Just A Little Fangirl Love

Release date: 2026 August 19 Album tracklist: MIXIN' THANGS - FLW$ Version, V.V.$, $TAY THE NIGHT - FLW$ Version ,  A$K, BOTTLE$ - FLW$ Version, COUNT IT UP, DA$H, Y.O.U,  BOTTLE$ , MIXIN' THANGS, VAMO$, $TAY THE NIGHT Album runtime: 16 minutes  Well, this is an interesting development with this group. They're now independent, which is curious enough, but they're independent with their former CEO serving as their creative director and main producer. That part has me raising my eyebrows and tilting my head. Curious. Very curious. On top of that, one of the members has left the group. She's the main vocalist of the group, so that's a blow to the others and they'll have to step up. I'm fully supportive of the decision to leave as she decided she didn't like the idol lifestyle with the training and the hours well-enough to stay, which is completely fair. I applaud her for realizing it fairly early and bowing out. And we're on Underage Protocol until ...

Release date: 2026 June 06 Album tracklist:  Ride or Die Japan Version,  Ride or Die , Wake Up Japan Version, Wake Up Album runtime: 11 minutes  Okay, everyone. This is a friendly recommendation that YouTube gave me that I then immediately looked up because I didn't recognize the name and wanted to make ure it wasn't an AI group, because there have been a few that YouTube has recommended to me and I have to decline those. I'm here for the human effort and ability with the actual performers. Anyway, they're made up of AWIN, which debuted early in 2024, and APEX, which debuted in 2018. Also one of the members is a Melody (BTOB fan), and fan of my man Hui from Pentagon, and auditioned for Peak Time. The maknae was born in 2001, which means the group is not on Underage Protocol, and I am happy as a clam about this. Okay, electric guitar. Hello there. The Tron vibes are strong with this song, and it's such an anime theme song, which makes sense since they've been pro...

Release date: 2026 June 12 Album tracklist: ICONIC BY MISTAKE , ICONIC BY MISTAKE, ICONIC BY MISTAKE (Instrumental) Album runtime: 9 minutes  This is going to be the only comment I make in regards to this. Three of the NewJeans members have been officially back since December. This was released in June. I'd love to ask someone that is part of the decision-making Powers That Be what their rationale was for that exclusion when that would have been a great way to show unity with the groups and start the healing process with the fans. I wasn't going to do this song (I know, I know, chase me off with pitchforks later please) because there have been songs released by one of the groups that I didn't like enough that it's turned me off from all of the songs attached to that group. But the song now has two wins, so I have to review it for my weekly wins posts that I'm wildly behind on. I want to like this song. For the record. I want to be proven wrong. And everyone is offic...

Release date: 2026 June 15 Album tracklist: SOAR, Do your dance , D-D-Done, Overdrive, Like a Bomb, In a Loop Album runtime: 18 minutes  I actually completely forgot that they'd released their new album, and I was looking forward to it too. Time is a soup right now and even the endless parade of releases I'm aware of and looking forward to is doing little to keep my attention on the here and now. Ah, well. Don't mind me. I'm just being a little maudlin. This specific kind of instrumental is one that hits my nervous system in exactly the wrong way. It's a song for clubbing and flashing lights in a dark room while you're jumping and dancing to the music. I'm not going to be able to listen to this song too much while I write this, but I'll do it as long as I can for the review. There are some interesting video game sound effects and beeps to it, which did catch my attention initially, but they are infrequent enough and the rest of the instrumental is aggres...

Release date: 2026 June 30 Album tracklist:  Perfect Target , Still Cute? Album runtime: 5 minutes  Two-and-a-half minutes. Less than, actually. I know you can't hear it but I just sighed heavily over the runtime for the title track. The other song isn't much longer, so I'm not holding out hope for too much of a complicated ong. That being said, congrats on the win for this song! I.O.I members have been very busy the last few months, but that fits with the concept of the group. This is the same bright and saturated anime girl that makes Yena so popular, which is funny because one is from I.O.I and the other is from the younger sister group IZ*ONE. There's an alarm sound effect occasionally that I really like. Most of the song is filled with the slightly grungy guitar underneath the skittering beat and the very aggressively hyper anime girl going on here. I'm surprised and pleased that the song has something approaching a bridge, if not a bridge outright. She's g...

Release date: 2026 July 06 Album tracklist: Mono (feat. Ska water) , Gimme Dat Love , Morning, Crow , Love Is Pain Album runtime: 13 minutes  It took me so long to do this song that the whole album came out. It's fine. It's fine. And you know what? Funnily enough there are so many kpop songs called "Love Is Pain" that I could almost do an entire month of them for the Expanded Offerings. Interesting way to start this song. I would love how the electric guitar is used to provide an interesting grindy and grungy texture to the song, but it's also very repetitious through much of the song. I say that, but I also acknowledge that the song instrumentally has a very hard change of texture halfway through that cleverly uses rests to provide an aural reset so that switch isn't nearly as jarring as it could be. And then we get an organ? And audience participation clapping? And a synth being used like a violin? There are some bold choices being made here. Every time this...

Release date: 2026 June 08 Album tracklist: HOLA!, ZIGI-ZIGI-ZIGI , NEVER SAY GOODBYE..., DDOOK DDAK Album runtime: 9 minutes  I've got a soft spot the size of Kentucky for Samuel, which doesn't compare to Seventeen's soft spot for him, which is the size of Alaska.  I hit play on this song and immediately twitched because that first note startled me. Big power right from the start. I'm not even going to call this Latin-esque, because it's just straight Latin music. The beat has a very specific timing to it that uses rests and eighth notes to give the beat a distinct rhythm, and there are two separate rhythms taking up the majority of the instrumental from two different percussion instruments, or maybe one of those is a synthesizer. I'm not sure. It doesn't really matter to me one way or the other. One complaint I have about the song, is that there isn't really a good and clear indication when the song starts and when it ends if you've got it on repea...

Release date: 2026 June 15 Album tracklist: Snapback Album runtime: 2 minutes  I figured I'd just hit both of the Seventeen songs that I didn't do in June. Happy late birthday, Hoshi. Less than a year left until you're back. This is your classic beat going on here and it sounds so much like Love Money Fame (am I the only one that remembers that order because it's the opposite of FML ?) that I had to stop and sing past the beginning part to figure out which song this sounded like, which is interesting that this doesn't share any songwriters with that song (not even a wild Woozi, so Hoshi apparently gave him a bit of a break). But there are some interesting sound effects going on in the instrumental occasionally, and we occasionally get rests in there to help interrupt the sound. Which is good. It's what we want. This is a lot of English for Hoshi. I'm proud of him. There's a lot of yearning going on in this song, which, as we know is something that I lov...

Release date: 2026 June 30 Album tracklist: Friend, BEAT, singasong , mia, coloring, girlsnboys, 8DM, rat race Album runtime: 22 minutes  When this subunit was first announced, I posted on Threads about how I needed them to call their subunit "V8" because of how funny it was. And then we got the subunit name. And I felt so pleased with myself. I still feel pleased with myself. Very validated. And I know I said I was going to focus on the July releases, which I've done a terrible job of so far, but they got a win, so I need to get this post done. It's not that I was neglecting them on purpose, I promise. This is 8-bit video game in the best way possible. Like, I've had this on repeat for, I think, an hour at this point while I read a Wiki on Five Nights at Freddy's  and I've just been vibing to it. It's very electronic, and that isn't one of my reliable yes types, though I do like some aspects of it fairly reliably. However, because of the aesthetic...

Release date: 2026 June 27 Album tracklist:  VIPER , Drift away Album runtime: 6 minutes  Hello! I'm going to reset this month because yikes, I'm behind on June. If I have time, which I probably will if we're going to be honest, I'll do some of the June releases I missed. Maybe even some of the May ones I missed. But you  (yes, you who are reading these words right at this very moment, I'm speaking to you) can help me figure out which of the missing songs I should do. And all you have to do...is ask. Leave a comment. If you're shy, you can always use  The Form  and no one else will ever know you asked me. In other news, UDTT are all fully adults and have been since shortly after debut, which I apparently didn't cover, but I thought I had. Wild. Okay. This is fun. So I actually left this on repeat for a while because I was trying to figure out how on earth I was going to say what I was thinking, which is that this basically sums up to a training montage from ...

Release date: 2026 June 26 Album tracklist: BAD,  MAMACITA, TOXIN, Fallin', Body Album runtime: 14  minutes  I'm really, really curious about the music video for this song because I have theories. Despite YouTube pushing this music video on me every time I open the app or go to the website, but I've successfully avoided it so far so that I could watch it for the first time for this review. Which is a little late, but it's fine because it could be like all the other reviews I haven't been doing. (If I skipped a song you'd like my thoughts on, leave a comment somewhere in the blog, or you can use  The Form  because I do have a section for you to select that option. It's also an option to ask for a review of a song I covered for the Expanded Offerings. If you want.) This is a surprisingly sparse instrumental, but there are some weird little additional sound effect. There's a high level of repetition going on here that isn't changed much in texture when ...

Release date: 2026 June 24 Album tracklist: Cosmic , Ring Album runtime: 6 minutes  This is their first release for the year, and ideally (because I know that this is a smaller group, which stresses me out on principle), I'd like to see at least a mini album from them by the end of the year. Preferably a full album, but that's less likely to happen, so I'd be content to have a mini album from them. If this doesn't have some solid choreography, this instrumental is wasted on the song. We've got some sleek R&B music here with a strong beat that's quite repetitious, which I'm not overly a fan of to begin with as we know, and there is a tiny bit of a melody working its way through the song that we can hear, although it's not strong enough for my taste. Still, this is a very strong beat that doesn't send my nervous system into a complete tizzy, because it's not a set of multiple aggressive beats stacked and layered over each other to produce the i...

Release date: 2026 June 24 Album tracklist: 24 Hours Album runtime: 2  minutes  The maknae is currently on a medical hiatus for an inner ear issue related to vertigo. I hope he recovers quickly, that therapy goes well, and that he can return fully without having it come back and without needing surgery. He also turns sixteen in a couple of days, so happy birthday in advance (along with the two oldest members)! And even though he's not active with the group right now, I'm leaving them on Underage Protocol.  This is a surprisingly soft instrumental with a touch of something sultry and a bit of what feels like it could be longing. It's almost an acoustic version of a song with soft, floaty bits and spots where it's about 3% more active than the baseline of the song.  We've got a little bit of rapping, and a little bit of singing, and, like with the instrumental, everything is just really soft. There's no bite here, but there is a good amount of variation to vocals,...

Release date: 2026 June 23 Album tracklist: Runaway , Defined, Chamomile Album runtime: 9  minutes  It's a single, but he's got a stunning voice. And congrats on the wedding last year, my dude! Ah, that's a strong guitar. It's easily the strongest and most prominent of the instruments going on here, but it's comfortingly country in a way that I personally really enjoy. I mean this is very country, but not honky-tonk, which is what I think a lot of people think of when they think of country music (I love honky tonk music, for the record, and you can pry Watermelon Crawl out of my cold, dead hands), but this feels more like your classic country love song. I'm fascinated that we're getting so many songs that have country music elements that feel like country music in K-Pop right now, because there's a very big difference between country music from someone who understands country and someone who knows what pieces should be included. Like, I could write a ro...

Release date: 2026 June 08 Album tracklist: 06070, VIRAL , ddok ddok ddok , ADIOS! , Upside Down, DIVE, Forever You, I Wonder Album runtime: 25 minutes  I'm super behind but I'll hit this b-side all the same. This sounds like a summer pop song from the mid-2000s. Remember when everything was just a little bit alt-rock? That's what this instrumental is doing. It feels a bit brighter than you'd typically expect from a rock song, but the guitars are doing their job and alternating between being supportive and then aggressively emotional. We've got some variation going on with the drums as well with changes in their rhythms, so that they're not just doing the beat. And I love how it ends with just the vocals and cuts the instrumental out. That actually does a really good job of ending the song on a sense of goodbye, having it be just the vocals. After the amount of sound that the rest of the song has vocally, especially leading up into the ending, having there be a ...

Release date: 2026 June 24 Album tracklist: RUN IT Album runtime: 3  minutes  Look at all the capital letters. We've got a little over a month and a half before the album is going to be released, and between now and then, their next tour is starting. Seungmin, I hope you're well by then. Chan, you'd better have that surgery before then. The timing of the tour feels very rushed, but there is a looming e-word sitting over Lee Know's head dropping closer every day, so despite how ridiculous the schedule is, before we find out what that is going to look like for Stray Kids, I'm willing to chalk it up to them trying to get one last tour in before that all begins. The runtime on this one has me very hopeful for the rest of the album's runtime. Fingers crossed. Y'all know I'm down for brass instruments. As fierce and dramatic as this instrumental is, and it's pretty dramatic in the "we're marching off to battle" sort of way, I'm intrigued ...

Release date: 2026 June 22 Album tracklist:  Dust Album runtime: 2  minutes  I would have had no idea he'd released a new song if I hadn't been wandering about Tumblr today and if one of my mutuals didn't post about the song like twelve times. And now you all get to know about it too! I'm going to leave him connected to VIXX here and in the future, because while the whole mess over his enlistment is deeply serious, as are his health problems, and he did finish his military service back in December with a double enlistment. He may not be able to be part of the group anymore since withdrawing back in 2022, but I'm accepting what happened as the final consequences as far as I'm concerned and I'll leave him connected to his group. As long as nothing else happens with him. I will be most cross and disappointed. I'm also disappointed in the runtime, but you know what? It's his first one back after years. I'll give him this one, but I'm not rounding...

Release date: 2026 June 22 Album tracklist: Lemon Tang , 15-LOVE, Baby Steps, heart emoji (♡), Secret Recipe, RUDE! Album runtime: 17  minutes  Underage Protocol is active because SM has an alarming habit of debuting actual full children. But the group is down to less than two years now before the maknae is eighteen. However, as a side note, I had one of my teacher friends show either  RUDE!  or FOCUS to her students and her students loved it and thought it was really cool that one of them was fourteen, which made me raise my eyebrows and shake my head, but they're like ten. Fourteen is cool and old when you're ten, even if she may have been fifteen when whichever song it was came out. I'm not enthused about the runtime, but it could be worse. The title track is a little too short for my liking, but it could be a lot worse. Could be worse. The slightly off-key whistling at the beginning is a bold choice and one that I happen to think is quite charming. The pian...

Release date: 2026 June 17 Album tracklist: Lilac Album runtime: 3 minutes  Oh, I'm exited about this song because I adored their debut song.  More traditional Korean music taps into my love for traditional Irish music. I fully recognize that they tap into the same part of my brain, and it's fine. We've got so much melody going on in the instrumental and a range of textures because we've got a range of instrument types. Percussion, stringed, woodwind. And, delightfully, we've also got audience participation snapping. I love it when we get that as part of the instrumental. Gorgeous. They have beautiful voices. Well-supported, a little bit lower, haunting on occasion. Those are some very pretty runs and vocalizations they've got going on, and some of the vocal techniques remind me a bit of yodeling, which just delights me more. The vocal skill and control that's on display with this song is very nice. I like this a lot. I may have gotten distracted by the Cara...

Release date: 2026 June 01 Album tracklist: Sad Girls Schemin', Peer, Baby Flower , Type of Girl, Sleek, I Like That, Me Myself Mode Album runtime: 17  minutes  Congrats on the win! The funny thing about tripleS, and I hope one of them can get the help she needs when she's ready, is that at one point, I actually could have listened to the whole group, but then the new maknae got added. We are very much on Underage Protocol now. I can still listen to some of the subunits, thought, but I have to check each one to make sure I can. I was kind of hoping that this was a subunit, but it's the whole group, so yes, we are on Underage Protocol. Underage Protocol is my small way of protesting when companies debuting minors that are under sixteen, or debuting more than half of a group underage. If a group is on Underage Protocol, I won't listen to them until the entire group is eighteen. I give the songs a single listen each for instrumental and vocals, and then two at most watches...