It’s time for Kpopalypse roundup! Let’s take a look at some new releases!
If Taemin wants to show his cardboard finger hole to the world, he’s a big boy now, what’s the problem? If NewJeans did it everyone would be caping for it.
Jung Kook – Standing Next to You
It’s not bad, and probably the best solo song he’s had, and the video looks pretty, so it gets a pass. I wouldn’t sell my firstborn for it but I’d probably still take it over the squared-off 80s funk jams it’s copying just because of the better production quality.
VIVIZ – Maniac
Viviz still don’t have that killer song that they really need to make them a worthwhile continuation of Gfriend’s legacy. This tempered-down “Mago” didn’t impress that much on first listen but is a bit of a grower, it’s worth a few replays to see if it gets under your skin. I’ll probably end up liking this because I’m going to be playing it 503 times just to look at my biases a lot.
Heejin – Algorithm
Too much double-tracking of Heejin’s vocal parts, combined with that very busy-sounding beat, is just too much in the same sonic space. Everything sounds crowded and a bit irritating, something needed to be backed off somewhere. Heejin in hanbok almost makes up though, definite S+ tier hanbok-wearing.
ZEROBASEONE – Crush
Wow, the influence of a certain girl group is really hanging heavy over the rest of k-pop right now, isn’t it? By this time next year the A-list artists will have all moved on and the nugus will have picked up this sound, so if you think sounds a bit drab wait for all the C and D-tier versions coming your way in 2024.
Hyuna – Attitude
It’s like one bass riff and some talking, and that’s it. Attitude alone can’t carry a song so slight that it was barely worth pressing play on at all.
Weeekly – Vroom Vroom
No mosh, no core, No Jiyoon, no fun.
Golden Child – Feel Me
Oh shit, it’s fucking great. Someone should go and check on The Bias List immediately. He pretty much has heart palpitations even when Golden Child have a mediocre song, so now that this banger has come out we should just make sure he’s not somewhere asphyxiating in a pool of his own cum.
CRAVITY – Megaphone
These boys needed to put in a password AND do a fingerprint scan, that’s a lot of security just to access a fairly shitty song.
Eite – Independent Woman
Too much random melody just ruins this one. Cutting about 50% of the vocal here might have given half the members nothing to do (plus generated a bunch of ‘line distribution’ complaints from over-sensitive fans) but it would have certainly resulted in a better song.
LIGHTSUM – Light It Up
In what will forever be known on Kpopalypse.com as “Not Shy Syndrome”, Lightsum’s intro for “Light It Up” both sounds great and looks cool as shit, but then the song actually starts and it’s a massively generic letdown.
LIGHTSUM – Whoopie
Their other song is a fair bit better, partly due to being less generically shit but also the fact that’s it’s not introed by a much better piece of backing track is helpful because we don’t get our expectations up for no reason.
Lee Chaeyeon – Cave
Someone should have left this in the cave they found it in.
NINE.i – Neverland
Digging the puffy flower-wearing gay as fuck aesthetic, definitely feeling the 30 year old gay twink vibes here, but it’s the syncopated synths that carry the show musically, not your flower boy bias.
WHIB – Dizzy
Generic boy-popisms.
Catch The Young – YOUTH!!
I was hoping this would be bad because of their stupid group name but it’s actually quite decent and now I have to deal with having something called “Catch The Youth” in my browsing history even more than I thought.
WayV – On My Youth
Fortunately the other youth-themed thing is shit though. Let’s have some songs for the old cunts for a change…. oh that’s right, you shitheads won’t buy it, never mind.
Jang Min Ho – We Were Young
This is better – we ‘were’ young, now we’re a bunch of crusty trot singers. Much more relatable.
JO1 feat. R3HAB – Eyes On Me
Speaking of which, I’m the oldest bastard alive but the only reason why is because I age a week every time someone in k-pop sings the phrase “eyes on me”.
INI – Tag
Although I’m not sure if it’s worse than putting the word “hashtag” in a song lyric.
GreatGuys – Be On You
Meh.
GreatGuys – Deep In Love
The other song is marginally better because it has funny lyrics like “I want her twerkin” yeah um I don’t see any twerking in the video so I guess she took a raincheck.
DIAWINGS – The Feeling
Once Nugu-Alerters Diawings are doing alright these days, getting to 20k views before I can even get to lay eyes on the video. Truly, being featured in Kpopalypse Nugu Alert is a blessing for the artists, even if only three of you ever read them.
Roa – Liar
I saw that dynamite and thought to myself that it would be neat if they just blow up the entire set, and then it actually happened, now that’s pretty cool. Sadly, the songwriters weren’t in the blast zone.
Moon Jong Up – X.O.X
One of the B.A.P members who didn’t rape anyone made a song, and it’s okay I guess but I’m not sure if I consented to that purple skivvy.
Epik High feat. Hoshi – Screen Time
I like how this group made a “Park Kyu” lightstick which basically is just for giving people the finger because now I can raise it when they play this song live, thereby participating in the fandom fun AND telling these guys to get fucked for their boring ass song.
Rothy – No Where, No Here
This boring ballad makes a bunch of people dive into the pool fully clothed just to block out the sound so don’t listen to this while near water or you probably will too.
Zior Park feat. Sion – Bye Bye Bye
What the fuck.
Izykite – HEY
This song’s as boring as asspaper so instead let’s have our weekly black music feature, yay! This time it’s Big Joanie who are a pretty cool punk band that sound a bit like Sleater-Kinney in their mellower moments I guess but they’re automatically better because Sleater-Kinney didn’t have bass guitar or electronics but Big Joanie have both.
Youngjae – Do It
Do what? Listen to something else? Okay, then.
Three Manager – Management Progress Song
South Korea apparently has the least productive office workers in the entire developed world, I think now I know why.
Summer – G-Bye
“Dancer Summer”, hey. The credits say “lead vocals by Summer”, I wonder what actually constitutes lead vocal and how much vocal work the backing singer did…
pH-1 feat. Milli – Rosetta
Milli can use a microphone correct and she can rap, that’s two things she’s got that most Korean rappers have no clue about. pH-1 should have just given this entire track over to her and called it a day.
U Sung Eun – If I follow the star, will I be able to reach you?
No.
Baek A Yeon – Lime (I’m So)
The best song from this person ever? Probably. Less than a thousand views this week and it’s better than most of what’s out from people who get a thousand views per second. Kpopalypse supporting nugus since 2013, don’t you ever forget it.
Jungwoo – Cumulus
Believe it or not there was a time around the early 1990s where literally every second video coming out was in black and white for no reason. This song took me back to those times when the songs were as boring as the visuals. “Cumulus” is a great song title though, it sounds like the final boss in a Wonho game.
Junoflo – Goin’ Nigo
This guy came to my town and did a club show and I went and saw his show but I left before he came on because he decided that he was going to come on at 2am or some bullshit and I just couldn’t be fucked waiting that long because spending from 8am to 2am in a club is like an eternity for me. Looks like I wasn’t missing much.
VEKOEL – Assertive
You know how I always crap on about how women are better than men at rap and honestly it’s true most of the time but every rule has its exceptions.
Uno – Brr
mrds
RANDOM BONUS VIDEOS OF THE WEEK
InternetsNathan – I went to Korea just to find out what happened to Loona
Obviously a big fan but he could have saved himself the airfare, all the trufax on this is in my computer games.
Ploopy678 – The scandalous life of Kpop’s MESSIEST Trainee – Han Seo Hee
Han Seo Hee seems like a lovely girl just trying to find her way and fit in and make a crust in this crappy business, I don’t know what everyone is talking about. “Scandalous life” pfft she hasn’t done anything most of my friends haven’t done, and besides you’ve got to get drugs from somewhere. I like Ploopy a lot though and I especially like how she used my current Twitter PFP for the video thumbnail, a nice touch. Also this video has the cheesiest sponsor segue I’ve ever heard… right at the start of the video too, and she singles out HSH for having no shame, geez…
Namie Amuro ft. After School – Make It Happen
Caonimas may not be aware that this song exists and that would make sense because it’s a j-turd so I wouldn’t normally give it much attention but it also has After School in it so that gets it over the line for relevance. The song itself is a bit on the basic side of course but at least it’s tonally consistent, something that today’s songwriters tend to struggle with in varying degrees. The set design and outfits are great too, pity that the editing flies by so fast that it’s all impossible to appreciate, not to mention that it’s in 240p because posting a full-length, high resolution j-pop video without some caveat like ugly hard-coded subtitles or fucked aspect ratio is apparently punishable by YouTube channel execution. This is the real reason why I never cover j-pop, if they don’t have time for us, I don’t have time for them. Anyway consider this a PSA and if you find a copy of it that doesn’t suck let me know.
That’s all for this week! Kpopalypse roundup returns next week!
