#ex'act means so much to me.........

[brokelover]

i was tagged by @28reas0ns to post my top 6 albums currently or of all time! love you down bad wwill 👩‍❤️‍💋‍👩

tagging @sodrippy, @jwooyoung, @hwajoongie, @onmywayv, @sunmisbf, @duovxq, @wookgerine, @markmallow, @heartual, @exobrasiloficial, @cultct, @juieon, @huiven!!

[hyuck-xix]

EXO!!!

(for the kpop asks in case that wasn't clear)

Hello! Thanks for asking about EXO! I feel like I don't talk much about them on my blog but I love them ^_^ Actually, in terms of music, EXO is my favorite k-pop group by far.

✦ my first bias: Baekhyun. It was actually kind of funny, I discovered Chen first but through his solo music so I didn't even know he was part of EXO, but I loved his music. And then Baekhyun's Bambi came out (if this gives you a timeline for when I got into k-pop lol) and I was like 'woah who's this guy??' and then I remember watching the music video for SuperM's 'One' for the first time and it got to Baekhyun's first line and I had some kind of visceral response, like 'oh my god okay now I know what a bias is and this is it'. Like love at first sight haha. Idk, I was instantly obsessed with him. But I didn't know he was the same guy from Bambi! But once I figured out who he was, I instantly became an EXO fan.

✦ my current bias(es): Still Baekhyun :) But recently... Kyungsoo's really been wrecking me!!!There's something about him... I'm a little in love with Kyungsoo these days lol <3

✦ my album and/or era ranking (or favorite of each): I'm just going to do their full-length albums for the sake of simplicity!

Don't Mess Up My Tempo: This album is perfect in my eyes. I loveeeee the styling in the tempo mv (Jongin's striped crop top! Baekhyun's highlights! Minseok's spiky hair!), and the music video and song in general. it's one of those songs that just puts a smile on my face whenever i listen to it. But the best part of DMUMT is the rest of the tracklist. Gravity, 24/7, Bad Dream, literally every song on this album is top-tier.

Exodus: There's something about Exodus that has me completely charmed. The Pathcode teasers were maybe the biggest slay in all of k-pop teasers ever. Nothing has ever topped that in my eyes. And the songs Exodus and Playboy are some of my favorites ever. They both have this kind of playful jazzy thing going on? I'm really bad at describing music genres but they feel like special songs to me. And not to mention Call! Me! Baby!! omg!! She's such an icon and a feel-good song!! And the choreography is so fun! Also: Baekhyun's ad-lib at the end ( where he goes 'woo! baby!')-- it's at 3:13 in the mv and he makes the CHEESIEST face it makes me smile SO BIG and i think about it at least once a week lolll. I mean actually just watch Baekhyun at any point in that mv, because he was FEELING IT, he was giving it his ALL!!!

Obsession: The title track Obsession was actually my obsession for a longggg time. I can still listen to it on repeat for hours at a time. There was also a period of time where I'd watch the music video multiple times a day every day... yeah. But also the album as a whole has the same feeling for me as DMUMT. All the songs hold their own. A problem I have with a lot of NCT's discography is that a solid fraction of their b-sides in every album feel like filler songs. But this album was clearly written and produced with love and care. Every song. Every song is great. Where most k-pop groups' 'cutesy' songs are cringey at worst and bland at best, EXO somehow is able to access the heart of a fun or cute song and give it something fresh and sincere and...important somehow. Non Stop, Day after Day, and Butterfly Effect on this album are like that for me. Not to mention the absolute masterpiece bangers that are Groove and Ya Ya Ya and Baby You Are and woah if I mention any other songs I will have literally mentioned the whole tracklist!! Bruh EXO really is that good.

Ex'act: Monster is arguably *the* classic EXO title track. The chorus still gives me chills. But even though I love many of the songs in this album/repackage (Monster, She's Dreaming, Cloud 9, One and Only, White Noise) it just doesn't feel quite as special to me. EXO sets the bar really, really high.

XOXO: A little unpolished, sure, but XOXO is such an iconic album. Wolf... i know no one else likes it but the live remix!! The live remix!!!! Literally makes me want to cry every time I listen to it, it's so beautiful. That's all I'm going to say about that. Baby Don't Cry is also a gem. Heart Attack was way ahead of its time in my opinion. My Lady makes me feel nostalgic somehow, even though I never listened to it when I was young. It just makes me feel that bittersweet emotional feeling. And I unironically love Let Out The Beast lolll. I think I put this album relatively low on the list just because some of the songs sound pretty dated now--they remind me of something One Direction would put out (looking at you, 365. like actually i'd be surprised if that song wasn't originally written for 1D, it's uncanny).

The War: Okay this is the hottest take EVER because almost every EXO fan I know holds The War as their favorite album. But... oh god, I just don't like it one bit. There's only one song I genuinely love on that album and it's Boomerang, which isn't even from The War itself but from the repackage -_- I also sometimes enjoy Touch It? But I think the amount of annoyance The Eve, Ko Ko Bop, Forever, Diamond, and Chill give me... I mean they're still not terrible songs. But there's something about the production of them that bothers me? Often the instrumentation feels like it's competing with the heart of the song, like trying to be interesting at the expense of the song sounding cohesive and it just comes across as grating to me... yeah. And the vibe of the album is such a departure from EXO's established aesthetic and musical identity that it makes me question why they did it at all.

✦ how i got into them: I kind of told this story up above for the bias question, but I guess I'll talk about some of the first EXO songs I fell in love with. Obsession was one of them. Also Gravity, specifically this live performance of it--I remember actually screaming when Baekhyun opened the chorus lmao. It's interesting, because EXO's always mostly been about the music for me. Even though I've considered myself an EXO-L for almost two years now, I've never really watched a lot of reality/behind the scenes content for them. But I know their entire discography like the back of my hand, including every member's solo albums...

✦ which member would be my best friend: As I mentioned above, I don't really know the members as people as well as I'd like to. So answering this question is tricky. Probably Kyungsoo firstly. I get the impression he feels a little uncomfortable with the fame side of being an idol, and something about that really resonates with me. All through college instead of participating in school events or clubs I just find neighborhoods or woods as far away from campus as possible so i can escape from it all for a bit, and just simply exist and observe the natural world. It's hard to find other people who feel that way. I think I'd also love to be friends with Minseok and Jongin (i'm just choosing the shy line of EXO aren't I lol... but I get along best with fellow shy people, and they seem really genuine and sweet).

✦ something i associate with them (or with a bias/any member): coffee--even just the smell, flying in an airplane at night when they turn off the lights in the cabin, wool peacoats, frost on windows, the feeling of homesickness, planetariums, black Moleskine journals with grid pages.

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Well, I didn't think it would be possible to write more than I did on my NCT 127 one, but here we are! lol. Sorry!

📥 send me a kpop group & i'll answer

[moonlightjongin]

exodus & ex'act for the ask game <3

exodus --  -- el dorado (this song means so much to me tbh)  -- exodus (a queen)  -- lady luck (been in this phase of listening to this song a lot... for a long while... but i never get tired of it... so) -- call me baby / playboy (such a fave but it makes me sad to listen to too, u know why) / what if (heavenlyyyy) -- hurt -- beautiful  -- transformer  -- my answer

ex’act -- answered 😙

(send me an album and i’ll put the tracks in order from most → least favourite)

[fairykibum]

Sharing my opinion on anon to avoid hate 😂 I don't like Diamond at all. Something about the flow is just really...uncomfortable to me. Tbh the whole album let me down a little bit. Don't get me wrong it's not bad, but I feel like they focused a little too much on trying to fit the current in style and they lost out on quality by doing so. None of them made me go "ah yes, THIS is exo". Maybe my standards were higher because we waited so long for the album? I just know they can do better

anon DO NOT WORRY. i dont like diamond as well.. i get what you mean its just...weird? there's not much of a flow as you said. and i get what you mean abt the album! its very different from ex'act, but i do find some songs kiiiinda similar to exodus. everyone has different tastes😊

[kyungpom]

sleekjayce84 replied to your post “Jongin looks so much more masculine in the 5th anniversary v live than...”

I like your reply... ex'act

thanks! i just find the way some people react at kyungsoo’s masculinity really weird sometimes (not @ the anon, just in general) and i don’t see what’s so strange about that. it’s got nothing to do with sexuality (manlier=less gay?) or “yaoi” fic ideas (the manly/the girly one or top/bottom) it’s just a characteristic of his and something that people often compliment because he’s charming like that. and you might think but what does this have to do with me? probably nothing haha sorry but it’s just something i’ve had in my mind for a while and the ask reminded me that not everyone thinks of the boys in the same way. but not because one person is complimented on something it means the others aren’t or are lesser, it just means that that person is being noticed for that.

[liinos]

I love how music is able to capture so many emotions in it 🤧

[andreggvil]

as much as i like EXO and think that Ex'Act really deserved the Daesang, i think people need to remember that EXO winning GDA’s daesang for four consecutive years isn’t entirely on their own effort - and i don’t mean this in a condescending way, because GDA quite literally HANDED them the Daesang by eliminating EXO’s competition, who’d OUTSOLD THEM AND EVERYONE ELSE in the Daesang category.

in case you didn’t know, in 2014, the GDA literally rigged their own competition by establishing a specific set of rules that would make sure super junior doesn’t win any award in the GDAs again (much less a Daesang). even TVXQ, who was second after super junior in physical album sales that year weren’t included (feel free to fact check me if i’m wrong), since they they fit one out of the four new rules GDA had deliberately added to exclude both TVXQ and SJ.

1) Singers who debuted between 2000-2006 are not allowed to join. 2) Singers who have gotten 3 or more Daesangs are not allowed to join. 3) Singers who have obtained more than 10 awards are not allowed to join. 4) Singers who got 1st in album sales for 4 consecutive years are not allowed to join.

i’m not sure if the rules are still used in determining the nominees for each GDA, but if they are, then that means EXO shouldn’t have been allowed to join this year as well since they’d won 3 Daesangs already, with this year being their 4th. however, i’d like people to remember that these insane double standards exist, and that it shouldn’t be tolerated, no matter what group it is.

you’d think that since the GDA had the audacity to set up these kinds of bullshit rules to eliminate the competition, they’d actually follow through with it every year after, but no - it seems that it’s just a way to keep SJ and TVXQ from winning the awards they rightfully deserved.

GDA: you’re calling yourselves “the most prestigious awards ceremony” and “the most fair and objective awards ceremony”? don’t make me laugh. you lost your credibility the moment you tried to “make things fairer” for the other nominees by making things unfair to two groups who have worked just as hard as any other of the nominees. and not only did you completely ignore their effort by specifically excluding them, you ignored thousands - possibly millions - of fans’ efforts too; fans who’d spent their time to stream their songs and watch their videos, fans who’d spent their money to purchase as many albums as they could and to buy their album on a digital medium.

you attempt to perpetuate fairness but change the rules to specifically target two groups so that your “fairness” is justified. where is the moral to speak? how could you pretend to be “fair” when another group that isn’t TVXQ or SJ clearly meets one of your requirements in being eliminated from the nominees so that other groups get a shot at winning?

i’m pissed as hell, and yeah, i’m still salty after three years have passed since the “new set of rules” thing happened. i’m salty about another group being an exemption to the rules that GDA set to stop people from winning too much, and i’m salty about everything that GDA has done thus far that is deliberately anti-SJ.

i hate how super junior has been limited from success and stopped from writing more history, but another group - who should be adhering to the same set of rules SJ were subject to - gets the chance to “make history” even though technically they’re not eligible either, if the set of rules weren’t revoked.

i want to clarify that i very much like EXO and that i do think that Ex'Act deserved this Daesang since it’s one of my favorite kpop albums of all time. i sincerely congratulate EXO on their four consecutive Daesangs, and i hope they won’t ever have to face this kind of unfairness that SJ and TVXQ has routinely faced.

my anger has nothing to do with the group that’s exempted from adhering to the rules being EXO - my anger has to do with how GDA’s double standards limited the heights super junior could reach, and the injustice they’ve been subjected to despite being one of the groups that globalized kpop and brought us all here. even after all these amazing achievements, they still aren’t taken seriously, still aren’t acknowledged for their successes and the history they’ve made, still aren’t goven the respect and honor that they deserve. and the worst part is that many people probably don’t even know this and doesn’t find anything wrong with the GDA.

(p.s. feel free to correct any inaccurate information in my post. if it turns out that GDA revoked the set of rules and EXO is, hence, eligible for the award, then my apologies for saying that EXO is not eligible. however, my point about the double standards and the unfairness towards SJ and TVXQ and any other group who’d been wronged by award shows pulling shit like this still stands.)