Song Review: Amber x Luna – Lower
Review

Song Review: Amber x Luna – Lower

At this point, I think I’d rather SM Entertainment abandon their digital Station project to focus more completely on full-fledged comebacks. It’s not that Station hasn’t resulted in some standout songs, but overall last year’s discography felt pretty forgettable. I fear that, rather than adding to artists’ catalogs in an interesting way, many of the … Continue reading

K-Pop Producer Spotlight: MonoTree
Feature

K-Pop Producer Spotlight: MonoTree

If there’s anything I’ve learned from covering pop music for over a decade, it’s that songwriters and collaborators are just as important as the artists themselves. Though they often work behind the scenes, this feature is a chance to shine the light on some of k-pop’s most innovative and accomplished producers and composers. MONOTREE Years … Continue reading

Song Review: Amber & Luna (f(x)) – Heartbeat
Review

Song Review: Amber & Luna (f(x)) – Heartbeat

With Heartbeat, SM Entertainment has completed their f(x)-driven EDM trilogy that started with Wave in May and continued with July’s All Mine. Given the strict adherence to genre structure, all three tracks feel somewhat interchangeable, but this helps create a welcome sense of continuity when they’re taken together, one right after another. Heartbeat was released as … Continue reading

The Top Ten Best Songs by f(x)
Feature

The Top Ten Best Songs by f(x)

SM girl group f(x) has rewritten the expectations for female kpop performers more than once during their career. Always looking forward, the girls have given us some of the most experimental, ambitious pop music in all of Korea. Yet somehow, each song’s complicating trappings are always wrapped in catchy, accessible hooks that offer the perfect balance between avant … Continue reading

Song Review: Amber – Borders
Review

Song Review: Amber – Borders

So far, SM’s weekly Platform experiment has been a disappointment, supplying almost exclusively slow and unmemorable side tracks. The fact that it’s billed as being a bonus or supplement to the agency’s usual releases makes it hard to be completely annoyed with it, but it still feels like a missed opportunity. I’m not going crazy over … Continue reading