It’s time for Kpopalypse to look back on his predictions for 2024, and make all new predictions for 2025! Come with Kpopalypse for a look into the crystal ball of k-pop!
Before we delve into the incredible revelations of 2025, let’s take a look at 2024 – at around this time last year I made a lot of bold predictions with my notorious super Boram ESP powers! How well did Kpopalypse do?
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RESULTS OF 2024 PREDICTIONS
NewJeans for all – CORRECT. Almost every single k-pop girl group out there, and even a sizeable quantity of the boy groups, jumped straight onto the trend PinkPantheress NewJeans spearheaded of light, airy, fast beats, wispy vocals and drum & bass/UK garage/whatever the hipster kiddies are calling it this week influence. The music videos followed suit, copying NewJeans’ collage aesthetic, grimy lo-fi style and of course there’s the dog-whistle, speaking of which…
Underage performers aren’t going anywhere – CORRECT. K-pop fans love to see underage people debut in k-pop, no matter how much they say otherwise. The numbers don’t lie.
The BTS solo projects continue – CORRECT. BTS shat out what felt like a solo song by a different member each week for the entire year, of vastly varying quality. Maybe I forgot to review one or two of them, but hey BTS are “not k-pop” and this is a k-pop website so what do you expect?
YG struggle to replace their legacy – CORRECT. I think everyone can agree that whatever you think of their music, BabyMonster haven’t exactly made much of a splash as ‘idols’ yet, and Treasure certainly aren’t at the stage where they’re realistically competing with BigBang popularity wise either.
Drug scandals return – CORRECT. It was mainly legal drugs making a splash in 2024, but legal drugs can still make you do illegal things, isn’t that right Suga. Although illegal drugs did also make a showing, which reminds me…
Speaking of which… did someone mention Han Seo Hee? – CORRECT. Speak her name and she will appear, with trufax (and syringes) to share.
Euphemisms ahoy – CORRECT. Illit not only copied NewJeans’ general sound for their debut “Magnetic” but also deployed the same dog-whistle shenanigans, which were definitely noticed.
Misogyny increases (yes, even more) – CORRECT. Did you know that 60% of young Korean men equate feminism with “female supremacy”? I wonder if NCT’s Taeil feels that way. Not that the older men have been any better this year, mind you…
Wonho finally meets a serious contender for his top-tier objectification status – CORRECT. In the ultimate shock result, Wonho didn’t clean sweep the objectification survey this year, but actually came second in the overall most attractive category to Seventeen’s Mingyu! Of course Kpopalypse’s Super Boram ESP Powers predicted this, so it wasn’t a shock to me!
Cultural scandals aplenty – CORRECT. If one of your hobbies was being offended by a bunch of Koreans not catering to your cultural norms, then 2024 was definitely your year.
The combination of AI and k-pop will attract idiots aplenty – CORRECT. We had shithouse AI music videos by the truckload. AI Jesus, have thou forsaken us?
NFTs in k-pop will become less and less of a thing – CORRECT. Nobody in k-pop could work out how to make money out of NFTs, so agencies all moved over to incorporate soul-sucking, environment-destroying, moron-attracting AI because at least the technology is now good enough and generic enough to speed up music video production a little and therefore save a few pennies.
More “eco-friendly” projects – INCORRECT. The environment is so last year, nobody actually gives a shit in 2024. Guess we gotta wait for fashion to cycle around again before we have another half-hearted crack at trying to save the human race.
Sexy concepts come back – somewhat – CORRECT. Kiss Of Life picked up the torch that has been lying around unattended to for the better part of a decade and have seen some reasonable success so far. Mind you they’re about the only ones because everyone else is too scared, so we’ll see how that goes, they seem to be getting away with it for now, fingers crossed.
K-pop gets increasingly embroiled in America’s lame culture wars – CORRECT. I’m pretty sure the South Korean leader was drinking the Trump dictator Kool-aid when he decided to declare martial law to try and save his own ass, fucking up k-pop schedules for at least three hours and annoying k-pop stars to the point where they’re actively supporting the protestors.
A good year for music in general – CORRECT. You’ll have to wait until the end of 2024 to know what I think, but there definitely were some bangers!
Mamamoo’s Hwasa keeps getting shat on for that harmless vagina-touching incident which just never seems to go away and she starts getting more and more pissed off about it so she just eventually says “fuck it” and doubles down, by including some insinuated vagina-touching in a new music video just to piss people off. It totally works and the media frenzy erupts, at the same time pushing her and her groupmates to higher levels of international relevance and Kpopalypse list inclusion – CORRECT. Hwasa released the song “NA” and the video features a chorus point-dance that has vagina-touching AND ass-touching, causing controversy as usual. Didn’t hurt her career one bit though…
Kpopalypse will continue to be a cunt – CORRECT! Expect more posts, more shitting on crap songs in roundup, more books, and more of Kpopalypse being a complete cunt in all the usual old ways and with any luck maybe even a few new ones.
So as usual Kpopalypse predictions were mostly correct thanks once again to SUPER BORAM ESP POWERS – James Randi lick the dried smegma from my foreskin! Now it’s time to see what Kpopalypse forsees for 2025! Super Boram ESP powers are now activated!
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KPOPALYPSE’S PREDICTIONS FOR 2025
The big winner of the NewJeans/HYBE battle is NOBODY – HYBE experiences significant brand devaluing as their shady business practices and dirty laundry are revealed to the public plus they lose their top-tier globally huge girl group, big shoes which nobody else on HYBE can fill right now. In the meantime NewJeans also lose market value due to having to put everything on hold right when the group itself is ho in the marketplacet, their sponsors start chickening out due to not wanting to tarnish their brands with the infighting and/or due to being pressured by “external forces”. It’s a lose-lose situation for everybody involved, regardless of any court case outcome.
Meanwhile, people will finally stop copying NewJeans… just kidding LOL no they won’t – expect the trend to hang around for a while yet, especially while NewJeans themselves remain in legal limbo, thereby leaving an opening for a new competitior to potentially appear. All the attempts will suck though.
The ‘shout’ chorus trend starts finally decreasing – people will gradually start to notice that you can’t just shout at people until they buy stuff.
Rock remains big – expect lots of people suddenly crashing Rose’s aparteu, trying to emulate her recent breakout global success in the coming year but adding a few more guitars into the mix or at least having your bias pose with a guitar more often.
Duets duets duets – some brainiac will determine that the reason why “APT” was so big was because it was a man and a woman singing together, so expect the industry to spam shitty male/female duets all through 2025 that all miss the point.
Veteran groups do well, newbies struggle – even though there’s a huge opening right now for the next big thing, it won’t appear. Recently debuted groups will struggle to have any meaningful impact. Meanwhile the groups already on top will continue to do just fine.
Videos with AI content start to suck slightly less – right now the use of AI in music videos is pretty goddamn obvious, but it’s going to start getting better, just like other forms of CGI, fairly soon. This is not because the tech will improve (although it will, a little bit), but because video directors will realise its inherent limitations and start to get more subtle in their use of it. Cue the hot denial by fans that AI was even involved, plus endless claims that every single scandal their faves get into was actually just an AI-generated video.
More problems with ‘personal relations’ in the music business – have you noticed how the 143 Ent situation, which should be big news, is just kind of being ignored, and nobody’s really talking all that much about it in the Korean business and media? Hmm, I wonder why that could be…
The Han Seo Hee saga continues – you just know she’s going to keep turning up, probably with yet another syringe filled with something for your bias.
Idols get more risque on social media – the content of music videos and public apparances won’t change much, but you can expect the social media thirst posts to increase in 2025.
SM has a good year compared to other big agencies – there’ll be some musical missteps along the way, as always, but at least as far as the business goes, SM will be looking relatively healthy, at least compared to the competition
Cultural education remains a low priority – expect a new crop of “insensitivity/appropriation/whatever” scandals in 2025 for everyone to complain about for a couple weeks before they forget about it and go back to stanning their bias as usual.
Music chart scandals come back – expect them fondly, at #1 with a bullet.
Kpopalypse Interview returns – someone finally has the balls to talk to Kpopalypse in 2025. This is the boldest prediction on this list.
Despite getting flak for anti-feminist sentiment, QWER members continue to pop up in unexpected places that would suggest a more pro-feminist stance and this confuses the fuck out of everybody except Kpopalypse. Eventually something forces the issue and it’s revealed that QWER is actually a pro-feminist sleeper cell designed to target Korea’s right-wing gamer incels by the dopamine receptors and make them more amenable to girls who can rock, while taking their money of course – Kpopalypse’s hyper-specific prediction for 2025, dedicated to those who doubt my powers or complain that these predictions aren’t specific enough!
Kpopalypse will continue to be a cunt – more of the usual content – roundups, trufax, posts, games, books, surveys and more, all coming at you in 2025, expect it fondly!
That’s all the predictions for the next 12 months – expect them fondly! My final prediction is that Kpopalypse will return soon with more posts!
