Song Review:: EPEX: Album Youth : Epilogue- ECHO

-

  • Release date: 2026 May 27

  • Album tracklist: ECHO, BETTER DAYS, BOYS IN THE BAND, Call it love

  • Album runtime: 11 minutes

 The stress suddenly rose up in me over the title of that mini album, so I checked and the d-word is not imminent. I don't think. Thankfully. And then I realized that I'd only read part of the album title and felt silly. And that, everyone, is the importance of reading everything and not just assuming. And you know what I'm going to say about the runtime. So I'm just going to point it out.

I had to pause it after that intro and pray that the song would live up to the absolute drama of it. I was prepared to be disappointed, and I thought I was going to be, but then that simple beat turned weird and I knew. This is amazing and dramatic and there's so much going on that even my brain with its need for interesting and varied stimulation is completely satisfied by this.

What in the Backstreet Boys is this? Even the amount of repetition of the word "echo" isn't enough to upset me because there's so much going on vocally every time we get it, and it's so different that I give it a thumbs up. This is stunning. And the weird rhythm of the "Eyes on me" part? I'm not even kidding. With the exception of a lot of the rapping, this straight up could be out of BSB's discography. I'm swooning a little. There is so much harmonizing and vocal layering in this song. Playlist here it comes!

They're even in white tracksuits. I love this song. We've got a bit of a storyline, and I'm a little disappointed by how muted in color the music video is I'm not overly bothered by it. 



Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Greatest Hits:: Yezi: Cider

-
Image
 Welcome to June, where I'm going to be stepping outside my comfort zone a little bit! It's also going to be majorly sentimental here at the end of this month because I've got two discharges that I'm looking forward to. But that's in the future, and we're going to start the month off with a me kicking myself off a cliff. I touched a solo rapper (metaphorically, please don't come at me with the pitch forks because I have never actually been close enough to RM to touch him and unless something really weird happens in my life, I never will) back in March, but I picked a soft, comfortable-for-me song that wasn't too far away from something I normally would vibe with. When I was looking for songs to put in June, I decided to do a female rapper, because I thought that would match the Woodz submission coming up in a few weeks and force me out of my safety zone. And I listened to a few songs with none of them giving me that "Yes, I need to do this now"...
Read more

Greatest Hits:: EXO: Tempo

-
Image
 This is why I laughed last month during the month of chaos when Love Shot was chosen because this was the first song I picked when I decided on the theme for the month. I wouldn't have done two EXO songs back to back because I like more variation than that. The other really funny thing is Love Shot is the title track from the repackaged album and Tempo is the title track from the original. The other reason why I laughed. There were a lot of EXO songs available and that one was picked. I don't know what to tell us. But! This song is the focal point of this month's theme because there's something very specific about this song that is the most known thing about this song. It's the first thing I learned about this song. I listened to it because of that thing I learned about it and swooned . EXO originally debuted in 2012 under SM with twelve members split between two subunits. Fun fact, I have a friend who used to be an EXOL back in the day (AKA when we were in high s...
Read more

Song Review:: The CrewOne: Hit the Floor {Debut}

-
Image
Release date: 2024 November 1 Album tracklist: Hit The Floor Album runtime: 3 minutes  Considering Ace of Ace  has been over for weeks, I had no intention to do any reviews on the final tracks. But by the time this gets published, The CrewOne will have been on ASC, which means that I have to follow my rules. For the uninitiated, The CrewOne was a team put together for Ace of Ace  consisting of the fourth gen boy groups ATBO and JUST B. Apparently disbandment was in their future before the two groups got put together, which is completely ridiculous as JUST B debuted in 2021 and ATBO debuted in 2022. I'm sorry, there are a number of groups that went on to be very successful after three not-successful years and if their companies had disbanded them, the face of K-Pop would be radically different. And yes, one of those groups I'm talking about is in fact BTS, though I wouldn't be me if I didn't also mention NU'EST here. But, I digress. If The CrewOne are going to be an...
Read more

Song Review:: Xiumin (EXO): Interview X- WHEE!

-
Image
Release date: 2025 March 10 Album track list: Can't Help Myself, WHEE! , Make You Lala, Switch Off, Lost Paradise, Love is U Album runtime: 17 mi nutes  I'm going to do the soloists in age order since there were a significant number of soloists releasing music today. This way, it can be orderly. There's a little bit of controversy regarding this release which I'm not going to get into, but I will frown disapprovingly at a certain former company of his. In other news, I've kind of enjoyed the individual members releasing solo material because that's made it easier for me to get to know each of them individually. And given my predilection for 2012 debuts, I fully anticipate EXO getting added to my list of groups I really like, that plus my soft spot for groups that have been mistreated badly because the company is garbage and knowing a little bit of EXO's history, it's an inevitability for me. So, this is nice ahead of their reunion once the maknae is disc...
Read more

Battle of the B-Sides:: f(x): Shadow

-
Image
 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...
Read more

Song Review:: Irubin (1TEAM): Foolproof {Debut}

-
Image
Release date: 2024 December 11 Album tracklist: Foolproof Album runtime: 3 minutes  Okay, so! Irubin is part of the 95z along with SCoups, Gon, and Minhyun, and he's actually a week younger than the latter. He was on a couple of trainee survival shows the same year NU'EST was on theirs. Almost made the debut team on BOYS24 and was the first boy trainee to be TOP1 on MixNine (where we also had a bunch of future ATEEZ and Treasure members), ended the show as the third ranked so he made the debut team, but that never happened. I actually remember him. Obviously I was focused on ATEEZ when I watched it this summer, but I do remember him. He went by the name Rubin then, and he was really good. He did finally debut with the group 1TEAM, which unfortunately disbanded within two years, and then he became a tattoo artist. Irubin is multi-talented then, and part of me is curious about why he decided to come back to music almost four years later, but I hope he has better luck as a soloist...
Read more

Music Show Wins:: Week of 10/01 - 10/07

-
Image
 We're already in October. Goodness. You know, it might be interesting for me to go through and tally how many groups got how many wins this year, and how many times each music show had a winner for an end of year music show summary post. I don't know. I'll have to think about it. That might be fun though. Y'all have all the raw data already and I could make pie charts and bar charts and... Sorry, I'm math nerd-ing again.  Two exciting things happened this week! First, we got two triple crowns this week! The only way I would be happier is if it was for a song that I could have given you more stage performances for, but that is super exciting! Congrats to the group! And, something that I have been rooting for since they debuted in January because they have had the absolute worst luck with timing, KickFlip got their first win! I couldn't be happier! Happy Chuseok, everyone! 추석 잘 보내세요!!! 즐겁고 풍성한 한가위 되세요!!!!  In the spirit of Chuseok, I decided to go with last year...
Read more

Greatest Hits:: BerryGood: Angel

-
Image
 This was actually supposed to be the song after After School, but I didn't write it down in my notes. And then when I checked my notes and double checked numbers (because for timing's sake, the last three must be the last three), I was missing one. So you get this one now, instead of when it was supposed to be, but that's fine because it works here as well. We're still on theme for May, and I think y'all will enjoy this one if you haven't heard it before. Funny story about this group, every time I see their name, my brain starts playing "Very Good" by Block B. It's probably a problem, but it's a me problem and I hope it's not a you problem now as well. They debuted in 2014 as a five member group, but by the time they disbanded, there were only two of the original members in the six-member group. Fun fact, they released multiple crowdfunded mini albums, including this one, and the lineup for this album was Taeha, Seoyul, Daye, Sehyung, and ...
Read more

Battle of the B-Sides:: Seventeen: Shining Diamond

-
Image
 I hope some of you figured out the group based on that last little hint that has now been fixed on Angel 's post, and I hope at least one of you was able to figure out which song I decided to do. This song sits in a little bit of an interesting spot because while it does technically match the May theme, it's actually fulfilling a much bigger role. If you've been around here for a while, you may know that I've got a massive soft spot for Seventeen that started out because they're NU'EST's brothers (and was resisted for several months even though I'd already attached to SCoups because the jerk decided to shred his knee in a potentially career-ending injury right when I got into K-Pop so that injury was the second thing I learned about Seventeen and resulted in my worry being activated before I ever actually knew anything). So my attachment was inevitable. It has since grown into respect independent of NU'EST, but that's why it's surprising tha...
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