It’s time for Kpopalypse roundup! Let’s take a look at some new releases!
IVE – Crush
Okay so like a lot of IVE songs lately it’s just “I Am” again but a bit slower and more pedestrian, and I’m fine with that. If IVE are going to become the AC/DC or Iron Maiden of k-pop and just rehash the same song over and over for their entire careers, I certainly don’t mind because at least they picked a good song to do it with.
Stray Kids – JJAM
Some really cool sounds here. Not so sure about what they were thinking when they wrote those vocal parts, but when the boys shut up and let the backing track do the talking it’s great.
Jaehyun – Dandelion & Roses
A bit better than I expected, thanks to having some decent writing and a bit of rhythmic dynamics, something that SM’s mid-tempo songs tend to forget.
Fromis_9 – Supersonic
Weak trendy nonsense, it’s just that sound everyone is doing right now. The underscore group are really starting to draw a line under their own careers.
NMIXX ft. Kid Milli – Sickuuh
A golden opportunity to let Lily drop her Australian accent onto a rap track here wasted. What a letdown, we all have to sound like Americans for some reason. Did Hilltop Hoods pave the way for nothing?
UNIS – Curious
It’s great! Shades of Fiestar’s “Apple Pie” here, but with the revved-up guitar and drums taking it to the next level. Definitely a song worth collapsing on stage for.
(G)I-DLE – Bloom
It’s always hilarious whenever someone tries to do something with the vibes of Fifty Fifty’s “Cupid” because the fans of whatever group it happens to be ALWAYS deny it like a bunch of crybabies even when it’s bleedingly obvious like it is here. Just fess up to it, kids. It’s a good trend anyway, even if G-Idle’s version isn’t exactly the best example, a few more straightforward mid-tempo cruisy pop songs without any bullshit honestly wouldn’t hurt the k-pop scene at this point.
LIGHTSUM – POSE!
This just sounds like everything in 2024.
Hyolyn – Wait
Could Hyolyn get a late run in the objectification survey this year? She’s certainly putting in her best effort here, and you’ve only got a day or two left before I close the voting off, so if you want to show your appreciation for Hyolyn or anyone else male or female that you want to, you know what to do.
Billlie – Believe
Typical “for the fans” montage crap, mind you this is so far away from the type of sound that made Billlie stand out that honestly I can’t even imagine the fans liking this one.
xikers – Tsuki (Lunatic)
Actually pretty good. It reminded me of when Rain’s “Gang” went viral and part of the reason why it was criticised for being basically bad is because it had a soft mellow bit in the pre-chorus, which I thought was a really weird thing to criticise the song for because… doesn’t every single fucking song like this do exactly that? Just saying.
&TEAM – Aoarashi
HYBE’s latest “let’s distract everyone from how shit we are as a company” boy group is actually decent. Who knows, they might even be able to pull off this whole bread-and-circuses routine if they can just stop shooting themselves in the foot in the media three times per week.
BANG&JUNG&YOO&MOON – Gone
Apparently all these guys were in B.A.P once but given the lame sleepytime softness of this song you wouldn’t fucking know it. I guess all these groups “mature” (i.e get boring) eventually.
CATCH THE YOUNG – Dream It
I can’t even remember what this sounds like because I fell asleep and dreamed of a better song.
Hi-Fi Un!corn – Left & Right
I went to see a friend’s band once, and the friend didn’t warn me that his band had dance routines, and so I went expecting a normal show and all of a sudden everyone started jumping in synchronisation and I just started laughing my ass off, which was really awkward because it was like a metal band or something and everyone else in the audience was checking them out earnestly and super-seriously. This song isn’t as lame as theirs was, but it’s close.
Atlantis Kitsune – Oh My!
Speaking of which, I don’t understand hardcore dancing where they do all that kicking and punching shit, those sort of movements don’t seem suited to that style at all. I feel it much more with a song like this, which definitely makes me want to kick some stranger in the face, but in a good way.
3Piece – Summer Feeling
I left this off roundup last week because I didn’t give a shit about it and I didn’t think anyone else would either. It’s actually not awful but k-pop has been so absolutely swamped with this kind of latin-lite sound over the past decade that the PTSD kind of outweighs the song being good.
1CHU – Date With Me
This song could have been great but why the fuck does the beat keep dropping out? Imagine establishing just the right vibe and then killing it every thirty seconds just because it’s trendy.
BamBam – Last Parade
Great visual style, all sorts of weird things going on here, but they sure forgot to bring the music along with them for the ride.
Lee Seunghoon – Thinkin’ Bad Things
Not even sure if a lazy-ass dashcam video like this even counts for roundup but it’s shit anyway so who cares.
Lee Seunghoon – Do Re Mi Fa Sol
His other song sucks too so let’s have our weekly Asian but not Korean not pop not world music feature here instead, yay! Do you know who is Asian and you probably didn’t know it? Kirk Hammett, the lead guitarist in Metallica, that’s right cunts. Here’s an interview with his Filipino mother if you are interested.
Yoon Sanha – Dive
This guy is in Astro and his song sure is a dive in quality.
SUPER JUNIOR-D&E with Siwon, Zhoumi, Ryeowook, Kyuhyun – Yueding
Do they even need the “D&E” title if they’re going to invite half of their group buddies onto the track anyway? Might as well just call it a full Super Junior song, but then it does completely suck dogshit so maybe they were worried it would drag the rep of the full group down even more.
Doyoung – 17 (NCT member)
NCT are big faves in the objectification survey so just letting you know that I’m counting up all the results soon. It’s still open for now but will close in a day or two after writing this once I start tallying things up. Better get a move on and vote quick if you haven’t – just like any other election, you’ve got no right to complain about the results if you didn’t campaign for your faves.
Mirani feat. Mingi (ATEEZ) – Hit Me Up
The usual Autotuned crap.
Kim Hyunjoong – Cage
If you’ve ever wanted to see Kim Hyun Joong behind bars, well you can actually do that with this video, now that’s really thinking of everyone.
ASTELL – Island
Devastatingly bad. Someone really did a number on these poor girls with this terrible track that sounds like it was made by your friend who learned how to produce from some celebrity online audio engineering scam class. Don’t blame the girls though, it’s not their fault that it’s all out of tune, good agencies have machines to fix that. Your bias sounds like this too before the app their producer is running fixes them up.
SUMMER CAKE – Squat
Another song that I left out last week just to do you all a favour, and then you requested it anyway. I wouldn’t even take a squat on this one.
COOING – Summer Kiss
Summer is going to increasingly become something that people around the globe fear, I know this from living in a country where summer has always been completely terrifying and noticing that you are all starting to get weather like my country now, good luck with that. Anyway this song might actually be awful enough to be the perfect soundtrack to that.
Kim Boa – Trick
I’m not really into this but who else is happy that Kim Boa is still making music and isn’t working at a sushi bar or something. Or maybe she is, I dunno. I feel like she would make a pretty good aburi salmon.
Mimiminu x MRCH – Good feeling
I didn’t expect this to be good, but it is, so there you go.
John Park feat. Gaeko, Thama – Vista
Rap must be feeling the pinch of the economy, celebrity rappers will just appear on anything these days.
Kingston Rudieska – My Cotton Candy
This ska thing is actually a bit too accurately old-school for my taste. I had an abusive ex-partner and she was really into ska so whenever I hear ska done in a really authentic way like this, I just think about her weird emotionally abusive manipulations. Fun times, not. Anyway, even though they probably don’t deserve it, because they’re quite good actually – fuck this band.
Rockit Girl – So Hot
Rockit Girl remember to switch on their distortion pedals again and the result is something like Motley Crue if Vince Neil went on a severe diet plan, got gender reassignment surgery plus learned how to sing again. I support.
RANDOM BONUS VIDEOS OF THE WEEK
Sorry NMIXX but what is this
Lots of jump cuts, shaky-cam and running to make you believe that something is actually happening when it isn’t. Nobody would ever believe this is real anyway, we all know that Australian girls don’t frighten this easy, Lily would just say “harden the fuck up, cunts, let’s go get a pizza”.
Katseye performs ‘Touch’ on ‘GMA’
Katseye are asked “what makes your music stick to the fans, what makes it so unique?” and of course the girl answers with “our diversity” because realistically what choice does she have, nobody equips these poor girls to actually talk about the music. Hell I can’t blame them, almost every single k-pop website apart from this one can’t talk about the music either, yet people always jump on bad old Kpopalypse for sometimes not talking about it, when I’m still talking about it way more than every other cunt because they’re too busy blowing smoke up your biases’ ass for fandom clicks. People think I’m a cunt for “engagement” but my traffic has always been marginal compared to k-pop’s heavy-hitting websites, and that’s because honest reviews are really NOT what k-pop fans want. I’d get way more traffic just being a BTS fansite or maybe even a Katseye fansite. You go, girls, get me that traffic now, cheers.
T-ara – Lie
T-ara’s start as a k-pop group was a little underwhelming with this decent but unspectacular semi-trot number, but they got quickly better after this, soon smashing out banger after banger. I’m not really into celebrating “anniversaries” because I think it’s really lame and arbitrary most of the time, but it’s worth mentioning that 15 years is a long run for a group that Allkpop insisted would disband sometime in 2013. By the way I’m lifting the embargo on mentioning Allkpop by name for this post only, just to tell you that the second Allkpop Performance Review is coming up next year, I wonder how they’ll do… and isn’t it funny that I’m somehow the bad person among k-pop fans just for appreciating the hard work that k-pop’s men and women do on their figures, when shitrag site Allkpop spreads revenge porn, DDOSes rival sites, has a CEO who is misogynist nearly to the point of psychosis and yet is openly supported by most of the k-pop community. I guess despite what they say, k-pop fans don’t really care about the welfare of their idols all that much, do they. “Lie” indeed.
That’s all for this week! Kpopalypse roundup returns next week!
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