Welcome to the 2023 clearing house post! Here are a bunch of songs that missed roundup, either because they were released too late, or I just forgot about them earlier! Let’s clean up this year’s leftover k-pop releases!
NEW SHIT
Jungkook, Usher – Standing Next To You (Usher Remix)
Actually not significantly different to the original. I guess Usher really wanted his name on a BTS track so HYBE said “fuck it, it’ll make money probably, we’ll let him add a few keys or something”.
Jimin – Closer Than This
The usual nostalgia thing, nothing of note, musically or in any other sense. Let’s just move on.
TWICE – Dance Again
Another horrible trip down nostalgia lane as k-pop groups are fond of doing. Twice have had worse, but not much worse.
TVXQ – Rebel
The best TVXQ song in ages, successfully leaning into the whole whatever-step thing. A bit too tonally weird because the song can’t seem to decide what mood it wants but it’s still pretty cool.
ITZY – Born To Be
Born to be… what? “Born to be in our area”, is my guess. Ho hum. (The recent ITZY solos didn’t make it in here by the way as they’re so short that I’m considering them ‘teasers’ for something longer that will hopefully come out next year. Or maybe it won’t. Whatever.)
Jessica feat. Amber Liu – Get It? Got It? Good
Jessica sounds a lot better this time around than when she debuted as a soloist a few years back, but it’s still nothing great. Kind of her to keep Amber employed though, what a champ.
Taemin – The Rizzness
Who’s idea was it to get Taemin to deliver the entire chorus in the “just been kicked in the balls” register? When the lame rap starts it’s almost a relief.
Alan Walker, Yuqi, JVKE – Fire!
Alan Walker didn’t have a “crew” of his own to be in his video, so he had to CGI one in. The choice of sonics is fomulaic, the lyrics are cheesy and the video is a fascinatingly awful Apoki-tier eyesore, but… the music has a pulse, and the melody is catchy, and that’s enough to actually make it work.
Taeyeon – Fabulous
I forgot what the song sounded like because I’m so traumatised by Taeyeon’s face these days. It’s like when your favourite game or social networking site does a GUI redesign and everything’s just slightly different and slightly weird now.
MONSTA X – Blame Me
I don’t mind the tune actually, it’s definitely one of the better “winter” songs or whatever with a big-drum power ballad sound. Something’s missing to really take it to the next level though, I’m not sure what, maybe Wonho’s abs.
IVE – Payback
Oh, IVE had a Christmas song that I left out of my Christmas roundup, so I’m putting it here instead. It’s pretty damn good by Christmas song standards, but I wouldn’t say it’s one of IVE’s better songs overall, being kind of a shit version of the type of thing they’re usually much better at.
NEXZ – Miracle
The whole thing is ruined by that very strange choice of rhythms. What the fuck exactly are we even listening to? Is the drum machine actually meant to make those noises?
Fatou – Adaeh
Fatou had four releases with videos this week, and only one of them is listenable. Here it is, it’s not bad actually, good work Fatou.
Fatou – Devil made the deal for me
This sucks though.
Fatou – Me Myself and I
So does this.
Fatou – Alright
And this. Oh well. 25% is still a better hit-rate than most k-pop artists to be honest.
Weeekly – Sweet Dream
Pretty much a total mess thanks to some really idiotic change-ups, the first one being at 0:51. What were they thinking?
Weeekly – A+
The two girls who escaped and did their own thing have a better song though. With this few members in the song they should call themselves “Wekly”.
KISS OF LIFE – Says It
When they’re sitting down politely in a row you know you’re in musical struggle town.
Nicole – Gravity
Nothing all that special here. I should have a lot to say about this song but I really don’t.
BOL4 – Eternal Love
I’m aware that the other girl who left BOL4 didn’t write most of the songs, but for some reason they fucking suck now ever since she left.
Lee Hi, Sung Sikyung – Alley
Eh, boring. If I was still doing the black music feature it would go here instead.
TIOT – Find the way
Bland, honestly. Oh boy we’re struggling in these last weeks.
Catch The Young – My Own Way
Okay this is at least a little bit perky. It would want to be with a keytar like that. Not exactly an outstanding chorus but at least it rocks a little.
Yuto Adachi – Dat Girl
Ehhhh nothing special.
Giuk – My Blue
A big drum sound is the best thing about this one.
&TEAM – Alien
Just once it would be cool if a label did something like this and the vocals were actually live. You can tell how much HYBE thinks all k-pop fans are morons.
Kandis – Snowflake
Another one that missed the Christmas boat. And again, it’s not live, just stop pretending. You’re insulting all of us. The girls didn’t “eat”, they threw up in our faces.
Libelante – On Your Way
Good voices do not automatically mean good songs example #234578620
RIIZE – Get a Guitar (Chromeo Remix)
The guitar lead shown at the start is a TRS connection which is the wrong type for electric guitar which is a mono signal so it only takes TS connection. Don’t tell us to “get a guitar” if you don’t know this basic information, fuckheads.
Lee Sungkyoung feat. Lee Chanhyuk – Eat Sleep Live Forever
Suhyun must be going into hiding this Christmas, fuck. Chanhyuk, can you get your sis to come out and do something please and in the meantime just stay in the background cheers.
Lee Mujin – Episode
Imagine having a Motorola V3 in a music video, in 2023, it’s proof that retro is going too far. Not everything that was old was good, you know. Sometimes the technology back then sucked ass and was left in the past for a reason.
Universe Ticket – Ticket To You
Someone get me a ticket outta here.
Baekho feat. Jiwon – What are we
This silly duet with Baehko and Jiwon both looking incredibly awkward actually sounds much better than it has any right to.
Jang Yoon Jeong – One Pick
The theme song to Miss Trot 3 apparently. Hopefully they’re saving the better songs for the actual show because this is dreadfully generic.
Junny – Promise
Oh yawn.
BM – ATAP (After The After Party)
It’s really not a good idea to have hard-coded subtitles when your lyrics are this bad. Next time get rid of them and also mumble the vocal delivery a little bit more so we definitely have no chance of understanding what you’re rapping about, we’d really appreciate that, thanks.
Yaeji – Easy Breezy
Yaeji continues to have bad music but at least she hasn’t gotten any worse over the silly season but is just consistently bad.
WOO – Num
Nobody’s going to release anything all that good these last few weeks of the year, are they.
CHANZE – Dive in
Actually this is a bit heavy which is definitely appreciated. I mean it’s not exactly the best song ever but at least they turned up the guitars enough.
ID:Earth – Alarm
I liked the “k-pop from 25 years ago” fashions a lot more than the music here.
Mijoo – Curiosity
Kind of a weak Lovelyz retread but the fact that Mijoo is even bothering to try and capture Lovelyz’ sound a bit shows that she has more understanding of what we want than any of her ex-groupmates, so that’s something.
Dean – Die 4 You
If only.
Venez – Persona
Given the way that Q6ix have been flopping since debut, kicking the k-pop to the side and becoming token models for some generic heavy rock band’s music video might actually be the way to go. I imagine they at least got paid for this, which means it’s probably already one step up from a lot of their idol activity.
OTHER SHIT THAT I MISSED
I asked for submissions in the end of year survey, and I actually got very few valid entries compared to previous years. Maybe I just covered everything, or maybe you all just didn’t give a shit because it’s been that kind of a year. (If you’re reading this before the Honourable Mentions post gets published, there’s still time to fill out the survey, you can do it by clicking here). As usual many people submitted music that was outside the submission rules (music that had actually already been covered, B-sides with no videos or stages, etc). Here’s the best of what was left.
Loossemble – Day By Day
Clearly ‘for the fans’ stuff here but it’s relevant because finding videos with Vivi screen time is like hitting a diamond seam in Minecraft that goes for more than three blocks.
TXT – Skipping Stones
This sounds pretty dark and dull (low strings on acoustic guitar + bass guitar + literally nothing else = mud), there’s at least a 15% chance that some of it is actually live because it’s so badly recorded that it’s hard to imagine someone preparing something that sounds like this in advance.
Cooing – Tied
Not a bad disco track but it feels like it mainly exists on vibes rather than hooks.
Fromis_9 – Attitude
Apart from some annoying vocal wailing, it’s a song as flat as the second-last character in the group’s name.
Agust D ft. Ryuchi Sakomoto & Woosung – Snooze
A couple of k-pops get together with the world’s most famous ringtone writer and the results are certainly something that you’ll want to put on snooze.
Hwina – Like A Tree
The first really good submission I found for clearing house, mainly due to that instrumental chorus. If we had had more stuff like this back when tropical shithouse was infecting the k-pop world, perhaps that fad wouldn’t have died so damn quickly.
Kingdom – Last Flower
I’ll forgive Kingdom for not having a video here given that they seem to spend a few million dollars on each one and surely the money must be running out by now. The change-ups actually make more musical sense than usual given Kingdom’s ‘cinematic’ (or whatever) style, but still, as usual the best thing about this is the costume design and staging. Kingdom are definitely at least partially responsible for awakening my 30 year old twink side.
Tempest – Dive
Only this lame dance practice video and equally muddy live performance stages exist for this song, and it’s a shame as it’s not too bad. The offbeat synth work (which doesn’t really come through that well in this video) is what makes the track stand out a bit. Original audio here.
Park Rossi – Gossip
This song wasn’t bad but desperately needed more space in the mix for the instrumental to breathe. When the singer finally shuts up and lets the rhythm track play a little at 2:07 it’s a welcome relief but it’s too little too late.
Chio Chicano – Hwang Jini Freestyle
This is the kind of boring stuff that more ‘academic’ k-pop websites wet themselves over, because people listen with their eyes, not their ears, so all you need to do to fool someone from one of those places is dress up ‘traditonal’ a bit, pose near an old building and steal a few old-school Korean instruments from a sample library.
Dion! X Veni – NEVA LOSE
However no academic will like this, even though it sounds nearly the same as the other song when you get down to it. It’s pretty silly with the gang signs and general posing out, but it was funny. Maybe 4/10 for music but certainly 8/10 for entertainment.
AMONG, DION!, VENi, CHIKA – M.A.R.S (Mad Ass Real Squad)
Seriously, thanks for the person who tipped me off on Dion. Everything her and her friends do is hilarious. I like her for the same reason I like Kerrigan May, even when she’s bad she’s still very entertaining, although this track here is definitely one of the better ones.
Nam Donghyun – Driver’s License
A rare case of an actual real vocal performance on a k-pop live stage, which just demonstrates why people don’t do it more often, as he sounds like shit and misses half the words. Imagine how much worse it would have sounded if the drums also weren’t mimed. The song’s not bad despite it all, although it’s so lazily performed it’s sometimes hard to tell in this version (original audio here).
Jena Powder – Futurist
You could have suggested anything you wanted for clearing house and you picked this? Either it’s the artist herself trying to get some promo who sent this in (in which case she could have made it embeddable, damn), or someone is just trying to torture me.
Song Heejin – Hi, I’m An Alien
I wasn’t that thrilled with this song but at least it had some tempo going for it. The person who keeps asking about sausages on my livestreams for no reason might want to watch this one as there’s some quality sausage barbequeing at 0:49 which looks like it meets Australian sausage cooking standards.
Kang Daniel – Re8el
Basically Dami’s “Beauty Full” if the guitars were turned up half as loud and the melody was half as good.
DumbAss – Stardust!
Nothing that special. Guitars are nice but you still need a memorable song at the end of the day and I’m not feeling this at all.
Apink – Me, Myself & I
K-pop girls wearing formal white dresses and standing an equal distance apart in a straight line is generally a recipe for musical blandness and this is no exception.
OTHER SONGS THAT WEREN’T ELIGIBLE FOR FUCKING ANYTHING BUT I’LL JUST THROW DOWN ON THEM HERE QUICKLY SO YOU ALL STOP ASKING ME ABOUT THEM
aespa – Hold On Tight
The synthwave treatment is cool but at the end of the day it’s still just the fucking Tetris theme with a bit of pop music window-dressing, and I got bored of the Tetris theme back when I used to actually play Tetris. Of course aespa fans loved it – the group were forced to use an actual fucking melody in a song for once, their fans are no doubt not used to this.
Fifty Fifty – Barbie Dreams
Double not-eligible-for-jack-fucking-shit because it’s from an OST and it has no official video, but even if it was it wouldn’t have gotten on anything except the dishonourable mentions maybe just due to the whole thing being so repetitious and cheese-grater-across-the-face annoying. Listen to this twice and you’ll feel like you’ve heard it fifty plus fifty times.
Mahatma – Chaotic Life
A new rule for 2023 is – no AI art in roundup. If I can pay a professional artist (very) good money to do my book covers, then Korean musicians can pay real artists too instead of using machine-aggregated generic plagiarised crap. Mahatma disqualified themselves from consideration in roundup not by being heavy metal (which is appreciated) but by using AI art for their stage backdrop. Go and reflect.
FINAL BONUS VIDEO FOR 2023
Rachel Kim dishes on SM and SNSD
Watch her snap back at the interviewer when he suggests having your phone confiscated is fair enough. Girl has been through some shit, there is real trauma here. Also she’s looking stunning here, better than she ever has. Watch her constantly adjust her clothes and hair to make sure you’re getting the best angles at all times. Very considerate, very awesome, thank you for your service.
That’s all for roundups for 2023! The next post will be the honourable mentions lists and top/bottom 30! In the meantime don’t forget that the end of year survey is still live for only two more days from the time of this post, you can do it by clicking here! Thanks caonimas!
