It’s time for Kpopalypse roundup! Let’s take a look at some new releases!
Johyun was no stranger to controversy back during the 15 minutes when people actually gave a shit about her old group Berry Good, and she’s making people take notice again this time by complaining about the lack of ballot papers in Korea’s elections, with several districts apparently running out due to an unprecedented voter surge. Apparently lack of ballots on the day favours progressive parties as progressive voters in Korea tend to vote before election day for some reason. As a result conservatives are saying this is a form of “election rigging” (even though it was a reaction to conservatives who complained about too many ballot papers being available in the previous election which partly led to the shortage), but given Johyun’s past controversies I’d say “erection rigging” is more likely.
LE SSERAFIM, ILLIT, KATSEYE – Iconic By Mistake
A thoroughly useless song that doesn’t contain anything that makes any of the better songs from any of these groups work. If anything, all this track proves is how any group of girls are interchangable with any other group of girls as far as HYBE are concerned and how none of it matters if the music is shit. It’s so characterless that with my eyes closed I couldn’t even tell you which group is where. NewJeans should be thankful they’ve been benched right now.
BTS – Come Over
Bland and dreary but at least not offensively crap, so it’s a definite step up from their last couple of feature tracks.
i-dle – Crow
It’s pretty obvious that i-dle at this point is really just “Soyeon and the i-dles” given that it’s over a full minute here before she lets any of the other girls have any shine. She might as well drop the pretence and go solo at this point. Anyway there’s a cool concept here which I’d love to see girl groups do more of, but the song itself doesn’t have the catchiness to back it up.
Yena – Mirror Mirror
Twee and horrid in that j-pop way, another argument in favour of excluding stuff that walks the tightrope between k-pop and j-pop from roundups altogether.
MEOVV – Hit ‘Em
Some cool sounds but everything’s just so monotone and boring. The best parts of the song aren’t the parts that are really prominent. This song needed less yap and more clap.
RIIZE – Do your dance
Wait, isn’t it “heads, shoulders, knees, toes”? Weren’t you listening to the teacher? Who said you could change up the beat? That’s it – nose against the wall until recess.
SHINee – Still Raining
Pretty bland stuff that so middle of the road I don’t even have anything snarky to say, so I’ll just use this space to tell you that I did a bit of a site upgrade in the backend that should make this thing load better, so let me know if it’s better, worse or no difference or you just don’t give a fuck. It’ll still lag like shit if you have video autoplay on (turn that shit off in your browser settings, noobs) but that’s a YouTube problem.
Yerin feat. Pateko – Shooting Star
Who is this woman in the white dress and what did she do with Yerin? Anyway, maybe she should search that guy’s external hard drive for some better music.
Jimin feat. Untell – WYA (Where You At)
I feel like Jimin doesn’t really know what she wants to do after AOA, everything she’s done since seems to be her reinventing herself as something different each time. Last I checked she was trying to discover her rock roots, this time it’s coffee-shop boredom for some reason.
Queenz Eye – LBD
What’s with all the acronyms in k-pop song titles, like I have enough fucks to give to remember what your random combination of initials stands for.
HEART OF WOMAN – Tea
What in the ass licking dick cunt fuck is an “archiving video”? Maybe it means they’re archiving this song somewhere so we forget about it as it’s nowhere near as good as their other songs.
Tomatomat – Orange Runaway
Yeah this is pissweak, another group where all their other stuff is better.
EPEX – Echo
Not too bad, this song just needed someone to know how to write a chorus. An echo echo echo echo echo echo is not a chorus, that’s just someone pissing around with an effects plugin.
AHOF – Sugar High
It’s 2026 and boy groups are still allergic to a chorus.
Haseul – Again
I bet you didn’t even know Haseul had a song out. Neither did I. Neither did most Loona fans. Oh by the way where the fuck are those fans – at the time of writing this has less views than my end of year list videos. Haseul really is at one with the spirit of the nugu.
YOUNITE – Parallel
All synths and no song.
ChillLit – Bottles
Why the songs about bottles lately, that’s what I want to know. Anyway VVS outsold.
CATCH THE YOUNG – Addicted
A different sound for k-pop boy “idol rock” groups, something kind of slow and grinding and groovy and not very interesting.
CROSS GENE – Helicopter
Wait, Cross Gene are still around? Well, not really because there’s only two of them and they’re in this stupid AI slop animated video so we don’t feel too embarrassed for their real selves. They should just give up on k-pop at this point and drive off in that sports car of theirs that keeps changing brands every shot.
NAVILLERA – Friday Night
Which seat should I take? Looks like Navillera made their mind up and sat in the “z-tier group from around 2015” seat.
THE SCOUT – Shout! Stars Reborn
What the fuck even is this. Don’t tell me it’s the boy group version of tripleS? Do I have to do another identification post? I haven’t even gotten around to the tripleS one yet.
Dragon Pony – Run to Win
It’s alright I guess but you need more than fast rocking, you need a good song too and this is still painfully generic once you get past the fact it has a guitar solo in it.
Balming Tiger – Oui
The usual strangeness and lack of songs, although this one’s better than most of what they do thanks to flirting with something vaguely resembling a musical style. Not sure what the fuck is going on at the end though.
Nuton feat. Miyeon – Don’t Ever Say Goodbye
Seeing as how she barely has anything to do in i-dle no wonder Miyeon is outsourcing herself like there’s no tomorrow. Hey she seems open to collabs with literally any old loser, maybe Miyeon would like to collaborate with Kpopalypse, if you’re reading please send me a list with your rates.
Luna feat. Kylie – Cotton Candy
Shit song and you wouldn’t even know it was Luna of f(x) in there if the title didn’t say so, but it’s just refreshing to see a video that has boy model eye candy swanning around cutely doing jack shit instead of girl model eye candy. Equality, or something.
Isha, E.SO – Sweet
Finally some ex-Berry Good members have something that isn’t total shit. It’s not that good either but “average pop song with nothing notable about it” is a significant step up from their last 2357 solo songs.
Isha, E.SO – I don’t feel like going home today
This one’s the same but faster.
Samuel – Zigi-zigi-zigi
Another crap song but I did enjoy the dancing here.
Mighty Mouth feat. Dindin, Soya – Tok Tok
This is a remake of an old song and I usually just delete these from roundup completely because honestly who gives a fucking shit about a new song that’s really just someone rerecording some old song, how is that even relevant to anything, but in this case… no, actually I still don’t give a fuck.
Ash-B – Tough
Ash-B is good at making lame styles of rap tolerable (she wrote VVS’s “Bottles“, and it shows) and she’s pretty good here but I feel like this still on the weaker end of an Ash-B song.
Lee Michelle – That You
Do you remember Lee Michelle? No? She’s the girl in this video who turns up at 1:27 with a bottle of booze, as you well might if you entered the Korean pop industry and gave it your all and were neglected for a decade and a half.
Gyubin – You Light Up My Life
Poop song but putting this here for that one anon who asks livestream questions and has a mad crush on Gyubin, because whoever was in charge of this video absolutely made her look great here.
Gabby Onme – Where’s the exit
If someone finds the exit let me know, I want to escape also.
LØREN – Emergency
Here’s a Google search for you in case you’ve forgotten who this guy is: “loren burning sun”. Have fun!
Seori feat Kim Jong Wan – My Gravity
I guess it sounds how I would expect it to sound given that there’s a Nell member involved.
Soorin – Star Rating
I have to say that I’m not sure if I’d enjoy the “Soorin Restaurant”, do I really want to wipe off the remnants of rogan josh paste every time I want to wear headphones? Also, only one crouton? The fuck, I want to see the manager.
Chio Chicano – With My Dawgs
We have a winner, folks. If you’re going to do it, go all in. Go all the way. An example for us all.
Yseult – Now Or Never
Someone reminded my about Yseult existing so she can be the random pick of the week. This song is good. That is all.
RANDOM BONUS VIDEOS OF THE WEEK
Busy Comparing Data – 100 Most Beautiful Female K-Pop Idol 2026
It’s not really worth the click to watch this AI slop video, but what’s certainly worth doing is going to YouTube and checking out the comments of everyone being buttmad at someone’s subjective opinions. There’s hundreds of these now and they’re all great because it’s obviously just there to annoy people and get them commenting. I should do a few videos like this of my own just to piss people off.
aespa – Lemonade – metal version (not AI)
This metal version is a nice attempt but it doesn’t really fix the problem with “Lemonade” which is the vocal melodic choices, instead just changing everything else around them to try and salvage it. Oh well.
Jo Kwon – I’m Da One
A pretty awful song from back in HYBE’s “put their group members so far into debt that they turn to extortion” era, that’s these days only notable for having some BTS boys as backup dancers in the video and not much else. If you use YouTube’s feature where it marks the most popular parts of the videos it’s all the bits where there’s occasional lingering shots of some rando BTS oppar. They’re quite young here so I hope people were looking respectfully.
That’s all for this week! Kpopalypse roundup returns next week!
