Music Reviews

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The World of K-Pop in 2025

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 Come one, come all to the 2025 recap from your 15th favorite Fangirl! We had a lot of very fun and special moments throughout the year and some absolutely killer albums dropped. This is going to be a beast of a post, so please buckle up. I will attempt to be entertaining, but that means there may be puns and quips involved. I'm also going to scatter random stages from this year throughout the post, just to break things up, and so you can have some music, although I did include that big playlist that I was forming throughout the year. I also included the pet tax, because I talk about them often across all sorts of posts, so you can look forward to that.  Here's your first brain break! Make sure that you've got something to drink! Reading is thirsty work! I'm going to break this up into sections so you can Ctrl+F your way through to each section depending on your interests and how much time you have. And I'll give you a table of contents, because I love table of cont...
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Greatest Hits:: VIXX: VOODOO DOLL

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 This comes from my submission form, and it's the first one I'm doing from there! Whoo! I was going to put this off a little because I just did a 2012 debut for a Battle of the B-Sides post, but oh, well! I have a feeling that this one isn't like that song either, so I'm less worried about doing too much of the same. Variety, yes, but I can do what I want and the few songs I've already heard of theirs ( Chained Up is in many of my playlists) I've liked already. How much of that is because I know they're in the 2012 debut club, which automatically enters them into my category of groups I look upon favorably, I don't know. But I do know that even without that, what I've heard is very good. I've also heard some interesting and hilarious things about the group, and am curious to know if they're true or not. But! This submission came with the note that the submitter was pretty sure this song was VIXX's first win and that was why it was being ...
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Greatest Hits:: IVE: Love Dive

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 I was honestly wondering when I was going to get a submission for a group that has been getting awards specifically because they've been getting awards. Well, that has finally happened. I'm assuming it was a DIVE that dropped this submission for me, although I've also never had a submission specifically asking me for other kpop groups covering the song in question. So this one took a little bit more time in that I had to hunt down some covers. It was an intriguing request. I appreciate it. I'm also combining it with an earlier submission that I got for this song, but hadn't gotten around to doing yet. That  submission wanted me to make sure that I included a specific performance from the 2022 Gayo Daejeon, so the timing for it is actually perfect. Two submissions for the same song, everyone! This is exciting for me. Love Dive is the first of two tracks on their second single. Because this song was submitted with comments on the awards, we're going to start wit...
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Song Review:: BTS: ARIRANG- SWIM

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Release date: 2026 March 20 Album tracklist: Body to Body, Hooligan, Aliens, FYA, 2.0, No. 29, SWIM , Merry Go Round, NORMAL, Like Animals, they don't know 'bout us, One More Night, Please, Into the Sun Album runtime: 41 minutes  Well, here we are, folks. A much awaited comeback. Let's just get to it. I did take note of the runtime and we're just shy of a three minute runtime average for the album, and the title track is less than three, which I'm not as pleased about, but that's par for the course with HYBE title tracks lately. At least it's over two-and-a-half minutes, so I'm not going to whine too much. Also, I took off the NU'EST nail polish of two of my nails and painted one of them purple in honor of this comeback. I'm very curious to see what they've got for us and I'll be taking a listen to the whole album to find the song I like best, which is likely to be a b-side given my track record. Parts of this instrumental remind me a lot...
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Music Show Wins:: Week of 02/25 - 03/03

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 How long have I been posting these? I still  need to look back at the previous posts to figure out what I title them. I'm not joking. This time, I tried to call it "Weekly Music Shows".  We would have had a clean sweep if Show Champion had had a winner this week. Alas. Still! Congrats to IVE for the wins for this pre-release! For the After School Club  re-run, I went with one of my favorite live performing groups: A.C.E. This was ep. 437 from 2020. There's a reason why they're a favorite for ASC because they're kind of fantastic, but also, every time they sit down, they flip their robes and it's delightful. This is just a fun episode with them, and I gave you the choreography at 2x speed and it's incredible. They did so good.. The The Show  re-run, I went back to 2016 and Dal Shabet! Have a good stage! For the extra stage, I went with Inkigayo and Daily:Direction, who just debuted, so check them out. The links in the spreadsheet all go to my reviews (...
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Greatest Hits:: RM (BTS): Wild Flower

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 I hunted through his discography for a song that would match what I wanted this post to do. For a number of reasons I'll get into in the next post, even though this will be posted on NU'EST's anniversary, I'm not doing one of theirs then. Instead, I wanted to do an RM song because BTS has an album coming out in the next week and I wanted to honor the friendship between the two groups, and because I finally get to pull JR's photocard off my enlistment wall next week as well, I wanted to do RM specifically. Both of them are rapper leaders, neither of them is the eldest member of their group. They debuted around the same time, they're both Kims, they're less than a year apart in age, and because their groups had near-disbandment-causing struggles early in their careers, they have that connection as well. And they ended up being at the same company, technically, when HYBE bought Pledis. You can actually see the spike in sales for NU'EST because RM would not...
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Music Show Wins:: Week of 04/02 - 04/08

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  Triple Crown came in this week, which is so exciting. Don't get me wrong. But you know what's more exciting? Two rookie groups got their first ever wins! Y'all, I cannot even pretend not to be ecstatic over this. This is so exciting! Congrats to KiiiKiii and Close Your Eyes! Whoo!!!!  For the ASC performance this week since they're still on hiatus, I just scrolled randomly through the playlist and the one I stopped on was the one I offer to you all, and I'm very pleased to say that here is Purple Kiss's attendance for Sweet Juice  back in 2023. MC's were Aron from NU'EST as well as Allen and Taeyoung of Cravity. And I have to say, I absolutely love Taeyoung's hair this episode. He looks so good. And it's also really cute that the members did the fanchant while the one fan was doing the dance cover. But you know what's really funny? The voice changing segment. You guys will enjoy it. Show Champion: Jennie (BLACKPINK) "Like Jennie" ...
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Song Review:: Jiwoo (KARD): (EX)IST- Home Sweet Home {Debut}

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Release date: 2026 February 11 Album track list: Home Sweet Home , Mutual, Dang Dong (feat. BM of KARD), Lily, Home Sweet Home (Inst.) Album runtime: 15 mi nutes  Congrats on your solo debut! I'm really excited to see what you have for us even if I'm posting this much later than I probably should have! She debuted in 2017, almost ten years ago, in the co-ed group KARD, and not to put too much pressure on her, but given that level of experience and how good her voice is in the group setting, I have high hopes for her as a soloist. This instrumental is so heavy that if it were faster, it would be called noise music, especially in the later part of the song. I'm not entirely sure how I feel about the buzz saw sounding bit, because it was incredibly jarring. But interestingly, the song becomes more "noise" as the song goes on. That steady build, though, I really like. The buzz saw being added wasn't jarring because the song had built itself in that direction, but ...
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Song Review:: IVE: REVIVE+- BLACKHOLE

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Release date: 2026 February 23 Album track list:  BLACKHOLE ,  BANG BANG , Hush, Stuck In Your Head, Fireworks, HOT COFFEE, 8 (Jang Wonyoung Solo), Odd (Gaeul Solo), Super ICY (Leeseo Solo), Unreal (Liz Solo), In Your Heart (Rei Solo), Force (An Yujin Solo) Album runtime: 34 mi nutes  Okay. Let's get this one out of the way now so that if it gets any wins, as I suspect it may, I have it already done and don't need to worry about it in the future. Congrats on the comeback, IVE! Ah, such lovely saturation to the instrumental. There's heft to this instrumental, which immediately balances out their lovely vocals and creates quite a nice level of contrast for the song overall. There are some disruptive beats of rest to make the song responsive and bold in a way that sounds very nice for the group. I'm enjoying this one. I love the vocal slowdown effect at the beginning. Even in spots where there is a bit of repetition, we get other things happening around the repetition. Lar...
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Battle of the B-Sides: ATEEZ: Utopia

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 I wanted my last "normal" (ish) post of the year to be a Battle of the B-Sides, before I start hitting the December wrap-up and the year recap hard, to be appropriate for going into the new year. There were a couple of things I was thinking about for it. For my last Greatest Hits of 2025, I did a big hitter in the form of IVE from The Form and that had me thinking about this last post. Do I do one of my top three groups? Do I do an old group? Do I match it in energy? Do I soften it a bit? Higher energy? Do I do a more obscure group or do I do one of the big hitters? Do I grab something from The Form as well, or do I do something that I pick? The answer to all of these questions: my drafts. I've got twenty-four of these things in my drafts, ten of which are Battle of the B-Sides posts waiting for me to actually do them. So, those went into the wheel. What came out was a fourth gen boy group, because I have a couple of those drafts that are simply designations to narrow t...
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