It’s time for Kpopalypse roundup! Let’s take a look at some new releases!
ALLDAY PROJECT – I Don’t Bargain
Allday Project don’t bargain. They don’t do a lot of other things too, it seems. But what they should be doing is the latest Kpopalypse survey which is out now, CLICK HERE to participate and have your say in important matters concerning k-pop today!
YENA – Catch Catch
Yena goes for the old-school T-ara “Bo Peep” electro-banger vibes and certainly gets the sounds right, but the songwriting is lagging behind. Shinsadong Tiger is sorely missed and not just by bus enthusiasts.
BABY DONT CRY – Shapeshifter
A smoother sound than they’re known for so far (and lots of unfortunate AI slop) takes the edge off, but it’s still a pretty decent song regardless.
AtHeart – Butterfly Doors
A reasonably good song almost completely ruined by the wrong choice of rhythm for most of its running length. Why half of it is at funeral tempo in this age where we’ve well and truly established that Blackpinkian tempos just don’t cut it in k-pop anymore is anyone’s guess.
ODD YOUTH – Babyface
Definitely a redemption for Odd Youth after a horrible start to their careers, their new song comes off like a budget version of Twice’s “The Feels“.
NiziU – Dear
Dear Niziu,
This song is fucking boring.
Love, Kpopalypse.
Odetari feat. Soyeon of i-dle – Don’t Die
A song with a fast beat and literally nothing else going for it.
Yeojin – Sugar Talk
I don’t think there’s any “sugar talk” that can sweeten the fact that Loossemble is mentioned in the video title even though they don’t exist.
P1Harmony – Unique
Significantly less unique than hyped. Of course the main problem is the music but the AI slop sure doesn’t help. Did you know that it’s a common belief that my book covers are made by AI but this is in fact incorrect? The artist is the amazing Brazilian artist Caius Augustus and you should check his work out, it’s great, you can do so by clicking the Girls909 book pre-order page here and scrolling to where his social links are. He does commissions, if you hire him tell him I sent you!
ALL(H)OURS – Dead Man Walking
Listen at 1:04, that noise your dad makes after he gargles salt water is actually now a valid k-pop vocal tehcnique.
AB6IX – Bottoms Up
“Screw it, bottoms up” sure is one hell of a chorus, let’s make Korea’s alcoholism problem worse, fuck it. But the biggest mistake here is that they call their own group “A-B-Six” instead of what it really is, which is “A-B-Six-Ix”. Shame.
M.O.N.T – Keep It Slow
The guy at 0:18 is looking out of the window of his dorm at the stars, trying to determine the exact co-ordinates of his particular patch of Korean soil. M.O.N.T random patriotism will rise again!
DAILY:DIRECTION – Self
This group that sounds like a self-help course sure could a bit of help writing songs. They could use some better visual advice too. Check this video at 1:57, what in the random ugly AI crap?
Aoen – Instant Crush
Oh HYBE is launching a Japanese boy group now, gosh I guess crime really does pay for big labels if they’re lucky enough to maneuver themselves into “too big to fail” territory before they get caught that’s nice I hope they do well.
IN A MINUTE – Broken Doll
Well at least they didn’t do a “for the fans” video” although I suppose that’s hardly an option when it’s your second single.
CMDM – Leash
Nothing much going on here of interest but I’ve got to hand it to them for just letting a poorly-lit room be a poorly-lit room and not CGI-ing a bunch of AI slop crashing cars or bits of clocks or something.
V01D – Tug of War
I like it when k-pop boys song on top of rubbish heaps beacuse it reminds me of Einsturzende Neubauten’s “Armenia” which is a banger of a song, and some of these k-pop kids even have the same eyeliner as Blixa.
Dragon Pony – Oh Perfect!
Another bland rock song, another AI slop video. Just skip it, it’s the only way these people will learn.
Hi-Fi Un!corn – Hungry Heart
Hi-Fi Unexclamationmarkcorn’s song is actually pretty good, and the visuals don’t suck either. It is still possible, people.
S2IT – What I Want
Once you get over that the song is 6dB quieter than everything else on YouTube for no clear reason, the song isn’t bad at all.
AFuture – Dream Land
The sort of song that would probably sound okay if a group with a budget did it, but you can’t really get away with this on a shoestring.
SKINZ – Poison Ivy
Where is Asian Junkie? Why isn’t he featuring this? He stanned Plave for about ten seconds but now he’s hung them and all the other avatar groups out to dry.
GIRLZONE – Song of Wave
I guess the budget didn’t extend to grass and foilage. I guess that’s a bit much to code on a tight schedule, but it’s sad when Infinity Nikki makes this look like one of those made-for-Kickstarter asset-flip scams.
Younha – Skybound
I’ve heard that the Younha spam lately is because she’s released a covers album… I didn’t know there were so many mid songs that one could cover in Korea. Oh wait, yes I did. But anyway this is definitely the best one.
Hoshi – Baby, Honey
We don’t want this. Orange Caramel comeback when?
ACE – Bonita
“Bonita” is one of those words where you know instantly if it’s used in a song title A. exactly what that song sounds like without listening to any of it and B. that it sucks. Don’t press play on the video, just try to imagine the song in your head first, then press play and see how close you got. I bet you were at least 85% right.
Rosesia feat. Noducksoon – B.O.M
Just a bunch of nothing at all, really.
M’ewn – Like That
This is a very popular nugu video location that I’ve seen a lot recently from different groups and soloists, all on the Z-tier. Add it to the Korean tourism sightseeing list!
CAMO – Tell Me
That Autotuned poop nobody likes.
Socialclub Hyangwu – Bleeding Cherry
mrcs
A Day In The Life Of An Enshittificator
If you’re wondering why roundup is late it’s because YouTube suddenly decided they won’t let me have a chronological subscription feed anymore, which makes these posts (or indeed any posts) of mine much harder to do. Of course they’ll probably, maybe, give it back to me if I sign up to their Premium tier or something, which is the whole strategy of these companies now – break something, and make people pay for you to fix it. Don’t reward these pricks. If you’re subscribed to YouTube on any sort of paid tier, cancel your subscription, give your money to people who don’t enshittify things. In the meantime this video can go here instead of the random music pick because fuck YouTube. Fucking dickheads.
RANDOM BONUS VIDEOS OF THE WEEK
HYOKEY – I was a K-pop idol for 8 years, and I ended up with DEBT?
I know you’ve all seen this video (after all about 235 of my readers all recommended it to me) and it’s just all the stuff I’ve been saying and writing about already for over a decade, but just putting it here because it’s important and it never hurts to remind people. You never know, someone might be discovering and learning about this for the first time, it’s a good idea to make that process easier. Let’s not all fall into the Redditor trap: “there’s no point because everyone already knows stuff, man”.
Latency’s band practice is just as chaotic and annoying as the band you’re in
It’s just as shit as your own band practice, right down to the bit where everyone annoyingly swaps instruments to waste time, and they even give up after a while to play computer games instead. This is seriously how it goes. Realistic af.
Girl’s Day – Oh My God
A song in the “Roly Poly” style, and it’s inferior to that classic of course, but it’s still aged pretty well even if it’s a bit overlong. Just a shame about the video. These days we have AI slop ruining k-pop videos, 15 years ago it was random sound effects. How far we’ve come.
That’s all for this week! Kpopalypse roundup returns next week!
No comments:
Post a Comment