Just A Little Fangirl Love

Release date: 2025 April 19 Album tracklist: Moon Album runtime: 5 minutes  I'm going to put this under ASTRO since it is spearheaded by them/Eunwoo. There is a very long list of contributing artists, and given the nature of what this is, yes, I absolutely am going to list all of them with group members in parentheses with their group: (ASTRO: JinJin, MJ, Rocky, Eunwoo, Sanha), (VIVIZ: Eunbi, SinB, Umji), (Monsta X: Minhyuk, Kihyun, I.M), (Seventeen: Hoshi, Wonwoo, Mingyu, DK, Seungkwan), (IMFACT: HELLO GLOOM), (Weki Meki: Yoojung, Doyeon), (SF9: Chani), (Stray Kids: Bang Chan), and (Billie: Moon Sua) . It's a testament to how many people love Moonbin, really, because this is only a fraction. You can hardly go through the group pages of groups that debuted between 2014 and 2019 without finding a member or two who isn't friends with Moonbin. I genuinely don't know what form this review is going to take, but I highly doubt a lot of critical reviewing will take place. I ne...

  Release date: 2024 November 29 Album tracklist:  Destiny,  RESET ,  Because of you, Sleepless Night, Destiny - Acoustic Version, Desiny - Instrumental, RESET - Instrumental Album runtime: 24 minutes  Grim Reaper Boy is back with a new album! (I call him this because this was the nickname I gave him on Build Up, because of his team's nickname for their performance of Pray ) I love the remake he put out recently and have been sitting anxiously waiting for this release to drop. Great run time. Huge fan of that. We've got a mellow R&B song going on that softens into full ballad territory occasionally, which is the general sound I have associated with him. The piano is beautiful. We've got some absolutely gorgeous strings. And frankly, the percussion is so well-bonded to the other instruments that often it fades into the background and just acts as a support rather than a defining feature of the instrumentals. The guitar that quietly bolsters his voice pops up...

  Release date: 2024 November 29 Album tracklist: Destiny , RESET , Because of you, Sleepless Night, Destiny - Acoustic Version, Destiny - Instrumental, RESET - Instrumental Album runtime: 24 minutes  So, I didn't check which one was the title track for the album. Good news, my review of Destiny is basically done. All I have to do is do the music video section when it gets that, as I assume it will since it's a double title track. Going by the tracklist, you can see why I was mistaken. Bad news, I saved time for future me, but that doesn't change the fact that I still have to do the actual title track. It's fine. I'm an acknowledged dingus. As an obviously unrelated side note that clearly has nothing with the mix-up, you should totally listen to Destiny because it's definitely getting a review, and I love it. It's gorgeous. Also, mellifluous? That's an expensive vocabulary word right there and so wholly fitting to this album that I'm just pleased. ...

Release date: 2024 November 03 Album tracklist:  Aftereffect , Aftereffect (inst.) Album runtime: 7 minutes  Grim Reaper boy from Build Up! Their performance of Pray lives in my head rent free. Also, I shouldn't call him that because he is technically two years older than I am, but if I ever meet him, I'll be more respectful. Until then, he gets that nickname.  I love his voice. Yowza. Also, that is what we call a proper song length. I'm very happy that I can listen to just the instrumentals on their own because I have a feeling that I'll be thoroughly distracted by his voice once I listen to the song as a whole. And honestly, this is so cinematic that I can almost picture the movie it came from. Starting off with the mellowness of the piano and whatever the hollower instrument is gives the song a melancholy air, but when the percussion and the strings enter the scene, the swell of music turns the melancholy into determination. There is a sorrow to it still, but the bu...

Release date: 2024 October 25 Album tracklist:  Somebody Album runtime: 3 minutes  I've never heard of Hello Gloom, so first order of business is some research. Okay, he's a soloist, birth name Na Ungjae. He is the maknae of the group IMFACT, which I have heard of but again, know nothing about them. He seems to be a songwriter and producer, which means that I'm going to be a little harder on this song. He's part of the 98z friend group that includes Seungkwan, Sinb, and Umji. IMFACT is apparently not disbanded; they're just focusing on solo stuff while they do the enlistments. Sang just enlisted a couple of days ago, which means it's just Ungjae that needs to go in now.  Okay. Let's get to it. Weirdly, I think the instrumentals do exactly their job and no more. They set the tone (dreamy in a sort of dissociative way). They stay out of the way of the vocals, while simultaneously supporting them and providing a grounding framework. But that's about it. It...