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[A Year in Music] Cheers to 2022

“Perhaps creativity is best indulged in the darkness of the ungodly hours of a new day,” I surmised when attempting to piece together fraying threads of a new blog post concept—the one of many a failed attempts over the last year—called “Midnights and Ghosts; Songs from the Darkness.” It’s 01:42 AM. It’s a bad Taylor Swift parody. I obviously trash the idea because I’m thankfully neither that…

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#A Year in Music #aespa #Changmin #Le Sserafim #NCT #NCT DREAM #NewJeans #Red Velvet #Seulgi #Seventeen #SNSD #STAYC #Stray Kids #Taeyeon #WJSN #WJSN Chocome #Youha

Musings: "Real Vocals," Do We Even Care? (Part I)

Musings: “Real Vocals,” Do We Even Care? (Part I)

Let me preface this post with an admission: I will rarely turn down a good intellectual exercise. More importantly, I will certainly not turn down a useless intellectual exercise that involves writing a stupidly long essay with too many tangents. So here we are. Please humor me and my tangents for now. In addition to thoroughly enjoying unneeded mental workouts with a non-zero chance of ending…

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Musings: "Hey, Here We Go Again," Red Velvet's Queendom and My Own

Musings: “Hey, Here We Go Again,” Red Velvet’s Queendom and My Own

According to one dedicated fan and Twitter user, it took 601 days to have the quintet known as Red Velvet return to the collective consciousness with a new album. With all sincerity it really was 601 days of agony on my Reveluv heart, but it went by faster than I could have imagined. There was a lot of TV I watched. I did the real life things that needed to be done. I got miffed on Twitter a lot.…

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#K-Pop #Red Velvet

2018 in K-pop: Chill Beats

Welcome to yet another installment of “2018 in K-pop,” and we haven’t even hit the half-way point! Take your bets now: will I make it to the very ambitious end before 2020 or will I falter in the middle? (I’m only partially joking.)

I think after all the dance-pop EDM it’s nice to slow down a little bit with music that lingers and wallows. Unfortunately “Chill Beats” is the best name I could…

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#A Year in Music #A Year in Music 2018 #Fromm #G-IDLE #gracie #Ha:tfelt #Heize #Hwasa #Sunmi

Indie Music Midyear Findings

Back at the end of last year when I gathered some of my friends to write about their year’s explorations in Asian Indie, I didn’t keep up my end of the bargain by writing my own list. Part of the reason was that they had pretty much covered the music I was going to cover, and the other (maybe more truthful) reason was that I got disenchanted with blogging all together. Thankfully, they are all…

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#Fromm #Kang Seung-won #Monni #Olivia Yan #Robbin #Taru #The Barberettes #Utopia #Younha #Yukari

[From the Vault] Music of the Week: "There is an ocean beating. There is a story about to begin."

[From the Vault] Music of the Week: “There is an ocean beating. There is a story about to begin.”

This is a post I wrote up back in May of 2015, and I haven’t changed a thing about it–which is why it’s sparse and sort of incomplete. I was digging through my gigantic draft pile and realized just how fun it is to go back and see what songs were interesting to me then and revive what might of died in the drafts. I’m going to call these posts “From the Vault” and hope that Wizards of the Coast do…

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#From the Vault #Music of the Week

2018 in K-pop: EDM Until You Drop (Part 2)

In part two of this EDM extravaganza, we look at even more EDM. Wow, shocking. Here’s a gif of Pristin telling you you shouldn’t miss it. Before we start though, I gotta apologize for the fake out, Pristin V will have its moment in the next installment of 2018 in Kpop. And no, it’s not EDM part 3.

Olivia-Hye (ft. Jin Soul), “Egoist”

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#A Year in Music #A Year in Music 2018 #CLC #G-IDLE #GWSN #LOONA #Weki-Meki #Younha

Movie Overview: Yes or No

Yes or No is a Thai movie about lesbians.

Now that it’s out there, if you are going feel uncomfortable with any of this, don’t say I didn’t warn you. But if you’re expecting this to be some sort of trashy movie about two girls, that’s not what Yes or No is at all. This movie is just a run of the mill romantic comedy that happens to tell the love story between two girls, and that’s exactly what…

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#Movie Overview

2018 in K-pop: That Cake Group, Queen of B-Sides

Over the years I’ve had many groups I’ve liked or loved, as most fans of K-pop do. I have fond memories of the “first group I became a huge fan of” (DBSK) and the “first group I listened to” (Super Junior), yet I never understood the term “stan.” It sounded crazy that there could be an entity that you cared about so much that it would consume you.

Little did I know the one that would…

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#A Year in Music #A Year in Music 2018 #Red Velvet

2018 in K-pop: EDM Until You Drop (Part 1)

Welcome to Part 1 of the big 2018 round-up, and the first collection of songs! As with all large undertakings, there was quite the delay, and I apologize. (Please read the introductory postfor more context about this project as a whole if this is all news to you.) To recap, each post will be centered around a concept, along with discussion of the individual songs. There are rather extensive…

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Looking Forward To: IU's "Modern Times" [Updated With Full Album!]

Looking Forward To: IU’s “Modern Times” [Updated With Full Album!]

After Younha, I would have to give my heart to IU as my second favorite female solo K-pop act. What I love most about her music is that she is able find a compromise between gothic, orchestral melodies and youthful vitality. She puts the cheerful into the sad so to speak. But to contradict myself within ten words, I have to say that “Mia” will always be one of my favorite songs of all time for…

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#IU

2018 in K-pop: "It's good to be a--Woman."

2018 in K-pop: “It’s good to be a–Woman.”

The advent of December marks the onslaught of all sorts of lists detailing the best of whatever-you-fancy and K-pop is no different. I’ve done best of Asian music (K-pop or otherwise) in the past here, with one list embarrassingly half-finished because of sheer exhaustion. Woe is me. Life gets in the way. Choose the excuse that makes me look the least lazy.

This too is a list of that…

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#A Year in Music 2018

Time Machine: Avatar the Last Airbender and Meaningful Animation

I was glossing over the recent “Freshly Pressed” on WordPress.com today, and I stumbled across the wonderful Mike DiMartino‘s blog with the article “You Really Want to Know What Happened to Zuko’s Mom?” (Yes, I really do, Mike.) As a huge fan of Avatar the Last Airbender, seeing that article instantaneously brought back the nostalgia of watching Seasons 1-3 multiple times over with my sister,…

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#Avatar the Last Airbender #Hayao Miyazaki #Mike DiMartino #Pixar #TV Shows

Time Machine: Avatar the Last Airbender and Meaningful Animation

I was glossing over the recent “Freshly Pressed” on WordPress.com today, and I stumbled across the wonderful Mike DiMartino‘s blog with the article “You Really Want to Know What Happened to Zuko’s Mom?” (Yes, I really do, Mike.) As a huge fan of Avatar the Last Airbender, seeing that article instantaneously brought back the nostalgia of watching Seasons 1-3 multiple times over with my sister,…

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#Avatar the Last Airbender #Hayao Miyazaki #Mike DiMartino #Pixar #TV Shows

Musings: "She Loves Me, She Loves Me Not..."

Musings: “She Loves Me, She Loves Me Not…”

While writing a review for IU’s Palette album, I found myself going off in a rather passionate tangent about how much I despise the narrative that surrounds IU these days. It’s bad enough with boy groups, but anyway, I’ve digressed from the point. I couldn’t bring myself to post this content (commentary on the lyrics of “Palette”) in the review itself because 1) it’s a huge ramble, and 2) it…

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#IU

An Update

Hello everyone. When I started A Splash of Inspiration, it was a place for me to talk about popular culture. I never imagined that blogging and everything else that I’ve done on the internet in the past few years would be what it is today. While it might not be obvious to you why I feel this way, I’d like to thank you all for making this experience one of my most transformative moments in life.…

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[#37-#1] A Playlist

It’s pretty self explanatory, right? I felt that even if I couldn’t bring myself to write about these songs, the least I could do is let you see what the list could have been. I can’t say that this is what it is, because that continues to change even as I write this, yet there’s something about “me” as a person in this collection that might be of interest. (Or not.)

In any case, Happy New Year…

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#A Year in Music #A Year in Music 2015

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