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.

April

20230417 NCT DoJaeJung "Perfume"

August

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Greatest Hits:: EXID: Up & Down

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 I was actually really excited to get this suggestion via The Form, because this song has apparently been sitting in my Junk Drawer for ages, which means that I get to clean out the playlist a little. That feels a little illegal, but who cares? Thank you, dear suggester, for giving me an excellent excuse to move a song out of that unwieldy playlist. They also directed me towards a fan cam from Music Bank  for this song and mentioned that it was the reason they got into the group at all, so I'm excited to see what this fan-inducing fan cam was. You can get some incredible shots on fan cams, and I love them because they're usually the raw audio that's been unaltered by the program or agency to make the groups sound better. So, EXID is a 2012 group, which I'm very delighted for obvious reasons. They sit between B.A.P and NU'EST in age, being a February debut as well as my apparently preferred debut year of 2012. I like this. I also really like their logo because unless...
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Battle of the B-Sides:: NU'EST: ONE KISS2

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 Even though I desperately want to do nothing but talk about my absolute ult and first group, the unfortunate reality I face every time I have to pick a song for either a GH or a BBS post, and it's one that everyone who is a fan of a disbanded group is aware of, is that until and unless they get back together after their enlistments, NU'EST songs are a finite resource. If I go hog wild on them, I will run out of them quickly. So, really, I should save them for special occasions, like birthdays and anniversaries. And this isn't one, but I have also spent the past week or so just missing them. So I'm ignoring the suggestions for this posting cycle, I'm ignoring the Roulette Wheel, and I'm ignoring the irrationality of the emotion. I'm sure this is partially fueled by the awareness of Hoshi's impending enlistment with the release of CBZ , but it is what it is. So I'm also giving myself permission to just fangirl over this song. Please note that the name...
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Song Review:: Seulgi (Red Velvet): Accidentally On Purpose- Baby, Not Baby

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Release date: 2025 March 10 Album track list: Baby, Not Baby ; Better Dayz, Rollin' (With My Homies), Whatever, Praying, Weakness Album runtime: 18 mi nutes  Next on the list of soloists to cover their new release is Seulgi! Several of her songs came onto my radar as I was building my Halloween playlist last year, so this? Yes, I'm curious about, and I'm very much fully on board with all of this. And as a side note, Rollin' (With My Homies) ? Yeah, it definitely makes me think of the movie Clueless,  and I can't wait to finish this review so I can go listen to that song specifically. My initial thoughts on the song was that it was cosplaying as something soft and fluffy. But then, the more I was thinking about it and chewing the song over in my mind, the more I decided against even that. This song is a sister song to the debut hit from Britney Spears, ... Baby One More Time . It's got some of the exact same grindy guitar chords, like, to the point that I think i...
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Music Show Wins:: Week of 03/12 - 03/18

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  Well, that was a clean sweep. VIPs and FAM, congrats! This is roughly as I expected to happen, so thank you for not disappointing me, but I'm only including the music video because there were no performances except for MCountdown two weeks ago. The Show has disappointed me for not airing anything, I'm assuming there were some extenuating circumstances. On After School Club, we had OT5 again with 100 . They're hilarious. Also, as I was watching the portion where they play the game, I found the perfect gif to describe one of the members. This was a funny episode. Also, Aron mentioned that he'd celebrated his thirteenth anniversary over the weekend and when asked a question about his members, I was unsurprised by his response and I still laughed. via GIPHY And as always, the links in the graph go to the reviews. Show Champion: G-Dragon (BIGBANG) "TOO BAD" MCountdown:  G-Dragon (BIGBANG) "TOO BAD" Music Bank:  G-Dragon (BIGBANG) "TOO BAD" Sho...
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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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Music Show Wins:: Week of 03/05 - 03/11

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  As expected. As much as I'd like BTOB to get a win for their new song, it was bad timing with everyone else who is releasing songs around that time. Case in point, we got two first wins for a song. And one of those was a first win ever. So congrats! NouerA was on After School Club, and they made me laugh. For example, here are two little quotes that I caught during the chaos of the games in the last part of the show, prompted by the chaos of the members. One of the MCs said, "What in the hell is going on?" And I laughed. And then not even three seconds later, another MC goes, "This is a chaos." Which made me laugh harder. NouerA are cute, adorable dorks who remind me a little bit of second gen groups in early days. And the starry eyes from the members when they see dance covers of their  song for the first time is what I live for with the newly debuted groups. We have that moment here. Starry-eyed rookies having all of these firsts. I hope they do well. As alw...
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Song Review:: NMIXX- Fe304: Forward- High Horse {Pre-Release}

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Release date: 2025 March 17 Album track list:  High Horse , KNOW ABOUT ME , Slingshot (<★), Golden Recipe, Papillon, Ocean Album runtime: 17 mi nutes   Okay, pre-release. Album comes out on March 17th. I'm not going to be a mess that day at all given what comes two and three days earlier, but it's fine. I'll have this blog to distract me this year and I don't have Minhyun doing his whole thing this year. So! Thank you, NMIXX. I appreciate the timing if nothing else. Also, and this might just be me being weird, but the word papillon doesn't look like it's spelled right. I know it is. But it doesn't look like it. If you didn't know, a papillon is a butterfly in French. Also a type of dog.  I thought this was going to be in the ballad sphere, but this is moody and surprisingly gothic, swinging between the more layered instrumentals and a quiet solo piano. It's almost like gothic dubstep. I don't even know if that's a thing or if I'm just ...
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Greatest Hits:: MAMAMOO: Starry Night

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 Coming up as we are on March 15th, I'm starting to get emotional. Between certain anniversaries, and a certain member leaving his company on the group disbandment date, I'm not doing incredibly well. So, for the dopamine hit, I picked a group that has very little connection to my boys, other than having two more 95z and their maknae being born within days of one of the members, but also one that I already love. MAMAMOO is the girl group version of my emotional support group, BTOB, and I'm into the emotional support right now for myself.  So I picked an emotional support song because I need it and I'm sure that someone else out there needs it. Starry Night  is, as the post title suggests, the title track for their EP "Yellow Flower" from their Four Seasons, Four Colors series (which serves to highlight each of the four members, beginning here with Hwasa). It kind of feels like half the album got a music video of some sort, something I think is super cool, and ...
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Song Review:: NouerA: New is Now- N.I.N (New is Now) {Debut}

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Release date: 2025 February 26 Album track list: Sparkle, N.I.N (New is Now) , Bring the Crunk, MU, Jet Stream, Pairing Album runtime: 3 mi nutes  Okay. Technically I'm pulling this out of the draft line, but this is a debut and I'd like to make sure I get this one done before too much time has passed on it. Oh! I was watching this survival show! And then I got distracted! This is the debut group from MakeMate1! And everyone in the group is seventeen or older! I remember a couple of the members as the trainees, which is impressive because I only watched a couple of episodes before getting distracted. This should be interesting.  Five seconds in and I am in love. These instrumentals at the beginning feel exactly like an old theme song from the 60s, specifically for Batman or Scooby-Doo. Or Scooby-Doo and Batman, but that didn't happen until 1972. It's a little jazzy, a little disco, and all drama. Also. Hold on. Do my ears deceive me or is that an EDM dance break? In th...
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Music Show Wins:: Week of 03/19 - 03/25

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  Well, all sorts of groups got wins this week, along with a Triple Crown! Congrats to all the groups for their first win for the songs! There isn't a single song that won on more than one show this week, which I like for the sake of diversity, and that means lots of different stages to share with you all. Also, three of the wins were with YG affiliated soloists/groups. After School Club had TNX (the group formerly known as The New Six) on, which was cool for them to talk about their new song before it comes out. Also, the amount of times they said something like "We didn't ask the company for permission, but it's fine" was hysterical, and one of the five of them is an absolute character. He's a delight. Also, the MCs on ASC announced this was the final episode of season 1 of ASC, which has lasted for twelve years, so they'll be going on hiatus for a little bit before the next season. So rather than just not include an ASC performance at all, because I can...
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