It’s time for Kpopalypse roundup! Let’s take a look at some new releases!
Jennie – Mantra
Jennie goes for a drive on some of those roads that she paved for your faves, and it’s actually a really damn good backing track but the melody writer sounds like they fell asleep in the back seat.
Lisa – Moonlit Floor
A pretty obvious thinly-veiled funkification of Sixpence None The Richer’s “Kiss Me“, but that group’s boring 90’s indie-lite for yuppies always fucking sucked so I’m not really that interested in this version either.
MISAMO – New Look
Seeing as how you can only listen to Namie Amuro songs these days by meeting someone on a specific street corner in Shinjuku at 11:58pm on the first Thursday of each month while wearing a red hat and saying the secret code word “Boram” while tracing a circle with your right foot three times and drinking tea, I guess it makes sense for there to be remakes now. A lot of effort for one of her worst songs, and this version is pretty faithful to it as well which makes it redundant because if you actually did like this why wouldn’t you just listen to Namie’s version.
SEVENTEEN feat. DJ Khaled – Love, Money, Fame
Really a whole lot of nothing. Be grateful that Pristin never hung around for the long haul because they’d probably be getting forced to sing trash like this instead of working in retail or whatever they’re doing now.
Jin – Super Tuna
“Super Tuna” finally came out in full video form and I’ve already written about it so I won’t repeat it, more of a FYI that buried deep somewhere in the BTS machine are people with some music taste even if they barely ever get to shine, it’s worth getting that reminder from time to time, you could be forgiven for forgetting.
XG – IYKYK
Weak-ass song (all of their rap solo tracks were way better than this) but I just like watching Cocona being in a group doing anything at all, because someone has to represent for the baldies. Don’t fuck with the baldies!
Billlie – Trampoline
Billlie are one of those groups (also see: Le Sserafim, B.A.P, Oh My Girl) that debuted with a very consistent and compelling creative vision that really stood out, only to then dump it after a while and just do randomly lame stuff instead. K-pop seriously lacks good creative direction across the board. Min Hee Jin stands out not because she’s a genius, but because everyone else is just so bad at it.
Jay Park feat. Chungha – Gimme A Minute
Just the usual thing Jay Park does but now with AI-generated explosions and a lack of soju in the mail for my girlfriend. Not acceptable.
MOVNING feat. Adora – Medic
Adora’s recent reinvention as a ballad singer is somewhat of a lame waste of potential, anybody could do this stuff (although I get the reasoning, I’m aware how much shit like this brings in the cash in Korea). What isn’t lame or a waste of potential is Adora’s style and fashion sense, this is hands-down one of the best looks I’ve ever seen in k-pop.
Xdinary Heroes – Night before the end
This was incredibly boring and I completely lost interest so this is just your reminder to say that the Kpopalypse 2024 survey of caonima action is still open, CLICK HERE to participate! Don’t be one of those people who whines on social mediua about Kpopalypse without actually having the balls to say what you think to my face, don’t worry I made it anonymous so unlike me you can be rude to complete strangers on the Internet and not have it affect your reputation at all, aren’t I thoughtful?
KARD – Spin
Starts off cool but the longer it goes the more it transforms from dancehall coolness into R&B ass.
BEWAVE – Hard to get ya
Despite appearances, this rocks surprisingly a lot, if they were a real band and not and idol dance group I’d say they were solid competition for QWER.
AB6IX – NVKED
Not much of a song but I respect that they’re actually singing about getting naked directly instead of wrapping everything in dishonest metaphors about food or whatever to sneak it past the naive idiots who are into k-pop now. More of this please.
TVXQ! – Sweet Surrender
Remember when these guys were the biggest thing in k-pop? No? Yes? I don’t think I even care. It’s okay I guess but if it was playing while I was fucking your mother who was a big TVXQ fan back in the day I’d ask her if she could turn the sound down just a little so I could focus.
EPEX – My Girl
Pretty dull but the bassline almost saves it. I really like that little chromatic switch back at the start of every verse line, so that’s something positive I guess.
Dreamnote – Joyful Green
Some groups look more cringe than others doing the whole forced emotional honestly thing. There’s like a sliding scale of how dumb and staged it all looks, with 1 probably being all those early T-ara drama classics and 10 being Girls’ Generation’s “All My Love Is For You“, anyway I’m giving “Joyful Green” a solid 8 for awkward walking in formation and cringe random dancing straight out of high school social night.
Lucky PangPang – Sugar
I feel like it sounds like it’s from pre-Hallyu days, but in a good way. There’s no trendiness here, someone just tried to write a good tune and that was it. I haven’t yet decided if they’ve succeeded but the effort is appreciated.
ONE PACT – As You Walk/While Walking
Rule: the length of grass in a k-pop music video is inversely proprtional to the quality of the song.
NOMAD – Call Me Back
This is their first single apparently. Imagine debuting with a song like this. Whatever happened to starting off your career with an attention-getting bang? I guess nowadays it’s sleepytime ballads for the kiddies to nap to.
CNBLUE – A Sleepless Night
I think I could sleep just fine after hearing this bland mid-tempo snooze-rock.
CNBLUE feat. Takuya from UVERworld – Countdown
Who? Sorry, I don’t care, so instead here’s your Asian but not Korean not pop not world music feature, yay! This time it’s Trivax from Iran and the incredible nutsacks on these people to be making black metal in Iran is very impressive. If you thought last week the non Korean pick got a little political then just wait for what happens here because there’s the whole recent history of Iran in this one and they even tell the Islamic Republic to directly eat their ballsacks at the end of the video, well done guys. They could only be better if they had women in the band but hey nobody’s perfect.
NOWADAYS – Heart vs Head
Back to Korea and not much is going on here.
Kenzie x Aespa – Supernova (KENZIE RE:WORKS)
SM realise that they finally have their first genuine non-manufactured non-payola hit in years with “Supernova” so they’re now trying to milk that cash cow in every direction that they possibly can, even stooping so low as to get the original songwriter to go back and remix the thing for a few more dollarydoos. The remix sucks though with those out of tune drones or whatever the fuck they’re supposed to be messing with the tonality and the whole thing reeks of desperation. I didn’t apply for a Kwangya visa for this crap.
JD1 – Be Responsible
Some shit song from the past that should have stayed there.
Hui with Jang Hyejin – Nameless
What’s more lifeless, these two singers, the dull song, or the fake plants in the video, you be the judge.
Yoo Taeyang – Hug Me
Solo boy group ballads, ew.
Moon – Company Net
Kind of two mini songs in one with the second part working a little better than the first (harmony helps) but I’m not sure if I would listen to either ever again.
Jainros – Play With U
This girl used to be in Brave Girls, so I guess that makes her a… less brave girl? I don’t know. Anyway the song is just average but wow does it come with one of the most shockingly ugly AI-infused trash videos I’ve ever seen.
Khundi Panda – Somozu Fever
Well he’s got a pretty slamming beat. I also love how the first strobe comes about 0.00025 seconds after the strobe warning. Fuck it, give people a seizure, why the hell not it’d make a great viral video trend probably.
BIG Naughty x Kid Milli – Downtown
Music for fuckheads.
BIG Naughty x Kid Milli – Freestylin’
“Freestyle” my ass, almost all rap freestlye is of the “here’s one I prepared earlier” variety, so few people bother to actually do it properly. By the way I’d love it if one day one of these idiots crashed the rental car on the way to the video shoot and then they had to pay for it.
Gabby Onme – Down
Okay it’s that Autotuned crap but… the song is actually really good? Proof that the real reason why this type of music usually stinks isn’t bad textures, it’s bad melody and harmony writing.
Yoon Seobin – Rizz
If you’ve got the gall to call your song “Rizz” you’d better come up with something more charismatic than this.
BEE BEE TAN – Blue Moon Express
Okay let’s just leave roundup here because this is insane and nothing is going to top this for this week.
RANDOM BONUS VIDEOS OF THE WEEK
Belle and Suho admit to using ChatGPT in their songwriting process LOL
“My idol is such a genius”, yeah they know how to write ChatGPT prompts, very smart. Hey “prompt engineer” is actually shaping up to be a real occupation in today’s post-AI hellscape, so maybe exploiting the stupidity of fans in the laziest way possible actually does make them smart, or at least at least smart at social engineering if not at music…
Something about Illit and NCT lightsticks or whatever
YouTubers really taking a leaf out of the k-pop Buzzfeed lately. This entire story is about an event that didn’t actually happen. Meanwhile people out there creating quality content can’t even get a goddamn click to save themselves. (Not referring to me here, I just produce shit, as we know…)
FTIsland – Love Sick
Strong early T-ara vibes in FTIsland’s debut song which actually came out before T-ara which just shows how powerful Boram’s ESP was in being able to predict both the future and the past.
That’s all for this week! Kpopalypse roundup returns next week!
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