Yes it’s the list that hate-readers have been waiting for all year – the list of the worst k-pop songs of 2023 according to Kpopalypse! Read on and enjoy!
Welcome to the worst k-pop songs of 2023 according to Kpopalypse! For the record, yes it was a shit year, not just in terms of the quantity of shit, but 2023’s shit songs definitely had a certain quality to them as well. You can read all about these qualities in the list below!
Most people will probably skip straight to the list part and then check with shaking hands and sweaty palms if their favourite artists’ favourite songs are included here so they can then go and complain about it somewhere (spoiler: probably), but if you’re a new reader and/or reasonably intelligent you may wish to read the below dot points before you dive in. These points explain this list’s criteria and general aims.
Songs are from 1st January 2023 to 31st December 2023, however the time window for this list actually extends a little bit before both of these dates to catch any steaming turds that may have missed making it into previous year’s lists. This list was published on 31st December 2023 but may appear earlier for some readers due to timezones.
Feature tracks only – songs released with a music video, or as a single, or featured on live stages.
OST songs are not eligible, because they’re almost always such complete crap that they would dominate this list and make it a very correct but very boring read.
Songs that have confirmed AI use in either the music or accompanying visuals are considered too shitty and disgusting even for a list like this one and are banned from consideration in all Kpopalypse lists.
Songs for sporting events are not eligible, these are ignored for the good of humankind, as Kpopalypse does not do the sport ball shape.
Christmas songs are not eligible as they are of such consistently low quality that they have their own special list of shittiness just for them.
“K-pop” is deliberately defined a little loosely for this list as music coming from the Korean industry – songs that aren’t strictly “pop” are eligible. Songs from Koreans or backed by Korean labels trying to break into non-Korean markets are eligible. Western attempts at “being a k-pop” are also eligible.
This list is 100% subjective, it’s all about what I think of the music. Sure, often I’ll discuss other aspects too, but that’s mainly just for entertainment, as most bad Korean pop songs actually have similar flaws and repeating myself a whole ton does not make for a very fun list. The other factors don’t really have any bearing on which songs made it into here. Yes this list is biased – as it should be, because what is the point of a personal list with no bias in it – but it’s musically biased.
The opinions expressed here are not important and do not represent any kind of “authority”. This list proves nothing except what my own subjective opinions are. Your own opinions will most likely differ. If you managed to extract any actual enjoyment out of these terrible songs, then good for you.
If you are upset by this list, good. Maybe go and complain about it somewhere, I’m sure that will work out just fine for you.
On the other hand if you’re thinking I’m just someone who hates k-pop in general, on statistical averages that’s actually very true (Sturgeon’s Law applies to k-pop as it apples to everything else), but know that the Kpopalypse favourites list for 2023 is also a thing so maybe go and check that out to hear some much better songs, I highly recommend it. Also you may wish to check the honourable and dishonourable mentions post for 2023 for more good AND shit songs you may have missed.
Now that you know what potential horrors you’re dealing with, let’s now get on with the list!
KPOPALYPSE’S 30 WORST K-POP SONGS OF 2023
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30. BABYMONSTER – Batter Up
It’s time for the first turkey of the list! Of course it’s YG’s new girl group, which means that it’s the typical stale Teddy formula, which is two verses and two choruses of dreary funeral tempo nonsense, followed by a jumping-the-shark change-up into something completely different (and much better) for the final twenty seconds. The twist here being that Teddy didn’t actually write this one, so we also lose the one advantage that Teddy normally brings to the table which is above-average production that is usually capable of propping up the below-average songwriting to acceptable levels. Instead it’s just a bland retread of “Wet-Ass P-Word” style beats with blues chord changes (I-IV-V yawn), no particular flair in the sonics to make it stand out and the usual lame “we’re such independent and badass girls when our CEO says it’s okay” vocal sloganeering. Most of all, it just sounds so incredibly empty and unexciting, which seems an odd choice for a new debut that you’d presumably want to generate some excitement. It’s telling that a fan version which shifts the vocals so they happen four bars earlier than the music which would have disastrous effects for just about any other song doesn’t hurt “Batter Up” much at all because there’s barely any interesting melody or harmony there to ruin the first place. By the time the song arrives at the final stretch where it does actually improve in pace and quality somewhat you’ve well and truly lost interest because who the hell in their right mind wants to wait two and a half minutes for a three minute pop song to get good. No wonder YG barely even bothered to do any promotions for this song and quickly hurried the girls off back to their dorms. Fans protested of course but seriously they’re doing us all a favour here by sending this written-by-committee crud back to the bench, I’m sure we’ll get the Blackpink-beater at some point from BabyMonster because that’s obviously what the plan is, but this sure isn’t the home run we wanted.
29. SMTOWN – The Cure
It’s nice that SM Entertainment have “The Cure”, but it does beg the question, what are we curing exactly? Whatever it is, they’re not telling. “Don’t you worry about it, we are the cure”, they sing, which is as lovely as it is non-specific, so I guess this is just supposed to be a catch-all type of song that you can use to feel better about whatever you want. If you need a bit of inspiration and reassurance before going on that mass shooting, or you’re having doubts that invading a neighbouring country for a bit of ethnic cleansing is the correct course of action, then a few spins of “The Cure” should be enough to convince you that you’re on the right path. If what you’re looking for is good music though, you might be a little bit more out of luck though, as “The Cure” isn’t going to help you there, with its hideous millennial-whoopisms and generic “African music filtered through Paul Simon’s anal ring” vibes (the musicians are of course unseen because unlike Kpopalypse, SM Entertainment isn’t very interested in highlighting black musicians). It’s all pretty goddamn depressing in the typical ways that music like this almost always is. Before applying the cure next time, it’s probably worthwhile checking that it’s preferable to the disease.
28. Primrose – Primrose
Earlier this year I interviewed k-pop producer AZODi (to to be clear isn’t one of the songwriters responsible for this mess) and that’s an interview that’s definitely worth reading if you haven’t yet, as he had a lot of interesting insights into the k-pop world and how songs are made. One of the revelations that he shared which I think is most important from a music appreciation point of view, is that the topline (industry term for melodies/vocal part) and the backing track are very rarely written by the same people and it’s common for these tasks to be farmed out to two different teams, often working in two different countries. If you’ve ever wondered why so many songs in k-pop sound like the backing track writers and the topline writers were in separate parts of the planet completely disregarding each other’s wishes, well the answer is because that’s in fact exactly how it is a lot of the time, and I have no idea whether that was really the case with this song or not but it sure fucking sounds like it was. Those cheesy blues-based and major scale vocal lines just rub completely the wrong way up against the feel that the backing track is trying to generate, like the song has no idea whether it wants to be “in our area” or sing us a nursery rhyme. Track writers need to start sending notes along with their track for topline teams: “please don’t write a ‘baby’s first melody’ that ruins the atmosphere of my badass beat, you wankers”. Until then, I guess we’re going to get stuck with a lot more shit like this.
27. UNEDUCATED KID feat. Yumdda – Brainless
He’s not kidding. Next.
26. LIONESSES – Papyun
I was actually really proud of independent gay-themed k-pop group Lionesses over the last couple years as after sucking wildly on debut they have actually managed to release more than one song that wasn’t complete crap and mostly stay off my worst lists. As someone who is down with the gays generally, this pleased me; I get a bit sick of trashing them year after year because I think their open flamboyant mincing gayness (which is clearly not a “business gay performance” unlike some other groups ahem) is something that should be encouraged and I just wished that they had songs that were as good as their concept. However this year they released “Papyun” and we’re right back to square one. Seriously what were they thinking with those vocals. The singer has this annoying habit where he continually resolves all of his vocal lines on the same note with the same phrasing each time which becomes fingernails-across-chalkboard annoying very very quickly, and while that can probably maybe work in some contexts, it sure doesn’t work here. They don’t even have the excuse of “the topline writers have no idea what the backliners want” because these guys are completely independent and did it all themselves. Anyway this song sucks even more balls than the group themselves probably do and if you see this song being pushed at you on that Jack’d app that they keep promoting I suggest that you swipe left.
25. Wheein x Hwasa – 17
Hey here’s a vocal warm up over hip-hop beats that you could listen to if you wanted, and you honestly might as well because it’s pretty much the same thing as “17” and if you like listening to this then you should like that too. The only real difference with “17” is that both the beats and the vocals are at about twice the speed, other than that it’s pretty much identical and should do fine for your vocal warm-up session. Oh and Hwasa touches Wheein’s hair in a nice little moment at 1:28 so if you dig a bit of “BGP” along with your vocal warm-ups then take note. Random lesbian vibes during a vocal warmup session feels like maybe it’s one of those random untapped marketing combinations, like Bailey Sarian doing true crime videos while also doing her makeup, I’m sure someone would pay to see that… oh wait, this isn’t meant to be a vocal warm-up session, but an actual song? Are you sure? They actually put this on an album and expected people to buy the music? Well, gosh. In the worst list it goes, I guess. What a pity.
24. Dbo feat. Don Mills – Culture
Dbo has been in these worst lists many times with many songs and rightfully so, and here he is again of course because with the awful music he makes, why wouldn’t he be. However this song here is particularly notable because it contains an unusual twist in that Dbo actually isn’t the worst thing in it. Believe it or not, his rapping here is almost semi-half acceptable, kind of, sometimes, a little. Instead he palms off the usual complete waste of space Autotuned utter mumbly shit to Don Mills and it’s Don who fucks up the track enough to get it on this list instead. Now that’s certainly a development that I didn’t expect in what has been another year full of k-pop surprises, I mean Don Mills has never been great but he’s also never been this awful. I guess someone has to take the pressure off Dbo some of the time, the poor guy has been working hard to get on these lists each year so I can understand outsourcing the low quality. Sometimes a man just needs a break. Unfortunately, it’s music fans who need a break from this type of music most of all and I don’t see one on the horizon.
23. DALsooobin – Tanaka San
“Tanaka-san” doesn’t sound too bad until the chorus starts. Up until that point it’s a reasonable disco number, that sounds like it’s building up to a normal chorus like any other. Unfortunately all we get is a weird, awful “Tanaka-san” chant over and over in various different inflections like that somehow makes it less repetitious. Then of course we get a trap breakdown because if you’re going to shit the bed you might as well spend some time to smear the shit around a little and really work it into those sheets, but it’s still the chorus that is the main offender here. K-pop companies thinking that choruses without melody are somehow a thing that people actually want is a trend that’s been baffling me a bit in 2023, I’m not sure where it started out or why but “Tanaka-san” certainly made me feel like a shark chiki chika chu.
22. Seoul Philharmonic Orchestra – Into The New World
K-pop label SM Entertainment’s ambitious orchestral project has covered many songs in the SM catalogue over the past year, and every single one of them has been an abject failure and a complete waste of time for everyone involved, except maybe the orchestra themselves who I presume at least got paid a little to grind through these messy arrangements in the rehearsal studio. The orchestra arrangements don’t work for the same reason that Metallica’s “S&M” orchestral concert was also a complete joke – the rewritten versions don’t stick to what made the original songs good, and instead try to do too much, adding in extra themes and permutations of the melody that distract heavily from the direct catchiness of the originals. However none of these attempts were more disgusting than when they decided to give Girls’ Generation’s iconic debut song “Into The New World” this treatment. The result is truly a disgusting botched mess, where the focus seems to be on cheesily divvying up the parts to showcase every individual instrument of the orchestra one at a time in some kind of weird “aren’t we all so talented, gosh” messaging instead of, you know, trying to actually make the result sound good. The result is an insult to every person who has ever liked a k-pop song, and if you’re not horrified that this exists, you should be, because this song is calling you an idiot to your face. K-pop companies don’t care about you as anything other than a sucker to be milked for money and attention, and the fact that there are people out there who consider this rendition anything other than a direct spit in the face of Girls’ Generation’s fans shows that they’re not even wrong.
21. KISS OF LIFE – Bad News
Kiss Of Life are potentially a great group, and there’s no doubt that they have some talented performers. However in the world of k-pop where actual vocal talent is rare, their talents just means that Kiss Of Life become vulnerable to the same fate as other people on the upper end of k-pop’s meager ability scale – they’re forced to carry tunes that don’t exist. I call this “Mamamoo Syndrome” (but they’re hardly the only other group inflicted with this), but the basic thrust of it is that since the girls clearly have a lot of ability, they’re given the emptiest of tracks to work with. The thinking is that some other performers who can barely sing without the computer’s help will actually need the finely crafted songs that tell them exactly what to sing and when, whereas Kiss Of Life don’t need finely crafted songs because their ability to churn out decent vocals will carry the show, so they just get any old bullshit foisted onto them. Here it’s basically just one ultra-compressed acoustic guitar loop and a beat with various elements getting switched on and off but nothing ever really changing all that much, and the girls are just kind of expected to make something of it. Of course it doesn’t work in practice because despite the obvious talent at play, pop songs actually need to be songs, and nobody bothered to write one so we’re just left with, again, vocal exercises over a sound loop. Bad news indeed.
20. Kim Sejeong – If We Do
Korea’s bland, dishwater-dull coffee-shop snoozefests are one thing, but they’re even worse when you know someone else besides you is being actively tortured. At 1:23 you can hear someone on guitar chunk down and do a few quick power chords like they wish they were in some punk song way better than this one – and then they quickly stop a couple seconds later. Clearly, this person is far more tormented by this song than I am, as they’ve no doubt had to sit there in the rehearsal room for hours getting their nothingy guitar part ‘just right’, and it just got to the point where they couldn’t stand it and just had to break out with that little solo-ette in order to rescue their sanity from coffee-shop-induced catatonia. The overall feeling is like the powerlessness you feel when you watch animal cruelty, your heart wants to do something to help but you know that the misdeeds have already occurred. However there’s no need to feel completely powerless, there are animal welfare organisations you can support, and you can also never listen to this song again and hopefully Korea’s songwriters will get the message and produce less of this trash, thereby torturing less unfortunate musicians in the future. If you don’t let your pets listen to this trash either, you can even kill two birds with one stone. Let’s hope for a more cruelty-free 2024.
19. Dbo feat. Swings – Push Up
Okay so Dbo has shit music and probably always will but I really kind of like him after watching this video. He seems to have a good attitude to life and doesn’t seem to take himself too seriously, those are definitely positive attributes. This means that when he reads these lists he’ll probably take it all in the appropriate cunty spirit, so honestly I can’t help but stan. I just wish he’d stop sucking at music, but hey I can wish for no war, no discrimination and a titjob from Hitomi Tanaka-san, that doesn’t mean that any of those things will actually happen. Good luck to him, and well played I suppose, I’m sure we’ll meet again in future worst lists.
18. Taeyong – SHALALA
Goddamn Taeyong get off your computer, I see you typing there in the video intro, talking about “keeping it low-key”, but haven’t you learned yet? We all know that you can’t be trusted with that thing. I don’t want you buying my stuff for sale on eBay and then smashing it with a hammer when you get it and claiming it was broken when you opened the box. It’s bad enough that you’ve served up this broken-ass song with no tune, catchiness or interesting rhythm to speak of. There’s even a breakdown in there were it literally sounds like someone tried to turn the damn thing off completely, if only they succeeded. Anyway please just stop all this solo song nonsense and get back to giving Loona girls things to practice their dances on, you’re better at that.
17. Kep1er – Grand Prix
It’s a sad fact that 2023 was a pretty poor year for girl groups overall. There’s no getting around it, while there definitely were a few shining examples of excellent girl group songs that outstripped everything else this year for k-pop quality (check the favourites list to see them) the boy groups actually had a much better year on average, with many more boy groups overall punching above their usual weight. The reason for this change seems to be that for some weird reason “chant choruses” are trending for girl songs, whereas boy songs are trending in a more melodic direction overall. Someone, somewhere apparently must think it’s ‘cute’ or something to get the girls to do weird choruses that are neither singing nor rapping but instead just talking or chanting some weird line, usually with awful non-specific portamento applied to the note to give us all the shits. Or maybe they just couldn’t be fucked teaching them to sing, that’s another possibility. Whatever the case, the horrid chant trend is definitely in effect during Kep-one-er’s latest song “Grand Preeeeeeeeeeeeeeee” which just has the most awful botched joke of a chorus this side of… er, Kep-one-er’s other rubbish tracks, which is most of them. At least they’re consistently shit, I guess. It’s enough to make you feel like a shark chiki chika chu and yes I will keep making that reference as long as k-pop groups keep committing these crimes against musical humanity. Trust me I want to move on from this shit trend as much as you all do.
16. Richboy Hardy feat. oceanfromtheblue – Shawty
There’s a weirdly large amount of debate in hip-hop communities about what the word “shawty” means, to the point where people have written eytmological analyses of how the word came to be in hip-hop. I always thought it was fairly obvious that it just meant ‘female’ and arose purely due to women being shorter than men on average, but apparently I’m wrong and the true meaning of the word is “shitty Autotuned trap R&B garbage with too much reverb and annoying posing idiots”. Hey, who knew? Anyway this song sucks almost as much as the dude’s name (“Richboy Hardy” please, I’m sure everything we see in this video is rented) and the video messaging is similarly awful with him taking some girl’s hand and getting rid of her glasses and pigtails which were super-cute and making her blend in with everyone else boringly because conformity is cool, or something. At least this has only 3k views at the time of writing so not too many people have been traumatised by this nonsense, just a shame that I’m one of them, I advise that you spare yourselves the click and free yourself from becoming a statistic.
15. YOUNGEST – Bad Girl
Recently there’s a whole thing in fandom spaces where people are complaining about idols debuting younger and younger, like this is a new thing somehow, and guess what? Korean labels don’t give a flying fuck what fans think, and never will, as long as fans keep obediently buying into the product. Talk all you want about “waiting until age eighteen to debut idols” (like that even matters if they’re still underage behind closed doors during training days getting ogled by all the staff while they learn the dances for years beforehand) because they’ll keep debuting girls and boys as young as they want regardless. No matter what morals you play-act out so you can get upvotes and assert your pretend morality to strangers, at the end of the day they know you don’t give a fuck, after all they have the data that shows what you pay attention to and where you spend your time, engagement and money. That’s why now we have to put up with a girl group called YOUNGEST who are flaunting their youth in the boldest way possible, because their agency’s data shows that this is exactly what you’re interested in. These girls are “bad girls” in the literal sense because they are girls and their music is in fact very bad (in much the same way as GPBasic, who they sound eerily similar to), and they naturally are very concerned about “where the party at” probably because the last time they actually partied was before they entered training. What do you mean you didn’t want this? This is exactly what your aggregated data shows that you asked for. The algorithm is never wrong and numbers don’t lie, now shut up and eat your gruel.
14. Ferry Blue – Free
While not as bad as certain solo projects from the group (see further down this list), Ferry Blue’s “Free” is still pretty awful. However it’s hard to pinpoint anything specifically wrong with it. It’s awful in that horrible non-specific way that anything created by an AI art program is also always awful, like a machine created all the component parts of the song and stitched them together while having no deeper understanding of anything that they were doing, only that certain things have worked in other contexts and are popular, so as a result nothing quite gels sensibly. Why did the girls get sent to the colourful Nugu Park roundabout setting just so they could do half the shots in black and white? Where is the melody of the song actually going? Why does the camera wobble and judder around like the cameraperson is drunk in every single shot? Why are some shots blurry? Why is the chorus the lowest, most dour and dreary part of the song? Why does the tiled ceiling lights in some scenes flash like they’re broken? Why are there so many random keyboard notes in the background that crowd everything out in some sections, while everything is weirdly empty in others, with no real rhyme or reason to when this happens? The defining moment of the package at least visually is at 1:15 where one of the girls quickly adjusts her top during the dance routine and hopes nobody notices (and they clearly didn’t, as the shot survived editing), she’s looking out for herself because she knows nobody else is. I hope that these girls are okay, but they’re probably not.
13. V – Rainy Days
Since BTS fans are proven complete cyberbullying human garbage I’m sure I’ll cop a bit of heat for having their favourite boy whatshisname in this list a bunch of times, but it’s not my fault that he sucked so badly this year. He sounds here like he’s on fucking valium, and the track is equally somnambulant, this is strictly music for people of a minimum age of 50 only. Remember that Blackpink fan who took her square-ass dad to a Blackpink concert and he complained that it was all noise and sounded the same like the old withered cunt that he is? Well he’d probably find this blandness right here to be more his speed, it shouldn’t interfere with the function of his heart bypass valve too much. If you’re a decrepit old bastard like him you’ll probably find this song to be right up your alley, for anyone else I’d advise give it a miss, especially if you’re about to drive or operate heavy machinery.
12. Tempest – Vroom Vroom
In the iconic Kpopalypse computer game Try Not To Have Gay Sex With Yves 2: The Return Of Not Having Gay Sex With Yves, (which isn’t the latest one, we’re actually up to episode 5 at the moment, with episode 6 coming in Pride Month 2024) there’s a cutscene fairly near the start of the game where Chuu dances to a fictional NCT song in the Blockberry practice gym. The audio for this section is just done by me, making stupid random noises into the microphone to approximate a generic “noisy boy group song”, and it sounds like trash as you may well expect. It looks like the songwriters for Tempest, obviously completely fresh out of any sort of creative inspiration, found this game of mine and have lifted my ‘NCT riff’ almost exactly, tweaking it just slightly and making it the main hook for “Vroom Vroom”. Of course I could probably sue them for such obvious plagiarism, but after hearing the low quality of the result I don’t think I’ll bother, as putting my hand up in the k-pop public arena to say that I wrote the disastrously bad hook for this would be too shameful a fate even for someone as shameless as myself. Even if this song mysteriously made bank, I don’t think the royalties would be worth the damage to my self-esteem, so they can keep it. At least people finally have a legitimate reason to be mad at my advertisement-free k-pop website that nobody is forcing anyone to visit, after all I did actually write this trash.
11. NMIXX – Young, Dumb, Stupid
I bet the girls of NMIXX didn’t realise when they registered to be JYP trainees that that they were basically signing themselves up to be glorified Play School hosts. Just listen to this literal nursery-rhyme bullshit, and it IS literal nursery rhyme bullshit. If you ever wanted proof that k-pop agencies think that the fans of their groups have the mental age of about six years old (as if the SNSD orchestral arrangement earlier in this list still hasn’t convinced you), here you go, because that’s very obviously the target audience here. It’s clear that the label called this song “Young, Dumb, Stupid” for a reason, they’re clearly referring to the fandoms, they must point and laugh every time they see an NMIXX fan getting into this music and willingly rehashing their “sit on the smiley face and eat play-lunch” days. No wonder Lily is so sick of fandom stupidity that she now has serial killer fantasies roughly equal to the ones Hana has in my books, if I had to sing this juvenile chorus as much as she now likely is going to have to I’d want to murder a cunt too. It’s a real shame as the rest of the song around it isn’t all that bad, but with a chorus this incredibly shit, there’s just no hope.
10. EPEX – Full Metal Jacket
Because this song is in the worst list, you will not like me. But the more you hate me, the more you will learn. I am hard, but I am fair! To be clear, there is no bigotry here, I do not look down on nugu-tier CGI, smoky eye makeup or cheap black costumes. Here, shit k-pop songs are all equally worthless! And my mission is to weed out all songs that do not pack the gear to serve in my beloved k-pop favourites lists! Now here’s a song that definitely doesn’t know which side is left and which is right. It seems that the songwriters were too busy snacking on jelly doughnuts while fingerbanging Mary Jane Rottencrotch to think about giving these boys something resembling a decent tune. Instead we just get them lamely chanting like unorganized grabasstic pieces of amphibian shit, when they should at least be sounding off like they’ve got a pair. I’ll bet their CEO is the kind of guy that would fuck a trainee in the ass and not even have the goddam common courtesy to give him a reach-around! I’ll be watching you!
9. Bobby – F
Everyone complains that big, bad old Kpopalypse swears a whole fucking lot but I don’t swear as fucking much as this cunt Bobby here but I bet everyone gives this wanker a free pass for it. I guess this shithead has realised that not fucking showering isn’t enough and is now finding new ways to try and be a “real hip-hop” kind of asshole. Anyway this shit music probably could have been vaguely fucking okay with some sort of better vocal treatment on top but it’s definitely a case of the lyrics being so fucking stupid and overblown that they ruin everything, there’s so much general abuse that it kind of loses its coherency, if it even had any. Full marks for making a fucking effort I guess as he’s certainly trying, but it’s definitely a case of “if less is more, nothing would have definitely been everything, you fucking loser”. By the end of the video Bobby gives up and just goes back to plan A, covering himself in mud to prove that he is in fact a hip-hop person after all, so welcome back to old times and being a dirty cunt I guess. Fuck.
8. NiziU – Paradise
Did Niziu really have only five singles at this point? For some reason I feel like they’ve been spamming one shit song after another at us at the rate of about one every two weeks for the past decade, or maybe it’s just the super-low quality of their songs that makes me feel that way every time I hear them do anything at all. Anyway “Paradise” is a little different to the average Niziu song in that it actually gets the production style right for once (there might actually be a frequency under 200Hz here somewhere, unprecedented!), unfortunately the lack of anything to complain about on the sonic end of the spectrum just serves to highlight even more than usual just how dreary everything else about their songwriting is. It definitely sounds like the type of song that Nickelback would pass up for being not musically daring enough.
7. V – Slow Dancing
V is back again and he’s definitely missing his “cup of milk lets rock n roll” here, as I supposed you might expect just from the song title. That part of the video at 1:15 where he hangs out with a snail seems to be his main songwriting inspiration moment and boy does it show. Look at them all pathetically dancing just after the two minute mark. That’s not how real people dance, that’s how people dance when they ‘dance ironically’ to pretend that they’re enjoying something when they actually know it’s garbage, like when the worst song in the world comes on the dance PA system and you and your friends can’t help but make fun of it for a while. BTS fans of course won’t be able to relate as they mostly don’t know the meaning of fun, they mainly seem to know only about being complete cyberbullying human garbage and streaming songs that they can’t admit to themselves that they don’t really even like all that much long into the night to make imaginary digits go up. I know there’s some good BTS fans out there who read my stuff and are smart and cool and doing well in life and not cyberbullying randoms that you don’t even know just because they don’t like your sleepy boy’s songs, so cheers to you and I hope your faves have better songs soon, or at least learn to lay off the xanax, the rest of you can go and suck Jennie’s dick.
6. YOUNG POSSE – Macaroni Cheese
Well, at least it looks great. I actually really appreciate the video directors going absolutely all in on the “Macaroni Cheese” concept in the most literal way possible, because the result is actually a lot of fun, and the interview with the person responsible for the visual concept is definitely worth a look. Of course, he had no choice, given that his other choice would have been to go with an “un-literal” reading which would mean of course engaging more than the absolute bare minimum with the obvious double-entendres at play, not something you really want to do with an underage just-debuted group (isn’t that right, Min Hee Jin). Of course none of this has anything to do with the music… or maybe it does, after all, it’s seemingly musically inspired by “Wet Ass P-word” (yet again, snore) like a lot of the slower, lazier, more boring k-pop jams are these days, which probably wouldn’t be my go-to inspiration for a debut group. It also manages to be musically less interesting than that song, because nobody is really rapping and nobody is really singing either, it’s just bland chanting, awkward scotch snaps and languid pace all the way with barely any melody to speak of or anything to hook you in except that one “Macaroni Cheese” vocal line which sounds like the girl chanting it took sleeping pills an hour before the studio session. It’s a bland, boring, lazy piece of music and it’s enough to make you go keto.
5. V – Blue
Okay I promise this is the last time this guy gets in this list and I’ve given him a bit of a hard time here so far and he probably doesn’t deserve that so for this review let’s focus on the positive. Apparently he’s doing quite well as a soldier at the moment so that seems to be his calling, which is great because we all need something we’re good at. It’s good that V has finally found his passion, I hope he goes forth and does lots of good military things. I guess all the dreary slow garbage songs that he recorded just before he left was him having a bit of a meditative zen moment and calming himself appropriately so he could be ready for action when the time came, and I totally understand that, I think that’s very admirable and demonstrates a commendable level of professionalism. Good work V, we love you sir. Hey maybe consider staying in the military and moving up through the ranks, why not. The world is in a tense time and we need good men out there fighting for what’s right. Have a think about it, sir.
4. EXO – Let Me In
When this song was released I rightly called it out for what it was, sheer emotional manipulation designed to get the group’s fandom onside, tugging at the heartstrings so fans don’t do anything rash or silly like insist that SM treat their artists better given the recent contractual disputes with EXO-CBX at the time. Fans of course responded to my observation with “but the song was already out, they just made a video for it” – well yes, of course, and they wouldn’t have bothered had they not seen a need to rally the fanbase. SM have done this type of thing before – it’s exactly the same thing that they did with Super Junior where they rushed out a video for an already pre-existing sentimental ballad to give the boys “one more chance” to cry on screen a bit and try to manipulate fans into sticking by the group after Siwon’s dog Bugsy went the chomp on some old lady and fucking sent her six feet under, making the group suddenly a bit more unpopular with the public than usual (can’t imagine why hey). The other response from idiot fans to this clear manipulation was “but CBX are okay with it, that dispute is settled now”, and sure it is, but anyone who has ever accepted an out-of-court settlement knows that “settled” doesn’t mean “we love each other again so much uwu let’s go to the milk bar together”, it just means “we were somehow forced to agree to a shitty compromise”. However the real people who have been compromised are the fans themselves who are now forced to endure this insulting generic album filler garbage and pretend that it constitutes an actual song someone might want to listen to. Anyone who was truly an EXO fan would insist on better songs, better treatment of all the EXO members, and more honesty across the board, but since k-pop fandoms are basically as immoral and worthless as the companies who service them, perhaps they deserve each other, it’s just a shame for the poor artists caught in the middle… and us, of course.
3. Jindozin – Character
Ferry Blue’s Jindozin wants you to “get out of (her) way / I’m the main character” and while the claim seems unsubstantiated, that’s fine, I’ll happily stand aside and give her some space to breathe after hearing that awful chromatic vocal line. However it begs the question, what is she the main character in? If I’m going to guess I think perhaps The Room. Her video is similar in set design to that enclosed rooftop scene, and she certainly delivers the song with all the rushed awkwardness of Tommy Wiseau buying flowers. The song marginally improves in the parts where she actually tries to sing it properly (and wisely starts off with these), but the vocals there are so over-present and annoying that you almost wish she’d go back to the random yelping parts. Overall it’s definitely a shame that the songwriters chickened out on giving her something decent, cheep cheep cheep. You’re tearing me apart, Jindozin!
2. Xikers – Koong
The worst boy group song this year really is something. It doesn’t seem drastically wrong in the first few seconds like a lot of songs on this list, but it’s certainly death by a thousand Autotuned cuts, so incredibly empty and bland apart from the weak rap posing, and the self-evidently shit “Koong” stuff… wow I could be writing a whole-ass chapter of the next novel in the Shin Hana series instead of thinking what to say about this shit song so why don’t I go and do that instead, yes what a great idea bye now.
Are you ready for this year’s worst song? I doubt it, but here it is anyway:
1. NiziU – Love & Like
Niziu are the most reliably trash group in k-pop (or j-pop, or whatever, seriously the ‘are they k-pop or not’ debate is boring discourse for gatekeeping ethnocentric timewasters, JYP Entertainment are responsible for this mess so that makes them ‘k-pop enough’ for this list), and haven’t had a single song approaching good since they came out. However there are degrees of shit, as regular list readers know all too well, with “Love & Like” riding right at the bottom of the barrel. Clearly a song designed to be played as the finale of a long and tiring live set so the audience don’t dare ask for an encore, “Love & Like” has several problems that are pretty obvious. Let’s list them!
It’s kind of a fast-paced blues. Blues in k-pop is always boring without exception because the qualities that make a shit blues song shit (computer-corrected note accuracy, sterile backings, written-by-committee lyrics, general safe blandness) are exactly the same qualities that k-pop by its very nature can’t keep away from.
While combining blues and major tonality does actually work pretty well in this style of music normally, it doesn’t work here because the vocal approach isn’t ‘bluesy’ enough to exploit the ambiguity between the minor and major 3rd that blues singers rely on for their melody lines. You can’t Autotune the blues, period.
Speaking of blues, the chorus is a literal blues progression, I-IV-I-V-IV-I. This progression is over 100 years old, and once again would probably work if there was something resembling a decent blues vocal, but…
It’s Niziu, so the vocals are dreadful. Listen at 1:21 where the double-tracked vocal actually has a beat frequency. Even computer correction couldn’t save it, because if you tune the machine too much it sounds like a robot, but if you tune it too little, it sounds like they can’t sing. Sometimes there’s no middle ground.
Oh and there’s shitty raps because why wouldn’t there be, it’s k-pop.
Nice major scale ascending and descending at 0:35, yes they are really this low on ideas for melodies that we are listening to scale exercises now.
Why are the backings so noisy and full of detail that makes no sense. That piano run at 0:12 is a good example but there are several others. We can’t even hear what that instrument is doing, so why include it? The brain pushes it to the background and it becomes noise.
Some meatier drums would have really helped sell the ‘blues’ thing, but there’s nothing like that here. Those weak handclaps don’t cut it, and the arranger even seems to agree as the amount they gets used varies quite a lot as the song progresses, meaning that there’s no decent rhythmic aspect to really lock onto.
A bass sound that sounded like anything other than a sine wave puking would have helped.
Showing off with the vocals at 2:07 is not impressive because it doesn’t sound good, and it doesn’t sound good because it’s not impressive. Turn the computer correction all the way off for that shit, or at least back it off a bit more, for the love of Chuu.
Almost all of these problems are in fact various aspects of the same problem. Niziu have just taken their gutless, weak, sterile production and songwriting style and applied it to an old-school fast blues number. The result is so bad that it makes every other Niziu song sound at least vaguely competent.
That’s the end of this list! Thanks for reading, and if you haven’t been reduced to a quivering wreck with no hearing or sanity left from these shit songs, please proceed directly to the Kpopalypse favourites list for 2023 in order to restore your faith in k-pop and your mental health! Kpopalypse will return in 2024!
