It’s time for Kpopalypse roundup! Let’s take a look at some new releases!
BTS just boycotted the Grammys, and in solidarity with them I’m going to boycott the Booker Prize this year. I will not be submitting my latest book Girls909 or accepting nominations for this prestigious prize in order to stand for better representation of Asians in media. Gosh I am so noble. I love paving the way with my BTS boys.
Red Velvet – Surfin’ Boy
Red Velvet deserve better than this lukewarm bossanova/disco hybrid that sounds like it should be played on a cruise ship for half-deaf retirees while they spoon out their overcooked vegetables from the ship’s smorgasbord and share badly-washed cutlery and catch new strains of diseases that we thought we eradicated 50 years ago.
BABYMONSTER – Moon
However Red Velvet probably do deserve this open mocking by BabyMonster, which would probably earn BabyMon a cancellation anywhere, except in k-pop where fans love impressions of minorities, such as the minority of people who thought “Zimzalabim” was a good song.
KARD – Back To Life
KARD are seemingly back-to-life in 2005 in this millennial-whoopfest. KARD are going on a hiatus now or something, which probably isn’t a bad idea actually, because this song wasn’t worth cheating on Shannon Williams for #neverforget
KiiiKiii – Candy Pink Magic Hole Flip Phone
KiiiKiii on the other hand get served the good part of 2000s-era sound. I’m told that Effie and some other underground acts were responsible for writing the track to this one and it shows. Things are looking up for this group.
The Wind – Party Like A Rock Star
The Wind gradually edge away from the “Christian horse boy” sound they’ve become known for, or maybe not-so-well-known given how nobody except me ever seems to mention that they’ve been doing it for almost half a decade now, even the people making videos about this stuff. I don’t mind it though because the territory they’re moving to here is pretty cool. Some great bass guitar really helps this track along.
POW – Flavor
You can probably thank Saja Boys from KDH for the reappearance of the “brightly coloured boys” concept, that dates all the way back to H.O.T’s “Candy” and probably even before that. If you’re enjoying this sound just wait, you’re going to start getting sick of it real quick.
TWS – Soda Soda
TWS aren’t even trying to hide it. I know k-pop is hardly about originality but come on, now, at least make the song title a bit more different.
HEART OF WOMAN – My Vision
Heart Of Woman are back to not sucking in genres that usually suck flat-out. It’s a special talent that they have and the label needs to double down on that part of what they do and turf out all the average-ass filler crap that they also do.
ONEWE – Neverland
Pretty generic rock stuff, nothing here of interest.
CATCH THE YOUNG – To You, Standing Before Me
Catch The Young’s “for the fans” video commemorating 1000 days of doing stuff has been out for a week already and has only 601 views at the time of writing this roundup, that’s less than one view per day of existence of this group. I’m not one of these “popularity is everything” people, after all I was the first person in the English-speaking k-pop world writing specific nugu content, but when even your fans don’t come out for your fan songs, it might just be time to put the project to bed.
Hi-Fi Un!corn – Airplane
This sounds like a fan song too and it has over 100 times Catch The Young’s viewcount. Scary times for boy idol rock bands.
DNA – No Cap
Does anyone really actually say “no cap”? If they do, I think we could use a cap. We could certainly cap this song off.
HYOLYN – Enjoy Your Meal
Just a PSA that boring ass lyric videos for shit songs do not belong in roundup. So this is a good time to remind you that the Kpopalypse Objectification Survey is a thing that you should fill out. CLICK HERE to vote for your favourite men and women of k-pop, while at the same time acknowledging that the k-pop industry is all about objectification! Honesty in media, that’s what we want to see here at kpopalypse.com.
B1A4 – D-DAY
Pretty dull stuff musically, but B1A4 members have traditionally been repeat performers in the Kpopalypse Objectification Survey. CLICK HERE to vote for them, or whoever else you’d like to! Okay thanks for your time, back to our regularly scheduled program.
EMOTI:M – Spark
Which one of them is Tim, and why is he emo? Also why does this group have a ton of Vietnamese comments? I hope they treat emos better in Vietnam than they used to in Mexico.
Xiaoting – Legend
I could be biased due to my heritage but I agree with Shu that Mandarin is best language. Zǒng de lái shuō, zhè shǒu gē xiāngdāng bùcuò, dàn jǐ rén de gǎnjué shì pūdiànguò duō, ér gāocháo bùfèn zé xiǎndé yǒuxiē píngdàn.
Picheolin – Party Rock Rock
Hitchhiker clearly didn’t give a crap about this, lazily throwing in recycled beats and samples from his old songs into this low-effort nonsense. I guess it’s not awful but it definitely feels like the real party was a decade ago and this is the scraps.
Young K – Shut The Door
JYP tries for synth-rock magic here but the result falls short, the song just isn’t quite there. Needed more plastic pants.
George feat. Minnie – If I’m With U
Oh snore.
Hui – Bingo
Song is just average but the video has nice snappy editing, clever choreo and I don’t think I saw one instance of AI slop anywhere? Points for that at least.
Hyojung – Look Around
A “special video” in k-pop somehow weirdly means “unspecial video” pretty much 100% of the time. I don’t know why that works, but it does.
Ten – If You Don’t Mean It
Actually no, I really don’t mean it. Sorry to bother, you can go now.
BIG Naughty feat. Haga – Flower
After about 23586 shit songs in a row, Big Naughty comes up with… something really fucking good? This is actually killer. It’s true what I keep saying, a good song can come from anywhere, even from that artist who you swear will never get their shit together.
Mark Tuan – Alone
He sings “drive across the border in a double door” while showing a car that isn’t a double door car. Automatic fail at being relevant.
Zelo – Ela
“She got me bent like Uri Geller” is an actual lyric in this song. Consider that a warning.
Kevin Woo – Ain’t No Party
He’s right, this definitely ain’t no party. Accurate song title of the week.
Park Soeun – Thinking of You
Apparently this girl was from Weeekly. This song seems like it’s going to be boring but it actually gets the dynamics right for this style and has a cool chorus, I dig it. I especially like the big dinosaur guitar slides coming out of the chorus, that’s some shit that I also like to do in every song ever with heavy distortion. Guaranteed crowd pleaser.
Luci Gang – Headlock
This is good, short and sweet. Gosh, rap music doesn’t actually sound too bad when they turn the accursed Autotune off and stop trying to be R&B losers. Imagine that.
Jeong Sewoon – Too Much
Loving the bass guitar sounds in this song, but sadly that the only interesting thing here.
Dovlvl – Golden-Haired Aerion
Hey this is cool, I love the completely different vocal approach for a song with this sound.
Idiots – Oooo
Yeah this rocks, takes me back to playing drums in punk bands and playing beats like this. Good times. More Korean rock needs to hit this hard.
SABATON live in Las Vegas with Hello Kitty guitar
Here’s our non-Korean feature of the week. Sabaton have a good sense of humour, and the Hello Kitty guitar is a rock and heavy metal beast actually, I own two of them! Just one knob (with decent clearance from the strings) means less shit to accidentally bump when playing, no tremolo means tuning stability is fantastic, one humbucker in the bridge position is all you need for rock, punk and metal, and best of all it’s pretty cheap. If you want a durable stage guitar for heavy styles it’s hard to beat.
SHURE SUPER 55 CAN WE FUCKING GET IT RIGHT OR WHAT LETS GO CUNTS SECTION
Redoor – Feather
Not bad, just a little too low. It’s pointing at his Adam’s Apple all the way through, which I guess could work if he sings down into it off-center but it’s not actually how you’re supposed to use it.
Pengsoo – Get Happy Now
This penguin fuck starts off with the same problem as Redoor above, but as the song wears on the mic positioning improves, by the last thirty seconds or so it’s just about perfect. I’m not sure if pengu can take credit for this though, this might just be an accident due to the microphone bumping into the penguin suit and getting tilted slightly upward into a more correct position.
Jun Kyo – Burning Heart
This is J.K. from N.O.M reinvented as a trot singer with an AIslopporiffic video and again he shoots just a little over the top of the microphone but he’s angling his head downward just slightly sometimes so this is pretty good.
Illuvan – M.A.Y (Memories about you)
YES YES YES YES YES CUNTS FUCK YES WE HAVE A WINNER LETS GO CUNTS FUCK YES THAT’S HOW YOU POINT THAT FUCKING MICROPHONE RIGHT AT YOUR MOUTH RIGHT AT YOUR FUCKING MOUTH GOOD WORK CUUUUUUUUUNTS NOW TEACH ALL THE DUMB SHITCUNTS AT SM FOR THE LOVE OF GOD HOLY FUCK BALLS
RANDOM BONUS VIDEOS OF THE WEEK
KOCOWA – JYP Shares Valuable Advice With New Group OURBIRTHDAY | The Manager EP408
JYP appears in deglam “preacher” mode and preaches the gospel of obeying your k-pop masters to his label’s new girl group. Of course he tells them “watch what you eat”, and “don’t associate with bad people” and all the usual things, laying the groundwork for their religious conversion later. JYP The Grace is here.
Ploopy678 has always been pretty sensible about her k-pop coverage and she has the absolutely right attitude to idol weight controversies. It’s in two parts because the upload fucked up somehow, probably YouTube’s censors going crazy as usual. Check it out if you care about this issue and are getting sick of the clickbait and everybody running around causing more harm than good by constantly oversharing some idol’s shoulder bones.
Lee Jung Hyun – Joolae
A strange song with a weirdly dry sound and some very odd rhythm texture choices, it’s not bad actually once you get past the fact the drums sound like someone hitting cardboard boxes with rulers like your broke friend at school did because his parents didn’t want to buy him a drum set. This official video is in 240p for god knows what stupid reason but at least the embed works, if you want a higher resolution video a caonima provided an upscaled version, click here if that interests you.
That’s all for this week! Kpopalypse roundup returns next week! In the meantime don’t forget that the latest Kpopalypse Objectification survey is now live and accepting votes! Don’t forget to vote – do it for [insert your bias here]! Stay safe, caonimas!
