Just A Little Fangirl Love

  You know what's kind of cool? This week's music show wins cover three of the four categories I classify K-Pop under. The only one missing is a co-ed group. Boy group? Check. Girl group? Check? Soloist? Double check.  Nice. The ecosystem is flourishing. With After School Club still on hiatus, I'm still giving a rerun. This one comes from a boy group that debuted back in 2011. Episode 20, guys, gals, and nonbinary pals! And you know what's really cool? They're having their first comeback since 2018 this month! I'm really excited about this even though I previously had no previous knowledge of the group! Now, granted this is their first Japanese mini album and not a new Korean mini album, but you know what? I'm just happy to see them releasing new music. But, back in 2013, they were young and cute, and I think I really like this song. As always, the links to my reviews for these songs are found in the graph below. Show Champion: Kang Daniel "Episode...

Release date: 2025 June 13 Album tracklist: Killin' It Girl (feat. GloRilla) , Killin' It Girl (Solo Version) Album runtime: 4 minutes  Another day, another J-Hope single. I for one am hoping that he'll put all of these singles into a possible upcoming album so that they can all be in one place. It'll make things a lot easier to find, and I think the fans would very much appreciate having them consolidated. Or maybe that's just me with my love of things being orderly. Either way, I've heard good things about this song, and I'm sorry that it's lateish. I do however kind of really dislike that runtime, though. I'm quite annoyed. That is proper hip-hop. It's got a hood strong beat with higher city-energy beats over the top of the driving beat.  While it doesn't ever really give the song a chance to rest, the relentless drive of energy does a remarkable job of keeping the song going even when no one is rapping. The shifts to the instrumentals are...

 Hello, hello! Congrats to the winners this week! I'm fully in agreeance with who won. Excellent songs. A first time win, and then a couple of repeat winners, which is always nice to see them rack up those wins. Very nice.  Speaking of Very Nice, I'm delighted to share with you all this After School Club episode I found that has The Eric Nam, Jamie, and Kevin from U-KISS as the MCs. And while normally, because I like timing to work out well, I'd wait to have this closer to the group's tenth anniversary, I don't know how long ASC will be on hiatus, and I'd hate to miss the chance to share with you Baby Seventeen! That's right, gals, pals, and nonbinary pals! ASC for you all this time around is 2015 Seventeen, a month after debut! While I was watching it so that I had things to say about it, I had to keep pausing it because the cuteness aggression was making it hard to breathe sometimes. That or my posture was terrible. Either way, I want to squish them. Withi...

  Three of the Big 4 are represented this week in the music show wins, but they're not the only ones, which is also cool. I like diversity in an ecosystem because that indicates healthiness for the ecosystem. We've got a couple of first song wins, which is delightful for all of us, and mostly them because those wins are important. And I was waiting for one of those songs to get a win. Also, I couldn't be happier about Close Your Eyes for getting a second (very well deserved in my opinion, that album is amazing and incredible) just about two weeks after debut. Whoo! I did a random scroll to grab an After School Club for this week as they're still on hiatus (which is fine and I'm happy to wait for them; I'm doing a lot of waiting), and after I finished watching it, I found my next one because it was the next recommended for me to watch. It's a group who is regularly a top listen of mine every month and they were on ASC exactly one time. This week, however, fea...

Release date: 2025 March 21 Album track list: Mona Lisa Album runtime: 2 mi nutes  I still need someone to let me know how to properly capitalize and punctuate his name. I apologize for the lateness of this review. I am working through my draft list. And because I wasn't aware of the release until after the fact, it got put in the drafts list. But, let's see how this goes. Also, that run time barely makes this a song, and I'm once again deeply frustrated with HYBE.  This is a pretty mellow hip-hop track going on here. It's chill and rolling through the song with the steadiness of a perfectly smooth marble on a ramp at a slight incline that occasionally levels out to prevent the marble from picking up too much speed. But it's too short to really get any traction going and so it's just perpetually steady without flare or bombast. He's clearly got a good voice, but I'm not seeing that this song is showing it off all that well. I listened to this song about ...

Release date: 2025 March 07 Album track list:  Sweet Dreams Album runtime: 3 mi nutes  I always get a slight moment of anxiety when I start anything related to one of the really big groups, because I see good and ugly interactions between fans of all groups, and it's one of the only moments where I have a touch of imposter syndrome and uncertainty, but I also speak the truth as I hear it in these songs without hate, and I hope that sincerity carries through because even when I don't listen to groups, I still wish them the best and that they will be successful in their endeavors. And in J-Hope's case, I woke up early and gave up sleep last week despite his being a rapper and my general "I don't typically prefer to listen to rap" deal and watched his concert livestreamed because I was curious and I always want to see if I can find more music I like. And I found a couple that I want to take a closer look at. This song was on the setlist, so I, like many others, h...