Battle of the B-Sides:: Candy Shop: Candy#

 I decided to spend some time this month on artists I haven't covered yet, which includes some younger and some older artists, and also on b-sides, because I've given a lot of attention to the title tracks the last couple of months and realistically, there are a lot more b-sides than there are title tracks floating out in the big wide world of music. People pay more attention to the title tracks for understandable reasons, but I really like the b-sides and they're a different side of groups than you get from the title tracks, you know?

So, Candy Shop is a five-member girl group that debuted in 2024 under Brave Entertainment. One of the members is currently on hiatus, and I did review the last song they released, which was March of 2025, right after the maknae turned seventeen. So, as of this year, with the maknae eighteen years old, they're no longer on Underage Protocol for debuting with most of the group underage at debut, which means I get to sniff my way through their (limited) discography now, hence this song. It's been over a year and the last thing they did was a single, so they're very overdue for something. I'm starting to get a little worried. Good news is that there was a live that was done on the official YouTube channel about a month ago and they've been doing shorts/reels/TikToks, so it's not desolate yet. But it's been a year.

Candy# is the fourth and last track on their debut mini album, Hashtag#. Our lyricists and composers are Brave Brothers (4Minute, After School, Park Bom, Sunmi, Samuel, BIGBANG, AOA, Sistar, HyunA, Boyfriend, T-ARA, Lee Seung Gi, HELLO VENUS, DKB, BTOB, Uni. T, Dal Shabet, Brave Girls, ZE:A, and UKISS) and Chakun (AOA, The KingDom, HELLO VENUS, TRENDZ, Samuel, Teen Top, Weki Meki, Boyfriend, T-ARA, Sistar, DreamNote, INI, DKB, Candy Shop and BAE173). The lyricist-only is Maboos (HyunA, Samuel, Sunmi, SISTAR, Park Bom, Brave Girls, DKB, Rania, TEEN TOP, 1PUNCH, HELLO VENUS, BOYFRIEND, MYNAME, After School, BIGSTAR, Leesang, UKISS, T-ARA, Bigflo, Romeo, and F-ve Dolls), and then the composer-only is JS (Samuel, AOA, Brave Girls, DKB, Dal Shabet, 1PUNCH, TEEN TOP, and Bigflo).

I picked the one without the performance video. Well, that's fine. I thought about doing Hashtag# because I do really like the song, but I'm not quite sure I'm ready to commit on my own to doing a whole post this long on a minute-and-a-half song. Unless someone wants me to.

That is an invitation. I've heard some intros that are absolutely stunning.

 I'm a little annoyed that we don't have any performances I can find, but I am hunting. I am continuing to hunt my way through this song throughout this post, so I did find a fan upload where I got some comments on this song. A lot of people are agreeing with each other that they think this one should have been the title track, which would have made this Candy Shop's debut song. This is the space for people to make a claim like that since, to quote myself, "[Battle of the B-Sides] is a slight misnomer as I'm not actually going to be comparing songs here. But I like the alliteration. Instead, I'm choosing the title to mean something more along the lines of 'B-sides that outshine their title tracks'." 

Candy# is a dance track, plain and simple. It's one dance break away from having an EDM dance break (which isn't something I see as often as I'd like to see with the girl groups), but this is one of those songs that deserves some big choreography. A strong drum for the main beat, a bit of a skittering beat applied strategically, not through the whole song, and a synthesizer that just won't quit. 

But this is a girl's girl song, the kind of song that you want to hear when you're out with your girl friends, the kind of song that sits in the same space as Kesha's Tik Tok (ignoring the opening line of the original because we're not here to have that debate) and Lady Gaga's Just Dance and Beyonce's Single Ladies, but like the younger sister of those songs along with the stateswoman song of Cyndi Lauper's Girls Just Wanna Have Fun (which I just found out has 1.7 billion views on YouTube, which is slightly less than Tik Tok and Single Ladies combined, which is just wild). 

We are here to have fun with our friends at some kind of party. I don't know what kind of party it is. This could be at a club or at a house party, I don't know. But we are here to have fun. There is energy and boldness and delight here in this song, and if I'm being entirely honest here, this would have made an amazing debut song. Like, I'm not entirely sure that I've heard the title track for the album (I was listening to the b-sides because I wanted to do one of Candy Shop's b-sides this month), so I genuinely wouldn't be able to say one way or the other if it would have made a better debut track, but if we think back to the girl group debuts of 2023 and 2024, this would have stood out so much as a debut track.

Candy# (which is actually a play on words using "#" as the word "sharp", which would sound like the word "shop" in a Korean accent because of what happens to r-controlled vowels, and I'm in favor of it as a debut track for the group for that very specific reason, even if it wasn't the debut song) has teeth and a very carefree attitude that doesn't claim sonic dominance or arrogant swagger.

Okay. We're going to go a little bit off script a little bit from what I normally do because this is the closest thing to a music video this song is going to get and in the comments I found out that a video that I've been seeing but haven't clicked on may actually be a choreography teaser, but I'm going to include the album teaser. 

What did I say about this being a party song? What did I say? Even the teaser has it as a party. It's fun! It's energetic! It's exactly what the song sound like!

And this is the closest we're going to get to choreography, until the company takes the members out of the basement and gives them a comeback and opportunities to perform, because apparently they didn't learn their lesson of how much performances matter from Brave Girls. 

There's a little bit of sass to some of that choreography, though I'm not sure how much of it is just Candy# and how much of it is other songs. But I love the ripple at :44. I love ripples in choreography. They're just aesthetically pleasing. This particular ripple happens during a section of the instrumental that I know is part of Candy#, which is why I mention it. 

The group deserves more. This song deserves more.  This one has the primordial soup that could provide the foundation for them to thrive in the K-Pop ecosystem, but they just aren't being given that electric spark to kickstart life.

The company needs to get it together.

For some of you, this may actually be your first introduction to Candy Shop. I don't want this group to go the way of so many other groups, because, as is the case here with this song, they've got some bangers. Thanks for reading about Candy#! Check out the rest of their discography! 

I'm kind of thinking about doing a month where I do some deep digging into nugu groups, so if you've got one you want to champion, toss me some songs either in the comments or via The Form. I can do a lot of research, but it helps with the posts if I can get a specific angle to focus on or start with. Ooh. Champions. How would y'all like to be called that?

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