AOA: A Dynamic 2014

An Album a Day

An Album a Day is my exploration into the Korean music scene. This podcast will cover mainstream, indie and some underground artists within the scene and provide both factual and opinionated commentary. The biggest benefit to sharing my thoughts this way is that it will hopefully expose you to more great music and exploration of your own.

Oh hey, look! Apple, in all of its powerful technology force, made updates that compromised countless podcasts availability and I had to pause my show. Previously recorded episodes had time-specific references that caused me to have to re-record a lot of AOAs episodes. Since I am determined to deliver a cohesive podcast season experience by minimizing delays, heres a quick overview of the remainder of their most dynamic year in music, 2014, right after the drop.

Youre tuned into An Album a Day. Show start.

Hey yall, as previously stated in Episode 3 of this season, FNC Entertainment struck gold for the group when Brave Brothers began to work with them in 2014. January set the new sound standard and this summer follow-up continued to push the new AOA vibes in the right direction. On June 19th of that year, AOA released their debut extended play, or EP, ????. This title literally translates as short hair in English and is also the name of the first single from the album. The EP is just over 24 minutes long and is a decent album to perk up your mood. Though Short Hair was followed by the albums second single, Joa Yo! the song Short Hair is truly memorable. The theme focuses on feeling good in ones skin. Choas whoa oh oh refrain and ownership of the chorus makes the its okay to not be okay theme more of a pick-me-up versus going the route of a ballad. Overall, its an album that can populate itself on shuffle when youre streaming music and you wont feel the need to skip it.

Continuing to ride the wave of success, AOA released a compilation album in September 2014 entitled, AOA Best Songs for Asia, and thats a seriously audacious name! So much so that Im skipping over details of this because its a compilation album and theyve already told you by the title that they dont care what you think about what could possibly be on a Best Songs for Asia list. Its them. Its AOA, in their book.

The winner of 2014 in their discography for me is the undeniably catchy, Like a Cat, released on November 11th. The entire album is fun and sassy but the title track has been proven to make me blow a speaker or two. The song is so iconic for them that it even made American-based television channel Fuses top 10 pop songs list for that month and year.

K-pop fans on a scale of 1 to 5 with 5 being essential listening and 1 not worth mentioning, the A3Day rating for 2014 for AOAs body of works is a 5. Weve never ranked a year before so this is a first! Though I hate that we had to breeze over this in greater detail, youre always encouraged to listen and draw your own conclusions. Oh yes, the #A3Day Highlights Playlist on Spotify is updated because its Friday! Albeit a bit late! Ill catch you in the next episode, bye yall.

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