Music Reviews

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Halloween Spookening: 2024 Edition

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 I love Halloween. It's been my favorite holiday for literally my entire life. I have loved Halloween longer than Sangyeon of The Boyz has been alive, barely because my first Halloween was a couple of days before he was born, but according to my mother, even at the age of not-quite one years old, I have loved it. She dressed me up as a San Francisco 49ers cheerleader. I have pictures.  One of the most important things, then, is finding music that matches the Month of Spookening and horror. I love spooky movies. I love spooky books. I love spooky video games (even though I am a wuss of the nth degree and prefer to watch other people play them). And I love spooky music. THUS, this post is simply going to be a compilation of some of the songs I've added to my Halloween K-Pop playlist. If I were to add all of the songs in there, this post would be ages  long. So I'm only going to add as many as I feel like it. I don't know how long this is going to be. But there will be vib...
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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:: IU: A flower bookmark, Pt. 3- Never Ending Story

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Release date: 2025 May 27 Album tracklist: Red Sneakers, Never Ending Story, October 4th, Last Scene (Feat. Wonstein), A Beautiful Person (Feat. Balming Tiger), Square's dream Album runtime: 22 minutes  I'm trying out something different with writing these because I actually have a tried and true method for my writing that I haven't been using for the last ten months or so. I write faster and more easily when I can handwrite things. Also, airplanes (as long as someone isn't wearing a cologne or a perfume that makes me nauseated) are an excellent time to write these. Apparently, I've never looked at IU's homepage on Spotify because I didn't realize how often she's worked with BTS or BTS members. Huh. That's pretty cool. I mean, I thought she was pretty cool before this, but I also  really just like it when there are collaborations of people I recognize. The runtime makes me very happy.  Wow, this is incredibly Disney-esque. I think I heard both "...
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Song Review:: BSS (Seventeen): Teleparty- CBZ (Prime Time)

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  Release date: 2025 January 08 Album tracklist: CBZ (Prime Time) , Happy Alone, Love Song Album runtime: 9 minutes  Every tick that marks off something makes us closer to the 96z enlistments. So while I'm very, very excited for this particular song because I love BSS and their particular brand of cheerful chaos, that awareness sits on my shoulder and glares at me. But, as long as it isn't in the vicinity of sad, I'll likely be fine listening to it. The Hoshi x Woozi subunit coming up shortly may be a different story, but that's a problem for Future Fangirl to worry about. Also, this is my 300th post review and I put off posting the special post to make BSS my 300th post. How many times can I say the word post? As expected, high energy and happy. There's the facsimile of audience participation clapping in the instrumentals, which makes it better because there's no pressure to clap, but you're absolutely invited to. The instrumentals for this song remind me a...
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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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Greatest Hits:: Seventeen: Not Alone {Japanese}

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 I have changed which song I want to do for Jeonghan's discharge song three times now. I considered Pretty U, because I love the bit of the choreography where he does the cheek tapping move. And I would consider it for Joshua because of his iconic mistake, but since he's an LA native born and raised, he won't be getting discharged. And I have the cheek tapping move attached to Jeonghan. It's very cute. Then I thought about doing one of the Japanese releases because he learned Japanese to talk to the Japanese Carats because English and Chinese were already covered. My second favorite Seventeen song is a Japanese release, but I also feel like I want to hold onto Ima for a different occasion. So then I switched to Power of Love , because I liked the symbolism of that and up until a couple of days ago, I had Power of Love locked. Until I suddenly decided, literally the day I finished my post for Something for Ren's discharge, that Power of Love was in fact wrong, and ...
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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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Greatest Hits:: Girl's Day: Something

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 So when I was trying to decide how I was going to honor my boys getting discharged, I decided to give each one of them a song to represent another aspect about them other than just as idols. For Minhyun back in December, it was a NU'EST song he was a lyricist for (thank you Submitter, for tossing that into my lap and helping me decide how I was going to do this). For JR back in March, it was a song for which he learned to play the bass guitar that was in a drama he acted in. For Baekho, I'm going to do a song he has writing credits for (y'all are going to be surprised by what song I pick, but you've got about a year before you get to find out which one it is). For Ren, as soon as I decided it was going to be some sort of a representative song, there was literally only one choice I could do: Something by Girl's Day. For those of you who know, of course I'm going to include that. For those of you who don't, look forward to a very funny comment section. I als...
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Song Review:: Hwasa (MAMAMOO): Good Goodbye

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Release date: 2025 October 15 Album tracklist: Good Goodbye , Good Goodbye (with. Duomo) Album runtime: 8 minutes  Now that I've seen her in person, I think she's even more stunning than the camera previously led me to believe. Voice of an angel. Looks to match. I'm a tiny bit in love and it's fine. You know why? Because it's Hwasa the Queen. All hail. Also all hail for the runtime, which makes me even happier. The majority of the song instrumentally is largely without too much variation. It's quiet and very stable, which allows the real star of the sh ow to shine. The version with Duomo has a violin and I'm going to be completely normal about it. But the actual title track? It's very consistent. The melody sounds in the same vein as about four other songs, which is great.  She’s got that gorgeous, smoky voice that I really love to hear so much, the kind of voice that you most regularly hear with indie artists in coffeehouses, but when she firms up her v...
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