To the pleasure of many and the pain of many many more, Kpopalypse roundup is now BACK for 2024! Let’s kick things off by taking a look at the first new releases of the year!
It’s the Winter of our photographer’s discontent.
ITZY – Mr. Vampire
An excellent and genuinely different backing track could have carried this song to the stars, but sadly you can barely hear what’s even going on back there because the songwriters decided to smother it to death with bland R&B vocals. Holy shit give the instruments some room to breathe!
ITZY – Untouchable
Their other song is definitely better. The backings actually cut through the vocals this time, plus the girls have actually been given something decent to sing, especially in the chorus. The usual post-first-chorus “random melody just because we can” bullshit is the only thing really wrong here.
RIIZE – Love 119
119 where I live is the part of the criminal code that relates to “foreign incursion and recruitment offences” and is especially relevant for counter-terrorism. With that said I’d like to report this song to ASIO.
Siyeon – Start Over
A remake of an old OST song, but the remake itself isn’t for an OST so it gets in. Given that Siyeon is one of the members of Dreamcatcher who has always pushed for the group to go in a ‘darker’ (read: heavier) direction, it’s odd that this remake subtracts the guitars from the original arrangement and beefs up everything else instead. The results are much more polished than the original but also pretty unsatisfying.
TWS – Oh Mymy: 7s
It’s funny how BTS fans hate TXT because they’re on the same label, but Seventeen fans are totally supportive and proud of TWS because they’re on the same label. It’s almost like there’s a special type of gatekeeping toxicity that’s unique to BTS fans, gosh, who would’ve thought? Oh and the song starts at 2:39 and I don’t know it’s okay I guess you’re welcome.
Geenius – Voyage
Have they used the accursed AI art here? It’s difficult to be sure. I think my rule will be restricted to “obvious” AI art, or AI art that really sticks out, rather than blink-and-you’ll-miss-it shit or shit that may or may not be AI, otherwise the waters get too murky and I’ll spend all my time witch-hunting rather than writing (and I know bigotry, witch-hunting and cancellation is trendy in the k-pop space but then so is being a racist and I’m not into that either). A lot of subjectivity here of course so I’m sure I’ll apply this rule like I’ve always applied all my roundup rules, so in other words completely unfairly and pretty much however I want. Anyway even though this video has potential AI use and incorrect Shure Super 55 use on the negative side, it also has a quality horse plus the Gangkiz “girls picking each other up hitchhiking in a kombi van gosh this looks very safe” concept on the positive side, so I feel like it evens out. The music on the other hand is pretty unspectacular and kind of neither here nor there so we’re still pretty even after factoring everything in and our final score is just average I guess.
ATEEZ Hongjoong & Seonghwa – MATZ
This silliness actually grew on my a bit because I like the sounds of it… at least when they’re not singing. As soon as they throw the Autotune on it it becomes like any other trap disasterpiece but the rap parts are good and don’t get in the way of the crunchy synth which is the real star of this show.
tripleS NXT – Just Do It
I get asked about once a week if I have any biases in fourth generation groups and the answer is always a big fat no. Not that the fourth generation of k-pop even exists at all, in fact if you look objectively at the time scales there’s a solid argument to say we’re not even completely out of the second generation, but k-pop fans have always been useless with things like “objectivity” and “examining data without bias” so don’t expect any rational discourse here anywhere across the k-pop Internet, we’ll be in the seventh generation by next week according to your favourite mainstream corporate cocksucking k-pop website probably. The fact is that almost any new person debuting in a group has to be in it for at least half a decade before I could even recognise them walking down a street. I’m only just now finally working out what Irene looks like. Maybe a song with some character might help me identify these girls in the latest tripleS unit apart from the other 63, but honestly it probably wouldn’t.
ICHILLIN’ – Bite Me
Rubbish mobile phone video format that only takes up 30% of the screen once again so here’s your traditional 30% of a review because if they won’t fill up all of the space why should I. So I thought this song was good given that the creative directors are clearly a complete bunch of cu
PURPLE KISS – Biscuit
You can tell that the Purple Kiss girls really do make these videos themselves because the audio transfer on them is always at -20 dB. Why should I listen to this song when they didn’t even want to.
THE BOYZ Sunwoo & Eric – Honey
Okay the effort to make long-ass reviews stops here, this is boring and that’s that.
DXMON – Burn Up
Okay once again we maybe have AI art here, but it’s impossible for me to be really certain what’s lame AI CGI vs just lame CGI. But we also have a guy rocking a hairstyle with more spikes than The Exploited in 1981, and that much at least seems to be real, even if his friend with the blue gull wings seems a bit suss, so we’ll give the visuals a pass even if the music sucks.
BXB – The Black Cat Nero
Some old song that’s been done to death all over the world and it isn’t any better the 43689th time around.
NOMAD – Lights On
Nothing to report on here musically, but the ‘garage with two rotating fans in the rear wall’ is definitely a hot new nugu location.
DKZ – 2023 (Friends)
2023 is over, stop living in the past.
GHOST9 – Love Parachute
Readers have repeatedly asked me to make roundups shorter because let’s face it you don’t give a fuck about this type of lazy fan nonsense and neither do I, so by EXTREMELY popular demand that’s what will happen. If your fave’s “special video” didn’t make it into roundup (or did, but with an irrelevant comment next to it like this one) then yes I probably did check it out, I just didn’t care.
Lee Chanhyuk – 1 Trillion
Apart from a slightly grungier bass guitar tone than usual this is pretty much the same as most of the better AKMU tracks. Which means it really should have been an AKMU track and then we could have had Suhyun in this video. I’m sorry those sideburns are cool but they don’t quite make up.
Kim Jonghyeon – Motto
It’s funny how we never heard this particular rhythm in k-pop until recently, isn’t it. Gosh I wonder where it could have come from.
Jeong Sewoon – Quiz
The oranges here feel as random as Orange Caramel’s ping-pong concept for “Lipstick“, pity the song isn’t as good though.
Minho – Stay for a night
This new government initiative where they go out to homeless camps and bulldoze the tents down if they detect the sound of boring ballads coming out of them is pretty cool.
BIG Naughty feat. B.I, Bang Yedam – INFJ
This song invalidates itself due to having Myers-Briggs aka “pseudoscientific racism for psychologists” in the title so let’s put something else here instead. I think this year I’ll make the “random substitution song” Asian music, but Asian music that is 1. not from Korea and 2. not pop music, so in other words the kind of Asian music that k-pop fans would usually ignore the fuck out of because it doesn’t come with a nice little box with a photocard and easily stannable performers who dance well. And not traditional Asian music either because while I have nothing against it I’m sure that there’s 3862 other websites out there that already cover that shit. Of course I don’t want to be too alienating, so why not ease you in gently with a full set from the grandfather of noise music, Merzbow? There’s not much to say about Merzbow that isn’t self-evident so I’ll just tell you a story instead. I played a set with Merzbow many years ago when he came to my town, along with my partner at the time (who was an even bigger fan of him than me) and his soundcheck was so loud and earth-shaking that it vibrated the entire basement venue, causing a whole bunch of dust and crap to fall from the roof, which partially destroyed a computer that I was using to trigger samples from. Having “Merzbow destroyed my equipment” is certainly an interesting thing to have on my music resume but I wish he’d waited until after the show, as it certainly made the night a bit challenging. I couldn’t even raise the issue with him as Merzbow didn’t speak much English and was pretty oblivious, but he knew how to say “as loud as possible” to the sound engineer when asked what his sonic requirements were. Definitely the right attitude.
DPR IAN – Limbo
Okay so for all those folks who still don’t get it, and somehow think that botched abortions like Sunmi’s “Stranger” and NMIXX’s “O.O” constitute acceptable music (although most people probably don’t even like those songs but are just talking themselves into liking them so they can be part of their friends’ club, because that’s what k-pop fans do), HERE is how to do multiple ‘change ups’ correctly in a pop song. I’m not even going to tell you what the difference is, just open your ears and see if you can figure it out. I don’t even like this guy usually but damn he got it right here.
SWJA feat. Kim Minseok of Melodance – Po.Ong
Sunwoojunga doesn’t really give a fuck what people want, and that’s actually really cool. It’s an admirable trait to just go your own path and fuck what others think. I mean, I do the same thing on this very website. Of course that doesn’t mean other people have to like my writing (and many don’t, which is totally fair) and it also means I don’t have to like this boring-ass music.
Hyelin – I Miss You
I know you will ask, so – the microphone shown here is a condensor mic and you wouldn’t sing with your lips this close to it in a real studio setting because you would actually blow the diaphragm out and the result on the recording would suck as it would have tons of wind noise. Even with a pop filter to break the air flow, the final result would have too much bass at that proximity. Also the angle she’s singing into isn’t exactly fantastic, still workable with a microphone like that but there’s literally no reason why you would angle the mic this way.
Suitz feat. Velowci – Kick
Lisa’s “Money” but with actual rappers. It does make somewhat of a difference.
Silica Gel – Ryudejakeiru
I didn’t mind this, it’s okay, and I’m enjoying that it’s not aurally excited to oblivion but just sounds like it was recorded in a lounge room with some friends.
COCONA – Macita
I don’t know what this is but it’s kind of cool and ugly and probably better than your bias. It’s probably better than all the other crap I got sent this week, so roundup can end here, yay!
Hickee – Kitty
but wait this one mrcs
RANDOM BONUS VIDEOS OF THE WEEK
El Gato de las Weeekly – Knetizens criticize Karina for wearing a very revealing outfit
Poor Karina can’t fucking win. She had to strap the girls down for Waterbomb and people criticised her for not showing enough boob, and now she does another show where she shows a nanometer of cleavage and she gets shat on for showing too much boob. How ridiculous, but then it’s par for the course in the sex-negative world of k-pop where misogynist creepy conservative fans somehow tell themselves on social networking that they’re the “good people”. Ironic indeed that the people who stuck up for Karina as they should by pointing out the differences in her clothing types and how that affected her appearance were making exactly the same types of observations that I make in my own posts about her, for exactly the same reasons.
Blackswan’s Fatou and Nvee debate important social issues on their livestream
That doesn’t mean this site isn’t about humour though. Just like me, Blackswan know how to have a friendly joke or two about some titties and ass. Just because so many k-pop fans are so fucking humourless up-themselves conservatives doesn’t mean the idols themselves are. Fatou and Nvee are cool and definitely collect stan points for this.
Narsha ft. SunnyHill – Mamma Mia
On a related note, remember the early days of k-pop when it was actually okay to say you liked something that was a bit sexual? And then everyone went “oh no, that’s objectification, adults dressing in sexy clothes is bad, you can’t stare at boobs and butts and abs and people kissing, stop that now and don’t let creeps like that weirdo Kpopalypse person tell you these things are good because they are NOT” and so the companies actually listened and stopped doing the cool adult concepts like this, and now they just cater the sexual content exclusively to pedophiles instead? Be careful what you wish for, hey. Okay this song and video are both pretty crusty looking by today’s standards but imagine both the music and the visuals with 2024-grade production values (and better makeup, goddamn there sure is some room for improvement there), it would kick ass. K-pop fandoms are the reason we can’t have nice things.
That’s all for this week! Kpopalypse roundup returns next week, and every week until December 2024!
