Just A Little Fangirl Love

Release date: 2026 October 28 Album tracklist: Day &N ight Album runtime: 2 minutes  This song is woefully, painfully, criminally short, so short that I had to triple check to verify that this was an actual release and not AI garbage and lies. But even though my list of even just the October releases I need to do is long and distinguished, of course I'm going to do the leader of Cross Gene's song, considering I just did a post of theirs for the Expanded Offering. I'm hoping that this is a wonderful addition to the month of spookening because of the album artwork. Well. This was not what I was expecting. We've got a trap beat underneath a generally upbeat instrumental that's also generally weighted down but has a slightly sparkly quality go it. It's good short to have much momentum or change go the song, which is a little bit of a disappointment because of how much I love Fill Me . He actually pulls out a falsetto a couple of times in this song, which helps t...

Release date: 2026 October 19 Album tracklist: Like you, 12 o'clock , Outside, One plus one, Not personal (Joshua Solo), Coloring (Jeonghan Solo), No looking back Album runtime: 19 minutes  Whoo! The next of the Seventeen subunits has debuted, which means that now Jeonghan is in almost as many subunits as Hoshi is. If they'd done the Guoz subunit, then SCoups would have been in as many official subunits as Hoshi. I'm deeply upset though over the fact that we have a title track that is shorter than two-and-a-half minutes. And only two of the seven songs are over three minutes. But this is a specific problem across all of the HYBE groups. I don't know what it is about this song, but it sounds oddly SHINee. Am I the only one hearing that? It's got a good streak of funky guitar and almost catcalling whistling. It's just really too short to have too much variation to it, although I love how the rest of the instrumental sort of pauses a little during the whistling. We...

Release date: 2026 October 09 Album tracklist:  Will I See You , Will I See You - Inst. Album runtime: 7 minutes  I'm so excited about the older groups being more active right now. Also, with the weather getting colder, I have to start wearing my wrist and thumb brace more which makes it a bit difficult to type, but it's easier to type on a keyboard than on my phone right now because of the lack of thumb movement. Gotta love car accidents. So much fun. Anyway, they debuted in 2004 and all three of them are married. Good for them. I'm glad they could have that bit of normalcy. This is a gorgeous instrumental. It's almost a lullaby of a song. We've got the trio of instruments that are just so versatile: piano, guitar, and drums. We get both kinds of guitars, which is always fun to hear, although the acoustic guitar does get a little bit more airtime. On top of the standard trio, we've also got a gorgeous violin just soaring its way through the instrumental. This e...

Release date: 2026 October 14 Album tracklist: Blank; DEVIL ; P.O.V; View; Sunset Road; CODENAME 3,2,1; Better Days; Love Me; 7 Days; 10th Page; Color; Click Click Boom!; EVERYDAY; Boys And Girls (Feat. Infinite); Those Times; Tree Album runtime: 46 minutes  Once again, everyone say thank you to the algorithm that I built brick by brick. I would not have known about this without it. And since it's the month of the Spookening, I'm very interested in this song based on the title alone. Also, I find it a little funny that he has a song on this album called "P.O.V" and another called "View". I also find it a little adorable that there's actually an Infinite song in this album. And I like the cleverness of the album artwork. This is a bit of a slinky and sultry song. The beat isn't particularly heavy, but it's smooth in a way that reminds me of whiskey in a smoky bar with glittering diamonds and silks. Very upscale place, this song is. It's heavy ...

Release date: 2026 October 14 Album tracklist: DON'T FORGET Album runtime: 3 minutes  The ZEROBASEONE members have been busy. One has debuted as a soloist now, and I find out out that Jiwoong was part of a group and debuted as a soloist before ZEROBASEONE. The more you know. I may need to take a look at his group to see if there's a song that catches my fancy for an Expanded Offerings post. But he also dropped a digital single, which was a surprise when YouTube gave me his music video as a suggested video. That's a lot of guitar there, so much so that it's a little bit too much for his voice, that or the balance is really off. It's a shame because I really like what's going on with the guitar in the instrumental. It's spunky and spicy and sassy with a lot of dramatic tossing its head. But it's a bit too much for how soft his voice gets in spots. And there's even a guitar solo. Is that a vibrato I hear? Jiwoong, I wasn't aware of this. I also have...

Release date: 2026 October 14 Album tracklist:  Go Around , Go Around (Inst.) Album runtime: 6 minutes  If you don't think that I'm going to do a review for a member of god (pronounced "G-O-D") as a soloist, I have not been doing my due diligence in screaming about my love for this group from the rooftops. There are only so many rooftops to scream from, but I will have to rectify this. This song is Son Ho-Young's first solo release in five years, and I am honored to be able to do this for him.  The drums and the guitar don't kick off into the song immediately, which lets the first impression be one of softness. And while we do have very steady energy, the softening that occurs occasionally is going to do really well to either let the vocals rest or to highlight them. We get the instrumental in the single, so I don't have to try to listen under the vocals yet for this part, which is why I can't say that yet, but this is an excellent flow of energy and m...

Release date: 2026 October 12 Album tracklist: Killin' Me, UNDEAD , Insidious, 3AM, Bloody Gravity, Other Side, Our Light, Steal the Thunder Album runtime: 21 minutes  I'm going to be completely honest here. I forgot he was debuting as a soloist. Luckily, YouTube and the algorithm I have built brick by brick have my back and when I tried to go to bed last night with my Resident Evil Let's Play I've been watching to go to sleep to (it's actually the  Resident Evil 2  remake, but I'm not going to quibble too much), one of my recommended videos was his debut music video. So, here we are. I am loving the titles of these songs though. I'm sensing some spookiness here and I am here for this. Yes. Oh, you want me to actually say more about this. Fine. The instrumental feels like a slightly more rock version of Thriller  by Michael Jackson and Back In Time by Huey Lewis & The News. It's zombie party eighties rock with a dose of the modern flare. I'm alr...

Release date: 2026 October 01 Album tracklist: Never Again Album runtime: 3 minutes  You know what I want? I want for VIXX as a whole group to have a comeback. It's time. I want to review a new VIXX song. We need the Kings of Concepts back. I will accept their solo work as an acceptable replacement, however. There's already a piano cover of this song on YouTube. As there should be since the piano is definitely the dominate instrument going on here. Actually, you want to know what this instrumental reminds me of? Hopelessly Devoted To You from the musical Grease . It's not quite as power ballad, but it's got a similar timbre. It's a beautiful instrument and I'm kind of sad that we don't have just the instrumental to listen to. There's something very sad about a slow, solo piano, but I imagine for people who are not me and need something specific to go to sleep to, this might actually make a good song to sleep to. Ah, listen to that. Listen to Leo's du...

Release date: 2026 October 21 Album tracklist:  360° , Devil, Ender, Pebbles, Swim Across The Sea, A Sleepless Night -Japanese Ver.- , Jinsei Sanka, Countdown, Shintouya, Slow Motion Album runtime: 4 minutes  There are so many songs I could do. But I also really like CNBLUE and even though I don't do a lot of Japanese releases, I'm choosing to do this one regardless. The album doesn't actually come out until the 21st, so I don't know how long this is going to be, but the title track is four minutes so I'll leave that as a placeholder until this is actually released. Listen to that starting guitar. It's so weighty. That weightiness carries through a lot of the song and gives it some very nice heft. But you know what has my attention? The violin. I was not expecting that from this band, but any time a violin shows up, the song has my attention. This is gloriously cinematic in a most wonderful way. This is just settled in a way I really love to see. And I love how...

Release date: 2026 October 08 Album tracklist: Fairy Tale Album runtime: 4 minutes  Holy crap, y'all. If I'm looking at this correctly, it has been six years since their last comeback, and they turned ten this year. Wow. We're also down to three members of the original six, but  Listen to that piano. Honestly, the vibe of "fairy tale" was nailed with a sledgehammer with this instrumental. It's got spots where it's a little sparkly but it's just soft and pretty for so much of it. We don't even have drums for most of the first part of the song. We get a little bit of a violin before we get any sort of drum set, which I am here for. I love violins in the instrumental. But this is genuinely just so soft and I love it. The piano is doing all of the heavy-lifting here.  They've got amazing voices. Why didn't they blow up? I'm genuinely asking that question because their last comeback was before I even started listening to K-Pop. Also, T'C...

Release date: 2026 October 09 Album tracklist: Treading Water Album runtime: 3 minutes  It's been a hot minute since they released something, so I'm kind of stoked about this. I love their debut song, if you weren't here for this back then or you ignored it. It's pretty awesome. It's one of the most Backstreet Boys things I've heard in recent years. And also, the eldest one loves BTOB, so we already know he's a man of taste for top-tier vocals, and I can say that objectively because of how the other five groups reacted to BTOB on Kingdom (one of my favorite responses was "If they decide to dance too, we're done") and because of what they've won with those vocals. So the fact that one of them loves BTOB tells us his vocal standard, and it will likely continue to influence the vocals of this group because of the emulation thing humans do that's so fun. This feels like it might be leaning a little afrobeats, but I don't think that...

 Alrighty-roo. I went back and took a look at some of the songs I shared with y'all in the other Halloween posts, and decided that I'd put this one on the short list for October this year. The shortlist is twenty songs long, for the record, so I'm not going to cover all of them right now, but I thought that this would be a good one to follow a behemoth of a group. As I said in the Halloween post in 2024, I wouldn't have discovered this group and this song if they hadn't released a new song. Ish. Seriously, this is an underrated group and it's impressive they survived as long as they did. They made it the full seven years of their contract, which is four more than the average girl group, so I just want that acknowledgement for them. Also, their fandom colors are Joyful Green and Cheerful Yellow, and that's just so precious that they actually have colors and what those colors are called. I know that's a bit weird with how dark this song is, but most of th...

Release date: 2026 October 01 Album tracklist: Tell Me, Five Hours in Pieces , I'll Be Okay, fool Album runtime: 14 minutes  I'm going to try my very hardest not to be as behind in October as I was in July, August, and September. Starting with TIOT.  I left this on repeat while I got up to go grab some salami because I just wanted to enjoy the song for a moment before I got all scrunchy between my eyebrows from listening. The answer is that I really just like this song. It's comfortingly energetic, which is a weird combination of words, but this is definitely a rock song with a comforting pat to the head. It's also very pretty, especially the very introduction, which is why I wanted to just spend some time with it. Like, genuinely, even though I'm not super paying attention to it, I've literally had it on repeat for roughly forty-five minutes and I'm just chilling with it. Alright. The rapping is very intense compared to the rest of the vocals, but it's ...

Release date: 2026 October 02 Album tracklist:  너란 섬 , 너란 섬 - Instrumental Album runtime: 8 minutes Oof, that's a long song. Excellent. This was apparently the Yeosu World Island Expo Theme Song, but it wasn't actually officially released until just now. I think.  The very start of the instrumental reminds me of one of the opening themes for Seven Deadly Sins, and then it becomes a lot more cheerful than I was expecting. And it sounds like there may be a little bit of organ work going on, or at least the synthesizer or the keyboard has been made to sound like an organ. We've got chimes. We've got a very prominent guitar that takes the dominant position for the aural landscape with the drums at a very close second. But this is very cheerful, and I'm happy we got the instrumental only track because then we can just hang out on it for almost four minutes. Bless the songwriters. I think my favorite thing about his voice is the fact that I don't think he could hide h...

 Everyone! It is time for the best season of the year! We're back with another batch of songs for the month of Spookening! Whoo! As always, because I am a connoisseur of the creepy, I spend basically all year scouring for the spooky and the dark songs. Basically, if I'm not in a specific mood playlist or my regular listening playlist, I've had my ears buried in spooky playlists. And I found some whoppers, but I can only fit so many into this unless I want to make it four hours long. You'd have to get my personal Halloween playlist if you want one that long though.  It's the most wonderful time of the year! Without any further ado, here are your 2026 Halloween recs: Mirotic by TVXQ! You may be wondering why I'm putting this song in a Halloween playlist when it's famously known for being quite sexy, and sexiness alone does not qualify it for this playlist. However, I'd like to point out the elements of the music video which would qualify it for this playl...

 If you've never heard of this group, don't worry. You're not alone in this because they're a first gen group that hasn't released an album since 2003 and they're not one of the names you regularly hear about as being a representative of the first gen line-up. Although, to be fair, even when you do run into one of the big names of first gen, I've found that many people outside of Korea don't know them as well as they should since they're foundational to what we have now. Our second and third gen (and fourth gen now) favorites got to run and be global superstars on the paths that first gen walked down first. You may also have noticed that when it comes to first gen coverage here, I've been focusing on the B-Sides. Part of that is because out of all of the generations of K-Pop that we have so far, first gen has the greatest wealth of b-sides as they were before the mini albums and singles were popularized, so they released full albums. The other pa...

 Someone looked at one of my posts using a Linux operating system in the last week. Wow. My eyebrows are raised and I'm a little bit delighted by that. Hello, Linux user. I don't know if you'll see this, but I'm giving you a thumbs up. Hello, everyone else! Welcome, Champions! I know I'm wildly behind with the plan for September, given that it's almost halfway through and I'm only now getting to those posts, so I'll have to move one of my planned August posts to November and one of my originally planned September songs to December. You will get that first gen song this year. September is going to be reserved for the smaller groups. We had big moments in August, and now we're going to get a little bit of a quieter month with smaller groups. Well, metaphorically because this was a nine-member group. Mostly. Sort of. Hence the name. Kind of what it says on the tin. 9MUSES debuted in 2010 under Star Empire as a nine-member group. Again, hence the name. T...

 I went back to the roulette wheel for this one because I figure that I can stray again from what I'm familiar with, and instead it gave me the first song I started listening to by MAMAMOO and the reason I continued listening to them. 6000 songs, at least a third of which I've never heard before. And yet, ironically, it's a song called "Destiny" that chaos decided for me. What's even funnier about this is the last song I did was by their younger brothers, who debuted the year this came out. Ah, I'm excited for you to hear this one if you haven't already. MAMAMOO is a four member girl group that debuted in 2014 under RBW. They're known for industry defying behavior (especially when told not to do something), insane vocals, and a level of chaos that has caused them to be called the female BTOB (and BTOB gets called the male MAMAMOO, which is accurate and funny). Also, Changsub and Solar are besties and she's about two days older. Or a day older. ...

Release date: 2025 October 31 Album tracklist: Fun,  If You Wanna , DND, Scissors, At The Time, Beautiful, On Top of the World,  Good Liar , Maniac,  Better Than Me Album runtime: 27 minutes  Yes, I'm very much aware that I have already done the title track and one of the pre-releases for this album, but I never did this one. And the music video popped up on my recommendations today while I was doing other things, which reminded me that this was sitting in my drafts. It unfortunately is what it is, but I need to clean out the drafts and this is a good time for that. So, without further ado, let's get on with it. I feel like this comment I'm about to make is going to be considered blasphemous, but honestly, it was my very first thought and it was one I continued to have over the course of the song (which is painfully short, but whatever). And I mean this in the absolute best way possible. I think this is secretly a Britney Spears song. Other than the very obvious danc...

Release date: 2025 October 24 Album tracklist: SPAGHETTI (feat. J-Hope) , Pearlies (My oyster is the world), SPAGHETTI (Member ver.), SPAGHETTI (English ver.) (feat. J-Hope), SPAGHETTI (feat. J-Hope),  Pearlies (My oyster is the world),  SPAGHETTI (Member ver.),  SPAGHETTI (English ver.) (feat. J-Hope) Album runtime: 22 minutes  Thank you, Fearnots, for forcing me to get this one done. And congrats on the win! (If any Armys contributed to this, given J-Hope's involvement, congrats to y'all too!). Also, that is a list of songs. Technically I think we should count this as a single because there are only actually two different songs on there. And before we are concerned at the fact that I seem to have listed songs twice, the first half are the explicit versions, and the second half are the music-show-performable versions. Why does this song remind me of Wife by i-dle? That's not a bad thing because I unironically love that song and have it in probably at least five pla...