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Battle of the B-Sides:: BoA: Start Over

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 This one is for my personal indulgences, because I wanted something first gen and I wanted something fairly recent. So, I'm going with Queen BoA, all hail the queen. The song does turn five this year, so it's not completely recent, but she's also got her 25th anniversary this year and I'm hoping she releases something for that. She also debuted at the age of thirteen, but we're not going to talk about that because then I'll be a little too filled with The Rage on her behalf and these are supposed to be not-rage-filled moments. This song comes from BoA's tenth studio album, Better, released in 2020 to mark her twentieth anniversary. Eleven tracks, of which Start Over is the ninth, for a total of thirty-eight minutes. Produced by SM the Dude and Marcus Andersson (who has produced for LE SSERAFIM, ILLIT, Demi Levato, and VCHA, among others) and written by Lee Seu Ran (who has written for BTS, TxT, IVE, Everglow, NCT, Super Junior, and GOT7, among others), Rosi...
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Greatest Hits:: SHINee: Everybody

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 Finally a moment to breathe where I can get to this one. This was suggested to me via a Reddit comment by a user who asked me if I'd do this song because I'd mentioned it in my August wrap-up in the honorable mention category. No further details were incoming, but that's okay! In this case, I didn't need any. SHINee is the oldest group I've done so far for a Greatest Hits addition, and Everybody  is also the oldest song I've done so far because it's a month older than Hush . So, reviewer hat off, and fan hat on.  Group : SHINee Debut Date : 2008 May 25 Company : SM Entertainment Status : Active Album : Everybody Song :  Everybody Release Date : 2013 October 14 My city doesn't have a ton of K-Pop things happening, so when things happen, I want to go to them, even if it's for a group I don't know well/listen to as a show of support so we can get more and hopefully for a group I listen to. In the case of SHINee, I knew An Encore , because I heard ...
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Who is this Random Person Reviewing K-Pop and Why Does Her Voice Matter in the Cacophonous Discord that is the Internet?

     Much like a recipe blog, this K-Pop review blog depends on the path leading me to where I am at today to dictate my tastes and how I perceive the world. Unlike a recipe blog, I'm not going to start every review with fifteen pages of backstory to get to the good stuff that you would actually care about.      You'll get the full fifteen (this is a joke, I don't think it's that long) pages up front, so you can decide for yourself if I'm worth listening to. There are a lot of voices out there. I'm merely one of them. Hopefully somewhat entertaining, but considering it took one of my friends four years to realize I was fun, I'm not holding my breath on that one.      So, who am I, and why should you care? Because my story isn't extraordinary. Well, it is because it's mine, but there are at least thousands, probably millions of other stories like it. Maybe something about mine resonates with you. But I do like to think I have some credentials ...
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Music Show Wins:: Week of 01/15 - 01/21

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  Most of the music shows are back on, which means the live stage performances, which I love best, are back in almost full force. We get more variety again! So, this week had another triple crown, which is exciting because once again, he got it without promoting the song other than the one performance. We got two first wins for songs, which is absolutely delightful for the groups. I'm so happy for them. On After School Club, Allen and Taeyoung rejoined as MCs with Aron for WEi, a five member boy group that debuted in 2020. There are some very cute dimples going on, some excellent English skills, more going for Taeyoung's MC job here, and some throwing the other members under the bus. That's always fun to see.  As always, the links in the chart go to my reviews. Show Champion: N/A MCountdown: BOYNEXTDOOR "If I Say, I Love You" (note: this performance is from the 250109 episode) Music Bank: BSS (Seventeen) "CBZ (Prime Time)"  Show! Music Core: G-Dragon (BI...
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Song Review:: Taemin (SHINee): Eternal- Sexy in the Air

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Release date: 2024 August 19 Album tracklist: G.O.A.T, Sexy in the Air , Horizon , The Unknown Sea, Crush, Deja Vu, Say Less Album runtime: 21 minutes      As the inaugural review for this new blog, I had to go with Taemin. I know this is a few weeks late, but better late than never and it's at least still in August. Hello, and welcome!      As his first album under the new company, I'm sure most fans approached it with mild or moderate hesitation.       Luckily, I don't necessarily think we need have worried too much.       The song opens with some grindy electric guitar, an element I have to admit I'm a fan of in general. It reminds me of a science fiction dystopia film at night in the rain during a chase, which is a specific image for me that isn't at odds with the music video.      The verses lose that guitar, turning into more of a generic trap sound that unfortunately loses my attention, but turns...
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Kai (EXO): Wait On Me- Walls Don't Talk {Pre-Release}

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Release date: 2025 April 21 Album tracklist: Wait On Me, Walls Don't Talk, Pressure, Ridin', Off and Away, Adult Swim, Flight to Paris Album runtime: 19 minutes  Yes, I know it's been a hot minute since this was released, but that's fine! I'm actually curious about this one. I'll get to title track, and I'll bump it up when he gets a win on a music show. In the meantime, I'm curious to see about this one. At least the run time is better on this one, but I really don't like the runtime of the album. This song is at least better. You know how when you're playing with a dog and they put teeth on you, not enough to hurt or even leave indents, but just so that you know that they have teeth and they're choosing not to use them on you? I wish this song would actually bite, not just warn. It's got obvious teeth with the instrumentals, not that it even threatens to use them, but it does have them, so I cannot be too miffed with the situation. It f...
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GREATEST HITS:: NU'EST W (NU'EST): HELP ME

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 Sentimentality here. The fifteenth was their anniversary, and Baekho left Pledis on the fourteenth, and I had my car accident on the thirteenth. It has been a rough few days emotionally and while I had a plan to do another group, the car accident confirmed for me that I should just do this for their anniversary, even though typing for long periods of time (such as doing this) hurts my wrist. And I picked a NU'EST W song, because the W stands for waiting, and that's what we're doing: waiting for them to come back. And I'm not masochistic enough to do Where You At , which got them their first win at all since debut, or Deja Vu , which is so beloved that it also got performed as five later. NU'EST W is the subunit formed after their appearance on Produce 101 S2 until 2019 with the return of Minhyun to the group. The album, Wake, N, hit number on the Korean charts, and this song got a win on Music Bank, which makes it the subunit's fourth win. In 2018. In December ...
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Battle of the B-Sides: B.A.P: Carnival

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 So this was actually suggested to me by multiple members of the fandom when I shared the Greatest Hits post for the title track,  Feel So Good,  with them. There's been enough time since I posted that (about a month) and there's been enough variation in the GH and BBS posts since then that this feels like a good time to post this. And that way, I can get this back to them finally, and it can stop sitting on my head screaming at me to do it. So, this is from the B.A.P's eponymous 2016 album, Carnival. You all are apparently getting very cheery songs right now. I don't know how much of it is me wanting cheerful songs, but aggressive cheerfulness can almost never go wrong. Honestly, the song feels like a finale song to a musical, where they're dancing down the middle of a street, with the others in the cast falling in behind while streamers and confetti rain down around them and the band is actually a marching band. It's just fun incarnate.  Every time I hear Ban...
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Music Show Wins:: Week of 04/23 - 04/29

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  I am super late with posting this, but in my defense, I GOT TO SEE 8TURN THIS WEEK AND THEY'RE AWESOME AND VERY PRETTY. And very funny. And very, very good dancers. And their vocals? Took my earplugs out a couple of times just to hear some of those notes better. Myungho has a set of pipes on him, let me tell you. Color me impressed. Anyway, we got some first song wins this week, which is delightful. There are only three groups that got wins this week, and all three of them debuted last year, funnily enough, so that's good news for the kids. I say kids. They range from roughly 23 to 14. Big spread of ages. I'm not entirely pleased with all of those ages, but regardless of that, I wish the groups' continued success as they continue to learn and grow and become better artists and hopefully well-rounded people. For the ASC performance as After School Club is still on hiatus, I just scrolled randomly and landed on Cross Gene, which was interesting because the episode was f...
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Music Show Wins: Week of 11/20 - 11/26

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Wow, NCT DREAM has been sweeping the music shows this week. Congrats to them, and well done, fans. You worked hard successfully. Aespa caught another post-promotion win, which is good. There wasn't a showing of MCountdown this week, likely because of MAMA, which I just realized yesterday while I was looking at some BIGBANG stuff needs to be MAMA and not MAMA Awards because that's redundant and would be MNet Asian Music Awards Awards and all I can hear is that one guy from the Doctor Who episode being all weird about ATMOS System for the exact same reason. I really don't like the character, but he does have a point there. Everyday, there's something new to learn. On ASC, we had the project group The CrewOne from Ace of Ace , and they're still not fully cohesive, but the survival show helped as a trial by fire, I can guarantee it. It was nice seeing them and Cravity get to hang out sort of without it being a stressful situation like a survival show and without compet...
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