Music Reviews

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

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  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"
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Battle of the B-Sides:: WJSN: Pantomime

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 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...
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Song Review:: Bijou: Summer Night 2026

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

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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...
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May 2026 Wrap-Up: What Happens In Vegas

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 [Insert the upside down smiley face here] In all seriousness, I know I'm very late, but I think I got through most of the reviews I wanted to do and it's time to do this. Otherwise I'll just keep putting it off and end up having to write it in December so that I can write my year-end wrap-up. Like last year. We're trying to avoid the stress I put myself through in December again. And spoiler for the songs I was listening to this month, it was a lot of NU'EST, so I'm only going to include the one I listened to the most rather than the four that would be included. For once, my top NU'EST listen was not FACE.  Debut time! Debuts I covered: NAZE , YUHZ , HEART OF WOMAN , AND2BLE , and H//PE PRINCESS . Debuts I didn't cover: FLARE U . Soloists whose debut I did not cover: J.Seph (KARD) (note: this is actually a draft so this will likely be finished at some point so this will be edited when I do) and Gabee (JAESSBEE) .  Songs I was looking forward to: I.O.I-...
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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:: Billlie: appendix: Of All We Have Lost- trampoline {Pre-Release}

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Release date: 2024 October 16 Album tracklist:  remembrance c andy ,  trampoline, Bluerose, BTTB (Back to the Basics),  shame,  dream diary ~ etching mémoires of midnight rêverie Album runtime: 20 minutes  I'm aware of one of the members of the group by name and know she and one of the other members came off hiatus earlier in the year. I'm always relieved when a member on hiatus for whatever reason becomes active again, and I hope she is doing well. I also believe this is the first full group album in a while, so that's also an exciting moment. I'm also aware of the recent controversy of the use of AI in promotional/album artwork for this album, or this particular single. I'm not entirely sure. I also do not condone the use of generative AI in artwork. But that's something to be aware of.  Audience participation snapping? Be still, my soul. There are a couple of sections where you could actually have audience participation clapping as well, which ...
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Battle of the B-Sides:: Ailee: Love Recipe

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 Two big powerhouse vocalists back to back. Nice. We're continuing with July's "I'm doing b-sides by artists that I haven't covered yet" theme, I suppose you could call it. I've had a few months of writing a lot of Greatest Hits posts for the Expanded Offerings, so I thought I'd forcibly balance that out a bit to compensate for that a little and for what will be happening in the short term that I know about. Which isn't a lot because I keep changing my mind about exactly what songs I'm going to do although the topic has been fairly stable once I decide it. Next month is "Events". For the record. With a tiny three post arc in the middle that's slightly unrelated. That mini arc is the only one that's one hundred percent locked though.  Ailee debuted in 2012 as a soloist, which makes her one of my beloved 2012 debuts, and congrats to her because she got married in 2024! I wish her a long and happy life with her husband. And you w...
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Song Review:: Plave: Caligo Pt. 1- Dash

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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...
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Music Show Wins:: Week of 09/17 - 09/23

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  Okay. We're going to start off with a big congrats to the freshly debuted soloists who got wins this week! It's a little amusing to me that we have two SM winners. But congrats to everyone involved! Also, holy wow Dayoung is pretty. For the After School Club re-run while they're still on hiatus, I actually picked this one before I found out who the The Show winner was, so this was just a happy coincidence. This is ep. 372 from 2019 with WJSN as the guests and Jamie, Heejun, and Woosung from The Rose as the hosts! I couldn't find a good clip of them performing Boogie Up  there so I used their The Show performance instead because those two shows are on the same channel. And as always, the links down in the table go to my reviews, if you have any curiosity there. Enjoy what performances I could give you! Show Champion: aespa "Rich Man" MCountdown: aespa "Rich Man" Music Bank: Haechan (NCT) "CRZY" Show! Music Core: aespa "Rich Man...
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