It’s time for QRIMOLE, the series where readers ask Kpopalypse questions! Let’s take a look at the mailbag for the last month!
{At 1:44 in} BewhY’s GOTTASADAE, it sounds as though the time signature is completely different or that different points in the beat are being emphasised compared to the points of emphasis earlier in the song. I have some music theory knowledge from playing piano, but not exactly enough to be able to notate what is happening at this part of the song/fully grasp what I am hearing.
At 1:57 a drum fill plays and then it feels as though the pulse returns to how it was counted before 1:44, but again I am not sure enough of what I’m hearing to confirm that. Kpopalypse oppar, can you use your magic music theory-wired brain to explain the time signature in this song.
It’s 4/4. Never changes. Two things do change: the beat from 1:44 to 1:57 reverts to bass drum only, so there’s no snare drum marking beats 2 and 4 in that section. Also the rapping changes a lot, with Bewhy cutting his rap phrasing right across the bar. So the beat becomes texturally simpler, while the rapping becomes more rhythmically complex. Then the drum fill happens and the song goes back to normal (or whatever “normal” is for a Bewhy song). Definitely this is a change in rhythmic approach, but it’s not a time signature change.
dear kpopalypse,
I am in dire need of advice on how to sustain mental fortitude.
my mother and I have very different music tastes. my mother likes to play Korean ballads, cringe western ballads (with lyrics I can understand), latin pop, and tropical house on the loud-speakers.
even with my door closed and with headphones on I can hear it.
please. what advice do you have?
best wishes,
a troubled kpopalypse-blog-reader
Better headphones, you need closed-ear headphones with active noise-cancelling. The noise-cancelling tech is good these days. I have a pair of JBL Phantoms and with the noise cancelling on and you playing your favourite music loud I promise you, you won’t hear fuckin’ shit else. Even when not playing music through them, the noise cancelling still blocks out outside sound to a certain degree just by having them switched on. Go for wall-of-sound type high energy songs. No rap music which tends to be sonically sparse. Ultra-shrill k-pop girl groups will also do it. So will metal.
Long time Roundup reader first time caller, apologies if i repeat a question already asked (I’m gonna be real I don’t read all the QRIMOLEs) I know you aren’t a big kpop album listener but do you make exceptions for groups whose you really enjoy? like H1-KEY’s or IVE,
you and I do have aligning taste on quite a few things so if you haven’t already heard them i give my (completely unsolicited) recommendation of the JUSTB minis,, just about anything H1-KEY has done but especially Love or Hate and Lovechapter,, and the recent debut album from HOW (not a flawless album but a very strong debut, My Vision is a killer track). I also think you’d enjoy Kep1er’s song Don’t Be Dumb which comes right after Bubblegum on that mini
Thanks for your time! I hope you’ have a lovely day
I listen to albums these days when it’s album review time! That’s honestly about it. I’m a very very busy person and albums don’t really fit into my lifestyle these days. Exception is long car trips, but my current car has CD only and no aux input so if I don’t have it on CD it’s a nope.
Can you explain this art piece? {some inexplicable bullshit about “Designing the most balanced and harmonious Vtuber”} IDK what they’re trying to say.
Me neither. Suggest that you don’t give it any more thought. Note that I’m deploying the curly brackets in this and a few other questions here yet again because question-askers these days have a habit of clickbait-titling their questions, which is just an annoying reader experience for QRIMOLE. Although in this particular case, I’m not sure how else you could have described this utter crap so I forgive you.
Lypse oppa, do you actually listen K-pop throught the year? Like genuinelly for the joy of it do you listen something that you liked from the current or previous releases?
Why does the drums on this genre sound like ass. I don’t know the technical name, but it sounds like a kid hitting their mom’s pans even though they often use a popular brand (I suppose of high quality drum kit)?
I do listen to k-pop through the year but time is a factor. Between all the stuff I have to review and write about, often weeks go by when I don’t listen to much music at all. I really enjoy December because roundups have a break and I get to seriously sit down and do a lot of listening that I’m often deprived of earlier in the year.
The drumkit sounds crappy because you’re listening to it in isolation. In the context of the actual song it sounds fine, here’s the song again but with the drums in the context of the full mix:
The drums here are tuned quite high, probably to cut through the many layers of sound in this group. The band has multiple vocalists, acoustic guitar, bass guitar, an entire brass section, a keyboardist and two accordion players… that’s a lot of sound! Beefy rock drums wouldn’t work here, it’d get in the way of the other instruments and crowd out the mix too much. A very “light” sounding kit sits better in the mix.
There is this new girl group from my country. It’s revolutionary because the last girl group was 2 decades ago.
The problem is, I think the managers are doing a terrible job with the PR and they don’t seem to find themselves a market plan yet. They are trying to appeal to older audiences when the exhausting majority of the fans are below 16.
The group lacks a vision, the girls and sounds are nice but there is no coherent “lore” to follow up for. No tangible merchandise. It’s like they took the parts that are wrong in a-pop and mixed it with the parts they have taken wrong from k-pop into to this Frankenstein’s monsterian mess.
The group was build from a survival show; much like KATSEYE but this naturally led to favoritism among members from the fans and the never ending bickering whenever their fav wears a slightly darker color than their groupmates. This is something that is hard to fix of course but I believe they are enabling this even further which harms the overall morale I’d say.
One of the girls is a graduate of the best school in the country and not just a shitty major. The most desirable and hardest to enter one. To make a comparison, it’s like graduating with honors from MIT or Harvard or Oxford whatever you think the best university in a country is. She is an engineer!
And now imagine if they marketed her towards younger kids. This country has a -really- competitive school and exam prep system, -think like Korea’s- and the pressure on kids are major from the parents. And now think about all the possible content you could make that the parents of the school children would endorse their kid to engage in. Imagine parents being happy because their kid’s idol is an engineer. But no, we’ll market to 20-somethings because girls are 20 something too!
The merchandise thing, imagine if they gave out licenses to stationary goods. I am pretty sure there exists bazillions of unlicensed pencil cases and what not of the girl’s faces on them. Imagine if they could capitalize on that. Imagine if they made collectables like photocards, like Panini football cards. But no, here is your 20USD hat that has a logo on it with a font that came build in with the PC.
They seem to have a budget they can really use and there could be better things to do. They integrate our culture’s motives to their concept which I adore, but there are lots of stuff they could incorporate more. The country is known for their tourism so they can be representatives of it, or just have the places as their backdrops for a video, and it would have a positive effect. But no, it’s either some alley or green screen. I don’t know honestly, their music videos are so boring so I haven’t watched them more than once.
What they really need is someone with a vision, a plan for group to follow thru, a plan that is build and has years planned ahead. They need a Jaden Jeong that is not lawsuitable, and a Min Hee Jin without all the weird kid stuff.
I really want to be a creative director for them but I have NO experience whatsoever. I don’t even know where to start. Is it all about knowing the right people so they can nepotism your way in? Is it the only way? How does one even be a creative director?
Thank you for reading so far, I’ve been following your site for ages now, so I think this questions is right in your alleyway. What would be your advices if any? Is it something impossible to want so?
Cheers xx
To be a creative director, you first have to be a creative, or nobody will trust you to direct others. So you need a portfolio that shows that you understand creatives enough for them to trust what you say. Then you need to prove that you can work with teams of people. So you need team management and other corporate skills. A background in HR wouldn’t hurt. Then you need to let your creativity take a back seat (because you’re not the creative, you’re the one directing others to be creative) while you do all the boring meetings and business planning discussions and forecast building and shake hands of annoying people you’d sooner spit on and monitor progress of your team and interpret metrics and hope and pray that it actually turns out how you think it will and the tastes of the public haven’t suddenly shifted or a NewJeans type group hasn’t come along and just blindsided everyone with a whole new aesthetic that you didn’t plan for and now whatever you have been planning for years is now last year’s fashion. A very hard job to get into and an even harder job to succeed at. And if you do well someone else takes the glory anyway. By all means follow your dream but honestly there are far less successful creative directors than there are successful musicians. It’s very competitive.
As for your reasons for wanting this – the reason why companies make decisions that make little sense to us is that planning and executing something like “a girl group” takes years and years of investment, preparation, training, resourcing, networking and so forth. Nobody is just going to give a fuck about your girl group, so you need to give people a reason to care enough to give you the opportunities to make things work. Maybe your group will be a hit if they debut on some music show, but do you know how hard music shows are to even get on, for an unknown company? There’s a whole-ass list of criteria to even get on those shows, mostly based around popularity that your team won’t even have yet, plus networking and relationships and so on. There’s hundreds of other situations just like this, and a lot of factors that are not always ideal. Something like “just change the marketing a little” might involve sacking an entire team, or completely changing an entire concept that was prepared the previous year at great cost, or annoying a sponsor who just came on board that was hard to get because he thought he was sponsoring thing X but now you want to change it to Y… these things are complicated. Companies do hear what people tell them, but there are often real reasons why they don’t behave in the way that you’d like, that aren’t obvious to an outsider.
I run a blog similar to yours called kisshuhua.tumblr.com and I wanna know what you think of it if you ever get time to read any of my reviews. I used to get compared to you a lot in my early days for some reason and occasionally still do. Do you agree or do you think these cunts have no idea what theyre on about? Do you have any criticisms of my rubric or what I say in my reviews?
This site didn’t remind me of me, because it contains ratings and is relatively polite and is also pretty much all reviews and nothing else from what I could (I scrolled down and couldn’t find anything that wasn’t a “roundup”, where are the other posts hiding?) I felt like I was reading a condensed version of The Bias List. Personally I highly dislike rating songs out of 10 or whatever which is why I don’t do it, it just invites people to fuss over the digits. By breaking things down into verse/chorus/prechorus ratings, I think even more so. Too many grey areas anyway. Some songs don’t have prechoruses. Some songs barely even have intros or outros. Having said that, if you wanna rate songs, every wanna rate songs, just making it clear why I don’t do this. But no, I think people don’t know what they’re talking about when they’re comparing us and you should ignore them. Just having an opinion alone is enough to get people compared to me, it seems! To be fair, it is rare in the k-pop space…
I see you don’t really include xdinary heroes’ songs in roundups when they release and that could be because you don’t feel bothered to or because you don’t like their genre but I just wanted to know if you do listen to them privately but don’t publicize what you think of them have you enjoyed the songs? I know you’re the type to probably think this kind of question is annoying so if you don’t want to answer it for QRIMOLE that’s totally okay
Xdinary Heroes have been in roundups quite a lot. Not sure how you are missing this. Maybe if it’s a dreary ballad song or some track that isn’t really a music video in the true sense I’ll skip it, but the majority of what they’ve put out as features has definitely found its way into roundups.
This video demonstrating audio engineer equipment just stealth flexing by a rich guy?
No, more like a warning. He’s probably extremely poor and is telling you not to fall down the gear-chasing rabbit-hole like he did. That’s what I get from it.
Have you ever heard of Sheena Ringo?
Yes but she’s j-pop so I don’t care about her.
She’s a rather popular Japanese artist who’s released a lot of interesting and unique music in her early days. She was also one of the first female musicians who was actively writing and producing her songs, challenging and fighting the people who said her stuff was ghost-written. She started off as a pop artist (similar to Hikaru Utada and the likes) before essentially giving the middle finger to her label and releasing whatever she wants.
She also started a band named Tokyo Jihen which did more commercial jazz fusion type of music.
Her first two albums (Shouso Strip + Kakuri Zahmen Kuri No Hana) are probably her most controversial and experimental albums. They’re not particularly well made, but they’re definitely worth a listen.
I’ll leave this here for someone who actually gives a fuck.
Recently Woni and Minami from Rescene got really popular for cosplaying gyaru (here’s some context). This thing skyrocketed the group’s popularity and one of their songs became a top 10 hit on Korean charts. Based on your Boram ESP powers, what will be the group’s destiny and which ‘viral’ route will they follow:
– EXID route: the members will become more popular than the group itself;
– Crayon Pop route: the agency will make a mistake with the concept and song choices and the hype will die down;
– Brave Girls route: the agency won’t be able to properly market the group and the hype will fade away
I consider the Brave Girls and Crayon Pop scenarios essentially the same. One of those.
which do you find to be more fappable and why? cheerleaders or daphne and velma from scooby doo cosplay?
Both scoring a flat zero on the fap scale.
good look for anybody? {video removed}
I won’t do these kind of questions on QRIMOLE, given that they already occupy about 50% of all questions on livestreams at this point.
Hi, O Master of Cunt!
Since you put XLOV – SERVE on par with N.O.M, which I was already a fan, I have been quite obsessed with everything about this release. From the MV, to the cloth styling choices, hair & nails, cunt serving, basically everything! This genderfluid shit is probably the gayest thing I’ve ever experienced in K-Pop and I love it!
But one of the things that most piqued my interest was actually the structure of the song itself. I found myself quite surprised every time i listened to it.
For my dismay, everyone that I live with don’t give a single fuck to anything K-Pop related.
So, to finally reduce my obsession with them and return myself to daily productive behavior, I tried to analyze the aforementioned song structure to try to reduce the effect of the spell Queen Rui’s bussy put on me, lol.
It goes a little like this:
A- verse 1 – Wumuti & Haru (0:01 – 0:42)
B- verse 2 – Hyun & Rui (0:42 – 0:57)
C- chorus 1 – Wumuti (0:57 – 1:14)
D- chorus 2 – Rui & Wumuti (1:14 – 1:30)
B*- verse 2 – w/ Haru’s rap and vocals from Hyun, Wumuti & Rui (1:30 – 1:46)
C- chorus 1 – Rui +someone (1:46 – 2:02)
E- bridge 1 – Hyun + something (2:02 – 2:18)
F- bridge 2 – Wumuti & Rui + some shit (2:18 – 2:35)
C’- chorus 1′ – Haru, Mumuti & Rui (2:35 – 3:09)
So it would be something like: A B C D B* C E F C’.
Some people says Wumuti himself is the producer of the track.
Besides some individual choices from the producer that I really liked, such as the ‘disc scratches’ on D – chorus 2, the fact that most of the part transitions don’t repeat themselves (the only one that does is B -> C, but B* sounds somewhat different from B since is shared with more singers) seems to be the responsible to give this ‘unexpected’ conduction of the song, with a satisfactory changed first chorus as ending piece. Also, having well coordinated alternations between three-like verses, three-like choruses and two bridges seems quite more interestingly elaborated than most A B A B C B K-Pop songs.
Now for the questions:
1. Do you agree with my structure conprehension proposal?
2. Does my conclusion feels tangible for your experience with the song?
3. (The most important one) Would you hit Rui’s pussy in 2:26 – 2:31?
4. Not really a question, but more a recommendation: watch Rui’s moves. Everyone here dances really well, but Rui is simply, I don’t know, special? Must be because their flexibility, I guess?
5. While I am part of the LGBT+ community, I still have some irks with masculine voices doing high pitched falsettos (like Rui & Wumuti on D – chorus 2). But somehow, after watching the MV various times, it doesn’t irritate me like before, actually I found it a little endearing given how well it fits to their concept! Does this musical phenomenon have a name? Have you passed by it with some song before?
6. When I was in my binge search about the group, I found out that last May they couldn’t perform in Brazil because visa related problems. Seems that continental chinese can enter Brazil without it, but taiwanese still needs one. Some fans got very pissed with it because the firm that organized the show canceled the event only 30 minutes before the scheduled start time!
People from all the fucking country went to see them (Brazil is bigger than Australia, just so you can picture the cost involved for those poor fans), and all they got was heavy rain in their asscracks while in front of the closed venue.
I found all of this case very strange, because how can the firm cancel a event only at that time when the origin of the problem is “you haven’t succeded to enter my country”? Doesn’t this type of thing be known days, or at least hours before the event? Maybe your professional experience could help imagine why?
7. Talking about Rui, it seems that they are a non-gendered / multigendered person. How can they be classified for the great honour of receiving the rightful prize of most beautiful person at the next Kpopalypse Objectification Survey?
Thank you for reading all of my hyperfocus bullshit and have a nice month!
1 & 2. I’m not going to go into the minutae of breaking it down by the second by essentially yes it is a more “progressive” song structure than is usual for k-pop. We’ve been seeing that a bit lately ever since NMIXX started stapling songs together and convincing everyone else to do it also. They paved the way.
3. Not my type but I appreciate the commitment to working the floor.
4. Yeah I think some more time on the gym mats. I respect it because I sucked mega balls at that sort of shit, I was totally unflexible even back when I was a twink with a body like this.
5. Honestly I think the vocals sound a bit paltry but that’s just an indication that they’re actually singing it for real. Everyone’s bias sounds more or less like this once you take the assisted backing track away. Not really into men doing high-ass shit but then I’m not really into men doing anything period.
6. Concerts getting cancelled the day before can happen due to visa issues but 30 minutes before start time is ridiculous and speaks of poor organisation. Clearly a disconnect between management and people on the ground.
7. Yeah I’m not sure how the recent influx of trans/genderfluid/idkwtf is going to work as far as that goes. Could be a tricky situation. Mind you if not that many people vote for them it may not be an issue, so if you wanted you could force the issue by campaigning amongst your peers for them to vote for Rui when the polling starts.
Can you please review the book “Idol Gossip”? It’s a pretty cliche book, but has its moments.
Not familiar with it. I would be interested to check it out.
hey, what’s your opinion on av scarlett hampton? her determination, not her looks.
I don’t really know her but I wouldn’t say she’s any more determined than any other AV actress. Please everyone let’s have a moment of silence to think about all the AV actors and actresses who have enhanced our lives.
hey, i searched your site for a review but couldn’t find one (maybe the wordpress search engine sucks ass?). what was your opinion of song Messy by Rosé?
Never listened to it. Maybe I’ll pick this song up in an album review or other content one day.
in this live video, does Lisa actually have a “sweet meaty ass”, or it is just an illusion created by her clothing?
Well the clothes do emphasise it, but other than this I’m not sure what you mean exactly. Are all asses not meaty? I guess we’ll have to wait for the 2026 Kpopalypse objectification survey polling to get clarity on this question.
Fate of ex Everglow member.
Earning more income than remaining D list nugudom members or no? (remember they were getting hate for touring in Russia?)
The video you linked directly answers this question, so I don’t have to.
In context of this clip of Jimmy Carr explaining what makes a good man, what does he means by a “nice guy”? I don’t think he mean the “male feminist” “performative male” type nice guy, who’s really just a player trying to get into somebody’s knickers.
No, he doesn’t mean that. What he’s talking about is being a doormat “people-pleaser” who just bends to the will of others. He’s suggesting that having morals and principles and doing what’s right is more important than pleasing everyone in the room.
Clip of some TripleS member performing a Kiiikiii song. Is the echo a sign of the recording being live in a big room or whatever, or is an effect that they added to the recorded video in editing?
The reverb sounds synthetic, but it’s hard to be sure because I can’t really tell the size of the room she’s in from this footage. Adding synthetic reverb to signing voices is a pretty normal thing for live engineers to do, as a lot of singers prefer the sound of their own voice with a little reverb on it.
Is this man’s analysis of Olivia Rodrigo album arrangement, song composition, etc entirely just a fan fiction he’s written in his head?
I wouldn’t know, having not heard enough of either Olivia or Taylor’s recent stuff to have an opinion. I am not westernpopalypse, I don’t sit around all day listening to western pop. Or even half my day. Or any of my day. I barely have time to listen to the k-pop stuff people are begging me to check out. He does seem a little like he’s reaching to me but yeah I can’t comment with any authority here.
The legacy of Pledis misogyny?
Fromis_9 Jiwon saying that she didn’t get an income until she left Pledis.
It’s not just Pledis. Calling it “Pledis misogyny” is trivialising the issue by reducing it to just one company, and thus implying that if only that company didn’t exist, the issue would be solved. It wouldn’t be. The problem is bigger than Pledis, the majority of k-pop companies are like this.
was having denim jackets like this with massive cut outs on the side some sort of “forgotten” Gen X fashion trend from 1990s, do you know? i know that Gen X did that with jean trousers, i.e. cut out the knee coverings.
Never ever seen a denim jacket with a big hole in the side like this before in my life.
can you pass this lady’s music nerd quiz straight from your memory?
I got all except #3. Nobody uses that fucking thing at #3.
are hybe company stans losing manpower? see as late as 2022 if you said anything about the BIG H you would be pierced with sharp pitchforks (mostly by people who also were armies), of course a lot of people already disliked hybe, but it seems like we’re able to express it more freely now due to the lack of people willing to defend them.
ironically, because i’m very glad i can now tear hybe apart, i also think the public opinion started shifting and people started jumping ship when girlgroups started debuting under the label. and hear me out: it’s definitely done on purpose by the company itself!
starting with the whole garam thing which they didn’t do shit to clear her from those accusations, then newjeans left and they used their mediaplay against them, now their girlgroups releasing questionable music left and right and topping it off with “iconic by mistake” which is definitely a ragebait tactic done to farm reactions out of the very prominent critics.
i really feel bad for those girls because let’s be real while people make it seem as it’s being put under scrutiny it’s really mostly about hating those very pretty women. but does it make sense? is the whole reason there isn’t many people defending hybe right now due to misogyny that’s a direct byproduct of the evil executives of hybe? i feel crazy, but maybe oppar can agree to some extent.
I think what might be happening is BTS fans (who make up the bulk of HYBE fans) are growing up and moving on. Some fans are fans for life but most find something else to do eventually.
are these “gen z is prudish/dislikes sex/going out/drinking etc” claims just plain bs? god knows (pun intended) that the most cringetastically god-bothering christian people i’ve met in my life are all 30+, while all the horniest kpop fap account mods i know are in age ranges 18-22. of course puritanical youth exists, but that’s ALWAYS been a thing, no? who does this narrative benefit? or should i just take my tinfoil hat off and accept that there is a point being made. i just can’t see it
Seems like BS to me, I see plenty of young people going out drinking and having fun times. It’s just conservatives online trying to normalise conservatism. Don’t be fooled.
does the concept of “family reunions” gathering/parties exist in australia? i know of it from american tv and movies.
Yes it exists although it’d probably just be called a “get-together” here and would be a bit more low-key and less dramatic than what you see on American media.
do any of the songs in this Jo Yuri concert clip leave any sort of lasting impression on you? I find them generic and forgettable.
If you find them boring and forgettable, what makes you think I want to even watch a whole-ass boring and forgettable concert?
hand to hand fight scenes from 2025 action film, Shelter, starring Jason Statham.
1. your thoughts on the fight choreography?
2. based on your personal experience, how much effort would a man in his 50s have to put in the gym to be able to effectively pull off choreography like this? (Statham is 58)
I wouldn’t know anything about acting in movie fight scenes, but I do know a bit about fighting and being old and going to the gym a lot hahaha. Jason Statham is in great shape and I’m certain that he maintains a frequent gym schedule. Assuming there’s no stunt doubles here he’d have to be hitting the gym daily for sure. As for fight choreo I think one of the best things that ever happened to cinema was Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon which really raised the bar on fight choreo in cinema, there was definitely a “before CTHD” and “after CTHD”.
In this Australian comedy sketch they’re calling the weed whacker a “whipper snipper”.
1. Does everybody know what you’re talking about if it’s brought up in casual conversation?
2. If you go to a hardware store will it be labelled as “whipper snipper” on the shelf?
3. Is “opa” a common name term for grandfathers in Australia?
Calling anything from garbage unfunny YouTube channel CrackerMilk a “comedy sketch” is certainly pushing the definition of “comedy” itself. I didn’t watch the video because I don’t hate myself that much, but I can tell you that “whipper snipper” is a commonly understood term for… actually I don’t even know the official proper name for it is, I just always call it a whipper snipper. Never looked for it in a hardware store. But that thing with a strip of nylon in it that rotates and cuts grass really quick and makes a lot of noise. “Opa” is actually the German term for grandfather, my family used it because my grandfather on my father’s side was German but I don’t think the word would be used outside the context of families that didn’t have German heritage.
Offensive lyrics to you?
They shit talk your home town.
Don’t care. Patriotism/nationalism/cityism/suburbism/neighbourhoodism (or whatever) is for idiots anyway.
Would you consider doing something like revisiting your best of/worst of but user submissions? A recent stroll down memory lane uncovered some monstrosities and I was surprised to discover they were absent from their roundup years/worst of ‘x’.
{videos removed}
No. What’s done is done, I don’t feel the need to George Lucas things. The lists are representative of how I felt at the time they were written. When I do best and worst of the 2020s, things might change a bit at that time but I’ll worry about that in 2030 assuming I haven’t vanished up my own asshole by that point.
Hello kpopalypse!
Ever since I ceased to write shitposts for my university English essays, I haven’t had the urge to write one—until today, when I had the misfortune of being engulfed by a wicked desire to shitpost on Reddit.
The reports of a new category concocted by the Recording Academy have reached my home feed. [“Best Asian Pop Music Performance” they called it] Something switched inside me, and like the sleeper agent in The Manchurian Candidate I began to type my essay.
Since it may fit in here too, I’d like to k̶i̶l̶l̶ t̶w̶o̶ b̶i̶r̶d̶s̶ w̶i̶t̶h̶ o̶n̶e̶ t̶u̶r̶d̶ bother you with a question about Grammys #66: what are the implications of the new category on the K-pop industry and K-pop fans.
The other question is about cross-cultural communication (I know you are an expert in this field): Do I sound like racist? Because I’m not one. At least towards Koreans.
I don’t remember your stance on reddit (only on Xitter), so I pasted the text and the link. Speaking of links, I should bookmark one directly to r/kpoopheads, which left me with a lasting impression of level-headed gentlemen of the all-round k-pop table.
Title: The new Grammys category might be a good thing
Yes, it’s an insult to nominate an artist in the ‘colored’ category instead of the ‘normal’ one. However, the worst part can be omitted to produce “Grammy nomination” “Grammys award” keywords to put next to your favorite group name in the clickbait titles. AI will digest it and label multiple K-pop acts as Grammys nominees/winners. Many people won’t even pry into which category or look further than that stupid AI answer in a Google search. This annual “insult” will help to secure brand deals, sell out NA concerts, and bring American dollars into the K-pop industry.
Grammys voting is a sham, and the first groups to be nominated and win are predictable. Even if you’re not a fan of those groups it’s still a good thing. The companies that will dominate this category are going to cater to NA market and potentially repulse other listeners, making breathing room for other acts in Korean and Japanese markets.
Even if a flop they-are-only-popular-in-Korea group gets the nomination, there’s nothing to be angry about. It might help more people to discover new music that they like.
*End of the post*
PS: I’m interested in K-pop industry, and have read some papers and theses on it. I’m expecting insights on it too whenever I read your blog, even though I often disagree with you. On the contrary speaking with fans is only useful for fan studies which isn’t what I do. If you happen to know of any worthy books/papers that are applicable to K-pop (not music theory it’s irrelevant) please share.
Thank you!
Never mind “Koreans” or “not Koreans”, I think you are wildly overestimating the importance of the Grammys and award ceremonies in general. It’s just a thing where the industry pats itself on the back each year. That’s literally all it is. What they do isn’t that relevant. I’ve met many artists and a lot of them dream of financial success, or fame, or cultural relevance, or just making a living and getting their music heard by more people, but nobody and I mean nobody and I mean absolutely nobody and I mean not a single fucking person I have ever met or spoken to in the music business from the 1990s until today (and I have met thousands, from absolute nobodies to legitimately famous people) has ever had “I’d like to get a Grammy” on their list of goals or concerns or hopes or dreams. So a new category in the Grammys… it’s not going to shake the earth.
what did you lesson did you learn from this karina drama?
It’s a funny sketch on some levels but I think I’m not quite deep enough into esport to get some of the jokes here.
As a writer and an English teacher, I’ve read a lot of human writing and, unfortunately, a lot of AI writing. By now I’m pretty good at recognizing the latter. The em dashes and “not X but Y” structure are the obvious tells, but there’s also a specific LLM “voice” that makes my skin crawl. Not everyone is capable of detecting that voice, though, because I’ve read Reddit threads in which dozens of people respond earnestly to an obviously bot-authored post and even compliment the quality of the writing! I won’t claim to be able to recognize AI writing with 100% accuracy, but I’m better at it than most people are, simply because I’ve spent so much of my life reading and writing and teaching others to read and write.
I’ve been wondering if you, someone who knows much more about music than I do, can detect similar AI “tells” in a k-pop song. I assume that AI is somewhat present in k-pop songwriting these days (God knows it’s present in the videography), but to what extent? Do you ever listen to part of a song and think “yep, that was written by AI”? Or is it impossible to tell, given that pop songwriting is already quite formulaic and many pop songs don’t innovate at all? (By the same token, I could probably recognize AI writing much more easily in a long novel than in, say, a makeup ad.)
Thank you for fighting the good fight against AI slop!
and
Hello Kpopalypse Oppar,
Many people online said that Friday Night song by Navillera is AI-generated. Upon hearing it I don’t really hear much difference. I know there are AI-generated songs that even entered digital streaming platform, but honestly it is so subtle to me to find the key differences between them. Can you spot the difference or what gives the hint of a song is AI-generated?
Or else, should we still asking whether a content is AI-generated at some point? Because it’s tiring. People blatantly believe fake news from the existence of news itself, propaganda, and AI just make it easier to do that. I hope AI (or in this case LLM) is only a bubble before it rots everyone brain.
Sorry for taking it out of context. I use AI too and feeling hopeless that I think I have a need to use that to perform tasks too much for my working time, for my salary, and for my wellbeing. Oh Navillera, why won’t you just call Iggy-Youngbae from wherever they are and created GFriend’s Navillera 2.0? It won’t make the world ends the suffering but it can help me smile.
Yeah
Sorry again, thank you
I actually have been keeping myself deliberately ignorant of AI generative tools in music and I don’t go around thinking heavily about this, so even I can’t always tell reliably. It’s not something I consciously think about when I listen to songs for roundup. But I guess the first obvious tell of AI music is if the song sounds exactly like another popular song with some details changed. Of course humans do “soundalikes” too, so this isn’t a completely reliable test. Cheesy lyrics that seem to imply a lot of dramatic weight but don’t say anything all that specific are another indicator. Just like AI-gen text tools tend to get very enthusiastic about something fairly dreary in reality, AI music does this too, adding dramatic weight in areas where it doesn’t quite make sense. Also an AI-generated song, even if it isn’t ripping anything off, is always going to sound a little retro because AI has to train on existing data, so a very modern sounding song being AI generated is less likely than something that’s a bit of a throwback. Outside of this, the most obvious sonic tell is that AI knows more or less what textures go where but doesn’t really understand the concept of an “instrument” in a band, so if you focus hard on just one instrument in a pop song (say, the bass guitar, or the keyboards) you might hear it randomly fade in and out of the track or change in texture in strange ways or otherwise behave in ways that aren’t consistent with how instrumentalists actually use their instruments. Think about how in AI-generated video, as the video progresses, details will shift around, like for instance a Ferrari might turn into or incorporate elements of a Maserati and then a Lamborghini all in the one sequence. AI-generated music can be like that also, as AI music is equally poor at keeping details consistent over time. The front-and-center elements will generally be consistent, but the background details not so much. Sounds that appear just in one section and then never again, or the texture of an instrument suddenly shifting at a random time, those are fairly obvious tells. None of this is impossible for humans to also do, of course, so there’s still some ambiguity here, because a really bad producer can also sound like AI. Perhaps if AI-gen music has any positive side it’s that maybe it will make people start paying more attention to backing tracks, just in general, while they’re trying to work out if things are AI-created or not.
If Kpop got popular firstly in the 1980s or if songs today still sound like the 1980s, which groups do you think Scott Aitken Waterman will produce songs to? Since SAW mostly remix older songs that song cover would they give to a kpop group?
I think they would remake A Force’s iconic “Wonder Woman”.
Hello,
There is discussion about Ariana Grande health after seeing her performances and updates as she begin her tour. People thinking she needs help because her body is so thin it almost malnourished and thinking she needs help. Then of course we don’t know everything about an artist or anybody so who are we to even judge? Then again if she said that she’s healthy so it’s a red light for people to stop bothering her about this topic.
Can you relate that when you don’t think you have anything wrong at all then bunch of strangers telling you have a serious problem? How do we know that it is an actual concern rather than creepy observation?
A world we live in, suddenly has no meaning if we created ourselves from perspective of others, then again at the same time our species can’t survive without relationship with others. Such paradox, how do we end it? Not by dying of course, that’s just cheating. Living with such a grim mindset… sometimes it just pops up where you feel happy, what a cheeky bastard!
Anyway, I want to pursue postgraduate study in Australia and all potential supervisors I emailed are not replying, do I have to say that I am a fan of NMIXX Lily so they will answer? Or it’s just Australian thing to do? I dream of playing a boomerang and change my accent. I hope those little things can keep me sane during this process
Thank you
I’ve been told that I’m “weird” literally my entire life. I can’t really “see” the weirdness, but I do understand that I’m different from others somehow. I don’t worry about it much though. I learned a long time ago that I’m different and that’s just how it’s going to be. No idea how to deal with university supervisors.
your thoughts on his philosophy on maintaining integrity by turning down “bad sponsorships”? does a similar thing happen to your blog?
Yes, all the time. I’ve turned down a lot of things. Most of it was just obvious scams. Some stuff I’ve had to turn down for legal or logistic reasons. If you have a website of any worth and a public email address you will get inundated with dumbass offers, that’s one reason why I recently switched to a contact form.
1. is this Stella from Hearts2Hearts?
2. what do you think of her advice?
1. I wouldn’t fuckin’ know.
2. Yeah it’s fine. Always best to not let on that you know. Don’t rub it in their face just use the knowledge for your benefit and either sort it out or exit smoothly. Taking the high road when someone’s being a dick is good life advice in general.
Hi Kpopalypse,
I hope you’re doing well. New group Heart of Woman debuted with full album. This approach surprised me (although most of them are not my cup of tea) because we know many groups opt for single or EP to debut. What do you think is the major factor when deciding a group debuted with certain type of release? Or if you a producer of a Kpop group, what makes you decide how they going to debut?
Thank you
How many songs you actually have lying around and if you think they’re any good or not, and if your performers can sing/pretend to sing/dance to them.
Hi Kpopalypse,
I came across this tweet about Monsta X’s Shownu live about how venue booking system in Korea (or at least in the big venue, idk)
I wonder if venue booking system is similar between countries, what do you think of the system? The venue operator solely decide whether a group can have the concert or not after lots of proposal. Is there any correlation between this and ticket price (or maybe other that can affect the fans?).
Thank you!
It’s not wildly different in other countries. If you want to book a venue, depending on the venue there may be competition for that venue. Of course since it’s the owner’s venue, not yours, they’re the ones who decide if you can book it, because they’re hiring it to you. If there are many acts all wanting to book the same date, that means they have to choose. Some venues are harder to get than others, some are quite easy and cheap to book but these tend to be venues with lower capacity or less than ideal location. Also some dates are harder to book than others, weekend dates or dates that coincide with important national holidays tend to come at a premium. There are other factors too, but simply, yes.
thoughts on Olivia Rodrigos new song “stupid song”?
She said it was stupid so I didn’t listen.
Long time no see, oppar dearest
I’ll try to keep it short: my boyfriend of 5 years dumped me, saying that not only he fell out of love with me, he fell out of love with me a good while back, and was ecstatic to get rid of the weight on his shoulders (that would be me). Granted we started dating at 18 and 19 and broke up at 23 and 24, but we’ve been very close friends since middle school, so I’ve spent my entire youth with him.
I know it’s going to pass, I know I just need to give myself time and be kind to myself, but holy fuck am I struggling. The “just think of all the ways you weren’t compatible” thing doesn’t work either, as I chose to work through those every single time, because I loved him, I wanted to spend my life with him, and he was secretly planning to get rid of me the whole time. God this shit fucking sucks hahahahahaha
I’m writing to you because I feel like we’re rather similar people, and every piece of advice I come across online seems to be made for sociable people who get along with the average person, and that’s just not me at all; I’m an androgynous, autistic, awkward woman who immediately distrusts the vast majority of people I meet. It feels like I’m never going to be loved, it feels like I’m never going to love again, I want to shove my head into a woodchipper, the works. WHAT NOW
Damn he really stuck the knife in. What a fucker, rubbing it in like that. The hurt will definitely fade, eventually the though of what a bastard he was will make you deliberately move on just out of spite: “I won’t allow this asshole to have a hold of my feelings” etc. From there, you’ll start to enjoy having a clean slate.
I recently listened to this old song by Stray Kids-and I realised that it really sounds like an SM song?
Certainly not that Aespa/NCT bullshit, but specifically a 2nd gen Shinee or maybe SNSD song. They were i think quite young when producing(likely co-producing) this song, but its really solid and well rounded. I’m no music theory expert, but it really gives off those youthful, magical early SM vibes somewhat comparable to Sherlock(Clue+Note) and even some anime intros, for some reason. What do you think of the song? Why do you think it sounds remarkably different to other Stray Kids songs, or does it still feel like one?
Another question- how do you embed links into text on Google forms? Just hoping the link works for you here, wasn’t sure how to embed it.
I don’t really listen to enough Stray Kids to answer your first question. Perhaps I’ll get to this song in an album review at some point. I might have more to say then. Or maybe not.
When sending me YouTubes there are multiple ways but the absolute best more perfect format in which to do it is the following format (remove the spaces and quotation marks, but keep the square brackets).
“”
The bold part is the video ID, always a string of eleven letters, numbers or punctuation. If anything comes after that eleven-character video ID, delete it, it’s YouTube’s tracking information that they use to track your activity.
Which music video do you think is better? T-ARA’S day by day or after schools shampoo? Personally, I love the storytelling and cinematography in Day by day but I have to go with shampoo because the music video just feels so nostalgic for me
Nostalgia means nothing to me. In fact I’m extremely averse to it. One of the reasons I deleted Facebook many years ago was the “on this day 5 years ago you posted this thing” flashbacks it would do. I hate looking backward just as much as I hate looking forward. Living in the present is the way. So that’s a long-winded way of saying Day By Day shits all over Shampoo.
Do you think Kpop Spy on YouTube is a caonima?
No idea. Didn’t sit through any of their robot voice videos long enough to find out what they were even about. I would hope that any YouTube creator who is also a caonima pays attention to this video here:
Is there a scientific reason as to why older BTS songs such as I Need U, Blood Sweat and Tears, DNA, Dionsyus etc are just so much better than their weird Western appeal songs post-2020? I’m by no means an Army, but those songs just had grit and some decent melodies that songs like Swim and Butter lack. Arirang was just absolute trash, by the way.
I don’t know about scientific or whatever, but I think that over time BTS has beccme more and more geared towards western tastes, as opposed to something a k-pop fan might like.
{comedy sketch where a mixed race looking man gets handed european utensils at a restaurant instead of chopsticks}
i can the logic behind the comedy sketch but i don’t think that anyone would actually be bothered/haunted by this?
actually i don’t think i’ve ever been to an asian restaurant where they give anybody european utensils by default. have you? (it’s always chopsticks by default and you have to request the european utensils.)
Where I live, in the suburban Chinese restaurants that have been in Australia for decades upon decades, it’s common to be given western utensils. In other types of Asian restaurants such as Japanese, and also in more inner-city restaurants, not so much. Mind you my favourite restaurants are usually ones where they don’t hand you cutlery at all, but have it somewhere for you to collect yourself or just have a big container of cutlery sitting on your table.
oppar, if you were a kpop, which of the following would you be most likely to be caught doing:
staring fondly into the eyes of a nazi soldier, wearing a sid vicious shirt, having a hip-hop themed birthday party or wearing a shirt with the confederate flag on it
what would your response be once netizens start making a fuss about your actions
Probably the Sid Vicious shirt just because my music taste runs in that direction. If anyone complained I’d just say that Sid paved the way for your k-pop R&B vocals.
this clip of a lady editing an “acoustic album” got me thinking, is it a distinct thing from an “unplugged” album? i always thought acoustic implied live music recordings, but i guess not?
Acoustic just means instruments that generate acoustic sound are involved, i.e instruments that don’t require to be plugged in to make a noise. Usually in practice, an “acoustic album” means acoustic guitar and drums are used, but other instruments may or may not be acoustic. “Unplugged” is a marketing buzzword that appeared in the late 1980s to describe live concerts featuring acoustic or majority acoustic instruments (with some flexibility to accommodate things like Hammond organ etc).
What’s up with any alt-right countries, including mine, who have allegations about their president or vice president being gay? There was a voice note about gossips that “confirms” about the relationship between these two fuckheads that I condemnly support if it was true and the tweet got deleted few days later because it “tarnish one’s reputation” (democracy country, my ass). I’ve seen more videos of them being close to each other on the news than seeing my grandfather’s grave.
Speaking of being gay, am I gay if I only love fictional men yet dislike most men in real life?
Politicians will play into whatever biases they think the public has in order to score votes. If a lot of the general public hates gays, then “that person is gay” becomes an effective smear tactic.
I think a lot of straight women would be right there with you on the “preferring fictional men” thing. After all fiction allows us to idealise and ignore the messy flaws that real people have.
are you offended by the fact that in all live action Superman adaptations, Lex Luthor has never been played by an actual bald man?
Stopped even reading this question when I noticed it was about a comic book superhero.
Why do people always point to NewJeans as “super young and catering to uncle-fans”, as an example, but its literally every group? Enhypen, SHINee, IVE, their companies are just as complacent. A more recent example is Cortis, and their 10000 controversies with “noona-fans” as a young group.
It’s not that NewJeans did anything all that different (underage female sexual dogwhistle is almost as old as pop music itself), but rather that their company’s CEO (at that time) Min Hee Jin gave such an emphatic denial of what was very obviously going on in plain sight. Another factor is that NewJeans were well on the way to becoming the female equivalent of BTS in terms of success and fame before HYBE CEO Bang Si-hyuk kicked them in the shins, and the more popular a group is, the more people will talk about them and notice things like this.
A hypothetical for you: imagine that a random younger Korean man bumps into you on the street and offers to help you lose your ass virginity. As an additional favour, he proposes that all future “good look for her” questions get sent to him and he will answer them on your behalf.
You respond to him, in an indifferent tone, “Who the fuck are you and why should I care cunt”. He then clears his throat and introduces himself as Zhang Hao from Zerobaseone, a closeted Kpop idol who is afraid of the reparations that could result from coming out as a gay man working within the dastardly Kpop industry. Why he finds himself in Sydney you have no idea.
You stand there puzzled, racking your brain for a potential answer you could give to this man you just met.
Kpopalypse oppar, what are you doing in this scenario? Know that kicking him in the nuts and running off is a valid answer, just be aware of the risk that the man could hop onto his PC and send you 50 Email:fwds calling you a Nazi chauvinistic fuckhead.
Have a good day sir
Never mind why is he in Sydney, what the fuck am I doing in Sydney?
Anyway seems like a nice man but what does he want in return. Seems like all the options on the table only benefit me. I’m not sure if I trust such a one-sided offer.
What are your thoughts of Jungkook’s fans changing their pfps to Lucy from Cyberpunk: Edgerunners after JK changed his to David? Many people have been doing this after they notice there’s an image of Lucy in the dude’s highlight stories in IG. And the Cyberpunk fandom immediately noticed it and started to call them “larp larp larp” or whatever they’re saying. Many videos have been made about it already. It’s like the fandom is at shambles right now. If you have no idea, please research it, cause I really need to hear your thoughts on this.
Research it… do I have to? I’ve got a lot of questions to get through. But okay.
[a few minutes later]
Sorry I just don’t give enough of a fuck. Some k-pop boy I don’t care about changing his profile pic to some anime I don’t care about, and then his fans that I don’t care about following suit…I don’t care. No opinion.
is this an observable trend or no? less “japanese vers” of kpop songs being made. bringing it up because this Japanese TV performance is 100% the OG.
I think there are still plenty, at least one tends to turn up in almost every roundup and that’s been pretty regular for as long as I can remember. I think perhaps we just remember some of the older Japanese-market songs a bit more fondly.
in this street interviewing clip, {people are asked what country their own nationality hates the most, the American draws a blank} what do you think was going through the american woman’s head?
Given the typical geography knowledge of most Americans, I’d say she’s probably trying to remember the name of one other country that exists. She might also be concerned about saying a city instead of a country by mistake, I’ve seen Americans do that a lot in response to geography questions. I don’t think Americans get much education on the rest of the world.
in this news editorial discussing a viral clip where a mainland chinese woman struggles with the HK dialect cantonese while entering a Hong Kong beauty pageant, what’s your take? do you agree with the HK netizens?
The reason why HK citizens find this a bit rough is probably because of the whole China taking over Hong Kong thing. They might see it as a Chinese trying to “Mandarin-wash” Hong Kong by entering the pageant.
Now that all the Blackpink girls are well into their solo careers, are you surprised by where any of them ended up? Rose being the first one with a massive western hit was definitely a surprise to me, I always predicted Jennie would be the first to hit big overseas.
With Lisa, for some reason I thought she would drop the whole bad bitch rapper gimmick when she went solo, but instead she leaned more into it. I thought she’d emulate like a Britney Spears or Ariana Grande, but in retrospect I guess it makes sense that she didn’t as I’m not sure she has the singing chops to be a “traditional” pop vocalist.
Jisoo is the only one who is exactly where I thought she’d be; acting in Korea with the occasional song release when she feels like it.
I didn’t pick Rose breaking out, thought she was just going to remain in ballad hell, although the minute I heard APT I knew it was the right move and it would be massive. Lisa and Jisoo haven’t been surprising. Jennie I thought would try to be a little more overtly commercial, some of her stuff is really abrasive and very pop-unfriendly.
what do you feel about songs like this one that deliberately crush the mix into mush and blasts feedback noise as a replacement for melody or to ‘go hard’. i see the appeal of them (and so does the kpop industry, prepare for a few more songs like these to fill roundup for the next few months) but the need to be a pop song ryins it for me. also nmixx change up.
It can work but it needs a deft production hand. This song isn’t it. If you want an example of k-pop getting this right, here you go:
oppar, how do you do it? over the years i’ve drifted away from kpop as a totally insincere art form severely constrained by its hyper capitalistic production model. i’m young enough that it was my gateway drug to all music, and now that i’ve heard better, i can’t imagine being a kpop fan. i guess it’s remarkable to me how loyal you are to the genre knowing full well the evils of the industry. but thanks anyway, i’ve found a not insignificant number of hidden gems from your posts, glad you stuck around.
I wouldn’t even call myself all that “loyal to the genre”, yes I like some songs and yes I write about it but calling myself a “k-pop fan” doesn’t feel right somehow given how little k-pop impresses me. What I really am is a fan of good music, and I just try and look for it everywhere. K-pop’s just the part that I write about because when it comes to pop I think that Korea gets it wrong less often.
Does this sound like a cult operation to you? :
(pasting here cuz all your other text asking places have restrictive character limits.)
**World Angel Peace** (월드엔젤피스) is the official YouTube channel for a highly unique, prominent **Korean youth arts troupe** (The World Angel Peace Art Group).
Rather than a standard K-pop idol group or a simple fan channel, World Angel Peace operates as a cultural diplomacy and artistic development organization. Established to nurture young talent in South Korea, they fuse traditional Korean performing arts with modern K-pop aesthetics.
Key details regarding their channel and content include:
### 1. Hybrid Performance Style
Their performances stand out because they blend several intense disciplines into massive spectacles. On their channel, you will find videos featuring:
* **K-pop Cover Concerts:** High-energy vocal and synchronized dance covers of popular K-pop tracks (their cover videos for songs like “Malhae Mwohae” have amassed millions of views).
* **Traditional Korean Culture:** Full-scale traditional drum dances (such as *Chilgomu*), traditional string instruments (*Gayageum*), and Hanbok luxury fashion runways.
* **Taekwondo & Martial Arts:** High-flying Taekwondo demonstrations mixed with synchronized choreography.
### 2. Cultural Diplomacy & Global Events
The troupe is frequently brought in to perform at major national and international events. Their YouTube channel acts as a portfolio for these massive live shows, which include:
* **World Expo Promotions:** Large concert stages dedicated to supporting campaigns like the Busan World Expo bid.
* **International Gatherings:** Performing as the premier showcase acts for massive global conferences, such as the International Rotary District assemblies and the Busan International Choral Festival.
* **Patriotic Concerts:** Headlining major South Korean national defense and veteran-honoring “Hoguk” concerts broadcast on networks like KNN and SBS.
### 3. Channel Footprint
With a dedicated following of over 27,000 subscribers, their upload style alternates between high-production **Full Concert Broadcasts** (often 15 to 30 minutes long) showing their elite formations, and casual **YouTube Shorts** highlighting individual member dance lines, backstage clips, and recruitment calls for upcoming generations of youth artists.
Not really. Mind you, all of k-pop is really very cult-like on some level so I’m probably a little desensitised.
just a music question. in this video:{link removed}
(the first three minutes), you can see they have Karina singing or chanting the same part over and over again and harmonizing with herself and doing like tons of takes until it sounds “good enough”. is there a reason they want her to do that instead of just like having the producers…taking the original vocal track and just lowering the pitch up and down?
I’ve seen this in the other sm behind the scenes recording where they have these idols recording ad libs and harmonies, and whatever vocal embellishments separately too. they’ll get critiqued and then go back and do it over and over. But like…can’t they do it electronically? I like that some of these idols are good at singing and are shown how to improve lol but from a ruthless capitalistic standpoint I’m surprised they even bother.
Is this an SM thing? A pop music thing in general? I don’t know much about musical production so hopefully this question makes sense!
Unfortunately the link you shared to me is gone. A shame, I’d be interested to see the video. But just answering generally, the reason why multiple takes are often done is because while pitch can be corrected, other aspects of vocal performance such as confidence, attitude, delivery style etc can’t. That’s why in “Nine Muses Of Star Empire” the producer instructs the girls to not worry about messing up the notes but to sing confidently. Pitch can be corrected, but the type of energy that creates a confident performance can’t be (convincingly) electronically added. That’s why especially weaker vocalists with poor musicality and little true live singing experience (i.e 90% of k-pop singers) tend to end up doing takes over and over in the studio – these inexperienced vocalists often can’t nail the right “feel” for a track instinctively and need some coaching to do so. The real reason why engineers like working with good vocalists more is because the process becomes quicker.
do you think mirotic by tvxq sounds similar to oops i did it again by britney spears?
No.
actually, i detract my previous ask. do you think that Mirotic by TVXQ sounds like Baby One More Time by Britney Spears? I mean, those two britney songs are very similar, but Mirotic sure sounds a lot like them.
No.
interview clip where an AV actress claims that black male AVs have trouble finding work due to mostly only really being in demand for interracial dramas. what would be your solution to this? shouldn’t they just start their own websites/businesses?
I guess they could but porn like any other entertainment industry has a supply/demand issue where there’s way more people wanting to do the work than there is demand for the work, and that goes for both men and women. So starting your own business and actually making it sustainable is easier said than done. So yeah I don’t know. I get what she’s saying though – I had a black girlfriend a while back and she liked porn but was really bummed out about the overall lack of “white guy with black woman” porn out there, at least compared to the other way around.
do the chorus lyrics to hybe girl group song iconic by mistake describe kpopalypse online prescence?
I have no idea. You can be the judge of that.
I heard that One Nation has 30% of the approval polls currently. Why are they suddenly so popular, in your opinion?
If they get a lot of seats, who would want to form a coalition with them?
If Pauline Hanson becomes your PM, would you calmly accept?
Racism and ignorance is the trendy latest fashion around the world thanks to the constant work of social media bot/troll farms poisoning the minds of the public for clicks, so it’s only natural that One Nation would benefit from this and rise in the polls. The thought that she could be PM one day is quite scary, but actually possible because Australians are pretty dumb, certainly dumb enough to think Pauline “we’re being swamped by Asians” Hanson is worth voting for. After all we voted for the useless Liberal party for the entire 2010s. Not sure who would risk a One Nation coalition as they’re divisive by nature. I would not calmly accept being ruled by Gina Rinehart’s little puppet. At least Paul Hogan isn’t fooled, so there’s hope. Speaking of which…
What’s the deal with that mining heiress lady, Gina Rinehart? Why does everyone in Australia seem to hate her?
Only thing I’ve heard about her is that ppl were blaming her for some racist shit that her dad said in the 1970s, so they rejected her pledge to bail out the national netball league. (why is netball struggling? Does nobody watch it?)
Gina is a big One Nation supporter (she funds their campaigns, advises them on policy and has given Pauline several gifts), is very anti-workers rights, anti-environments, a climate change denialist, and she’s gone on record saying a bunch of stuff that’s very unsympathetic to poor people (can’t remember what but she gets laughed at in the media for this every so often). Loves Elon Musk too – of course. However the biggest hit to her reputation is probably that she’s been locked in a legal battle with her own children over mining royalties. Can’t comment on netball, I don’t know anything about it other than there’s a net and a ball.
Your thoughts on his theory about “music made for no one” {bland artists who make a killing from royalties for being played in gyms and shopping malls where bland music is preferred, don’t actually have that many passionate human fans so they can’t easily fill concert venues}, to explain the “blue dot fever” and cancelled tours?
(pull the source Tiktok link from there. It doesn’t work for me.)
This rings true.
Why is War Of Hormone your favourite BTS songs when the lyrics are so objectifying of women and girls? To be clear, I mean seeing women as inanimate objects without feelings, not just thinking they’re hot or sexy. Lines like “women make the best presents” just come off as wrong, especially from the mouths of 17-20 year old boys.
Because the music fucking slaps. It has the best music they ever did (as a full group, I’d say Jin has better solo songs). The lyrics are pretty fucking tame to be honest, even by k-pop standards, let alone by the standards of the music I listen to outside of k-pop. Why would I even give a fuck what they sing about, I don’t use the music I listen to as my moral guiding compass in life and you shouldn’t either. It’s just a fucking song. Also, it’s a mistake to assume that because someone sings about something, that they endorse that thing. Sometimes singers are taking on a character, or dramatising for effect. Anyway I think the song pretty accurately captures the way douchey 17-20 year old boys tend to think about girls!
Do you share your writing while you’re in the middle of drafting it? I don’t mean the editing stage while looking for another pair of eyes, but while actually brainstorming and/or writing.
Sometimes if I mention that I write, my friends or family want to read my stuff, but I have a really really hard time sharing before I feel like the piece is at least 80% done. If I go into making major revisions mode, again, I can’t listen to others any more (even if the comments are just “it’s good I like it.”) I’m wondering if you feel the same way. Like what do you do if someone you’re really close to wants to read your story before it’s done, or wants to hear about it before it exists at all?
For me I’m super permeable to feedback and always have been. I’m working on changing so that – among other reasons – I can write without feeling like I’m soaking in the ambient opinions of everybody and having it mix confusingly or displacing my own ideas. I feel like you’re somebody who’s less sensitive to feedback than that, but I wouldn’t expect you to pimp out all the details before you’re done either.
I never show anybody anything until it’s done, except snippets for promotional purposes. This is fairly unusual. Most authors have “beta readers” who will read drafts and provide feedback etc. and for most authors I think that’s a good idea, I just don’t feel like I need it personally. When I’m writing the story I only worry about if I think it’s good, and I know what standards to measure that by, so I don’t really need a second pair of eyes. Basically:
* am I interested, not bored, when reading
* do I actually like what I read
* does the story say what I want it to say
* do key scenes induce the kind of effect that I want
* would someone who doesn’t know and doesn’t care about the subject matter still find the story compelling enough to keep reading
NERDY QUESTIONS
I assume you mean Forza Horizon 3 being set in Australia. Answered here.
game for you? do you like the artstyle? indie RTS Dust Front.
Artstyle is kind of cool, but there’s no way in hell I would play this. I find RTS a very boring game genre, even the RTS games I used to like bore me now.
for this wonho game which character do you prefer, @5:49-10:03 the australian woman or the russian woman?
None of them. Hate the art style. Truly yuck.
you called Portal “excellent, essential gaming”—what other games do you think qualify as essential gaming?
also favorite world cuisine(s)?
No specific order:
Thief The Dark Project, Thief II The Metal Age, Half Life 2, System Shock 2.
Vietnamese, Thai, Chinese, Korean, Italian, French
thoughts on game? inspired by Blood and Resident Evil 4.
It literally just looks like a revamped Blood. Probably wouldn’t play, if I wanted to play a game like this I’d just play Blood again.
obviously you never plan to buy the Steam Machine, but do you like asthethics of it?
Not overly, but it’s relatively inoffensive I guess. All consoles are ugly, at least this one knows it and just tries to cosplay as an unassuming box that you can hide with an indoor plant or something.
1. opinion on the art direction in this game?
2. your thoughts on my hypothesis? to me it looks like the weapons at least were made as 3D polygonal models first and then “screenshots” of individual frames were made to create the sprites.
3. @0:06 it looks like that machine pistol looks is a M1911 with a Thompson SMG grip attached. do these guns actually exist? (i’m assuming prob know more than me cuz you did all that research into guns for the Shin Hana books.)
1. Don’t hate it but not overly taken with it. I guess they’re trying to make it look like Peaky Blinders or something. I don’t know, I’m kind of bored with that look. They do pull it off though.
2. I don’t really know enough about this to be able to say for sure but given the wealth of FPS games out there that use these kinds of weapons, it would make sense.
3. Yes, seems like a M1911 pistol with the front bit of a Tommy gun (both grip and barrel) stuck to it. Never seen this in real life, almost certain nothing like this exists.
@5:04
Hints that the game might have weapon load outs (i.e. a limitation on what you can carry on your person) vs. having a full weapon wheel. I imagine this is being carried from Red Dead Redemption 2, where your full weapon collection was stored on your horse (I’m guessing here it’ll be in your car boot). Do you like this “limitation” or no?
@8:02
Sounds like they might have something similar to the capturable enemy outposts in Far Cry 3+ (no signs yet that they’re capturable here though.). Did you like those? Do you they’d a good fit for GTA?
Loadouts, I don’t really care. I think the on-foot combat in GTA games has always been incredibly weak so I couldn’t care less what weapons I’m using. A silly addition if that’s what it is.
Raiding gang compounds, I did like how that was done in Far Cry 3 but I just can’t see it being that interesting in a GTA game… unless they incorporate a lot of stealth, foliage, many options for angle of approach etc… and then you’re basically just playing Far Cry 3 again at that point so you might as well just go and play that.
Weirdly I’m getting lots of questions about GTA lately so I’d just like to go on the record and say that I don’t give a shit about GTA and won’t be playing GTA6, not when it comes out, not ever at any point in the future either. Hell, I haven’t even played GTA5. I lost interest in the GTA series when GTA4 came out, which I found so boring that I’ve tried to play through it about half a dozen times now and always lose interest a couple hours in and quit. For me the series peaked with Vice City which had enough concessions to realism to be immersive without getting bogged down in endless cutscenes, side-quests, pointless “gritty realism” and general boredom. So any questions about GTA games being overpriced or shit or the latest round of enshittification crippling them or release dates for GTA6 or whatever the latest bit of viral hype train info is… I do not care. Just do what I do and don’t play it if you don’t like what their stupid company are doing.
Your take on this news? The developer of this solo/co-op rogue-lite FPS {Deadzone Rogue} have decided to make announce a sequel rather than do DLCs. Sequel announcement news comes less than a year after their OG game’s release. (The below post details their reasoning. I for one think not wanting fragment co-op playerbases with DLCs is a very reasonable argument.) The OG game currently has mixed RECENT user reviews agregate because of protest review bombings.
Deadzone Rogue was a surprise hit game last year, selling almost a million copies.
The developer has a history of failed live service games. Deadzone Rogue itself I believe is built using salvaged assets from a cancelled Starsiege extraction shooter, which was recycle of a prior cancelled Starsiege battle royale.
They have an abandoned attempt at a Tribes 3 arena shooter. (Steam says it hasn’t been updated in 24 months.) (which in of itself may’ve been a sequel to the failed Tribes Ascend from like 2016.)
What this tells me is that making games seems to be a very difficult business to be in.
(The Deadzone studio itself is a spin-off of developer called Hi-Rez Studios, which have a graveyard of dead and cancelled live-service games, going back like 2 decades.)
I think live-service games are hard to find and keep a playerbase for, and that’s why so many of them die. All live service games these days seem to be trying to gear themselves to be “the everything game” i.e the only game you’ll ever play, but there’s only so many people playing games and they have to divide their attention somehow. This company’s attempts to keep their games alive beyond the release spike obviously aren’t working, which I guess is why they’re always trying to release something new. Maybe it’ll work one day. I have fond memories of the very first Starsiege Tribes game but what made that game cool has never been captured in any of the sequels.
do you find this character to be a racist depiction of americans?
No. Unsure what race has to even do with it.
if the next gen of consoles won’t have physical media, then wtf is the point of them then? when i was super poor (still am pretty poor, actually) i could buy 2nd hand games. now that option is out. physical copies of older games drop in value vs. the price staying the same on digital stores, cuz retailers want to clear shelf space, etc. i suppose i’m 100% pc now.
“Sony Ends Physical Game Discs for New PlayStation Titles from 2028”
Same as it always was – to make money.
Thoughts on Game?
I would never play this. Too much socialisation, also being colourblind would probably put me at a huge disadvantage in both hiding myself and finding others.
NOT QUESTIONS
Not really a question, but I went to TWICE’s concert and I had a great time. I mostly go to small gigs of local artists and small rock/metal bands, but I thought the production value was insane and the girls are stunning irl. It was also very weird because the fans in line who were next to me were so young (one of the girls there was 2 years old when I started listening to kpop in 2011!!!). That being said, everyone was really nice and I made a new friend!
Awesome, glad to hear it! Not really an answer, but JAV of the month is DLDSS-466. I think Mino Suzume, although not my type, bears a passing resemblance to Sana, what do you think?
Hi oppar, it’s that gay caonima again.
I’m willing to rant here as to how fucking EXCELLENT KiiiKiii’s 404 (New Era) is!! [unless you’re dumb in the head and think the song is fucking weak] like I know the melodies can be a bit of a drag but if the package is brilliant, who am I to ignore? Also is it just me or To. My First Love just reminds me of Oppa Virus? I think it’s more of the fact those two are set in place in a school visually but somehow can’t help myself to compare those two musically too.
[I’m expecting a JAV with a fat guy oppar, please… I need good faps this pride month!!!]
This kind of was a question (“To. My First Love” and “Oppa Virus” are fairly similar texturally) but I’m putting it here anyway just for you. JAV of the month is KV-320 but you have to wait until the very end of the film to see the fat guy get blown.
{original question and answer here, stuff about how video games are steering away from the curvy women stereotype}
it’s not just “one company”, it’s pretty much the entire Western AAA gaming industry. Eg As of June 2026 Ubisoft have 2 upcoming remakes of 2013 games, Assassin’s Creed Black Flag and Rayman Legends. One has censored the cleavage of a character, other has shrunken a character’s boobs.
These have been obvious, observable trends since around 2016. But yes, I largely have dropped out of buying new Western AAA games, I mainly play old games and when I do buy new games they’re usually indie or from East Asia.
People crap on the major gaming companies all the time and rightly so, but if we dislike them so much why even care what they do? I just don’t buy their shit and ignore them. Simple. Easy. I still don’t care even if it is all the major companies as I generally don’t buy games from the major companies. There’s literally thousands of games released yearly with girls with big boobs if that’s what you want. There is not a shortage. Never has been.
Honestly though, I think that the reason why women have always had a high-sexualised presentation in games (and why that’s changing more recently) isn’t the evil patriarchy or the evil feminism or the Gamergate incels or the anti-Gamergate incels or whatever, but simply because in the very early days of gaming, game developers didn’t have a lot of pixels to play with. If you were writing a game and had male and female characters, and wanted to differentiate them, and you were using ancient hardware, there weren’t a lot of ways to make that obvious to the player – exaggerating the ‘femaleness’ of the form was about all devs had in their toolkit back then. Now that graphics have become much more advanced, more androgynous or less feminised or whatever-you-want-to-call-less-titties presentation can actually be portrayed fairly accurately now, whereas in 1990 it would just look like you were trying to draw a woman and were just really bad at it. So as gaming tech has matured so has presentation. And a lot of people like a less ‘feminised’ woman anyway. Less feminised doesn’t mean less sexual, just maybe not your type of sexual. And that’s okay. Games don’t have to cater to common straight male sexual fetishes, any more than they have to cater to anything else in particular. Devs can make whatever they want. You can choose to buy it or not. Who cares what the “trend” is in gaming, any more than what it is in k-pop. Trends come and go, and niches outside of those trends will always exist too. There is room for Rayman Legends AND Stellar Blade. Back in 1985 when I first started playing games a lot NO games were sexy (at least not until Samantha Fox Strip Poker PAVED THE WAY). Don’t let clickbaiter trash far-right grifter accounts like Pirat_nation fool you. We’ve never had it so good.
Not a question so JAV of the month is the very nerd-friendly OFES-046.
Idk if someone already said something about this but I cannot stand heavy serenade by nmixx. The part after the bridge when the song switches to the chorus is so ear grating and the harmony sounds so horrible. BUT it’s literally just that part and I haven’t seen anyone else mention this. I have no music knowledge so maybe it just sounds wrong to me but it fully sounds like dissonance and it’s just that one part that annoys me so bad. Am i going crazy?? I genuinely feel insane. Anyway I love u oppar
Yes you are probably going crazy because I didn’t have any issues personally. MIRD-286 is also pretty crazy.
BEST QUESTION
I I I really really really hate hate hate it it it when when when choruses choruses choruses are are are just just just repeats repeats repeats of of of words words words make make make it it it stop stop stop – okay but seriously this trend in kpop needs to end. Why is it even a thing? Just lazy writing? Writers/companies having a word requirement?
Don’t l-lose your t-t-t-temper so easily.
That’s all for this episode of QRIMOLE! This series will return next month!
Oh, and do you have a question that you’d like to see answered in the next episode of QRIMOLE? If so, use the question box below, or if no box appears, click the Qri on the sidebar to open the box as a separate webpage! Kpopalypse will return!
