It’s time for Kpopalypse roundup! Let’s take a look at some new releases!
KARA – I Do I Do
A nice bit of nostalgia for KARA fans but seriously, not even KARA fans are going to remember how this song sounds in a week. Never mind bringing Goo Hara’s voice back which is honestly neither here nor there, they should have brought back their old production team. A KARA comeback without Sweetune at the helm feels like a Bunnings sausage sizzle without the onion, tomato sauce and cancer risk.
(G)I-DLE – Last Forever
The song isn’t much but everyone looks great and I’m all for rock instruments being made cool so I’ll just roll with it.
RIIZE – Lucky
I think I rolled snake eyes on this one.
XG – Something Ain’t Right
Something’s not right about these “global girl groups” infesting roundup lately. XG continue to disappoint as a full group even though some of their rap solos and units have been excellent. I’m definitely biasing Cocona in this group though because someone has to represent the baldies, if you agree (and you should) you can vote for her or any other male or female you want to in the Kpopalypse 2024 Objectification Survey by CLICKING HERE! Better get your votes in, you don’t want to be that sucker saying “it’s not fair, where is my bias” when the results get released!
Kwon Eunbi – Please, Summer
Speaking of which, the new Kwon Eunbi video is out. Gosh, she seems like a nice girl, and her song is nice isn’t it. I’m sure there’s a way you could show your appreciation, can’t imagine what it might be…
KATSEYE – Touch
I feel like this actually isn’t too bad in that cringe “guess we’d better find a way to board the NewJeans gravy train” kind of way that everyone is doing now, especially all HYBE artists as they all desperately follow the captain’s orders, scrambling to try and replicate what made NewJeans actually work. If Katseye have a snowball’s chance in hell of getting anywhere at all, this song will be the one that does it for them. They probably won’t though, not that I even give a fuck either way. I don’t have a horse in the race, I just want some good music.
Rolling Quartz – Red Wine
Rolling Quartz either get the guitar solos right, or the songs right. Why not both?
KISS OF LIFE & Mark Tuan – Superpower
Every single tune for anything from Riot Games is always the same power-fantasy nonsense aesthetic. Seems like the perfect assignment for heavy metal but for some reason they get these lightweight pop acts to limply rap along instead. You’ve heard one, you’ve heard them all.
Jay Park feat. Jessi, Awich, MILLI, Ramengvrl, Lil Cherry, MIRANI, Maliibu Miitch, CAMO – Xtra McNasty
Jay Onlyfans Park assembles an all-star cast of women who can rap better than him, just to prove that he knows all their phone numbers I guess, but it really doesn’t matter because the beat is the problem.
Lee Youngji – My Cat
Of course Lee Youngji is going to destroy Jay and all those other MCs this week with her amazing rapping and beat selection and… oh wait never mind.
ARrC – Dummy
Okay so how the fuck am I supposed to say this group’s name? Thank fuck I’m not a radio DJ anymore, no shit I felt like I was getting trolled with each debut.
DIGNITY – Cool Down
A k-pop boy group calling themselves “Dignity” is like a stoner rock band calling themselves “drug free”. Still, the song is actually pretty dignified even if the white-shirt-wearing shenanigans aren’t.
KAVE – Legend
It really is the week of boy group debuts and honestly there’s a refreshing straightforwardness to the new songs lately. We could be exiting the era of trendy drop and change-up bullshit finally, folks. Don’t get your hopes up though, a shit new trend is overdue to begin.
UNICODE – Blur
We’re not at CSR or Lovelyz level here but it’s a nice attempt. I support your direction, keep trying, girls.
CIX – Curtain Call
The title suggests it’s their final song, here’s fucking hoping if they’ve got more up their sleeve that sound like this.
P1Harmony – I See U
If you click the black X in the top right corner of this video while it’s playing, something magical happens – it stops! 100% improvement.
Yungin, BM of KARD, Bobby of iKON – Run It Up
Good organ sounds, shit song.
GroovyRoom feat. Gemini, Dawn, Jay Park, Vince – IG
Anything but buy my girlfriend a bottle of soju, goddamn. She’s waiting Jay, I messaged you on your OnlyFans, let’s see some action. Chop chop.
YS Block feat. Rosy Barbie – Booty
Rosy Barbie couldn’t be fucked being in the video for this one, not sure why, maybe she hadn’t practiced her twerking. Anyway you’ll wish it was her and not him rapping through most of this.
VAHN – Crush on You
This guy is apparently from NINE.i and no I couldn’t name you a single NINE.i song even though I’m quite sure I’ve reviewed about twenty of them. This solo song is actually alright though so maybe I should try to refresh my memory or something…. actually nah fuck it I’ll just listen to this again.
Candy Shop – Tumbler (Hot & Cold)
Actually just lukewarm.
VAHN feat. Joohyung – D.T.R (Daily Temperature Range)
The DTR here is lukewarm too, what’s going on over there in Seoul don’t you have summer plus global warming or something?
Mega Mongoloid – Drugz
I don’t know what the fuck is going on here because I’m quite sure these fucked up ravers aren’t endorsed by jack shit, but I still liked it. More brainless raver trash please.
Crackshot – Go Away
The reason why grunge swept hair-metal away into irrelevancy in the early 90s was that most of the hair metal sounded like this. It really was time for it to go, we all breathed a massive sigh of relief back then.
Eddie and the Bricks – Ms. Summer
Nice rock music for nice people. Get it away from me.
KATIE – Unbreak
Isn’t this the girl who was signed to YG for two weeks or some shit during their “thumb-twiddle” mid-2010s era when they just sat on all their female roster while waiting for Jennie to do her hair? Anyway, song’s boring.
ARTLOVER – Planet Luv
Did you know that some artists actually reach out to Kpopalypse and say “hey I’ve got a new song out, would you be interested in covering it please”? Artlover is one of those artists, and that’s actually super ballsy given how I don’t even like 90% of songs I get sent so I definitely respect anyone with the courage to hear honest feedback. To be honest this floaty stuff isn’t really my speed as much as the mid-period T-araesque “Want U Back” was, but I’m just glad she’s still doing it, crossing my fingers for a punchier Artlover sound next time around.
AOORA – okay what the fuck is this, seriously
This is what too much hanging around with Edward “LSWF” Avila does to a person. Devastating.
Pastel Girls – Gyeongsarpse
Here’s your weekly nugu trot submission. I would have saved this one for Nugu Alert but they’re actually well-known enough to make it on music shows so I don’t think they need my help. Clearly world domination is close at hand.
Park Seoyoung – Repeat
I thought this wasn’t that interesting so this week’s non-Korean non-pop non-world-music feature can go here instead. A lot of you have probably heard of Guitar Wolf, but if you haven’t, allow me to introduce you to one of the rockingest garage punk bands from Japan you’ve ever heard. Cool guys too, an old band of mine played with them when they came to our city. The bass player didn’t tour with any instruments, so I loaned him my bass and rig for the night, which they proceeded to destroy maybe 4.67% more than it was already destroyed, fun times. I also recommend the weird zombie film they’re in “Wild Zero” which is certainly a trip and very very silly. Anyway roundup’s not going to get better than this so let’s leave it here for this week.
RANDOM BONUS VIDEOS OF THE WEEK
When YG told 2NE1 to cry like SM artists…
Just in case any of you still give a crap about 2NE1 here’s them not crying when they win shit, except for Bom who does her best to fake it while the cameras are rolling. They’re touring or something apparently so if you live in one of the half a dozen countries that k-pop groups do their “world” tours in, you could go and see the queens of stoicism shed no tears for real I guess.
Some lame agency-curated Le Sserafim documentary
HYBE are starting to realise that they’re not winning the public relations war against ADOR so they’ve just released this big ass carefully-edited Le Sserafim documentary in multiple parts to pull your heartstrings and make you cheer for their chosen girls, while at the same time leaking as much bad stuff about NewJeans members to the press as they possibly can. This is just part 1 of this untrustworthy silliness, we’re never going to get another “Nine Muses Of Star Empire” again, the labels are too smart to let the mask slip these days. That’s why I have to write fucking books. By the way book four, “The Love Complete”, the final book in the Shin Hana series, is now out on pre-order on Amazon and Kobo, the links to order it are here if you’re a Halcyon stan and want to find out how the story ends!
5DOLLS ft. Jay Park – Lip Stains
Since we can’t get away from Jay this week, here he is with 5Dolls although he’s only in the video doing some dance stuff and not singing or offering soju samples or free subscriptions to his Onlyfans premium tier. The song isn’t much, kind of a watered-down crappy version of Sistar’s “How Dare You“, but the old-school k-pop drama music video is still worth a watch, they don’t make them anywhere near this cheesy and melodramatic anymore.
That’s all for this week! Kpopalypse roundup returns next week!
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