Music Reviews

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Battle of the B-Sides: LABOUM: 빛이 되어쥐 (Be the Light)

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 Unless I do The Roulette Wheel, I obviously can pick which of the suggestions I've gotten that I'll write posts for. I also have a spreadsheet where I have my posts organized by generation and boy group, girl group, and co-ed. The co-ed groups definitely need more attention, but I'm taking these last few Specialty posts to focus on the girl groups because they're not my natural inclination, and while the Roulette Wheel is weighted equally, I don't like that it's uneven. So, I ignored my normal addition of the B/G/Co-Ed Wheel spin and just did it for a girl group, and I ended up with LABOUM. I'm not sure I've heard of them, so this will be exciting.  LABOUM is a third gen girl group that are younger sisters to U-KISS and Brown Eyed Girls, which is wildly hilarious considering the last GH post I did was in fact for BEG's song Abracadabra . So, that was unintended. 빛이 되어쥐 , or Be the Light  as I will be calling it through this because while it would be...
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Halloween Spookening: 2025 Edition

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 It's the most wonderful time of the year!  I'm back with a new selection of Halloween themed or generally spooky songs for you all! Have I spent the year looking for new songs for my playlist? Yes. Yes, yes I have, so if you have anymore suggestions for me, give me the creepy doll songs, the predatory wolfy songs, the haunting and the eerie. I love my Halloween playlist and I listen to it all year long, but October is the official start of when I don't get weird looks from people for listening to it. I am so excited. I get to pull out my Halloween nail polish and the glow in the dark stickers. It's a good time to be me, and also hopefully you as well. So the Halloween recs for you for the year 2025 are: Welcome To The Other Side by DPR Ian (C-Clown) Yes, he's Australian, but he was in the K-Pop group C-Clown, which is one of my beloved 2012s, so I'm counting him. Also, this song is super spooky with dramatic strings at the beginning and artistically applied au...
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Music Show Wins:: Week of 09/10 - 09/16

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  Well, everyone, this looks like it's a clean sweep this week. No winner from The Show, which seems to be the least frequently occurring of the bunch, but of the other five, all of them were won by a single group! So congrats to them! That's exciting! It also means that, if you like this song, that's five more stages for you to love. And if you haven't heard it yet, five more chances for you to fall in love with this song. This week for our After School Club re-run is ep. 547 with LE SSERAFIM! It was their second mini album and they were less than six months after debut. As I'm sure you're all aware, because I talk about it ceaselessly, Aron was one of the members of NU'EST that did not renew contracts with Pledis, which means that Aron and LE SSERAFIM were never under HYBE at the same time as debuted artists, so this could have been their first meeting. Interesting, huh? Yunjin was not present for this, unfortunately. The games and stuff were really fun to...
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Greatest Hits:: MBLAQ: Stay

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 Summoned for you directly from The Form, it's ironically a song from the same album that I've already done a BBS post from. I chose to do Darling  because of the roulette wheel and shuffle, so that one's on me. But apparently someone out there in the world really likes this album to slide the title track my way as well.  So, I was technically focusing on the repackage album of this for Darling , so you get sort of new information. Released in 2011, this was their first full album. Containing a grand total of thirteen tracks and a runtime of 43 minutes, which averages out to a little more than three minutes a song, it's at a good length, even with the first track dropping the average. It did pretty well on the charts, peaking at second on the Gaon weekly chart and third on the Gaon monthly chart. No music show wins with it, but that doesn't matter because music show wins are not the final dictator of love for a song.  Flashing Lights warning for the music video. Gro...
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Song Review:: Dayoung (WJSN): gonna love me, right?- body {Debut}

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Release date: 2025 September 09 Album tracklist: body , number one rockstar, marry me Album runtime: 8 minutes  I've got kind of a soft spot for this group because one of them was born on my best friend's birthday. It doesn't take much for me to just add people to my list of affection, which is probably why the list of groups I like to listen to is ridiculously long and distinguished. We also got three songs with this single, which does feel a little like an oxymoron, and there isn't a capital letter to be seen. Fascinating. But congrats on the solo debut! I'm sure you'll do well! The title track is under three minutes, but it's kind of close, even though the runtime is short. So, I think (not positive, but I think) that this is trap music for the instrumental. I've had to learn about a lot of different, unfamiliar genres over the past year or so (the ones I know well have been wholly useless for the most part), and I'm not always confident on it. St...
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Song Review:: Junhee (A.C.E): The First Day & Night- Supernova {Pre-Debut}

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Release date: 2025 September 12 Album tracklist:  Umbrella (10:00) , Tattoo (12:30) (with Lee Jiham, BK, Kang Yuchan & WoW),  Too Bad (15:00) , Sugar (18:00), You should come (21:00),  Supernova (00:00) , Night (02:00), 호랑이 장기 가는 날 (10:00) Album runtime: 25 minutes  MY MAN, JUNHEE. Y'all, I have been counting down the days  until this was released. I found out about it because of his absolutely phenomenal cover of Your Idol  from Kpop Demon Hunters  (I'll drop the video at the bottom of this review because it is so amazingly done and the amount I refuse to shut up about that cover should alarm me, but you know how much I don't care? Not at all, actually.) This will be his solo debut, but I think this is a pre-release. And, like, he and the other members leave Beat Interactive. He founds a company to house A.C.E. He starts prepping this. He takes like a week to drop the cover and attracts so much attention that people who have never heard of the gro...
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Song Review:: A.C.E.: Anymore

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Release date: 2024 September 11 Album tracklist:  Anymore , Anymore - sped up, Anymore - instrumental, Anymore - Pop Ballad Remix, Anymore - Emo Remix, Anymore - Acoustic hiphop Remix Album runtime: 16 minutes  I knew about A.C.E. from one of my other multifandom friends, and then I watched Build Up because Eunkwang, Baekho, and Solar were judges. I found out one of the A.C.E. members was on Build Up, which made me start rooting for him on principle because my friend loves the group. And then I saw them at KCon LA, and my mouth was hanging open, such was my surprise at how freaking amazing their vocals are. The entire group. I'm still in awe a month later. They need to come back to the US so I can go see them. An entire concert? Swoon. They need more fans. Literally, as soon as I heard their voices, I became a fan of them, and I know these reviews don't sound like it, but I am incredibly  picky about the groups I would claim being in the fandom for. So as soon as they ann...
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Song Review:: TREASURE: LOVE PULSE- PARADISE

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Release date: 2025 September 01 Album tracklist: EVERYTHING, PARADISE , NOW FOREVER, BETTER THAN ME Album runtime: 12 minutes  I did watch the YG announcement for TREASURE, BABYMONSTER, and BLACKPINK. That is a lot of capitalizations. So I knew this was coming and this was on my list of releases I was curious about for this month. I haven't listened to them a lot, much like I haven't actually listened to a lot of BIGBANG, WINNER, or iKON (again, so many capital letters), but when I like one of their songs, I tend to really, really like it. Plus, the members of TREASURE are all adults now, and that's important because at debut, I couldn't have listened to them (maknae was fifteen). So I came it at a good time. The album doesn't quite hit the desired three minute average, but each song is at least in the 2:50 range, so it could be a lot worse. The title track is the shortest of the bunch, but it could be worse. I'd prefer if all the songs got an extra ten seconds,...
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Song Review:: Monsta X: THE X- N the Front

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Release date: 2025 September 01 Album tracklist:  Do What I Want , N the Front , Savior, Tuscan Leather, Catch Me Now, Fire & Ice Album runtime: 18 minutes  Happy tenth anniversary, Monsta X! Everyone but Mr. Maknae I.M has returned from the military, and I'm pretty sure he needs to go this year. But! This is also my first review for September, which means that I have now, officially, been doing this for over a year. Whoo! I did have to round that up, mostly because the first and the last tracks on the album are under 2:45, and while I'm a little surprised that they didn't drop something longer for their tenth anniversary, the fact that they've been rereleasing their older songs both re-recorded in Korean and newly released in Japanese, clearly specifically for their tenth anniversary makes the mini album a few months later better. Do What I Want , despite my already having done the review for it, dropped as a pre-release so it technically doesn't count as the ...
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Music Show Wins:: Week of 10/01 - 10/07

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 We're already in October. Goodness. You know, it might be interesting for me to go through and tally how many groups got how many wins this year, and how many times each music show had a winner for an end of year music show summary post. I don't know. I'll have to think about it. That might be fun though. Y'all have all the raw data already and I could make pie charts and bar charts and... Sorry, I'm math nerd-ing again.  Two exciting things happened this week! First, we got two triple crowns this week! The only way I would be happier is if it was for a song that I could have given you more stage performances for, but that is super exciting! Congrats to the group! And, something that I have been rooting for since they debuted in January because they have had the absolute worst luck with timing, KickFlip got their first win! I couldn't be happier! Happy Chuseok, everyone! 추석 잘 보내세요!!! 즐겁고 풍성한 한가위 되세요!!!!  In the spirit of Chuseok, I decided to go with last year...
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