Song Review:: Kang Yuchan (A.C.E): REBEL- Close To You

-

  • 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 nice. I like that for this song because it pushes the song in a nice way. But, again, this would be a good song to have an acoustic version later on down the road.

Is this song all in English? Is this just what the A.C.E members are doing now? (The answer is no, but this one is in basically the reverse of a lot of K-Pop that has the majority in Korean and then the occasional English word.) So most of the song, he's got a very consistent tone and texture going on. It's nice. It sounds good. But there's one brief moment where he has a fun, surprising little trill. It's a welcome surprise. I enjoy that vocal display. 

So this music video is largely...I don't know. It's somewhere between a slice of life or a Vibes and Visuals. It's a very chill music video, and it was directed by from20, which made me smile in delight to see. Not that we see him. But I like that he's expanding, especially for Yuchan here. The vibes are immaculate here. It's gorgeous.



Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

September 2025 Wrap-Up: School's Back From Summer

-
Image
 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 ...
Read more

October 2025 Wrap-Up: A New Nightmare

-
Image
 What is up! I completely spaced out needing to do this, and time both has no meaning and is soup. Little nerdy D&D reference there for you. Warm you up for the fun times. So, first up, as always, we have the lovely debuts. I covered none of them, and I feel bad about that. So I'll probably snag one or two and do a later review for them. Still, even without that, I'm still going to hand them over to you lovely readers so that you can take a listen and decide if you like any of them. BE:MIN , the subunit of the boy group XEED, now called XD. LUVITA , virtual girl group made up of V-Tuber. Global girl group NWH:I . Girl group ARVVY (who debuted with everyone over twenty, by the way). Girl group E11iVYN (which is only a four-member group, and you pronounce that as "eleven"). &TEAM had their Korean debut (with three accompanying music show wins, and now they have their very own younger brother group, aoen who is going to get a review from me in a couple of days...
Read more

Halloween Spookening: 2025 Edition

-
Image
 It's the most wonderful time of the year!  I'm back with a new selection of Halloween themed or generally spooky songs for you all! Have I spent the year looking for new songs for my playlist? Yes. Yes, yes I have, so if you have anymore suggestions for me, give me the creepy doll songs, the predatory wolfy songs, the haunting and the eerie. I love my Halloween playlist and I listen to it all year long, but October is the official start of when I don't get weird looks from people for listening to it. I am so excited. I get to pull out my Halloween nail polish and the glow in the dark stickers. It's a good time to be me, and also hopefully you as well. So the Halloween recs for you for the year 2025 are: Welcome To The Other Side by DPR Ian (C-Clown) Yes, he's Australian, but he was in the K-Pop group C-Clown, which is one of my beloved 2012s, so I'm counting him. Also, this song is super spooky with dramatic strings at the beginning and artistically applied au...
Read more

Music Show Wins:: Week of 10/15 - 10/21

-
Image
  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...
Read more

Song Review:: xikers: HOUSE OF TRICKY : WRECKING THE HOUSE- SUPERPOWER (Peak)

-
Image
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 ...
Read more

Battle of the B-Sides: LABOUM: 빛이 되어쥐 (Be the Light)

-
Image
 Unless I do The Roulette Wheel, I obviously can pick which of the suggestions I've gotten that I'll write posts for. I also have a spreadsheet where I have my posts organized by generation and boy group, girl group, and co-ed. The co-ed groups definitely need more attention, but I'm taking these last few Specialty posts to focus on the girl groups because they're not my natural inclination, and while the Roulette Wheel is weighted equally, I don't like that it's uneven. So, I ignored my normal addition of the B/G/Co-Ed Wheel spin and just did it for a girl group, and I ended up with LABOUM. I'm not sure I've heard of them, so this will be exciting.  LABOUM is a third gen girl group that are younger sisters to U-KISS and Brown Eyed Girls, which is wildly hilarious considering the last GH post I did was in fact for BEG's song Abracadabra . So, that was unintended. 빛이 되어쥐 , or Be the Light  as I will be calling it through this because while it would be...
Read more

Song Review:: Daesung (BIGBANG): Falling Slowly

-
Image
  Release date: 2024 March 05 Album tracklist: Falling Slowly , Light Album runtime: 7 minutes Ah, a proper song length. I'm writing this before the frantic rush of the next few days in terms of releases, because competition there will be fierce. And also to start to pad out the March releases because somebody had to get a win on a music show months later. I joke. I'm actually very happy for them. And I picked this one because I scrolled randomly, and his was the one my cursor was on when I stopped. I feel like Daesung needs very little introduction. He is the maknae of BIGBANG after all.  The instrumentals for this song are absolutely gorgeous with a lovely acoustic guitar that gets to spend time at the front of the song, before it hands over the reigns to an electric for very strategic sections. But seriously, that beginning is one of the most soothing things. There's a sense of the bittersweet to it, because at no point is there a strong bass driving the song, and the ho...
Read more

Song Review:: PRIMROSE: Love Your Flower

-
Image
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...
Read more

Music Show Wins:: Week of 10/29 - 11/04

-
Image
  This is what happens when I get behind. Groups and soloists I don't expect to get wins get wins and then I have to hurry up with those reviews. Congrats and happy birthday to Lee Chanwon, though! I have no idea who this person is and I'll learn when I do that review (the answer is a trot singer and y'all should take a listen to that voice of his. Wow. I would live in his voice specifically but the song almost made me cry because of how much I love it.) (Also his light stick is one of the cooler ones out there). And congrats to &TEAM for their first music show win! On The Show ! Imagine that!  I'm not bitter at all about that cancelation! For the re-run of After School Club , I decided to hop back to 2019 and share episode 375, featuring "the group equipped with powerful yet soft ubersexual charms". No, no. I'm not kidding. That's the title of the episode, word-for-word quoted. And I picked this group because their contracts with their company end...
Read more

Song Review:: BM (KARD): PO:INT- Freak (feat. B.I)

-
Image
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 ...
Read more