It’s time for Kpopalypse Christmas roundup! Let’s take a look at all of the k-pop christmas songs this year!
Yes folks it’s Christmas time once again, the season for giving, and as usual we’ll be giving a lot of shit songs some bad reviews and a lot of k-pop fans a hard time. They certainly deserve it, for considering any of the music in this list acceptable just because their stupid bias was involved in it in some way.
Of course like any Kpopalypse list, this one has rules. They are:
Released this year
Christmas themed – generic “winter” themes don’t cut it, must be at least a candy-cane coloured dildo visible in the video or something
Original songs only, covers don’t count – although a cover or two may slip through the net anyway due to my general lack of knowledge and/or interest in fucking shit music like this
Has an actual video, that’s more than just a lazy “lyric video”, someone pointing a mobile phone camera out of a car window for the entire thing, something made with a single prompt into an AI, etc
Songs are presented in chronological order of release, no quality ratings because it pretty much all sucks anyway as you’d expect
Not a complete list so don’t send any suggestions for songs I’ve missed, trust me nobody cares or even reads these posts at all once the honourable mentions lists come out
Let’s take a look at the songs!
November 14th – SAAY – Heart of Christmas
The first Christmas song this year, at least out of the ones I know about is this fucking jazz-lite bullshit and I’m sure that while it sucks mega donkey dicks all night long, everything else is probably going to be even more forgettable. Although I do like the tactic of using ultra soft-focus and bloom and then stacking necklaces or whatever they are onto the microphone so snarky k-pop writers can’t tell if it’s pointed in the right direction or not.
November 21st – Shin Soohyun & HUS – Uza
Humming Urban Stereo are one of those names you hear all the time and then when you finally check out their music you’re like “oh right, well that’s that then, that’ll teach me for listening to hype from independent publications I guess”. They’ve successfully ported their sound of generalised funk ambivalence over to a Christmas theme, good for them.
November 22nd – Rocky – Forever and Ever
Rocky from Astro has a crap ballad for us and his track record of songwriting quality is rocky indeed, like rocks at the bottom of the ocean. “Forever and Ever” is no exception, a song you won’t be listening to forever and ever, or probably not even as long as it takes to read this review.
November 22nd – Jang Dongwoo – Super Birthday
A weird as hell track full of random noise cluttering up the mix, but the strangest thing about it is how he managed to the get lyrics “breathing soft and glowing the night today” to sound like “pretty fucking cool in the night today” (a line which actually makes more sense in context when you think about it).
November 23rd – BIG OCEAN – Red-dy Set Go
It probably helps to be deaf around this time of year. No wonder they look genuinely happier than anyone else on this list.
November 24th – tripleS – Christmas Alone
You thought telling these girls apart normally was hard, just wait until you watch this and they’re wearing all the same Christmas fetish wear. Jaden up to his old tricks, I see.
November 25th – INI – U Mine
Actually one of the better songs in this Christmas roundup, but nobody actually cares about this group so let’s just move on.
November 26th – LUNCH – Dear Santa
So many songs and it’s not even December yet! K-pop sure got stuck into the Christmas shit earliy this year. Actually this song is mildly acceptable as well but you wouldn’t listen to it by choice, or if you had a brain, or a life, or even if you didn’t.
November 26th – Rainbow18 feat. Yewon – Good In Smile
Rainbow and Jewelry team up for a battle of the second-gen legacy nugus, and again the song isn’t terrible, come on girls you’re ruining the theme of these Christmas posts which is to shit on everything and make people stop.
November 27th – Chad Burger – Winter Flowers
Not to be confused with Chad Future, this is some serious nugu bollocks that cost everyone involved about the price of the decorations in the video. Chad Future sadly doesn’t have a Christmas gift for us this year, I know because I checked, and it tells you all you need to know about the song quality here that I went seeking out Chad Future videos instead.
November 28th – OWN – A letter of December
Some girl with only a thousand views, I’ve written Nugu Alert posts with more views than this song. Anyway everything her looks very Christmassy and sounds very shit.
November 28th – OWN – Christmas Wish
I guess if you’ve got more than one of these Xmas shits up your sleeve you might as well recycle the video set. This song’s pretty crap too but it’s a relative banger compared to the other one, with a viewcount to match, nearly 6k views on this cinematographic masterpiece.
November 28th – FIFTY FIFTY – Making Christmas Magical
I’ve never heard of Blocks Universe, guess I’m not that hip to what Gen Alpha are up to these days, back in my day blocks were just wooden lumps and they didn’t come with some slightly-above-average k-pop group slumming a Christmas song for the paycheck.
December 2nd – CRACKER – Rudolph’s Secret
Holy Rudolph’s buttcrack we’re into the December songs finally! Damn we had a lot of stuff this year. Speaking of cracks, Cracker had to call themselves “Korea Cracker” probably because there’s also an American Cracker that a few people give a fuck about apparently. They needn’t have bothered, there’s no fear of anyone getting noticed by anyone internationally except nobodies like me with songs like this.
December 2nd – fromis_9 – White Memories
I know that a lot of my readers have had their own “white memories” with the underscore group, but not me, I don’t give a single fuck and this song is… well it’s actually probably better than half of the actual fromis_9 comebacks over the latter part of their short careers but that’s not saying a lot.
December 3rd – Juniel feat. Ko Youngbae – Let It Snow
Look at the guy’s face from 1:45 onward, it tells you everything you need to know. He really does look like he’s considering his life choices. Juniel meanwhile is oblivious and seemingly thinks that somehow this song is going to work out well for her.
December 3rd – Chaebin – DingDong Christmas
Do these extreme nugus really think that doing a Christmas song that sounds exactly like every other Christmas song ever is going to rocket them to Mariah Carey levels of Christmas relevance, or do they just fucking love Christmas songs that much? I really can’t tell.
December 5th – Chungha – It’s That Time of Year
Chungha’s song at least sounds maybe slightly different to the usual trash but it’s not going to make you forget her better songs or even make you remember it at all beyond next week.
December 5th – ALL(H)OURS – White Christmas
No it’s not that “White Christmas” because if it was it wouldn’t even be eligible for this list. Not that anybody would miss it anyway. Is it just me or did 80% of the groups in the Christmas roundup this year film their video inside the same house?
December 7th – DIA – 365 Christmas
No, it’s not the failboat CCM/MBK/Pocketdol girl group, but that singer from that very short-lived other failboat k-pop group Kiss&Cry. I can’t imagine how I was able to remember that, as my song submitter didn’t make mention of who she was. Gosh I suddenly feel like some Christmas turkey.
December 8th – DIGNITY – The Moment
The irony of a group calling themselves “Dignity” releasing this crap.
December 9th – BEWAVE Jiun & Yunseul feat. GK – Christmas Eve
The singers here spend the entire time singing into a microphone with a great fucking huge sound dome around it. I wonder what was going on in the studio for the engineer to have to control the spillage of their voices that drastically. Or maybe it was a spit-shield so these girls didn’t cover the room in their saliva while singing Christmas crap. I’d be interested to know because the vocals sure don’t sound like they were worth all the hassle of erecting that thing.
December 9th – Wish – Wish You A Merry Christmas
With a name like “wish” I guess things get confusing at this time of year. Let’s all wish for Wish to stop wishing us things.
December 10th – Park Jinyoung – Christmas Fever (got7 member)
No, not the Christian-preaching plastic-pants wearing JYP, but the other JYP that was signed to JYP but then JYP left JYP with his group, probably annoying JYP in the process. If none of that made sense don’t worry this song doesn’t either.
December 11th – KIIRAS – KIIRASMAS
In a development that will shock nobody, Kiiras have a Christmas song and it sucks. What might surprise you is that it’s also the song of their careers, so far.
December 14th – Kim Yuna, Oyeon – Merry Merry Christmas
These two girls sound exactly the same. I wonder who the poor ghost singer in Korea is who gets all the gigs around this time of year and has to secretly be on 50% of these Christmas comeback things. I hope the money’s worth it.
December 15th – DAY6 – Lovin’ the Christmas
Unlike just about every other video in this list, someone actually put serious hard effort and sweat into this. Pity them.
December 15th – Ahn Yeeun – Rudolph
The amount of Christmas decorations seems to be inversely proportional to the quality of the song. This starts off meh but then it suddenly goes into crazy high-flying power-metal madness. Definitely the only song that there’s any chance I’ll be listening to again out of all the ones here.
December 15th – Byeon Wooseok – The Christmas Song
Some drama bollocks. There’s a second part of this as well but you can go and search it yourself if you give a fuck because I sure don’t.
December 17th – QWER – Be Happy (Carol Ver.)
Of course QWER girls all get computer game shit for Christmas in this PlayStation ad, but these girls really strike me more as the PC master race type given that the band name “QWER” hardly relates to non-PC gaming. Maybe if PlayStation pays them enough they’ll rename themselves to the four PlayStation buttons. Anyway shit song but at least they’re on brand and the novelty of blue Christmas decorations is actually a nice change for my brain after slogging through hours of red tinsel for this list.
December 17th – J.K. x Chaewon – X-MAS is you
Looks like it wasn’t snowing that day and they couldn’t afford snow effects for the video so someone just breathed on the camera lens a bit and fogged it up.
December 18th – FIVE O ONE – Last Christmas
A bit of a drama video here where a couple people remember how they used to hang out and be cool but then Christmas got in the way and theu turned into complete cunts who now refuse to even acknowledge each other when crossing the street. It’s actually pretty good drama-wise just keep the sound down.
December 18th – Aisa – Sugar Light
This sounds like some jazz fusion take on a Christmas song or something. At least she got herself a different room to most of the others in this list.
December 19th – Yoona – Wish to Wish
Yoona grows one of those freaky indistinct AI-assisted fuzzy monsters in her house that we’ve all been seeing lately in every second k-pop video and TV advert ever because they cost about ten cents for a CGI artist to knock one up in Canva and somehow she doesn’t freak the fuck out and shit her pants.
December 19th – Isegye Idol – White
Even these anime things are in the same room as everyone else. Tis the season to be generic.
December 23rd – Xiumin – Fireflies
Nice balls, Xiumin. Just a shame about the song.
December 23rd – Serim – From Us
I don’t know if it’s the makeup or the surgery or how he’s really feeling, but for some reason Serim looks on the verge of tears during this entire video. Except when he starts driving that dodgem car and then he looks like he’s staring into the face of death.
December 23rd – SMORZ – 24th
They released this a day too early for the song title to make any sense. Sounds like a Fifty Fifty song actually, but a lower-tier one. “Starry Night” is better, you could listen to it if you wanted.
December 23rd – Nam Gyuri – December Dream
I guess an annoyingly letterboxed video means 70% less k-pop Christmas crap visuals, so in this case I’m okay with it.
December 23rd – ASC2NT – Replay
Asc-two-nt seem to hate Christmas decorations too and couldn’t even be bothered turning up the lights bright enough so you could actually see them. Looks like they ended up shooting most of the video out on the bridge after they dumped all their tinsel in the Han River. Somewhere a dolphin is being strangled but at least their video doesn’t look like gaudy shit I guess.
December 24th – XG – 4 Seasons
This one features XG’s singers only so you already know it’s a skip. Mind you I don’t really want to hear cringe Christmas raps anyway even if they’re done to XG’s usual standard so I guess I should be grateful. I suspect the rap team noped out of this one for the same reason.
December 24th – Lee Seunghyub&Yoo Hweseung – It’s A White Christmas
These guys are from M.Flying and you can tell the groups with the bigger label backing because they can actually afford extras to ride the roundabouts.
December 24th – RESCENE – MVP
I know what it’s supposed to look like, but that opening shot of the Santa decoration with the tilted back posture and the wide-eyed stare looks exactly like he hung himself after listening to too many Christmas k-pop comebacks. Just a reminder that statistically Christmas/New Year is peak suicide season around the world due to all the toxic positivity feeling so alienating to people going through hard times, so this is just your reminder to take care of yourselves and each other and you can always drop me a line through my ask-thingies if you’re feeling very shitty. In the meantime I’ll do my part to help your mood by shitting on all of these toxically positive Christmas songs as they represent a serious mental health hazard that needs to be contained in posts like this one.
December 24th – Verivery – Only One Present
I’ve only got one present for you, and that’s that this godforsaken awful Christmas roundup is now over!
So in summary, fuck all these songs. If I missed any please don’t suggest them below in the comments or anywhere else because I really couldn’t give a fuck, we’ve all suffered enough. Ho ho ho from Kpopalypse, and I hope you had a good Christmas (by listening to something else) – yay!