2023 Reviews

 As things get more filled up, this page will get more filled up. But right now, this large page for one little link is because of organization and consistency.

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20230417 NCT DoJaeJung "Perfume"

August

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Greatest Hits:: Yezi: Cider

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

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

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

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

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

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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...
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Greatest Hits:: EXO: Tempo

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 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...
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Battle of the B-Sides:: CL (2NE1): MTBD (Mental Breakdown) (멘붕)

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    I had this one started over a year ago and then realized the bad timing, and decided to delay it a little bit because it would have been posted during Ramadan and would have been one of the most insensitive things I could have done due to the chanted bits of the Quran which have been removed (there was one concert in 2016 where the unedited version was the one used and CL apologized, corrected the mistake by ordering that all copies of the unedited version destroyed, and that's that) . Which is why it got sent to the pile for me to forget about. I remembered about it during Ramadan again this year, which frustrated me and made me laugh because I needed to remember it during literally any other month of the year. Which is why I'm doing it now so that I don't forget about it again. I did find a version of it online that apparently is the unedited version, but we're not going to use that one. In case you were unaware, CL is the leader of the recently reformed girl grou...
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Greatest Hits:: TWICE: One Spark

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 This was actually the first TWICE song I liked, and I wouldn't have heard it if it hadn't been for a cupsleeve event where I live. And I figured I probably should listen to some of the songs before I went. I listened to three or four that didn't really spark my interest, pun absolutely intended, and then this one played. And I went "Oh? Okay. I've got my song." I've had a bee in my bonnet about this song for a couple of months now, ever since I saw a video compilation on YouTube about the person's worst songs from 2024. No, I will not be sharing it. Think of this as in the classic tradition of scholars responding to each other by writing their own disagreement papers, like during the Enlightenment. And also Cope and Marsh, the two paleontologists who engaged in the Bone War back in the 1800s, but a lot less vitriolic than that. No smear campaigns and no dynamite will be used. There were at least three other songs on there that also sent me into a bit ...
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Song Review:: DAY6: Fourever- HAPPY

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Release date: 2024 March 18 Album tracklist:  Welcome to the Show , HAPPY , The Power of Love, Get The Hell Out, Sad Ending, Let Me Love You, didn't know Album runtime: 24 minutes If it seems odd that I'm reviewing a song that came out in March, you would be correct. I wasn't intending to, but events being such as they are and my ridiculous ideas being what they are, here I am. This is also going to royally mess with my organization system for the moment, but that means I'm going to have to do a couple of March reviews to pad out the page this inevitably goes into. I'm making more work for myself with the weekly wins on the music shows. Hence this seven-month-late review. So look for that. Enough whining from me! Congrats on the win, DAY6! From the bottom of my heart, even though I'm sad you had to beat NU'EST's record, I'm glad you're did beat it, and now you've gotten a couple of wins on different songs in the last few weeks. The title is v...
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