Just A Little Fangirl Love

Release date: 2025 August 19 Album tracklist: Cotton, Goodbyes and Sad Eyes , Da Capo, Chocolate Tea, DRIP, Over You, ICY BBY , Take-off Album runtime: 3 minutes  We have a four and a half minute song, everyone! Alert! This is not a drill! The title track is even three-and-a-half minutes long. I love her just a little bit more for restoring my faith in K-Pop song lengths, because we are over a three minute average. Happy, happy, joy, joy. Y'all, she has been so active as a soloist the last little bit. I am waiting somewhat impatiently for the next MAMAMOO comeback, but Moonbyul is doing well to be active while I and their MOOMOOS wait.  Twenty seconds was all I needed. Done. Sold. This actually reminds me a lot of the rock-country music I grew up. It also feels pretty 00s alt-rock, so it feels really familiar. The only way that this could feel more targeted directly for me to drag me back to my childhood is if this had been a proper country song. It doesn't go hard the en...

Release date: 2025 August 19 Album tracklist: Cotton, Goodbyes and Sad Eyes , Da Capo, Chocolate Tea, DRIP, Over You,  ICY BBY , Take-off Album runtime: 3 minutes  My girl, Moonbyul! I didn't actually see that this was being released until a few days before it was, and then finding out it's a pre-release caused all the emotions. I fear I still haven't actually moved on from Is This Love? , so I'm worried about my acceptance of the new album. But, you know what? It's good for me to have to accept a new song, and if MAMAMOO isn't releasing new music as a group right now, then I'll be looking forward to their new music as soloists. We've got some retro video game vibes to the instrumental, which is interesting to be hearing. I like the vibes. I just wish the different sections were a little more strongly distinct. With the exception of the intro and the first verse immediately following it, the skittering beat goes through the entire song and kind of takes ...

Release Date: 2025 April 02 Album tracklist: WANT , WANT (Inst.) Album runtime: 7 minutes  Solar, the queen you are. That's it. That's all I have to say about this. That and I love how long the song is. Plus, we get just the instrumental so I get to use it. I can't decide if this is more disco or funk, but it's upbeat and there's a very distinct call-and-response embedded in the song that demands audience participation more than the fan chant. That's right, guys, gals, and nonbinary pals, we've got the return of some audience participation clapping! There for a while, there were a lot of songs being released that had either audience participation snapping or clapping, which I loved. It's nice to have this return to it. This song feels like it's a lot of fun, and I'm here for it. This song doesn't show off her vocal skills quite as much as I would like it too. It also feels a lot tamer than what we normally get from her, so it's interestin...

 Coming up as we are on March 15th, I'm starting to get emotional. Between certain anniversaries, and a certain member leaving his company on the group disbandment date, I'm not doing incredibly well. So, for the dopamine hit, I picked a group that has very little connection to my boys, other than having two more 95z and their maknae being born within days of one of the members, but also one that I already love. MAMAMOO is the girl group version of my emotional support group, BTOB, and I'm into the emotional support right now for myself.  So I picked an emotional support song because I need it and I'm sure that someone else out there needs it. Starry Night  is, as the post title suggests, the title track for their EP "Yellow Flower" from their Four Seasons, Four Colors series (which serves to highlight each of the four members, beginning here with Hwasa). It kind of feels like half the album got a music video of some sort, something I think is super cool, and ...

Release date: 2025 February 05 Album tracklist: Hoshiakari , Because of you, Is This Love? (Japanese Ver) Album runtime: 10 minutes  Japanese Debut incoming! I obviously don't do a lot of the Japanese releases, but this is Moobyul and  it's her Japanese debut, so obviously, I have to review this one. Obviously. She's stunning and phenomenal. She went for somethin gloriously soft for her debut. The guitar is quiet and sentimental, and even when the energy starts to spark up, the beats of rest that act as a reset for the song do a phenomenal job of specifically delineating the different sections and allowing the softness of the verses to come to the forefront without making it too jarring. Really, even when the energy has increased, this is just such a soft song that I'm delighted by this. Strictly speaking, debuts are how to announce what form the artist's career will be like, at least for a little bit, so with Moonbyul's being just so soft, it makes me genuinely...

Release date: 2025 January 09 Album tracklist: Aftertaste , Aftertaste - Instrumental Album runtime: 10 minutes  Wheein just casually slid a single towards us, and I love that for her. She's probably the member of MAMAMOO that I'm least familiar with, but that just means that there hasn't been good timing for me to get to know her. And this also comes with the instrumental, which makes her my favorite right now. But even if I don't know her as well as some of the other members, she's in MAMAMOO and that tells me everything I need to know about her voice. Wheein dropped a song that belongs in a fairytale. I'm not even kidding. I'm reminded somewhat of Pinocchio and Cinderella, without anything substantial to explain why I'm connecting those two to this song, but also, this is both soft and sweet, with just a bit of a bite occasionally from the cymbals and the guitar. But we get strings, which are one of my favorite things to be added to music because they...

Release date: 2024 October 29 Album tracklist: First Love , Love Letter Album runtime: 7 minutes  Solar, the queen you are. The word 감성 in Korean apparently translates to "sensitivity", and I'd be willing to bet that because she has eight of these now, she uses them to release songs she wants to do, instead of ones that match the concept or whatever of the albums. And if the two songs on this one are any indication, she may use them to do her ballads that require no choreography. It doesn't go quite as hard as a Phil Collins song, but this is a full 80s soft rock ballad. This is a slow dance at prom song. This is also an ending credits song for a Disney movie. If this was a Western song, this would be a waving lighter song. You could use the phone flashlight, but realistically, this song vibes with a lighter being used instead. It's the flickering vibe.  Her voice is so unbelievably gorgeous. Even though she keeps the tone of her voice so soft, she doesn't kee...

 The official start of this little music review blog! I'm proud of it. And, again, thank you for everyone who has read even a single post so far, even if you aren't reading this one. I am simply happy and grateful and will endeavor to continue this honesty with love and recognition of the hard work of the artists. And for the one person who seems to be reading every single one, thank you and I love you. You make my morning every day. September of 2024 saw a couple of debuts, a re-debut, and some comebacks I was very much looking forward to, as well as some I would have been looking forward to had I been listening to the group/artist already. The ones I personally was emotionally invested are as follows: Vahn (NINE.i): They were the first group I saw in person, and the reason I watched Boy's Planet, after the fact of course because I didn't get into K-Pop until after ZB1 had already debuted. I love their voices, and I have yet to run into a song I didn't like by them...

Release date: 2024 September 19 Album tracklist: Road, HWASA, NA,  EGO, OK NEXT, just wanna have some fun, O Album runtime: 20 minutes  It's always a pleasure to listen to Hwasa, even if it's been some time since she released a new album. Last year's I Love My Body  was, as far as I'm concerned, a perfect match for her, so it'll be interesting to see where she goes from there.  This is kind of a strange phenomenon where I can actively be listening to NA , and forget that I'm hearing instrumentals. I don't think it's because they're necessarily weak. I just think they blend into the background to support Hwasa's voice so well, that they fuzz out. It's not a bad thing. If she were playing one of the instruments, then I'd be alarmed by the imbalance there, but since she isn't, the point is to highlight her voice. Which they're very effective at doing. And that's even more interesting considering the chorus is actually doing notic...

 This is going to be the least filled out of these. In the future, I'll be more on top of releases, but considering I started this near the end of the month, I'm going to give myself a pass. Top Releases of the Month : Moonbyul's Is This Love? - I'm really not joking when I say that if this song isn't one of my top listens of the year, I'm going to be really sad. It's basically perfect and...I want more of this. Give me more interesting musical techniques, I beg of the industry. B.A.P's Gone - I just want to wrap myself up in the song and pretend like everything is okay. Is it? I don't know, but what I do know is the fact that they managed to come back together after all the trauma they went through together, even if they aren't fully back together yet, gives me hope for all the groups that didn't deserve what happened to them (and the handful of my small groups that are struggling right now). Honorable Mentions : xikers's Tsuki (Lunatic)...

  Release date: 2024 August 21 Album tracklist: Backpack, Is This Love? , Dear., TOUCHIN&MOVIN (English Ver.), Is This Love? (Sped Up Ver.) Album runtime: 16 minutes As soon as I heard this song, I fell in love with it. First time. That was all it took to tumble head over heels with it. I'm going to be very sad if it doesn't end up being a top listen of the year for me. I love it so much. If it doesn't, that means that the competition was very stiff. I'm a simple girl. Songs that brighten my mood immediately upon hearing them always end up being my favorites, especially if they also just make the brain happy because there are delicious things going on with them. The background instrumentals do some amazing things with the variability of the sections and playing alongside the vocals. Sometimes rests are added where there hadn't been earlier. There are some cool slides and stutters and skids.  I think one of my favorites parts of the melody is the inverse word pai...