), MOVE LIKE THAT (Momo), DECAFFEINATED (Sana), ATM (Jihyo), STONE COLD (Mina), CHESS (Dahyun), IN MY ROOM (Chaeyoung), DIVE IN (Tzuyu) Album runtime: 28 minutes   Happy anniversary, TWICE! I couldn’t be happier to see it. This is definitely giving me some early 00s R&B. The instrumental is incredibly consistent throughout, though it does have brief little blips of interruption to the regularly scheduled programming of the song. But this very much is not the focus of the song, and it shows. I’m actually kind of happy about that because of the fluffy nature of the lyrics. I love the group affirmation songs. They’re very comforting. We also regularly get the lovely vocals with songs like this, which again is something I historically really like. TWICE, because of their numbers, gets to do something I also really like to see, or hear, rather. They’re a very special kind of love song. Al...

Release date: 2025 October 15 Album tracklist: Good Goodbye , Good Goodbye (with. Duomo) Album runtime: 8 minutes  Now that I've seen her in person, I think she's even more stunning than the camera previously led me to believe. Voice of an angel. Looks to match. I'm a tiny bit in love and it's fine. You know why? Because it's Hwasa the Queen. All hail. Also all hail for the runtime, which makes me even happier. The majority of the song instrumentally is largely without too much variation. It's quiet and very stable, which allows the real star of the sh ow to shine. The version with Duomo has a violin and I'm going to be completely normal about it. But the actual title track? It's very consistent. The melody sounds in the same vein as about four other songs, which is great.  She’s got that gorgeous, smoky voice that I really love to hear so much, the kind of voice that you most regularly hear with indie artists in coffeehouses, but when she firms up her v...

Release date: 2025 October 10 Album tracklist: WE GO UP , PSYCHO, SUPA DUPA LUV, WILD Album runtime: 12 minutes  I watched the video where YG the Dude outlined what was going on with Treasure, BABYMONSTER, and BLACKPINK a few months ago, where he also said that they'd be moving the release date of this album to a later one to better work with Chuseok. Which was smart of them. He also said that one of them is kind of a country song? I must say that I'm very intrigued by this. Unfortunately, unless it ends up having a music video with it so I can review it, I can't listen to the song yet because the maknae was too young at debut and won't be eighteen until 2027. So. That's where I'm at. On the other hand, both the title track and the album runtime are good, so if I end up liking this, then I get to add it to my playlist for groups that are too young but have songs I want to listen to. Sucks that I need a playlist like that, but on the other hand, I look forward to...

Release date: 2025 October 10 Album tracklist:  I gotta feeling Album runtime: 4 minutes  This is what happens when I get curious about a new group. I find more of them. So, have another band. With the loss of their former maknae leaving the group for whatever reason, the entire group is technically older than I am. The new maknae is a week younger than SCoups. And looking at their discography, they have a surprising number of songs with what looks like titles in Russian. Or something similar. The language definitely looks like it uses Cyrillic, which is interesting for a Korean group, but I'm not going to lie, it's a little intriguing. Interesting. This song is one of those that just stays on full tilt the entire time, no sense of subtlety. It definitely has a specific sound I'm not used to hearing from Korean bands, and reminds me a bit of kid rock (not the artist Kid Rock), but not in a bad way. This sounds like something that would have been in Clueless or What A Girl ...