Song Review:: AHOF: RUN TO YOU: RUN TO YOU

-

  • Release date: 2026 July 08
  • Album tracklist: RUN TO YOU, Sugar High, JUST SAY YES, You're the Reason, Our Story
  • Album runtime: 15 minutes

 I can listen to AHOF like I want to December of 2028 when the maknae turns eighteen. He was fifteen at debut, which unfortunately puts the group in Underage Protocol. Although he is currently sixteen, so if you're not quite as stubborn as I am and sixteen is your only hard limit, the group is good to go for you now. The group being in Underage Protocol does not change the fact that I have several of their songs sitting waiting in the playlist I have for songs by groups I can't listen to yet. 

If this instrumental was slightly more acoustic, we'd have a country song on our hands. As it is, this song is also still so "boy groups" that I'm not surprised it's gotten a win already. The beat holds the song in place while the other pieces move around it, and while there is a dramatic late song interruption with specifically chosen rests, I wish the rests were more dramatic. But this is still nice. I wish the maknae wasn't the age he was at debut so I could listen to this a few more times, but it is what it is. I just know there's stuff I'm missing though, which is a little frustrating, but I bring this frustration upon myself because I don't want to support companies debuting anyone under sixteen. But, also, that's a great guitar. Very upbeat.

I love how heavy the singing is for this group. It's a personal preference and I recognize that, but also, they've got lovely voices. They really do. There's some rapping going on here, but it's relatively mild and doesn't require me to have a mental readjustment. The "run to you" part was particularly good, I think.

I love how soft their songs are, in general. They remind me in feel, though not sound, to NU'EST's later tracks. And their music videos are just cute.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Battle of the B-Sides:: WJSN: Pantomime

-
Image
 And here's our closer to the b-side month I decided to do. You know what's kind of funny? The first songs I reviewed are about to become eligible for Greatest Hits posts. Some of them are practically those posts in length already, so it would be interesting to see what I do with them now, especially now that I've had time to sit with some of them and performances have had time to happen. In the meantime, we've got a song that comes with mcuh recommendation from the K-Pop community at large and kind of a perfect way to bridge what I've been doing with July and the events that are going to happen in August. Because this kind of is an event on its own, but it's also a b-side by an artist I haven't covered. Win-win. Best of both worlds. Perfect bridge. And it has a bridge, which is a throwback to May. WJSN, also known as Cosmic Girls, debuted as a twelve-member group under Starship Entertainment back in 2016. I've actually got a pretty big soft spot for thi...
Read more

Halloween Spookening: 2024 Edition

-
Image
 I love Halloween. It's been my favorite holiday for literally my entire life. I have loved Halloween longer than Sangyeon of The Boyz has been alive, barely because my first Halloween was a couple of days before he was born, but according to my mother, even at the age of not-quite one years old, I have loved it. She dressed me up as a San Francisco 49ers cheerleader. I have pictures.  One of the most important things, then, is finding music that matches the Month of Spookening and horror. I love spooky movies. I love spooky books. I love spooky video games (even though I am a wuss of the nth degree and prefer to watch other people play them). And I love spooky music. THUS, this post is simply going to be a compilation of some of the songs I've added to my Halloween K-Pop playlist. If I were to add all of the songs in there, this post would be ages  long. So I'm only going to add as many as I feel like it. I don't know how long this is going to be. But there will be vib...
Read more

Music Show Wins:: Week of 07/08 - 07/14

-
Image
  I'm getting closer to being caught up.  The links down in the chart, as always, go to my reviews I've written for the songs. Show Champion: Hearts2Hearts "Lemon Tang" MCountdown: LE SSERAFIM + ILLIT + KATSEYE "ICONIC BY MISTAKE" Music Bank: ATEEZ "BAD" Show! Music Core: aespa "LEMONADE" Inkigayo: I.O.I "Suddenly" ASC Performance: N/A The Show: RESCENE "Pretty Girl" The Extra Stage: BABYMONSTER "I LIKE IT"
Read more

Song Review:: NAZE: NAZE- People Talk {Debut}

-
Image
Release date: 2026 May 04 Album tracklist:  Pretty Pink Socks , People Talk , Awesome, Seoul Album runtime: 12 minutes  I'm suddenly having deja vu, like I've already looked these guys up. Was it this group? Was it a different one? Well, regardless, these guys took a bit of the ol' ASTRO route and technically debuted as actors first in a drama and used that to introduce themselves. And I believe that they would have been CIX's younger brothers, if CIX hadn't recently been disbanded, and yes, I am totally fine about that. Why wouldn't I be? Disbanding right before military service. It's fine. Technically they're the grand-dongsaengs because of EPEX, so EPEX are the ones getting younger brothers. Anyway, I wish NAZE all the luck in the world. And their maknae is already eighteen, so we don't need to put them on Underage Protocol. Interesting choice for a debut song. I feel like more companies are debuting with a little bit more of a sultry, yearning so...
Read more

Song Review:: Bijou: Summer Night 2026

-
Image
Release date: 2026 July 24 Album tracklist: Summer Night 2026 , Summer Night 2026 - Instrumental Album runtime: 3 minutes  Okay. So. I'm sure you're all aware that I try to pay specific attention to the first Gen groups when they drop new music. And this isn't technically new music in the way we might think, but it is a new edition, so to speak, from their 2017 song. Oh, and they're a co-ed group. We need the co-ed groups to stay active because there are so few of them. Ah, listen to that saxophone at the beginning. I wish it lingered a little bit more throughout the song, but it pops up enough that I'm okay with it not being present throughout. Funnily enough, when the saxophone isn't around, it sounds like video game menu music for something that's brightly colored with cute animals. It's kind of Viva Pinata, you know? The saxophone ages it up a little and turns it into easy listening, and it's really nice, and then it goes back to the menu music. ...
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

Battle of the B-Sides:: Teen Top: Tell me why

-
Image
 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...
Read more

Battle of the B-Sides:: RAINZ- Music up

-
Image
 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...
Read more

Song Review:: 8TURN: 8.X- Stagefright

-
Image
Release date: 2026 July 21 Album tracklist: Stagefright , 8PM Album runtime: 5 minutes  I'm so excited that they're coming back to my city. They put on a pretty good concert, even with how small that venue was, and I like a lot of their music. EXCEL is still my favorite song of theirs, but even then, they've released a few other songs I like nearly as well. I'm just happy that they're still active. I really am. There is a specific level of sultry drama in the instrumental. While the instrumental has the slow beat that lets the ong have a little bit of an inherent weight, the actual instruments being used are largely light and high. The instrumental uses the heavy weight of a lone percussion as punctuation for the song instead of letting the ong ahve a swagger weight through the whole thing. I imagine that we're going to get some very smooth choreography with this song. I also mostly love how the instrumental falls out from underneath the rapping to let him stan...
Read more

Song Review:: Plave: Caligo Pt. 1- Dash

-
Image
Release date: 2025 February 03 Album tracklist: Chroma Drift, Dash , RIZZ, Island, 12:32 (A to T) Album runtime: 17 minutes  I wasn't originally going to do a review for this group because I don't know where to put them in my mental classifications (I had to work really hard as a kid to learn that animation = not real because I believed literally everything was real until I was about seven, which also coincided with my realization that I couldn't actually visit Jurassic Park, so I struggle with the idea of a virtual group in general), but because this song got a win on a music show, I kind of have to for the pattern I've established. So, here we are, although I honestly don't mind being forced to do a review because of my pattern. PLAVE is a virtual group using motion capture that debuted in 2023. And that's all I've got for you on that end. I apologize for the rambling thus far. I'm assuming the real people are all adults for my own sanity, but I also h...
Read more