It’s been about a month since my last post, but with COVID restrictions easing (at least here), and the great summer weather, I’ve been spending my time interacting with people! BUT, a lot has happened in the world of boybands – and I wanted to discuss!

Ready to Love: As you know, I’ve been spending a lot of time with Carats and think Seventeen is ABSOLUTLEY the “bee’s knees” in boybands right now! Well, exciting news for all SEVENTEEN fans, they made a comeback on June 18th with their 8th mini-album, Your Choice. The lead single, Ready to Love is an absolute HIT – I could be more happy with this comeback! The album shows growth within the group and takes turns highlighting the vocal and rap team, and gives the performance team a lot to work with. I HIGHLY recommend! And others think so too! SEVENTEEN took their second win for Ready to Love on “Show Champion”.

But that’s not the only new mini-album release in June (well technically May 31st)!

TXT is BACK: I haven’t spent a lot of time talking about Tomorrow X Together in this blog, but they are a five-member K-Pop band with Hybe Labels (also the label for BTS and SEVENTEEN). The group is made up of Soobin, Yeonjun, Beomgyu, Taehyun and HueningKai, and on May 31, the band released their second full length album The Chaos Chapter: Freeze. This album has hit after hit with the first two singles, Lovesong and Magic, taking over playlists and radio stations everywhere – both are definitely on my repeat playlist! Magic is also the first all English language song for TXT, which will probably open the doors for more global domination for the band this year! But whether they sing in English or Korean or a mix of both, I love this band’s sound and they are a group to watch!

Building on Butter: BTS is back – again! The follow up to their Butter release in May is the new song Permission to Dance. It’s the B side to the single and is another English language song from the band – cowritten by Ed Sheeran! And while I think the song is decent, you might surprised to know I’m not totally loving it! To be honest, its not the best I’ve seen from BTS – it actually reminds me of a generic boy band song from the early 2000s AND the rap line got ZERO air time in this song. I have noticed the amount of time for the rap line in the last 2 songs is less and less…and that’s disappointing. I miss the BTS of the Fire and Not Today eras – and hope they go back to their roots for the next release!

It’s 2000 all over again: And in other boy band news, 98 Degrees are making a comeback??!! With buzz building after their 98 days of summer campaign, 98 Degrees just released a new single on July 9th, Where Do You Wanna Go. After spending most of 2020 in a COVID bubble together writing music, the group is scheduled to start their comeback tour in August 2021. For a blast from the past, see how 98 degrees did in the boyband throwdown.

What did you think about some of the boyband news in June? What else did I miss?