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:: DreamNote: GHOST

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 Alrighty-roo. I went back and took a look at some of the songs I shared with y'all in the other Halloween posts, and decided that I'd put this one on the short list for October this year. The shortlist is twenty songs long, for the record, so I'm not going to cover all of them right now, but I thought that this would be a good one to follow a behemoth of a group. As I said in the Halloween post in 2024, I wouldn't have discovered this group and this song if they hadn't released a new song. Ish. Seriously, this is an underrated group and it's impressive they survived as long as they did. They made it the full seven years of their contract, which is four more than the average girl group, so I just want that acknowledgement for them. Also, their fandom colors are Joyful Green and Cheerful Yellow, and that's just so precious that they actually have colors and what those colors are called. I know that's a bit weird with how dark this song is, but most of th...
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Battle of the B-Sides:: HOT ISSUE: We Go

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 Okay, everyone! Back to my September of groups that deserve more attention because they shouldn't be forgotten! This isn't even the newest group that we're going to be talking about this month because the next one is even younger, but I think they have survived technically longer. I've actually got a couple of HOT ISSUE's songs in one of my playlists already, though this is not one of them. I just decided that I wanted something a lot more upbeat than what I was going to get from S#arp. So. The reality is the group lasted less than a year, which is even worse than the three year average for girl groups. But the song doesn't know that. HOT ISSUE debuted in 2021 as a seven-member group under S2 Entertainment, a company that was set up by one of the founders of Cube Entertainment, which automatically tells me that this group has some vocals on them. It also makes sense that I found them and added songs to playlists despite their less than a year of official activi...
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Song Review:: Kiss of Life: SWEAT- SWEAT

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Battle of the B-Sides:: The Boyz: Survive The Night

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I'm not super familiar with most of their discography and even though Sangyeon was on my enlistment wall (I've got a softness for him because his birthday is near mine), I wasn't initially planning on doing a discharge post for him. Then, to my surprise, I got this request in The Form from someone who just found my little blog from a post I shared on Tumblr, asking if I'd do this song for Sangyeon's discharge. Naturally! Discharge posts and anniversary posts are two of my favorite kinds of posts to do because they're just happy times usually. And I'm excited to do this specific one because while I've heard a couple of songs from this album, I haven't actually heard this one, so you're also introducing me to a new song. I also find it slightly satisfying that I'd already planned to do a song by a group from this company (sort of) this month, so I'm very much not opposed to including The Boyz here because they too have languished under a ga...
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Song Review:: Stray Kids: THIS & THAT- After You

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Halloween Spookening: 2025 Edition

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Halloween Spookening: 2026 Edition

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 Everyone! It is time for the best season of the year! We're back with another batch of songs for the month of Spookening! Whoo! As always, because I am a connoisseur of the creepy, I spend basically all year scouring for the spooky and the dark songs. Basically, if I'm not in a specific mood playlist or my regular listening playlist, I've had my ears buried in spooky playlists. And I found some whoppers, but I can only fit so many into this unless I want to make it four hours long. You'd have to get my personal Halloween playlist if you want one that long though.  It's the most wonderful time of the year! Without any further ado, here are your 2026 Halloween recs: Mirotic by TVXQ! You may be wondering why I'm putting this song in a Halloween playlist when it's famously known for being quite sexy, and sexiness alone does not qualify it for this playlist. However, I'd like to point out the elements of the music video which would qualify it for this playl...
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Song Review:: Ken (VIXX): PUZZLE- 신아브로 (Gradually)

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Release date: 2024 December 26 Album tracklist: 신아브로 (Gradually) , Bye My Only Universe, We Are Forever, Make Me Strong, Dear Little Star Album runtime: 18 minutes  I don't normally include the Korean titles because it's inconvenient for me when I'm on the computer but given that this one has no English lyrics at all, it feels disingenuous to have the English title only. The timing is also hilarious for me given that I just covered both a VIXX song as well as a remake of one of Ken's songs. The alignment of the stars brings me a little bit of joy, and I'm glad for it to have happened. It's cute. I'm patiently waiting to see when VIXX puts out a new album, but in the meantime, I'm happy to see what the members do individually.  I accidentally left the whole album on and wandered away from the device. But I have to say that there are some songs on here where he is flexing a phenomenal voice, and wow . Also, take a look at that runtime. Yes.  There are enou...
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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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Song Review:: RE:WIND: Treading Water

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Release date: 2026 October 09 Album tracklist: Treading Water Album runtime: 3 minutes  It's been a hot minute since they released something, so I'm kind of stoked about this. I love their debut song, if you weren't here for this back then or you ignored it. It's pretty awesome. It's one of the most Backstreet Boys things I've heard in recent years. And also, the eldest one loves BTOB, so we already know he's a man of taste for top-tier vocals, and I can say that objectively because of how the other five groups reacted to BTOB on Kingdom (one of my favorite responses was "If they decide to dance too, we're done") and because of what they've won with those vocals. So the fact that one of them loves BTOB tells us his vocal standard, and it will likely continue to influence the vocals of this group because of the emulation thing humans do that's so fun. This feels like it might be leaning a little afrobeats, but I don't think that...
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