Just A Little Fangirl Love

  Y'all, I just went down a rabbit hole over INKODE, who we should be getting the second boy group debut announcement from soon. Anyway.  We have three first wins for songs this week! Whoo!!! Congrats to those groups! And I believe one of these may be a first win ever, so that's even cooler! For the extra performances, I went with a pretty recent After School Club with Ep. 664 from 2025 and KickFlip. For the The Show re-run, I'm giving you TOMORROW X TOGETHER back when they were still pretty new in 2021. And the two extra stages for this week went to ifeye and UNCHILD. As always, the links in the spreadsheet go to my reviews of the songs. The link down with ASC goes to the full episode because they get weird when I try to embed them. Happy watching, everyone! Show Champion: &TEAM "We on Fire" MCountdown: Cortis "REDRED" Music Bank: NCT Wish "Ode to Love" Show! Music Core:  NCT Wish "Ode to Love" Inkigayo:  NCT Wish "Ode to ...

Release date: 2026 April 20 Album tracklist: 2.0 (TWO POINT O), Ode to Love , Sticky, Feel The Beat, Crush, Street (2AM), Glow Up, Everglow, Don't Say You Love Me, Voyage Album runtime: 30 minutes  Congrats on the first full album! Title track over three minutes? Check! Average runtime over three minutes? Check! Maknae who is eighteen? Check! I am a happy fangirl for this moment.  This is a pretty mild instrumental, more so than I was expecting. We've got the skittering beat that usually promises high danceability, but combined with the relatively low BPM (I've only just now realized that what I consider a low BPM is actually pretty fast because this feels like it's in the low 130s, so ignore me on that point), it allows the song to to translate its softness to lightness. We don't have any big bursts of drama with the instrumental, though we do have a softening dip that allows there to be a good contrast of energy with the song at equilibrium. It's nice. This wi...

 Well, well. Here we are with another awards show, which means a whole new set of performances. As with the others, I'm going to stay out of the way of the wins and performances. When you make it down to the end, that's when I'll yap. See you then! Enjoy the performances! performances 10CM (_CDEFG + To Reach You) aespa (Drift + Rich Man + Dirty Work ) ALLDAY PROJECT ( ONE MORE TIME + LOOK AT ME + FAMOUS ) Alpha Drive One (HOLA SOLAR + FORMULA ) BOYNEXTDOOR ( Hollywood Action + IF I SAY, I LOVE YOU ) EXO (Wolf + Monster + The Eve + Love Shot + Growl + Back it up) G-Dragon (DRAMA + POWER + HOME SWEET HOME + TOO BAD + Crooked) Hanroro (0+0 + Landing in Love) Hearts2Hearts ( The Chase + Focus ) IDID ( CHAN-RAN + PUSH BACK) ILLIT ( Do The Dance + Not Cute Anymore ) IVE ( XOXZ + ATTITUDE + REBEL HEART ) Jennie (Seoul City + ZEN + like JENNIE ) KiiiKiii (To Me From Me + I DO ME + DANCING ALONE ) NCT Wish ( poppop + Videohood + COLOR ) RIIZE ( Fame + Bag Bad Back + ...

Given my relative verboseness and frequent rambling, it would be understandable if you're expecting me to ramble about now as well. But I'm not going to! Yet. That'll come at the end. Instead, just enjoy the performances and the winners.  My little comments will show up at the end.  In the meantime, enjoy! performances Alpha Dive One (Intro + FORMULA) BABYMONSTER ( WE GO UP + DRIP ) BOYNEXTDOOR ( Hollywood Action ) Bumsup/Park Bo-gum (Ink Becoming Flesh) Enhypen ( No Doubt + Bad Desire (With or Without You) ) Hearts2Hearts ( FOCUS ) i-dle ( Good Thing ) IVE ( XOXZ + REBEL HEART ) MEOWW ( TURN IT UP ) NCT Wish ( COLOR ) Super Junior ( Express Mode + Mr. Simple + BONAMANA + Sorry, Sorry) Treasure (2025 Free + PARADISE + I WANT YOUR LOVE) TWS ( OVERDRIVE ) Yeonjun (Coma + Talk To You) match-ups Hearts2Hearts X NCT Wish TWS X MEOVV winners Fan's Choice of the Year (Daesang): Enhypen Song of the Year (Daesang): Rosé X Bruno Mars - APT. Fan's Choice Male Top 10 (B...

Release date: 2025 September 01 Album tracklist: COLOR , Baby Blue, Surf , Cheat Code, Videohood, WICHU, Reel-ationship Album runtime: 21 minutes  Apparently there's another NCT Wish song that dropped ahead of this that I didn't know about. Mildly peeved. It's fine. I may not get to it though if it doesn't get a win anywhere. Apologies for that. I feel like I've heard the beginning of this song somewhere, and I feel like it's a first Gen song. I mean, SM had three groups: H.O.T, S.E.S, and Shinhwa. It wouldn't be out of the picture to borrow a snip of instrumental from one of them. After that slightly more mystical introduction, things get a little more industrial with the clanging and the street performance music vibe. We get the mystical back, which I appreciate as that means that the introduction isn't a one-and-done, and we get some interesting instruments that spice up the song a little.  SM songs just sound like SM songs, and I get why if you like...

  Ooh, this week had some interesting wins. Well, okay. First of all, this is the first time in a while that we've had a full batch of wins. The only way this could have been better is if After School Club had come off of hiatus. Alas. But that's fun regardless. But you know what's more fun? Three of the six were first wins for songs. And one of the six wins got a triple crown! That brings the song to ten wins, which is apparently 1/7 of the group's total wins, and makes that triple crowns from Inkigayo, Music Core, and MCountdown.  I picked a group that for the ASC re-run this week that is currently on a survival called A-IDOL, and I don't know how I feel about it because of the nature of this survival show. My girls Purple Kiss, Lightsum, and DreamNote are also on it, which is...concerning for a completely different reason. So give them all some love, yeah? (Other groups on the show are WOOAH and iCHILLIN, so give them some love too). Anyway, this is episode 571 f...

Release date: 2025 August 12 Album tracklist: Surf Album runtime: 3 minutes  Well, I was going to sleep after I did the VANNER review, but as it turns out, I need to emotionally recover, or at least make it so that I'm not crying as I'm trying to sleep because I don't need my eyes to be that red and puffy at work tomorrow. So instead, I'm going to focus on NCT Wish, because they got a win, so I need to write a review for this anyway and having a good distraction will help. Focusing on something happy, no matter how small, is a powerful tool. And I like NCT Wish, anyway. Such a summery song. The instrumental does make me laugh a little bit because the instrumental track for this song reminds me a lot of a theme song for a comedy set in the 70s. Though, to be fair, it doesn't have to be a full comedy because it also reminds me a little of Hawaii Five-O  or Magnum, P.I . Though, to be fair the latter one is mostly from the 80s, but my point still stands. It's summe...

  I am super late with posting this, but in my defense, I GOT TO SEE 8TURN THIS WEEK AND THEY'RE AWESOME AND VERY PRETTY. And very funny. And very, very good dancers. And their vocals? Took my earplugs out a couple of times just to hear some of those notes better. Myungho has a set of pipes on him, let me tell you. Color me impressed. Anyway, we got some first song wins this week, which is delightful. There are only three groups that got wins this week, and all three of them debuted last year, funnily enough, so that's good news for the kids. I say kids. They range from roughly 23 to 14. Big spread of ages. I'm not entirely pleased with all of those ages, but regardless of that, I wish the groups' continued success as they continue to learn and grow and become better artists and hopefully well-rounded people. For the ASC performance as After School Club is still on hiatus, I just scrolled randomly and landed on Cross Gene, which was interesting because the episode was f...

Release date: 2025 April 14 Album tracklist: poppop , Melt Inside My Pocket, Design, 1000, Silly Dance, Still 3PM Album runtime: 18 minutes  Okay, this song shouldn't make me emotional. I started a certain group's tenth anniversary release and realized that my current emotional space is not good for that. So I can't right now. Instead I'm going to go for a rookie group that I've liked so far, NCT Wish. They're adorable and with how much I absolutely adore both Dunk Shot and Steady, I'm tentatively hopeful for this one as well. Also, the title track is over three minutes, so the fact that I had to round up to the eighteen minutes (it was still pretty close) isn't too much of a problem for me. Also, I definitely need to get this review done because they've gotten wins, and y'all know what that means. Okay, so this song has more of the classic NCT sound than the two tracks they promoted with the last time, both of which I absolutely loved. The bass ...

Assuming this works, I'm going to start including the music show wins in a weekly post. Mondays are apparently the break day for the music shows. But I'm including the weekly performance on After School Club, which can be watched live on YouTube each week at 13:00 KST and is focused on international audiences, so the primary language is English with live Korean translations and subtitles. You can also watch them after the fact. Current hosts of After School Club are Aron of NU'EST, and Allen and Taeyoung of Cravity. I'm sure it's fairly obvious why I'm including After School Club (hereafter referred to as ASC).  And here are the various performances! Show Champion: Kang Daniel "Electric Shock" MCountdown: Yeonjun "GGUM" (note: This is from the 20240926 episode of MCountdown; if I can find a performance, I'll update) Music Bank: NCT Wish "Steady" Show! Music Core: Key "Pleasure Shop" (note: I can't tell you how hap...

 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 24 Album tracklist: Steady , 3 Minutes , Dunk Shot , On & On, Supercute, Skate, Hands Up - Korean Version Album runtime: 21 minutes I've been looking forward to the album because of how much I liked Dunk Shot . I'll have to do a review of 3 Minutes  as well, but that will be for when I have a moment and the releases cool down a little. In the meantime, let's see about this one! Oh, it's so cute! I know I normally do the instrumentals and stuff in this paragraph, but I got so distracted immediately from how cute they sound that I think my cuteness aggression got triggered. They're not the only boy group to recently debut that I've thought were cute, but this is the first one that actually made me start to laugh at my reaction. And, generally speaking, I think TWS are some of the cutest to recently debut, but I never kicked my feet for TWS. And yet, this song made me do just that. I don't know how I'm going to recover fro...

Release date: 2024 September 24 Album tracklist:  Steady ,  3 Minutes ,  Dunk Shot , On & On, Supercute, Skate, Hands Up - Korean Version Album runtime: 21 minutes I'm not generally a huge fan of the NCT subunits. I like Dream and WayV the best, but even then, they're not groups I would stress out to pre-order tickets for. It's the perceived shouting thing. So I have to admit, I haven't paid much attention to this one other than the general pride I feel when a younger sibling group to one I do like debuts. Not that this is a debut, but I think it'll be my first listen to one of their songs. This reminds me of a hip hop version of High School Musical , which makes me laugh a little bit. But there's also an industrial grind to the bass accompanying the electric guitar and the synth. Ah, that's kind of funny to picture. Industrial High School Musical . Troy Bolton and the Wildcats shooting a music video in a construction zone. The beat isn't particularl...