Just A Little Fangirl Love

Release date: 2026 March 15 Album tracklist:  Shining Star , Only One Album runtime: 5 minutes  Can we take a minute and enjoy the fact that the title of the album is styled exactly  like I format these posts? I'm curious about this because I enjoyed the debut track they had a lot. And! And!  Good news! On YouTube Music, this song currently has more streams than their debut song, which is exactly the growth we want to be seeing. This is good. This is amazing news. I don't even care that both songs are under three minutes for a moment because for a small group for a small company like that, this growth is extravagant and I love to see it. This scratches the exact same itch as my second favorite Seventeen song (Ima). Same ballpark. The guitar is on fire here and it's very present throughout most of the song. Also, the way the vocals and the instrumental work together on the "shining star" part to mimic each other's emphasis is very nice. This is one of those son...

Release date: 2026 March 20 Album tracklist: Body to Body, Hooligan, Aliens, FYA, 2.0, No. 29, SWIM , Merry Go Round, NORMAL, Like Animals, they don't know 'bout us, One More Night, Please, Into the Sun Album runtime: 41 minutes  Well, here we are, folks. A much awaited comeback. Let's just get to it. I did take note of the runtime and we're just shy of a three minute runtime average for the album, and the title track is less than three, which I'm not as pleased about, but that's par for the course with HYBE title tracks lately. At least it's over two-and-a-half minutes, so I'm not going to whine too much. Also, I took off the NU'EST nail polish of two of my nails and painted one of them purple in honor of this comeback. I'm very curious to see what they've got for us and I'll be taking a listen to the whole album to find the song I like best, which is likely to be a b-side given my track record. Parts of this instrumental remind me a lot...

Release date: 2026 March 18 Album track list: SAY LOVE, LATENCY , MALIBU, IT WAS LOVE , STARRY NIGHT,  Album runtime: 15 mi nutes  Ah, right. This band is stacked with idols and a well-known guitarist. I really liked their debut song, which may have been the first debut of 2026, and that makes me tentatively excited for the rest of the mini album. Also, fun times had by all, there is only one song on here that is under three minutes and it is not the title track. Score. This one has an interestingly "anime intro" vibe to the instrumental for one of those heart-warming, friendship triumphs over evil sorts. There's a lot of sunlight and bright colors, the wind blows through to ruffle the main female lead's skirt as she tucks her long hair behind her ear and some leaves get caught to swirl past her as she stands on a green, grassy cliff overlooking a town or a lake. You know the scene.  That's the kind of anime that this feels like. There's a really good flow of ...

 Happy fourteenth anniversary, NU'EST! Happy discharge, JR! One of those has already happened, and the other will be happening in a few days! I cannot even tell you how much I am vibrating with excitement over JR's discharge. But as much as I love both NU'EST and JR, not everyone does, so I elected to do a post between the two events, rather than do one for both. I could have. I had a JR solo song selected for his discharge, although I might hold onto it for his birthday now that he'll be out. (Here's your friendly reminder right up here at the front that will be repeated further down at the end that I love doing posts for anniversaries and special events and I also love it when y'all give me songs to do for them). But this is a first for a couple of reasons: this is a fictional band, and it's also an OST. What does this have to do with JR? He was the bassist in the drama! So funny story about this drama. I watched it because of JR. I loved it. A couple of m...

Release date: 2026 March 12 Album track list: UNIQUE , Pandemonium, L.O.Y.L , Wednesday Girl, Triple 7, ICE (VVS) Album runtime: 16 mi nutes  Well, well, everyone. I'm a little bit excited to see what all the group has for us this time. I saw a clip from the music video and went "Huh. Well, that song sounds fun." And now here I am ready and curious for the review, although I'm less stoked about the fact that there isn't a sing We've got a very stripped down instrumental at the beginning and through a surprising amount of the song. For a lot of the song, we have at most three instruments, but there's nothing particularly loud about the instruments either. It's a lot of structural stability and support rather than a lot of life on its own, but at the same time there's a surprising amount of variation to go with the vocal melodies. It's interesting. I'm not sure how I feel about it.  I love how emphatical the line "My crew unique" is...

Release date: 2026 March 14 Album track list: Baby, Honey Album runtime: 2 mi nutes  Less than a year until he's discharged and he still gave a gift for White Day. The standards are real, guys. He'd probably pass the "he's just not that into you" test of "If he wanted to, he would." As a side note, that movie is great and everyone should watch it, especially when you're younger and learning how you should be treated. On the other hand, the man is racking up the solo songs so if he manages to convince The Powers That Be to let him do solo stuff like he wants, he's halfway to a full album so far. Not in song length, of course, because that's atrocious, but in numbers at least. It's a very cute instrumental, very tropic rom com. You know, the kind where the soon-to-be couple arrives at the place (separately, of course) and everything is all fine, and then they lock eyes for the first time and it's an adorable meet-cute? There's somet...

  We're almost finished with the first quarter of 2026! How is everyone feeling? Good still?  We've got girl group dominance this week for the wins, including a first win for a song! Whoop! So for the After School Club re-run, I grabbed an early episode, ep. 22 from 2013 featuring the boy group History! (side note, that sequence of groups is a little incredible because you have NU'EST, then History, then BTOB, then BTS). And I picked that clip to go as the embedded video because you get them singing a capella. For the The Show re-run, I went with Verivery from 2021 and the extra stage is from Show Champion for the OnlyOneOf subunit QQQ, which debuted recently! I also decided to include an old stage from Show Champion because I ran into it and the choreography is both adorable and hilarious, but their voices send me. But since we were thinner on the recent stages, I'm giving you that extra one. As always, the links down in the spreadsheet go to my reviews of the songs an...

Release date: 2026 March 16 Album track list: Given, BOTTOMS UP , Forever, So Sweet (0522), Pieces of Youth, Holiday, Sometimes, Your Tomorrow, Faded Trail, Side by Side, Endless Album runtime: 37 mi nutes  That is a lot of capital letters. I'm not just shouting at you. You know what's really funny? One of these members is in the Greatest Hits post I'm going to drop here soon. I did not plan that deliberately; it's simply one of those funny happenstances. Anyway, this group is wildly talented as well, and I've got a soft-spot a mile wide for several of them. And we have an average of almost three-and-a-half minutes per song for the album, which I am stoked about. And it looks like the members potentially have solo songs folded into the album! One of them is the member I was just referring to! He is not the eldest, though, who is going to need to enlist this year, so that's where this group is at. And their seventh anniversary is also coming up in a couple of mon...

Release date: 2026 March 16 Album track list: NO DOUBT; DEAD MAN WALKING ; Piece of Me, 7 o'clock (Kunho, Youmin, Minje, ON:N); Cause I'm Insane (Youmin, Xayden, Masami, Hyunbin); My Spring, My Light, My Breath Album runtime: 17 mi nutes  This song is barely two and a half minutes long, which is atrocious for a title track, but if the first track on here was a slightly more reasonable length, this whole thing would have cleared the three minute average I want to be seeing.  The beginning of the song is promisingly dramatic, and then it shifts to heavy electronic music with some added choral emphases to the beat. The whole thing screams boss fight in a video game, especially something from like Devil May Cry or Castlevania , a supernatural action adventure. The story beats are clear in the instrumental, and it's making me really excited to see the choreography. There are power chords, for crying out loud. This song has a lot of things going on vocally. We've got vocal f...

Release date: 2026 March 10 Album track list:  POP IT LIKE , Silhouette, A-LIST, We are young Album runtime: 11 mi nutes  I missed doing their last one so I have to make sure that I do this one. Maknae is eighteen now, so if you only listen to groups where everyone is eighteen and older, you can now listen to them! I was not expecting for the cowbell to be as front and center as it is. It's not in the entire song, which would be excessive even for me, but it does spend a lot of the not quite three minutes with the cowbell. I'm also annoyed that we got such a lovely, more traditional sound at the beginning, and then it changes the genre and we never get that back. What do we get instead? Sirens, both of the alarm and police variety. I think that is a weak exchange, personally, but others are welcome to disagree with me. We do also get the Mario coin sound effect, or maybe that's the Sonic ring sound effect. Either way, it's an addition I wasn't expecting. Other than ...

 I hunted through his discography for a song that would match what I wanted this post to do. For a number of reasons I'll get into in the next post, even though this will be posted on NU'EST's anniversary, I'm not doing one of theirs then. Instead, I wanted to do an RM song because BTS has an album coming out in the next week and I wanted to honor the friendship between the two groups, and because I finally get to pull JR's photocard off my enlistment wall next week as well, I wanted to do RM specifically. Both of them are rapper leaders, neither of them is the eldest member of their group. They debuted around the same time, they're both Kims, they're less than a year apart in age, and because their groups had near-disbandment-causing struggles early in their careers, they have that connection as well. And they ended up being at the same company, technically, when HYBE bought Pledis. You can actually see the spike in sales for NU'EST because RM would not...

Release date: 2026 March 10 Album track list: Palm Lines, Oh Perfect! , Zombie, Rehearsal, Hidden,  Album runtime: 16 mi nutes  There is a song called "Zombie" in this mini album. I hope that this one gets a music video that is appropriately spooky to add it to my Halloween playlist because that's really all I want in life. Anyway, I kind of love this band and even though I'm a little bit behind on my reviews for the month, I want to make sure I hit this one because they need the love and attention. They're a pretty solid band. That's a strong opening for the song, and the instrumental as a whole takes advantage of a stereo audio system, because I can hear it in the instrumental moving from right to left. The whistle, for instance, sounds like it's coming through mostly on the right channel. This song is for the "noise music" lovers out there, where it's not fully intense but there's enough happening that it's a little bit much for me...

Release date: 2026 March 10 Album track list: Tame Album runtime: 6 mi nutes  I wasn't even aware that they were dropping a single! And this is a single and not a pre-release, I'm pretty sure, but that's fine because this is one of those groups that regularly just hits my brain in exactly the right way. Dark Dream remains one of my favorite K-Pop songs, full stop. Will this one be as good as Dark Dream ? Let's see. And it's close enough to three minutes that I'm okay with it.  Well, this is promisingly dramatic. That guitar reminds me so much of Ash by Seventeen that it brings me joy. It's also a very specific kind of guitar that I just love in general, so there is that anyway. But there's a little bit of an EDM overlay to that guitar that I really appreciate. I hope this gets performed soon so that we can see the choreography, because I imagine that this is going to have really cool choreography. They sound so good. I wish I had the energy and time to...

Release date: 2026 March 12 Album track list:  Keep It Slow , Keep It Slow - Instrumental Album runtime: 6 mi nutes  This trio is so insanely talented. Between the vocals and the songwriting, I'm just regularly impressed by them. And! They hit the magical seventh anniversary this January, which is a huge relief. We're probably going to see a lot of groups disband this year, and I'm glad that they're not one of them.  While this has some very smooth bits to the instrumental, with a guitar that acts up a little in a very fun way, there is also a section that reminds me of playing around on the presets on the keyboard I got from my grandparents because I didn't have a piano at home. This is going to be such a solid base for their voices. I'm excited. This is a good R&B track. Smooth instrumental. Smooth vocals. And this is also a love song, although there are a couple of spots where I'm surprised by how upbeat the instrumental is when it sounds like the lyr...

Release date: 2026 March 09 Album track list: Twenty Album runtime: 3 mi nutes  The mini album comes out next month, but you know what? Mini albums two and three were amazing, and I hope that this continues their trend for me. Freeze has been frequently played on my playlists the last little bit, and I'm the opposite of offended by this.  Two seconds. I love that these guys have fully leaned into the rock genre. There's a good ebb and flow to the amount of energy that the instrumental is giving to the song, though, granted it is very much more on the energetic side than the softer side. We get a quick burst of energy at the beginning, and then it settles to let the listener anticipate the return of the instruments. But, generally this is a solid instrumental. I would have been happy with this as a title track, which does make me a little worried for the actual title track.  The rapper with his much lower voice to the rest of the group provides such a good contrast to the...

Release date: 2026 March 12 Album track list: Babyface ,  C♡NDY.exe Album runtime: 5 mi nutes  My girls dropped a new single! You almost just got a lot of capital letters and while I am mentally shouting I don't want to scare y'all away from my enthusiasm over this group! I can't wait for how weird the music video is. They've gotten second gen weird music videos and I love it. I'm disappointed by the runtimes for the two songs here though, but at least the title track is closer to three minutes than two. The restraint I'm having to use to not just watch the music video. As a side note, C♡NDY.exe is a delightful little song. That is a lovely bass for the beat. We get some spots where the bass goes away which immediately changes the sound of the song, but we also get quite a few where it's just the bass. The overall drama level of the song is medium, but it's still solid enough on the whole with good movement and flow that this song moves well. Here's ...

Release date: 2026 March 11 Album track list:  Tug of War , ROCKROCK ,  The One, LUNA, Tug of War - Instrumental, ROCKROCK  - Instrumental, The One  - Instrumental, LUNA Album runtime: 26 mi nutes  They're now officially a March debut, and you know what that means! I'm probably going to love them. Also, we got some updated birth years, at least, from the ones missing, and I'm pleased to confirm that they're not  on Underage Protocol as hoped, which means that if I like them, and I probably will, that I can happily listen to them to my little heart's content. And every single song on here is over three minutes. Ooh, that starts out surprisingly mellow. I'm actually a little bit fascinated by the fact that the song gives the different sections so much time before changes happen. We're talking like four bars at a time or more. The beat is actually surprisingly slow overall as well. This feels like a low bpm. But this build is so wonderfully steady. There's ...

 As promised, if you weren't vibing super hard with HyunA's post, here's a boy group that turned two last year and I haven't heard of any issues with them. Also, for the person who submitted this song, it took me a bit because I wanted it to have a good spot where the song could be highlighted well and the group could get the attention it deserved. Coming off the second gen soloist wave and ahead of the soloist for next time, this is a really good spot for them, especially since this song sounds unlike anything around it. I want the submissions especially to be highlighted. If the submission is for a specific date, then I might not have the room and flexible to lead into it well, but if it doesn't, then I get to slowly plant and nurture the area around the submission. And other than the Stray Kids submission that's coming at the end of the month for their anniversary and the three EXID songs I have left to cover (but want to space out because I did three last ye...

Release date: 2026 February 20 Album track list:  Dazzle Flash , No Clarity, Coming Home, Who Dat, Dazzle Flash - Instrumental, No Clarity  - Instrumental, Coming Home  - Instrumental, Who Dat  - Instrumental Album runtime: 25 mi nutes  Good news, everyone! This group is so not on Underage protocol that there are multiple members with a one in front of their birth year! And the maknae turned twenty the year they debuted! This is fantastic. I am fascinated with the runtimes though. Ignoring the fact that the title track is just over two and a half minutes for a second, there are two sets of songs that have the same runtime, and they're paired in an ABBA...I almost called it a rhyme scheme, but I suppose it is sort of. But that's the sort of thing that feels deliberate, you know? That scream at the beginning startled my cat. He paused purring for about two seconds, which is momentous because PJ purrs in his sleep. The rest of the instrumental, the occasional screa...

Release date: 2026 February 20 Album track list: RUDE! Album runtime: 3 mi nutes  Hearts2Hearts is one of those groups that have to be on Underage Protocol because the maknae was too young at debut, so I can't listen for another two years. But, that's fine. Also, congrats on the win now that I'm super late, you know? But I am happy about the fact that it's over three minutes. A mild instrumental without it being a weak one. The beat is good, even if it lacks the attitude of the lyrics. There feels like there's a ceiling holding the instrumental from getting any louder or exciting, which isn't necessarily a problem, but the song isn't feisty enough to warrant the ceiling being in the mid-range for both energy and complexity like it is. The sing-songy vocals is an irritating trend, but recently I've been well-fed enough on bigger vocals that I'm able to better tolerate it here. I would have liked it if the song had waited a little bit before that style...

  I decided to stick with the girl groups for the extra clips and stages, because IVE has been absolutely dominating lately. And congrats to Hearts2Hearts for their first win for Rude! For the After School Club re-run, I went with 9Muses in 2015, and episode 141! They did a lot on this episode, including showing off the point dance (AKA the pre-cursor to the dance challenge) and having the rappers and the vocalists swap parts. The point dance is the clip embedded here, while the link goes to the full episode because things get a bit weird if I just try to embed the episodes. The old The Show  performance is from 2019, and it's AOA. The extra performance from this week was from Show Champion and I picked X:IN! The links in the spreadsheet go to the reviews I wrote. Show Champion: IVE "BLACKHOLE" MCountdown: Hearts2Hearts "Rude!" Music Bank: IVE "BANG BANG" Show! Music Core:  IVE "BANG BANG" Inkigayo:  IVE "BANG BANG" ASC Performance:...

Release date: 2026 March 09 Album track list: Dot dot dot (...); TOUGH LOVE ; Flex on me; Lie; X, Oh Why? Album runtime: 15 mi nutes  My man Onew! Look! I'm actually doing this when it comes out instead of months later like with what happened last time! Everyone, I love his voice. I really do. It's so gorgeous, and while I've found a few other artists who have a similar vocal tone and quality to him, they're pretty far between. I am however deeply disappointed in the runtime for the title track and the album runtime overall does not hit the three minute average. It rounds up to it. This is a very grindy instrumental while simultaneously being soft and floaty. It's an interesting combination. I'm not sure how well this works though, so this might take me a minute to decide on exactly how I feel about it. It could just be that the song doesn't have the space to be able to finish what those two parts of the song could have been together.  Crucially, even during...

Release date: 2026 March 05 Album track list: Still Hurts , Still Hurts, (Inst.) Album runtime: 6 mi nutes  This is the most interesting co-ed group to drop in years, arguably one of the most interesting groups full stop in years. There are two notable K-Pop names in here: Narsha from Brown Eyed Girls and MJ from ASTRO. That right there is a duo to raise eyebrows considering they debuted ten years apart, but to join them are all-rounder entertainer Kwon Hyuksoo and comedian Na Hyunyoung.  I'm getting a very strong second gen vibe from this instrumental, which we get because the debut single includes it. Yay. There are shades of 80s techno as well, which is a delightful combination. There's a strong energy to the song that I'm excited to see how it translates vocally, especially with this combination of artists. Honestly, this instrumental would make for a good workout song if you were in the market for one. Why am I getting Orange Caramel vibes off this song? There's no...

 As messy as her private life has been in the last decade, I wanted to do this song now because it's a good pairing for the one I just did, and also, the second half of this month is going to be very boy group heavy, so I wanted to counter balance that a little. This was also long before any of her messiness back when she was nineteen and had all of those mistakes yet to make, but I don't want to punish this song for her choices. Now, that being said, if her choice of husband has soured all of her music to you, then thank you for reading this paragraph, and I'll let you keep going with your life. You'll like the next one I do though. No scandals attached to it or the artist. Promise. So, HyunA debuted as part of...a lot of different groups. She originally debuted with Wonder Girls in 2007 as the main rapper, then she debuted in 4Minute in 2009 as the main rapper and main dancer. She debuted as one half of the duo Troublemaker, and one third of TripleH. She also debuted ...