[Bonus] The Late Report: March 2020

With the world suffering under the wrath of coronavirus, the social distancing and quarantine shenanigans are out in full force. I've had more time to write but also more time to sleep or play Animal Crossing or do absolutely nothing. Nonetheless, March comes to a close with a very basic Late Report to go over.

LOONA - Sorry Sorry

You cannot escape the power of Loona. They have an extremely impressive collection of high-quality dance covers under their belt. And with Lee Sooman participating in album production, perhaps something like this was inevitable. Loona display chemistry and class with a cover of "Sorry Sorry," and even though there's autotune you can't deny the girls sound good. The choreography is also clean (as expected) and Yves does fantastic work as the center. If LSM sees potential this group, then you know they're doing something right.

[Review] iKON - My Type (Revisited)

Through a fine-tuned random number generator (AKA asking my sister for a sequence of numbers), this next revisit will be of iKON's debut single "My Type." Since then they've amassed a large compilation of tracks, released subunit / collaborations, and lost a member. Let's see how well their first official track holds up after five years. Rather than repeat post the music video, I figure it'd be at least more interesting to link a live performance of some kind instead. So here we go.

• Originally the Team B that lost to Winner, this set of trainees had to wait an extra year before their debut with "Welcome Back." While a year is certainly a long time, iKON had to be careful to not be similar to their now-sunbaes, but maybe the YG flag would be enough to give them (more than) a pass regardless.

You know, this statement about not being like Winner made a lot of sense when I wrote it, but with how these groups played out...did it really matter? Both groups have had their ups and downs, their bops and flops, consistency and controversy. In reality, the fact that they spawned from the same survival show probably was a benefit to each side of the scale, in a way.

[Review] Itzy - Wannabe

You probably saw this coming but I'm still gonna review it. Itzy are back with "Wannabe" and despite my general neutrality for their previous two songs, it'd be silly to give up on a group from JYP yet. Plus they are one of the few new generation girl groups that have (at the very least) piqued my interest. Ryujin was the trainee many were touting as the next superstar, and I recently learned of Chaeryeong's tragic history on Sixteen. Almost all of them have English names too for some reason, which is neat? They have had as many comebacks in one year as Black Pink had in two. Talk about yikes for BP fans.

[Misc] Pestilence Abounds

I'm back from Los Angeles. Only a couple weeks to find out if I contracted coronavirus. There's some stuff I want to talk about, but I'm gonna save it for an actual post once I unpack and have a good night rest. Even though it's a back-to-back fluff post (or as some may call them, shitposts) I have a valid excuse this time - week of travel plus not having slept on a bed the entire time will do numbers on you. Until the next post, enjoy the extremely high quality videos of Studio Choom.

[Misc] Pre-Flight Birthday Wishes

Happy Brthday my queen. Turning 31 years young and still killing it everywhere she goes. The new song "Happy" looks like it'll be yet another twist on Taeyeon's superstar vocals. Can't wait!

This is also a PSA that I'm gonna be out for a week, heading to Los Angeles to travel and hopefully catch the coronavirus or something. By the time this post is live I should be in the air. Might be able to upload some cheese or simple reviews during my stay but if nothing new gets posted you now know why. Perhaps I will purchase some authentic merch while in Koreatown. Enjoy your week all the same.

[Review] Bolbbalgan4 - Galaxy (Throwback)

My long-needed music library update has started and I do these in alphabetical order so Bolbbalgan4 enjoyed a significant boost of additions to my iPod. They might not be categorized as like indie or anything, but they certainly were under my radar (outside of songs "Some" and "Workaholic"). The iTunes update is a necessary remedy to that notion. As such we'll take a look at one of their earliest smash hits.

[Review] NCT 127 - Kick It

Perhaps through no fault of my own, boy groups and soloists got ignored entirely during the February craze. So in return, I bring you an extremely fresh review of NCT 127's latest endeavor with "Kick It." How fresh you ask? I'm writing this as I listen to the song for the first time. For some reason this video has a Korean, Chinese, and English title. I don't believe there's a Mandarin version of this song (yet?) so I'm not sure why SM went hardcore on the extra languages.