Feb 2024 new music~
gonna post it on time this month! ^^

⭐⭐⭐ liked some/most songs:
Cravity - Evershine
P1Harmony - Killin' It

✨✨✨ liked a few songs:
DK (iKon) - Nakseo

❄️❄️❄️ singles:
Aimers - Somebody
Epex - Graduation Day
Rescene - Yoyo

🌠🌠🌠 indie:
Jukjae - Midnight Call - this actually came out at the end of January but I missed it, anyway I love Jukjae
Maktub - Please Forget Me
Seyan Kim - Lullaby for Hozzi (her cat who passed away from cancer)

😱😱😱 gwangseok has a dog called boseok it's so cute!!!! it's so cutecutecutecutecuuuutee!!!! 💕☁️💕☁️💕

this week's music hashtags~ 🍭🧁

#kpopmonday - same same
well obviously for me it has to be Tap Tap, my most favorite Verivery era ever!!!

Japanese Ver!!!

I'm not feeling the other hashtags so that's all for this week~ 😊

aahh inseong didn't post anything on instagram after the last episode, i hope he's not too upset about this.........

thinking about it more - the contestants who got eliminated were dropped in favor of people who can't even remember their lyrics or finish their performance - it's disrespectful

i was watching peak time bad again and sungkyu's screaming is so funny

I'm free~~~~~~~

nah tbh i was feeling pretty checked out from this show and kinda hoping for inseong to get eliminated so i can move on with my life. it sucks but hopefully he got a bit of exposure i guess.

2/3 performances I still really wanted to see were cut ☹️ (hyukjin/inseong, hwanhee/hwanji). instead we were forced to watch junhyeok and yeo one flounder through my sea and juhe lose his shit and break down during the performance. taehwan losing to my sea? they're just trying to slam peak time, you can't convince me otherwise (need a tinfoil hat emoji, this is the best I can do lol ) anyway, here is peak time's my sea which is way more worth watching 🩵

and yeah, just disappointed. I remember hwanji's voice had kind of a unique pathos that I really wanted to hear again. It seems like hyukjin has a really bright personality and I would love to see more of him just doing anything lol.

That's the thing about this show, it's just the stages + reactions and a bit of drama. No games, no casual spontaneous interactions between the contestants to make it interesting. Last time I was like, idk what they even filled up the 2 hours with. and everything felt so rigged. i can't believe they took so many great people and made such a crap show. needless to say i'm not interested in the final group LOL

bye bye build up~ 🔥

last vote before the episode:
💕 Inseong Seongjeong x7
🩵 Seongjun Inhwan x5 Sunyoul x4

discovered a new krnb artist ~ 수엔 Suen 🌙
her voice is beautiful 💜 full ep

this week's music hashtags~ 💕🍫

#kpopmonday - fall in love again
💕 ha sungwoon - lazy lovers
💕 sf9 - easy love
💕 riize - love 119

#tunetuesday - break up or make up
🖤 vixx lr - beautiful liar

#thursdayfivelist - the sadness
nah sorry I don't feel like thinking about sad songs right now~ ☀️

#jukeboxfridaynight - live performance
lmao with kpop there are wayyy too many given all the music shows

since it's valentine's week, I'll go with Verivery - Hold Me Tight, ft. Yeonho being completely adorable in a beret 💗💕💗💕

a rather boring and disappointing episode of Build Up today...

and what are they even doing with the pacing? there are supposed to be 10 matchups in Round 2, they've only managed to get through 6 but they're already teasing Round 3? surely they won't just gloss over everyone else, right...? right...?

Round 3 will be 3v3 so for that to work they should be eliminating 10 people. I thought it might be the member with fewest votes from each losing team in Round 2, but it looked like the judges are completely in charge of elimination. No indication of our votes having any effect on anything yet 😂 iirc in Round 3 all members of the losing teams will be eliminated (15 people!) my guess is that this is how jay will bow out, as well as any other popular candidates they don't want in the final group.

my updated conspiracy theory is: 1) companies pay mnet to promote their trainees - 2) bring in established idols for views - 3) get some nobodies to come on for the exposure - 4) gush over the trainees and screw everyone else - 5) profit!!

thoughts on the matchups

Yeonwoo / Yunseo vs Woong / Seokhwa

the leadup to this felt very scripted to me. idols vs trainees. (you already know how this is gonna go). 2nd team's song choice was baffling - you know the judges were unhappy with you singing newjeans so you... double down and choose blackpink?? woong and seokhwa seemed quite deflated both during and after the performance. the performance was genuinely not great but it felt too much like they had been set up to lose 🙄

Bain / Minseo vs Gwangseok / Seongjeong

well how about that, gwangseok and seongjeong just so happened to have technical difficulties that tanked their score so the trainee can win. remember guys, when seokhwa makes a mistake it ruins the performance but when minseo makes a mistake it's cool because it shows his passion!! bain was impressive and it was nice for someone to show that jay's not the only one who can sing in a western pop style. that being said, personally it was not my taste. and I just loathe "scratched" singing 🙄

Seongjun / Seohyung vs Geonu / Soomin

seongjun and seohyung's performance was my favorite 💕 the stage was kind of plain, basically they just sang very well haha 🩵 soomin did great on the other stage and having a more lively vibe secured their win

ok votes votes... idk i haven't really been feeling it as much with gwangseok, and he's doing ok in 18th so I think I'm gonna drop him for now. i'm thinking:

inseong inhwan seongjeong x7
seongjun x4 sunyoul x3

i ended up alternating gwangseok and jaekyung in the votes this week... and tonight before the episode i gave 3 votes to seongjun because i miss him :)

~ judging an album by its cover ~

I think visual aesthetics relate to auditory aesthetics to some extent, so I regularly give some songs a listen just because I like the album cover. It doesn't always work out, but I have found some really good songs this way I would have missed out on otherwise, so I keep doing it :)

Anyway, here's a pretty album cover that drew me in recently and turned out to be really good 🌌🦋🌌🦋🌌 DK - LTNS

why the fuck does the Makestar website look like this???? who the fuck's idea was this???????? i save web pages (SingleFile) for archival purposes and now it's 60 fucking MB (previously 2MB) for a single makestar page just why???????

One of my goals for 2024 is to get into Chinese music/Cpop/Mandopop!

My plan is to basically do what I did for Kpop, spend a year listening to just about everything, see what's good and get a sense of which artists and genres I like/don't like.

To make it easy I'm just listening to whatever's on QQ's new music page, hopefully that's a good enough selection.

Of the songs I've saved to my cpop playlist so far, about half of them were released natively on Youtube Music, and the other half were uploaded by some music channel such as KH Tan.

looking up the artists for songs I liked (January)...
let's see if I discovered anyone notable 😀
⭐ SING girl group - idol pop + traditional elements! I like it!
⭐ 陈卓璇 Chen Zhuoxuan / Krystal - she played the blind girl in The Untamed - I liked her whole album 👍
⭐ 黄晓明 Huang Xiaoming - omg! it's the guy from NIF2! he sings beautifully!
⭐ 阿悠悠 A Youyou - 1.4M followers on QQ, description says "charming smoky voice" - yep accurate

OST songs:
💕 藏药令 The Divine Healer : 荒涼 (Desolate) - 郑俊树 J.SHU - love this guy's voice
💕 花青歌 Different Princess : 釜溪 (Fuxi River) - 愉快涵 Yu Kuaihan
💕 漂洋过海再爱你 You'll Never Walk Alone : Honey Honey - 印子月 Luna Yin
💕 天龙八部 Dragon Oath (game) : 龙行江湖 (Dragon roams the jianghu) - 裂天, NL不分

One thing I'm enjoying is hearing more lower-tone voices, in contrast with the Korean music scene, which heavily favors high voices.

this week's music hashtags~🌨️❄️

#kpopmonday - let's play ball

Golden Child - OMG (basketball concept)

#tunetuesday - ring walk songs

Han Yohan, JUSTHIS - Not Like You

theme song for the extremely pugnacious Hanlim Gym webtoon 😃 it has a kind of self-hyping, defiant vibe that I think is similar to the attitude of boxers walking into the ring

#thursdayfivelist - the sleep
I actually had a hard time with this one because I mostly like upbeat songs, I don't have many songs about sleep lol

jukjae - lullaby
hyuk - a long night
j_ust - want to go to sleep
lucy - snooze

raimu - samurai's dream

#jukeboxfridaynight - up in the sky
✨💖🌈 verivery - skydive 🌈💖✨

so... Build Up... well if there was still any naive individual thinking Mnet wouldn't blatantly rig it just like all their other shows, hopefully they woke up today. I mean come on, any system that hands Lee Donghun a 75 and then hands Wumuti a 100 is just silly. So yeah, any illusion of legitimate competition here is gone so now we can all just sit back and enjoy the clown show, right?

It is weird to me that despite the apparent purpose being to create a vocal group, they appear to be blatantly favoring cute trainees (Hayoon, Juhe) over established singers and musical actors. Wumuti is kinda also in that category, though he did already debut once. It's just, why invite older idols and non-idols and act like they want to make some kind of ballad group, just to turn around and make a babygirl 5th gen group? eh.....

in other news, Inhwan + Jaekyung's performance of Roy Kim's Take Me Back In Time was astonishingly, jawdroppingly good, basically perfect ✨🙌👑✨ I'm very happy they were able to put on such a good performance, hopefully they will be rewarded in the votes 🩷🤍🩷🤍 btw does anyone remember Seungjun "adopting" Jaekyung on Mixnine? just me? ok lol

speaking of votes, argh what am I gonna do.... I don't want anyone to get eliminated but at least voting will be easier 😅 anyway right now I'm thinking:

Inseong Inhwan Seongjeong x7
Seongjun Jaekyung Sunyoul x2
Gwangseok x1

Inhwan is up 9 places this week (to 31 from last 😭)

✨✨✨ INHWAN MUST RISE ✨✨✨

finally, it looks like Inseong is with Hyukjin for the duet mission. it's impossible to predict how these 🤡s will judge their performance, but Hyukjin is solid so I'm actually kind of relieved to see them paired up, I'm sure he and Inseong will make a great stage 🌠✨

ok so I have a total of 28 votes (7 accounts)
I think I'm gonna divide them up like this until the next episode:

💕 Inseong Seongjeong x7 Sunyoul x6
💕 Inhwan x3 Gwangseok Seongjun x2 Jaekyung x1

I'm behind on new music again... been trying to catch up over the past few days... anyway here are my highlights from January! 🌸

🌟🌟🌟 liked all songs:
B1A4 - Connect
SF9 - Sequence

⭐⭐⭐ liked most songs:
AB6IX - The Future Is Ours: Found
Jeong Sewoon - Quiz
Yena - Good Morning

✨✨✨ liked a few songs:
All (H)ours - All Ours
Limelight - Last Dance

❄️❄️❄️ singles:
Riize - 119
Trendz - Go Up
Weeekly - Stranger

🌠🌠🌠 indie:
Ashh - sooner than later
Hanul Lee - wishlist

this week's music hashtags~ 🌙🌷

#kpopmonday - hot and cold
onlyoneof - a song of ice and fire

#tunetuesday - dance like no one's watching
eite - dance it out

#thursdayfivelist - the flower
4 kpop songs and a lofi song!

jbj - my flower
wei - winter, flower
verivery - flower
dkb - rose

tophat panda - moonflower

#jukeboxfridaynight - past present future
the boyz - timeless

Build Up Ep. 2 - they had to squeeze in 7 stages this week! honestly it was too much, it all started to blur together and I think it was hard for anyone to stand out on this episode. but here are my thoughts on the stages:

* = top tier

[Breath]
Junhyeok / 👑 Haram* / 👑 Inseong / Hwanhee

I am really proud of Inseong's performance here - his voice sounded beautiful and he got to show off a higher tone than in the "Letting Go" clip 🩷🌸🩷🌸 Haram ended up getting top tier, but he also did really well and deserved it. And now Inseong doesn't have to look bad by sending someone to "low tier" 🤭 As for the stage overall, idk - I felt like it lacked team cohesion I guess? like they didn't screw it up but it wasn't great.

[Tomboy]
👑 Gwangseok / 👑 Juhe* / 👑 Inhyuk / 👑 Hwanji

This was the best stage of the episode! All four of them sounded amazing, both individually and together! Their unique vocal colors meshed together really well. The harmony was perfect 🌸✨ and I'm sure a lot of it was due to Inhyuk's leadership and hard work as shown on the episode. Any one of them could have been chosen for top tier and they would have deserved! And Gwangseok got attention as the AAAAAAAA boy lmao

[Shall I Love You Again]
👑 Seohyung / 👑 Seongjeong* / Yeo One / 👑 Inhwan

My boy Seongjeong got top tier!!! Deserved!! So glad to see him getting appreciation for his beautiful disney prince voice! Inhwan's voice was really pretty and he's very cute too lol 💕 But now Seongjeong has to pick a "low tier" member and that will suck...

[Decalcomanie]
👑 Bitsaeon / Yeonwoo / 👑 Sunyoul / 👑 Suhwan*

The most charismatic stage! And also the one where the trainee (Yeonwoo) forgot the lyrics 😅 Suhwan did great, can't argue with his top tier, but my favorite was Bitsaeon. According to the judges he got off tempo a bit but his radiant performance made up for it in my eyes. This is not really a song I would think is suited for Sunyoul, but I was both surprised and impressed, I think this stage demonstrated his skill and versatility quite well.

[Something Like That]
Euibin / Minwook* / 👑 Taehwan / 👑 Jaekyung

I disagree with the top tier on this one, I think Taehwan deserved it. My personal favorite voice was Jaekyung, he sounded really pretty, I will find a way to fit him in my votes somehow 😊

[Ditto]
Wumuti* / 👑 Woong / Seokhwa / 👑 Soomin

Another one where I disagree with the judges - I really liked Woong's performance and Soomin probably deserved top tier here. Wumuti kinda danced and winked and did cute gestures but vocally he was not impressive. Similarly in the Tomboy stage, I had a feeling they were gonna pick Juhe just because he's cute, though he did have the talent to back it up.

[Beautiful]
Taewoo / 👑 Minseo / Yunseo / Sanghyun*

I was just not impressed with this stage. Maybe it's partly because it was the last one and I was fatigued from all the others, but.... yeah, idk what the judges were going gaga about. Taewoo's "unique" voice is too unique, he sounds like an old man. Yunseo's voice felt annoying to me, like he's not bad but he has a good deal of room for improvement. Sanghyun got top tier and I mean, he's good, he has a pretty tone, but I wasn't particularly impressed. I did like Minseo here, he has a good "idol" style of singing, I will be watching for his debut~

Finally, a few "low tier" members were picked at the end of the episode - Geonu and Hyukjin 😢 I've been seeing speculation that the top tier guys will strategically pick their closest rivals but that doesn't appear to be the case so far. If they pick someone popular it could backfire in voting so I think it would be more strategic to pick whoever has the fewest fans.