Just A Little Fangirl Love

 We're apparently having a slightly controversial little month. It's fine. You can't do anything in any industry without running into a scandal or two because people are people, and people are flawed. Not that she did anything wrong because she didn't. However, I added her to the Roulette Wheel candidates because she's released so many OSTs that I absolutely adore and because I, and probably many others, know her best from the song she did with Taec because of how many of the idols have covered that song, which was released a couple of years after she released this album. Baek Z Young debuted in 1999 as a soloist and she is now wonderfully married with a daughter. Good for her. Genuinely love that for her. Also, I just need everyone to know that she has a song called "Sad Salsa" and if this weren't b-side month, I'd be doing that because color me intrigued. Also, I found out that she was one of the performers in Pyongyang, North Korea in 2018. She...

Release date: 2026 July 20 Album tracklist:  Time's Tickin' , An Ordinary Story Album runtime: 7 minutes  I've actually already seen the music video because I let YouTube just play music videos for about an hour and this was one of them. Also, I was mildly surprised to see him so active on Weverse this last weekend, but when I saw he'd dropped a new song, it suddenly all made sense. Those two usually aren't very active unless they've got something going on. During SM Town last year, Changmin was commenting on posts for about five minutes right before TVXQ! was performing. Literally stopped as the group ahead of them finished. This song is oddly clangy, and it sounds like there's a cowbell involved, which I'm always surprised by, though to be fair, I think it's been several months at minimum since the last time I heard a cowbell, or something that sounds like one in a song I was reviewing. Everything else going on in the song is oddly dramatic in a wa...

Release date: 2026 July 21 Album tracklist: Answer, Don't Wake Me Up! , Can't Get Enough, Summer Blue, Down, Test Drive, Promises (feat. BrotherSu) Album runtime: 20 minutes So I don't get insanely behind, I try to do at least one July release a day right now. I've been not doing so well with this goal, but here we are. I have jumped both times that I've hit play on this song. That's such an aggressive start. We've got a strong dance tack for the instrumental with a skittering beat that drives the song like a war chariot. Underneath the skittering is a heavy bass drum of some sort and a grungy electric guitar. This honestly feels very movie soundtrack, but it has to be a movie like Rocky . There needs to be high intensity with the action.  Vocally, this reminds me a bit of the Twilight soundtrack, which is strange for two reasons that are closely related but not the same thing in my head: 1) I cannot actively recall any of the songs from that soundtrack and ...

Release date: 2026 May 04 Album tracklist: MOON , CHOOM , I LIKE IT , LOCKED IN Album runtime: 12 minutes  Am I doing a b-side instead of any of the title tracks I'm supposed to be doing? Yes. But, I picked this song for an extra stage on one of the Music Show Wins posts, which meant I was forcing myself to review this. However. I've got a good feeling about this song (I can't watch their stage because they didn't win, but I've got a good feeling about it). You know what? I spent most of the instrumental waiting for something very specific to come out of this instrumental because it's registering as country music in my head. I finally got it for a bit during the bridge, and honestly the instrumental is so bright and festival-like that  it's reminding me of a song I covered for the Expanded Offereings, but because we're on Underage Protocol, I don't dark risk taking the time to figure out which one it is because the odds are very high that this song w...

 I'm back to being in the correct month! I'll be caught up by August and then we can get back to my normal commentary. As always, the links down in the chart go to my reviews. Show Champion: N/A MCountdown: Hearts2Hearts "Lemon Tang" Music Bank: ATEEZ "BAD" Show! Music Core: I.O.I "Suddenly" Inkigayo: N/A ASC Performance: N/A The Show:  N/A The Extra Stage: izna "METRONOME"

  First wins for songs this week! Whoo! As always, links in the spreadsheets go to my reviews! Enjoy! Show Champion: RIIZE "Do your dance" MCountdown: LE SSERAFIM + ILLIT + KATSETE "ICONIC BY MISTAKE" Music Bank: RIIZE "Do your dance" Show! Music Core: I.O.I "Suddenly" Inkigayo: N/A ASC Performance:  N/A The Show:  N/A The Extra Stage: EPEX "ECHO"

Release date: 2026 July 06 Album tracklist: CHEESE , SEXY BACK Album runtime: 5 minutes  Not even five minutes for the single. It's fine. I'm fine. The title track is almost acceptable, but overall? What is that? Also, even though vol. 2 is sitting in my notebook waiting for me to do it because of how painfully behind I am, I wanted to do at least one review from this month today. So, CHEESE gets that spot. Well done, CHEESE . The electric guitar is being used as punctuation, which I am here for. It's a nice use of the instrument and one we haven't gotten quite this aggressive in a while. The slightly odd rhythm of some of the instruments, especially considering most of them aren't getting a legato set of notes for a melody. We get a lot of chords, which is fun, but it's only the pre-chorus and to a lesser extent the chorus that get a proper melody going on in the instrumental. I like the use of the camera flash sound effect as well as what sounds like a dispos...

Release date: 2026 June 06 Album tracklist:  Ride or Die Japan Version,  Ride or Die , Wake Up Japan Version, Wake Up Album runtime: 11 minutes  Okay, everyone. This is a friendly recommendation that YouTube gave me that I then immediately looked up because I didn't recognize the name and wanted to make ure it wasn't an AI group, because there have been a few that YouTube has recommended to me and I have to decline those. I'm here for the human effort and ability with the actual performers. Anyway, they're made up of AWIN, which debuted early in 2024, and APEX, which debuted in 2018. Also one of the members is a Melody (BTOB fan), and fan of my man Hui from Pentagon, and auditioned for Peak Time. The maknae was born in 2001, which means the group is not on Underage Protocol, and I am happy as a clam about this. Okay, electric guitar. Hello there. The Tron vibes are strong with this song, and it's such an anime theme song, which makes sense since they've been pro...

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, Come Over Album runtime: 41 minutes  I don't know if they also dropped a music video for Come Over, but here we are, behind, as per usual. I actually love the instrumental for this song, and it's not just because this is an almost four-minute long song, which is wildly rare these days and also an outlier in the album as a whole given that about thirty seconds were removed from each song. It's got a very specific aesthetic that reminds me of Bioshock. Everything about the instrumental sounds vaguely like it was recorded either underwater or through water, using technology from the thirties (which I know isn't the time period for Bioshock, but bear with me). It's wonderful. There's a bit of a melody to accompany the beat that has this haunting weakness ...

 This song right here is literally older than half of Stray Kids and half of ATEEZ and the entirety of TOMORROW X TOGETHER. We're going back, y'all. Which is funny because there's another first gen song lurking in my roulette wheel that's older than all of BTS except for two. So, for those of you who were born after this group disbanded, and never got the chance to listen to them, and for those of you who came to K-Pop after they disbanded and never got the chance to listen to them, well, now's your chance to discover them! We do have some of the lineup changes that make first gen K-Pop distinct, instead of just the music, but it could have been a lot wilder with those changes. And the group had a few controversies while they were active, but it seems like they and Baby V.O.X are more or less cool with each other now. DIVA debuted in 1997 as a three-member group under Cream Records, possibly. I did look, but I'm getting conflicting information from a couple of ...

Release date: 2026 May 28 Album tracklist: Y2K , LBD, THIS ISLOVE (Kor ver.), THIS IS LOVE (Eng ver.), Y2K (Sped up ver.), Y2K (Instrumental), LBD (Instrumental) Album runtime: 20 minutes  How late am I? Almost two months late with this, actually. But, this was sitting waiting to be done in my notebook I've designated for writing my reviews because I just really enjoy writing by hand, a lot more than typing. This song is making my joints ache in a very specific birth-year-starts-with-a-one sort of way. The sound of the phone dialing at the beginning is bringing back some memories I was not expecting to have such visceral flashback to. You never hear that sound anymore. And the sound of the dial-up modem? Even more stress. Interestingly, the instrumental itself doesn't really sound like an instrumental from around 2000. This isn't loud enough. The chanting right before the dial up modem sound does in fact sound very 90s however. I just realized that I never double checked ag...

Release date: 2026 July 10 Album tracklist: Vanilla, Ice Cream , Baby Wassup? No More Disco, Fxxking Star, Long Way Long Ride Album runtime: 16 minutes  I don't think I ever did his solo album back in November, but I'm still willing and happy to do it if someone would like to suggest I do it. A simple "Can you review Talk to You by Yeonjun please?" comment on literally any post would do it. You don't need to submit it with The Form , although you can. Also, congrats on the wins! This is apparently just my day to do boy group soloists with the more sensual choreography. I haven't seen his choreography yet, of course, but with the low bass and the grinding instrumental, I can guess what it's going to be. There are a couple of spots where we get a little more variation to the instrumental than I expected, when we've got a spot right in the middle where most of the instrumental gets stripped out and then the grungy guitar  gets more prominent again. That s...

Release date: 2026 July 15 Album tracklist:  Icy & Spicy , KO, KO (Rush ver) Album runtime: 8 minutes  I've already gotten a slight spoiler of this. Everyone, be prepared for muscles on display. Funny thing about this is, my mom mentioned to me a bit ago that he said he'd been dieting since May. I said, "He's releasing something soon." The next day: announcement. My mother and I discuss K-Pop often as one of our shared interests along with D&D, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, ASOIF, etc.  Minhyuk. This song is too short. This man really likes his brass instruments, doesn't he? I'd be a lot happier if we got more of that, but being placed where it is in the song (intro and chorus) is a good second. Otherwise, most of the song is taken up by a very strong dance beat that is likely to have a lot of body rolls and strutting of some sort. This is not one of his soft and sentimental song' this is one of his swaggery songs that's truly Huta, not BTOB...

Release date: 2026 July 04 Album tracklist: The road that shaped me , The road that shaped me - instrumental Album runtime: 6 minutes  The process that led me to discovering this group is as follows: for July in my Expanded Offerings, I'm only doing Battle of the B-Sides posts by artists I haven't yet covered there, so I was looking for some soloists to add to the Roulette Wheel I'm using. I looked up one (Son Yeji, or as I had to find her, 손 예지) and she has a song called "Ghost" which I decided to listen to even though it's a title track and thus can't do it this month, but I was curious about it for October potentiality. In my queue, I saw a song by something called "MOVNING" and I liked the title of the song. Turns out MOVNING is a band and this came out this month. SO I'm going to pause what I was doing to cover this. That piano. The piano i the reason I looked up the band because I was really hoping this was a real song and not an AI art...

Release date: 2026 July 13 Album tracklist: Promise , SOLOVE, Bad Name (sung by Leeteuk), GODOGNAM (sung by Heechul), ONSAGMIRO, More Than Love Album runtime: 21 minutes  I love it when yearlings get their own subunits (looking at you, 90TAN). This one, I think, has been at least a decade in the making, although to be fair, I'm not super familiar with Super Junior dynamics other than their rather infamous fights they used to have back in the day. Still, I'm excited about this one and very curious to see what these two will give us. I'm always curious when the second gen idols do something. The instrumental sounds like either a children's nature show theme song or a really cheesy sitcom theme song from the 70s or 80s. It's fitting considering they're doing their subunit because they're the same age and they were born during the 80s, but it's just kind of amusing. The brightness of this instrumental is almost blinding in the most summery lemon-yellow kind ...

Release date: 2026 June 12 Album tracklist: ICONIC BY MISTAKE , ICONIC BY MISTAKE, ICONIC BY MISTAKE (Instrumental) Album runtime: 9 minutes  This is going to be the only comment I make in regards to this. Three of the NewJeans members have been officially back since December. This was released in June. I'd love to ask someone that is part of the decision-making Powers That Be what their rationale was for that exclusion when that would have been a great way to show unity with the groups and start the healing process with the fans. I wasn't going to do this song (I know, I know, chase me off with pitchforks later please) because there have been songs released by one of the groups that I didn't like enough that it's turned me off from all of the songs attached to that group. But the song now has two wins, so I have to review it for my weekly wins posts that I'm wildly behind on. I want to like this song. For the record. I want to be proven wrong. And everyone is offic...

Release date: 2026 June 15 Album tracklist: SOAR, Do your dance , D-D-Done, Overdrive, Like a Bomb, In a Loop Album runtime: 18 minutes  I actually completely forgot that they'd released their new album, and I was looking forward to it too. Time is a soup right now and even the endless parade of releases I'm aware of and looking forward to is doing little to keep my attention on the here and now. Ah, well. Don't mind me. I'm just being a little maudlin. This specific kind of instrumental is one that hits my nervous system in exactly the wrong way. It's a song for clubbing and flashing lights in a dark room while you're jumping and dancing to the music. I'm not going to be able to listen to this song too much while I write this, but I'll do it as long as I can for the review. There are some interesting video game sound effects and beeps to it, which did catch my attention initially, but they are infrequent enough and the rest of the instrumental is aggres...

  I'm laughably behind, so you're getting the succinct version. Triple Crown! Whoo! The performance for aespa is from Music Bank . All links go to my reviews, as per usual. Show Champion: N/A MCountdown: aespa "LEMONADE" Music Bank: BOYNEXTDOOR "VIRAL" Show! Music Core:  N/A Inkigayo: ILLIT "It's Me" ASC Performance: N/A The Show: N/A The Extra Stage: RIIZE "Do your dance"

 Next up from the Roulette Wheel that I made of songs I could theoretically cover this month, we have a Produce 101 S2 era project group. I'm not going to turn this into a NU'EST adjacent post, so insert the applicable connections as though I've already said them. Now, that being said, one of my favorite things that happens post-survival shows, especially the big ones that are backed by the major broadcasting companies, is the number of smaller project groups that pop up made up of former participants. They don't usually last much longer than the debuting group from the show, but they're usually a very interesting composition of the trainees. AB6IX could be considered such a group, for instance.  RAINZ debuted in October of 2017 and disbanded in October of 2018 as a seven-member group, all of whom have debuted as soloists since then and two of which debuted in other groups later. The majority of the members of RAINZ were between ranks 31 and 62 when they were elimin...

Release date: 2026 July 13 Album tracklist: Twenty, Kids Return , Run It Up, Lovestruck, Trainspotting , It's Not Over, Boys Gonna Dive Album runtime: 18 minutes  Okay, the next subunit for this group has debuted, but because the groups current overall maknae is currently fifteen (debuted at fifteen, turns sixteen next month as of writing this), I will have to check every subunit until he turns eighteen in 2028. The maknae of this particular subunit is seventeen, turning eighteen in a few months. He's also the leader and while I'll accept the maknae debuting at seventeen, I did have to check for the second thing that would qualify a group, or in this case a subunit, for Underage Protocol, which is the number of underage members. There are only two in total of the five, which is within acceptable limits percentage wise, and they both turn eighteen before Joshua and V turn thirty-one. And, best part, is that even though there are some short songs lurking amongst the b-sides, ...

Release date: 2026 June 30 Album tracklist:  Perfect Target , Still Cute? Album runtime: 5 minutes  Two-and-a-half minutes. Less than, actually. I know you can't hear it but I just sighed heavily over the runtime for the title track. The other song isn't much longer, so I'm not holding out hope for too much of a complicated ong. That being said, congrats on the win for this song! I.O.I members have been very busy the last few months, but that fits with the concept of the group. This is the same bright and saturated anime girl that makes Yena so popular, which is funny because one is from I.O.I and the other is from the younger sister group IZ*ONE. There's an alarm sound effect occasionally that I really like. Most of the song is filled with the slightly grungy guitar underneath the skittering beat and the very aggressively hyper anime girl going on here. I'm surprised and pleased that the song has something approaching a bridge, if not a bridge outright. She's g...

Release date: 2026 July 08 Album tracklist: On My Knees , Crime (2026 Remastered), Kart Racer (2026 Remastered) Album runtime: 9 minutes  I find it a little amusing and interesting that the last track on here is one I know I've already done when it was originally released. And you know what? I really hope that the maknae gets to work with ATEEZ like he wants. I'm manifesting that for him. Also, I didn't realize until I was typing this up that I didn't pay attention to the song or the single title. I thought it was "On My Way". That's a very different vibe for the song. I actually really like the guitar throughout this ong. This is actually a very fun instrumental. One part soft and affectionate, one part bright and energetic, and one part almost sultry (and before anyone rolls their eyes at my inability to do fractions, I said "one part", not "one half". Trust me, if I say "one half" and it ends up being more than one whole, ...

Release date: 2026 May 28 Album tracklist: ALIVE, SHOW H.O.W, Told U So, TEA, My Vision, Skit.exe, Lost in Proof , ($.$) , Close To Me , One Beat, Dive With Me Album runtime: 28 minutes  This one is almost long enough for me to be fine with the song length. However, as you may remember from the review I did  on their debut song, I noted how much I liked this one. I did that because at the time, I wasn't sure if this was a debuting group that would only be promoting their debut and title track, or if they'd be promoting multiple of the songs (which i the better strategy in my opinion, if the company can afford it, because then you've got more opportunities for people to encounter them and more opportunities for a spark to light the possible fire), and since the group is not on Underage Protocol, I took a listen to perhaps convince someone else to give another song a chance by describing the songs in short. And, also, because I'm really excited every time a group debuts a...

 I've got a doc that I've been adding songs to and removing from for the last couple of weeks of potential songs to cover for the rest of July. Before I tossed that list into a roulette wheel, I took a look at some of the groups I've got in my To Do playlist and added a couple more b-sides for groups in there that I hadn't covered yet. This song was actually one of them, so Teen Top apparently wanted to be covered, and they wanted to be covered now. Which is fine, you know?  Teen Top debuted as a six-member group under TOP Media (which was founded by two members of my second favorite first gen group and also has my kids ODD YOUTH) in 2010 when the maknae was fourteen. I expect better of idols-turned-CEOs. I really do. But apparently the reason why Teen Top wanted to be covered right now is because their sixteenth anniversary is right now, so happy birthday, Teen Top! Their former leader left the group because he didn't feel like he fit the idol standards (I'll f...

Release date: 2026 May 26 Album tracklist:  Starlit Voices , Step, Deja Vu, Too Late, Time Limit - Korean ver., Starlit Voices - inst. Album runtime: 21 minutes  This post has been sitting in my drafts basically since it was released. The fact that they get to use their name again? Their fifteenth anniversary this year? The twins that are besties with Sungjae from BTOB? The concepts this group had? I'm happy about all of this. I'm glad they're still together and making music, and even happier that they got their name back. You know what I'm going to say, right? There's a violin, and that violin is front and center in the instrumental. There's a softness to the instrumental that is supported by how sweeping and cinematic it is. The Cinderella vibes are strong with this instrumental, very fairytale, very pretty. There are several spots where the instrumental follows the vocals, or the vocals follow the instrumental, rather than the two parts doing their own thing...