It’s time for Kpopalypse roundup! Let’s take a look at some new releases!

I need some money at the moment, perhaps I need to work out how to turn my weekly livestreaming into a successful blackmailing-of-idols operation. Junsu, got any tips?

Jin – Running Wild

What I want to know: why does Jin get all the really good BTS solo songs, and every single other member gets absolute trash? I guess someone in the group had to have some music taste.

Taeyeon – Letter To Myself

Taeyeon’s lighter-waving mid-tempo ballad isn’t bad at all actually. By the look of this video I think she’s going to start playing furry conventions soon.

ILLIT – Tick-Tack

Where have I heard that particular keyboard patch before, gosh certainly not another well-known five-member girl group closely associated with Illit’s company… anyway this song isn’t a bad effort but that chorus is just a bit too annoying with the dit-dat-dee-dat-dit-dat-shit-crap.

ATEEZ – Ice On My Teeth

That slow, boring trap-infused boy-group sound that more and more groups have been leaving behind lately, come on Ateez get with the times.

Stray Kids – Giant

Mostly a giant waste of time, with cool sounds but no real songwriting to back it up.

LE SSERAFIM – Star Signs

Are Le Sserafim going to finally crawl out from under the shadow of their labelmates and rise again to relevance, reclaiming their badass debut sound? No, of course not, don’t be silly.

NEXZ – Nallina

A song that’s mainly just sound effects and chanting, which seems to be what most songwriters think constitutes a chorus these days.

MEOVV – Toxic

Weirdly maudlin and empty. Sometimes minimalism is an asset but it isn’t here. It’s just too little.

Yves – Viola

Not much of a song and definitely worse than her last few, but damn how good did they make her look in the video. No wonder Chuu spent last weekend at Yves’ house instead of appearing in her own music video, we’d all do the same if given the chance, surely.

BIBI – Derre

As per usual Bibi has amazingly good video concepts and dud songs.

Hwasa – Star

A clever arrangement that only kicks into full gear in the closing stages is appreciated but it isn’t enough to save what is basically just another boring acoustic ballad that k-pop already has too many of.

Younha – Point Nemo

Seriously, why bring the amplifiers out onto the beach if you’re just going to mime it anyway. Talk about giving the film crew a ton of unnecessary work, plus all it takes is for one larger than usual wave to come rolling along and there goes your head and cabinet.

Tova Oh – Dizzy

Tova Oh is the artist formerly known as UZA and I’m not really that much into her latest song although the sounds from the synths are at least really good.

Nakyoung, Mayu, Shion, Chaewon – Polaroid

Only really notable for that weird “big band jazz” changeup at 1:14, nothing else about this really sticks out and especially not the people in it who I have no chance of remembering and yes I will mention that each and every time this TripleS group is covered here just because it seems to annoy people you’re welcome.

CLASS:y – Psycho and Beautiful

I keep forgetting that CLASS:y is essentially T-ara 3.0 but it’s easy to forget that with middling songs like this. I do really like that odd lumpy bass-drum noise that happens when the beat kicks in though, like they farted out the microphone diaphragm by riding the gain too high but just left it in the mix anyway. It’s not the worst or weirdest idea that someone at that agency has ever had.

PRIMROSE – Steal Heart

Some readers assumed that I wouldn’t like this, and they’re right, but it’s not that bad. Well okay, it’s pretty shit, but it’s not agressively shit, it’s more just garden variety fertilise-your-lawn shit.

TIOT – Take It Slow

Accurate song title of the week.

A-Plus – Error

Definitely an error on the agency’s part to think that this was release-worthy.

BigOcean – Flow

It says a lot about the quality of k-pop in 2024 when a group of deaf people can realistically compete with the other offerings out there with no major problem.

8TURN – You Are My Reason

You are my reason for moving onto the next video.

TVXQ! with Toho Band – It’s True It’s Here

Horrible, horrible song but worth a look just for the scene at 4:06. Never mind the dudes waving their hands, look at all that neatly-organised old-school stationery. These are the people at the forefront of k-pop “culture technology”, sitting there with old school twisty metal crank sharpeners. How are aespa getting back to Kwangya, hitching a ride on fucking Sputnik? Catching a lift from The Wright Brothers?

AMPERS&ONE – Calling You Back

I think I’ll let this one go to voicemail.

DXTEEN – Level Up

Actually one of the better boy groups comebacks lately. It’s not amazing but it is straightforward and pleasant enough and a bit pacy so that puts it in the top 5% for this week easily.

JAESSBEE – All of you and now

Okay, someone give me the backstory, why is this popular. Not that popularity is or isn’t a determining factor in quality or anything, not making a judgement here (for once), I just want to know, thanks.

Daychild – Stunning

Kind of weirdly atmospheric and not all that good.

Dream Route – Let’s take a rest

Let’s take a rest from reviewing shit songs and instead put the weekly Asian but not Korean not pop not world music feature here, yay! If you want to hear ridiculous guitar shredding look no further than Chinese guitar shred video collabs. I’m sure you can find tons of these on Billibilli but not many make it to YouTube, I liked this one because it has a few different styles including a fusion section so you jazz eggheads (hi Annie) can fap, enjoy.

Anda – Dawn

Your community service announcement that Anda is still a thing and making songs. I’m not really into this but at least she’s still doing it and not marrying a Saudi prince or something.

Baekhyun – Rendez-vous

What is this fucking lounge music bollocks, is this what the kids are into these days, god I hope not.

Yesung – There She Goes Again

There Yesung goes again with another boring song I don’t care about. Damn, what a slow week.

KAVE – You

Who are these people? I have no idea but hey the song is good! Sure, the lyrics make no fucking sense at all but I’m not gonna hold that against it, this is rocking and really makes up for the lack of quality stuff this week.

KARDI – No Need

This isn’t bad either. They don’t quite have a song I like but at least they turned the guitars up.

Verycoybunny – Red Flag

One day this group will have a song I really like, but this isn’t it.

Sohyang – Surrender

In an alternative universe, incredibly good singers actually get incredibly good songs to sing, instead of propping up the most generic trash imaginable.

Junoflo feat. Lyricks – 24 HRZ

It’s hard to give a fuck about the “soft rimtap weak shit” end of hip-hop. Or about roundup in general this week so I’ll leave it here.

RANDOM BONUS VIDEOS OF THE WEEK

Wonho – Practice Till You Make It – Practice behind the scenes part 2

I thought readers might enjoy Wonho getting ready for his fans by practicing several important dance routines, including the ass-shaking from Viviz “Maniac”, you’re welcome.

VIVIZ = ‘Shhh!’ Dance Practice (Moving ver.)

We had Wonho dance practice so in the name of equal opportunity we have to have a Viviz dance practice here too. Kpopalypse is all about diversity and including the maximum amount of tastes, I hope you appreciate this effort.

KARA – Jumping

Kara had some great tracks back in the day, but I was never much of a fan of “Jumping”. It’s agreeably high-energy but it’s also pretty screechy and overloaded with vocal layers and it just wears down the ears after a very short amount of listening. It does not make me want to pretty.

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That’s all for this week! Kpopalypse roundup returns next week!

Caonimas have been noticing that AI-generated visuals have been appearing in k-pop music videos more and more over the course of the past year. At the same time, there’s also been a rise in the denial of the use of AI in music videos by k-pop fans eager to cape for their biases. But what is the truth, and how is Kpopalypse determining the use of AI? This post has the trufax!

When AI-generated imagery started appearing in k-pop music videos, I originally wanted to boycott all use of AI imagery everywhere in roundup and Kpopalypse coverage in general. My stance on this was because of the following reasons:

• AI imagery takes away jobs from artists
• AI imagery is basically plagiarism
• AI imagery isn’t very environment
• AI imagery generally looks like asspaper

Unfortunately for me, this moral high-ground proved to be unworkable. The use of AI has now taken off to such an extent that if I stood true to that boycott I’d probably be left with a large chunk of the most interesting comebacks not even covered, and there goes half the stuff in roundup people actually want to see. So the only stuff that I’m boycotting is the super lazy stuff, the videos that are literally just an AI prompt into a video-maker like Sora and not much else. Please now thank one of my readers as I introduce you to AI Jesus:

This terrifying video showcases typical lazy AI video generation results and shows a lot of the things that AI can’t do right consistently yet, like draw the Roman numerals on clocks correctly, figure how how many digits people have on their hands, or stan Chuu in a sensible fashion.

You can count on AI to be as confidently wrong as any k-pop fan on social media

Of course it’s easy to pick on an independent artist’s effort, and as we all know they have no money so we can probably forgive them (a little), the temptation to use AI instead of hire another starving artist (like them) must be large. Any k-pop idol studio wouldn’t have those kind of worries though, they’d tidy up such little details before the final product and make sure that no mistakes like that slipped through anywhere because as we all know k-pop is all about consummate professionalism and creating the best product possible…

Well, okay never mind. But my point is that there’s no real debate about these kinds of uses of AI, it’s fairly obvious. K-pop fans definitely noticed that the above video had lots of AI in it, to the point where the label sat up, took notice, and released a “natural” version with all the more obviously AI-generated imagery removed but plenty of the less obvious stuff still left in no AI-generated imagery at all, gosh no, pinky swear.

This of course completely satisfied the concerned k-pop fans. Isn’t it lovely when agencies listen to their fans, gosh yes. However sometimes it’s not so easy to determine if AI was used. So how can we be sure?

Whenever I determine the possibility of AI use in k-pop music videos, I try to look at it from a business perspective first as if I was the creator:

• What would be the time/money investment for AI to do this
• What would be the time/money investment for a human to do this via physical props, CGI, hand-painting etc
• Where am I actually going to use the result, how much bang for my buck do I actually need given the intended use

An important thing to understand about video directors choosing to use AI, is that they’re typically not “AI-bros”. They’re not like the mouth-breathing idiots who hang around on social media with NFT profile pictures talking about some techno-optimist bullcrap, they don’t have any ideology invested in AI use. K-pop video directors are simply using it because they have production deadlines to meet, and they want to use the quickest way of doing something, like a programmer who might use AI to knock up a quick code template just because it saves a bit of time. That doesn’t mean they’ll use AI for everything, definitely not, because 1. the tools suck too much to trust them to that extent (see AI Jesus above) and 2. why automate yourself out of your own job, but something conceptually straightforward that’s easy enough to explain to a computer with a prompt but a tremendous hassle to actually make manually is something that a k-pop video director will be very tempted to use AI-generated images for.

So let’s look at the main types of AI use in k-pop videos today, by singling out some videos that I’ve previously flagged as having AI use, and look at why AI might have been chosen in these types of circumstances.

Hyuna sorry I mean IU’s “Holssi” has a video which is mainly not AI, but the floating people certainly are AI. Indistinct-looking people with withery, undefined limbs, hands and feet is definitely something that’s directly within AI’s wheelhouse at the time this video was made. This type of look is something that AI image generation can knock up quickly, but which would be a true pain in the ass for a human to do with a manual CGI tool, so it makes sense that they would use AI here for this. It’s probably also the reason why this song has a “recording behind the scenes” video but no “on the video filming set behind the scenes” video like IU usually has for all her other MVs. Why would IU’s agency miss an opportunity to do a behind-the-scenes video for a big inflatable Tweety Bird… unless they didn’t want people to know that it was just a “big yellow cartoon bird please, plagiarise Warner Bros a bit why not fuck it” prompt?

The dog/wolf/whatever the fuck that is at the start of Kiss Of Life’s “Get Loud”, that’s AI-generated for sure – no, not CGI. How do I know?

• CGI dogs these days look a fucking hell of a lot better than this shit, look at its feet holy fucking christ where’s AI Jesus when you need him
• Who the fuck has time to draw a CGI model for a dog that barely gets used

The second point is crucial. If it were a manually-built CGI dog, they’d probably make it the main feature of the goddamn video and use it a ton, because it would have taken some artists quite a bit of time and effort to actually create it and they’d be thinking “now we’ve fucking paid for and got the damn dog, let’s make the most out of it so we can get some return on our fucking cyberdog investment”. However, they didn’t do that – they’re only using the dog for two seconds at the start of the video, so what do you think is more likely for them to do:

1. pay someone for all that time and make them put in all that effort to (badly) animate two seconds of dog that nobody cares about, or
2. someone in post production thought “gosh this scene is featureless and bland hey a dog would look good here” and threw a prompt into some AI and made a dog real quick to fill up the space and threw it in and the director looked at it said “has that thing got paws of hooves who the fuck knows but hey fuck it k-pop fans will lap up anything as long as their bias is in it, I guess it mrds”

There’s lots of floaty AI-generated crap in Odd Youth’s “Best Friendz” video, like random bubbles, confetti, and… people having accidents, how aegyo, much heart shape. Again, it’s not manual CGI because think about the options:

• Pay a stuntman to fall off a ladder, multiple times
• Hand-CGI draw in a realistic-ish looking guy falling off a ladder
• Type “workman falling off a ladder” into some prompt somewhere

It’s only background detail (and it looks like dogshit anyway, notice how all the angles are deliberately so you can’t see the face, hands or feet, plus where the hell are they landing) so you know they are going to go with the laziest possible option. Again if it was someone’s blood, sweat and CGI tears the falling would be more front and center, it wouldn’t be a blink-and-you’ll miss-it background detail. There isn’t time to sweat over background details when there’s production deadlines to meet. AI for sure, 100%.

There’s also a technique in AI image generation that I like to call “detail spam”. Watch the sequence of images in Achii’s “Fly” video from 2:30 to 2:36. This is all AI-generation at work. Whenever you see something in a music video that fits the following criteria:

• Easy to describe to a machine-learning program with a prompt
• Extroadinarily high amounts of rendering detail, which would take a real artist hours or maybe days to create
• On the screen for an absolute split-second

Then it’s AI-generated (because again, if it took a real human days to make it, you’d better believe you’d see it in the video for longer). You see AI used like this a great deal in k-pop videos for transitional effects now, that flash up very quickly. When working with traditional CGI, a transition with a ton of detail is a headfuck, but with AI video generation, a heavily detailed transition isn’t all that much harder to do than a simple transition, because you describe it to the machine using the same method.

Same again with Jay “where’s my soju” Park and “Gimme A Minute (to type in this prompt for exploding cars)”. We know this isn’t hand-made CGI because hand-made CGI cars actually look really fucking good these days, CGI artists worldwide have honed their craft on decades of shithouse Vin Diesel movies, they know how to make CGI cars look like actual cars, more or less. The cars here on the other hand suck donkey dicks, they have the same weightless, blobby, wishy-washy feel as the floating people in the IU and Odd Youth videos, and they look like absolute ass, which is why they’re on the screen for such a short amount of time, so you don’t notice how badly a job they’ve done.

AI use doesn’t have to suck in the end result though. Feel however you want about the ethics of it, the right creative minds can still get decent results from it.

XG probably represent (at times) the pinnacle of AI-generated imagery in k-pop at this moment (and I’m calling XG k-pop for simplicity’s sake because idgaf). Plenty of XG fans were quick to insist that AI wasn’t used here, because why wouldn’t they, they gotta cape for their bias after all, using shaky arguments like “there’s behind the scenes photos of props plus a big credits list of people who worked on it, therefore there’s no AI“. Total bullshit of course, it doesn’t matter how many people worked on it, or how much of it is manually-built props, they could still be using AI as well. XG use AI in their imagery all the time. For an example, check out the “Princess Mononoke”-inspired foot imagery at 1:20 in the video. Fans were insistent this wasn’t AI because this photo exists:

It’s a legit impressive prop for sure, but it doesn’t mean AI wasn’t also used. This is actually precisely how the best visual designers work with AI (and CGI as well), they do as much stuff with manual props as they possibly can (because it looks better) and then add in CGI or AI-generated images afterwards over the top to enhance it even further (in this case the ‘growing’ effect on the ground).

It’s highly likely that XG used AI for this and other transitional effects in the “Howling” video, because… well, they’ve done it before, so why would they stop now? Their credits for the “IYKYK” video have four AI artists credited. I promise you that they didn’t turn around and suddenly say “gosh AI isn’t very environment, we’d better stop using AI artists now to help our country reach its carbon emissions targets or the fans will have a sad”. Sure, everyone cares at least a little about the environment, but when there’s a production deadline to meet, those concerns tend to become someone else’s problem. At least Cocona’s shaved head is real and eco-friendly.

Speaing of all things environment, I’ll leave you with environmental expert Chuu’s “Strawberry Rush” which is almost certainly using a fair bit of AI-generated imagery for all the more boilerplate-looking background cartoon shit. It’s not the first time Chuu’s new agency have used AI and they’ll probably keep doing it because even though the fans hate it, as long as they keep their interest up the agency doesn’t care. It works okay in this context anyway because it fits the surreal nature of what’s going on, and there’s a good chance that the AI output was then curated by humans and modified a fair bit further. I suspect that the main thematic details here were manually made and then some AI stuff was added to fill in the gaps. The result is a video that looks good but probably a bit too crowded for its own good, it’s a bit like watching those remastered Star Wars films where George Lucas added all the extra creatures just because he could. Also it’s hard to see all that cool Melbourne graffiti because of the critters getting in the way, it’s just as well that Chuu has a big enough screen presence to cut through it all.

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That’s all for this post! Kpopalypse will rursh back with another post soon!

Caonimas have been noticing that AI-generated visuals have been appearing in k-pop music videos more and more over the course of the past year. At the same time, there’s also been a rise in the denial of the use of AI in music videos by k-pop fans eager to cape for their biases. But what is the truth, and how is Kpopalypse determining the use of AI? This post has the trufax!

When AI-generated imagery started appearing in k-pop music videos, I originally wanted to boycott all use of AI imagery everywhere in roundup and Kpopalypse coverage in general. My stance on this was because of the following reasons:

• AI imagery takes away jobs from artists
• AI imagery is basically plagiarism
• AI imagery isn’t very environment
• AI imagery generally looks like asspaper

Unfortunately for me, this moral high-ground proved to be unworkable. The use of AI has now taken off to such an extent that if I stood true to that boycott I’d probably be left with a large chunk of the most interesting comebacks not even covered, and there goes half the stuff in roundup people actually want to see. So the only stuff that I’m boycotting is the super lazy stuff, the videos that are literally just an AI prompt into a video-maker like Sora and not much else. Please now thank one of my readers as I introduce you to AI Jesus:

This terrifying video showcases typical lazy AI video generation results and shows a lot of the things that AI can’t do right consistently yet, like draw the Roman numerals on clocks correctly, figure how how many digits people have on their hands, or stan Chuu in a sensible fashion.

You can count on AI to be as confidently wrong as any k-pop fan on social media

Of course it’s easy to pick on an independent artist’s effort, and as we all know they have no money so we can probably forgive them (a little), the temptation to use AI instead of hire another starving artist (like them) must be large. Any k-pop idol studio wouldn’t have those kind of worries though, they’d tidy up such little details before the final product and make sure that no mistakes like that slipped through anywhere because as we all know k-pop is all about consummate professionalism and creating the best product possible…

Well, okay never mind. But my point is that there’s no real debate about these kinds of uses of AI, it’s fairly obvious. K-pop fans definitely noticed that the above video had lots of AI in it, to the point where the label sat up, took notice, and released a “natural” version with all the more obviously AI-generated imagery removed but plenty of the less obvious stuff still left in no AI-generated imagery at all, gosh no, pinky swear.

This of course completely satisfied the concerned k-pop fans. Isn’t it lovely when agencies listen to their fans, gosh yes. However sometimes it’s not so easy to determine if AI was used. So how can we be sure?

Whenever I determine the possibility of AI use in k-pop music videos, I try to look at it from a business perspective first as if I was the creator:

• What would be the time/money investment for AI to do this
• What would be the time/money investment for a human to do this via physical props, CGI, hand-painting etc
• Where am I actually going to use the result, how much bang for my buck do I actually need given the intended use

An important thing to understand about video directors choosing to use AI, is that they’re typically not “AI-bros”. They’re not like the mouth-breathing idiots who hang around on social media with NFT profile pictures talking about some techno-optimist bullcrap, they don’t have any ideology invested in AI use. K-pop video directors are simply using it because they have production deadlines to meet, and they want to use the quickest way of doing something, like a programmer who might use AI to knock up a quick code template just because it saves a bit of time. That doesn’t mean they’ll use AI for everything, definitely not, because 1. the tools suck too much to trust them to that extent (see AI Jesus above) and 2. why automate yourself out of your own job, but something conceptually straightforward that’s easy enough to explain to a computer with a prompt but a tremendous hassle to actually make manually is something that a k-pop video director will be very tempted to use AI-generated images for.

So let’s look at the main types of AI use in k-pop videos today, by singling out some videos that I’ve previously flagged as having AI use, and look at why AI might have been chosen in these types of circumstances.

Hyuna sorry I mean IU’s “Holssi” has a video which is mainly not AI, but the floating people certainly are AI. Indistinct-looking people with withery, undefined limbs, hands and feet is definitely something that’s directly within AI’s wheelhouse at the time this video was made. This type of look is something that AI image generation can knock up quickly, but which would be a true pain in the ass for a human to do with a manual CGI tool, so it makes sense that they would use AI here for this. It’s probably also the reason why this song has a “recording behind the scenes” video but no “on the video filming set behind the scenes” video like IU usually has for all her other MVs. Why would IU’s agency miss an opportunity to do a behind-the-scenes video for a big inflatable Tweety Bird… unless they didn’t want people to know that it was just a “big yellow cartoon bird please, plagiarise Warner Bros a bit why not fuck it” prompt?

The dog/wolf/whatever the fuck that is at the start of Kiss Of Life’s “Get Loud”, that’s AI-generated for sure – no, not CGI. How do I know?

• CGI dogs these days look a fucking hell of a lot better than this shit, look at its feet holy fucking christ where’s AI Jesus when you need him
• Who the fuck has time to draw a CGI model for a dog that barely gets used

The second point is crucial. If it were a manually-built CGI dog, they’d probably make it the main feature of the goddamn video and use it a ton, because it would have taken some artists quite a bit of time and effort to actually create it and they’d be thinking “now we’ve fucking paid for and got the damn dog, let’s make the most out of it so we can get some return on our fucking cyberdog investment”. However, they didn’t do that – they’re only using the dog for two seconds at the start of the video, so what do you think is more likely for them to do:

1. pay someone for all that time and make them put in all that effort to (badly) animate two seconds of dog that nobody cares about, or
2. someone in post production thought “gosh this scene is featureless and bland hey a dog would look good here” and threw a prompt into some AI and made a dog real quick to fill up the space and threw it in and the director looked at it said “has that thing got paws of hooves who the fuck knows but hey fuck it k-pop fans will lap up anything as long as their bias is in it, I guess it mrds”

There’s lots of floaty AI-generated crap in Odd Youth’s “Best Friendz” video, like random bubbles, confetti, and… people having accidents, how aegyo, much heart shape. Again, it’s not manual CGI because think about the options:

• Pay a stuntman to fall off a ladder, multiple times
• Hand-CGI draw in a realistic-ish looking guy falling off a ladder
• Type “workman falling off a ladder” into some prompt somewhere

It’s only background detail (and it looks like dogshit anyway, notice how all the angles are deliberately so you can’t see the face, hands or feet, plus where the hell are they landing) so you know they are going to go with the laziest possible option. Again if it was someone’s blood, sweat and CGI tears the falling would be more front and center, it wouldn’t be a blink-and-you’ll miss-it background detail. There isn’t time to sweat over background details when there’s production deadlines to meet. AI for sure, 100%.

There’s also a technique in AI image generation that I like to call “detail spam”. Watch the sequence of images in Achii’s “Fly” video from 2:30 to 2:36. This is all AI-generation at work. Whenever you see something in a music video that fits the following criteria:

• Easy to describe to a machine-learning program with a prompt
• Extroadinarily high amounts of rendering detail, which would take a real artist hours or maybe days to create
• On the screen for an absolute split-second

Then it’s AI-generated (because again, if it took a real human days to make it, you’d better believe you’d see it in the video for longer). You see AI used like this a great deal in k-pop videos for transitional effects now, that flash up very quickly. When working with traditional CGI, a transition with a ton of detail is a headfuck, but with AI video generation, a heavily detailed transition isn’t all that much harder to do than a simple transition, because you describe it to the machine using the same method.

Same again with Jay “where’s my soju” Park and “Gimme A Minute (to type in this prompt for exploding cars)”. We know this isn’t hand-made CGI because hand-made CGI cars actually look really fucking good these days, CGI artists worldwide have honed their craft on decades of shithouse Vin Diesel movies, they know how to make CGI cars look like actual cars, more or less. The cars here on the other hand suck donkey dicks, they have the same weightless, blobby, wishy-washy feel as the floating people in the IU and Odd Youth videos, and they look like absolute ass, which is why they’re on the screen for such a short amount of time, so you don’t notice how badly a job they’ve done.

AI use doesn’t have to suck in the end result though. Feel however you want about the ethics of it, the right creative minds can still get decent results from it.

XG probably represent (at times) the pinnacle of AI-generated imagery in k-pop at this moment (and I’m calling XG k-pop for simplicity’s sake because idgaf). Plenty of XG fans were quick to insist that AI wasn’t used here, because why wouldn’t they, they gotta cape for their bias after all, using shaky arguments like “there’s behind the scenes photos of props plus a big credits list of people who worked on it, therefore there’s no AI“. Total bullshit of course, it doesn’t matter how many people worked on it, or how much of it is manually-built props, they could still be using AI as well. XG use AI in their imagery all the time. For an example, check out the “Princess Mononoke”-inspired foot imagery at 1:20 in the video. Fans were insistent this wasn’t AI because this photo exists:

It’s a legit impressive prop for sure, but it doesn’t mean AI wasn’t also used. This is actually precisely how the best visual designers work with AI (and CGI as well), they do as much stuff with manual props as they possibly can (because it looks better) and then add in CGI or AI-generated images afterwards over the top to enhance it even further (in this case the ‘growing’ effect on the ground).

It’s highly likely that XG used AI for this and other transitional effects in the “Howling” video, because… well, they’ve done it before, so why would they stop now? Their credits for the “IYKYK” video have four AI artists credited. I promise you that they didn’t turn around and suddenly say “gosh AI isn’t very environment, we’d better stop using AI artists now to help our country reach its carbon emissions targets or the fans will have a sad”. Sure, everyone cares at least a little about the environment, but when there’s a production deadline to meet, those concerns tend to become someone else’s problem. At least Cocona’s shaved head is real and eco-friendly.

Speaing of all things environment, I’ll leave you with environmental expert Chuu’s “Strawberry Rush” which is almost certainly using a fair bit of AI-generated imagery for all the more boilerplate-looking background cartoon shit. It’s not the first time Chuu’s new agency have used AI and they’ll probably keep doing it because even though the fans hate it, as long as they keep their interest up the agency doesn’t care. It works okay in this context anyway because it fits the surreal nature of what’s going on, and there’s a good chance that the AI output was then curated by humans and modified a fair bit further. I suspect that the main thematic details here were manually made and then some AI stuff was added to fill in the gaps. The result is a video that looks good but probably a bit too crowded for its own good, it’s a bit like watching those remastered Star Wars films where George Lucas added all the extra creatures just because he could. Also it’s hard to see all that cool Melbourne graffiti because of the critters getting in the way, it’s just as well that Chuu has a big enough screen presence to cut through it all.

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That’s all for this post! Kpopalypse will rursh back with another post soon!

It’s time for Kpopalypse roundup! Let’s take a look at some new releases!

One of the world’s deadliest snakes, an Eastern Brown Snake invasion closed down my school playground one day. That was a pretty awesome day to be at school, pity none of the people who were bullying me at the time got bitten. Little did I know back then that the snake was on the side of the bullies, but I’d find out all about it later…

IVE, David Guetta – Supernova Love

A blandly discofied version of Ryuichi Sakamoto’s “Merry Christmas Mr Lawrence” isn’t what I had on my IVE bingo card for this year.

VIVIZ – Shhh!

Lots of fuss about the dance for this one but I don’t know why, it’s nothing they haven’t already done in “Untie“. Sadly the song isn’t really worth making a fuss over either, being just a lightweight version of what Le Sserafim have been doing lately, even if I prefer the Viviz delivery system. Bring on next year’s Gfriend comeback.

XG – Howling

I don’t know who writes the raps for XG but they’re doing a great job, and the creative direction is on point too – even though the video is filled with disgusting AI stink it’s at least being guided by a hand that clearly knows what they’re doing, which makes it almost semi-watchable. And Cocona is still bald, so all is right with the universe. The weakest part of the package is definitely the melody writing, XG should just forget about all the pop song business and become a rap group.

Chuu – Pink Cloud

You know that a Chuu song is dull when Chuu herself checked out of being in the music video and palmed the job off to someone else because she’d rather spend the weekend at Yves’ house.

ENHYPEN – No Doubt

Nothing all that special happening here.

NCT DREAM – Flying Kiss

A weird song with boring meadering verses and a surprise chorus full of action with constant vocals and those big oppressive 1980s drum machine sounds turkey-slapping me in the face like my gay male readers’ NCT fantasies. I can’t help but feel after it was all over that I wasn’t quite ready for this stage of the relationship.

NCT DREAM – When I’m With You

It’s better than their other song though. Don’t call me, I’ll call you.

Sorn – Cool Waters

Musically the waters are a bit too cool here for me to want to dip my toe in, but this is apparently a rehearsal video for Waterbomb so I appreciate Sorn’s determination to be prepared for this culturally important event.

Heize – Fallin’

After a few good songs here and there Heize is back to her usual on-brand boring ballad stuff, let’s just move on.

EPEX – Universe

Hey this isn’t bad. Okay it’s a bit millenial-whooping but it doesn’t get too cheesy with it, there’s some nice melody and the tone and tempo of the song remain consistent throughout, in 2024 this is enough to get over the line.

EVNNE – Keshiki

I hope Youha doesn’t fuck around this much behind the counter when she’s serving up iced mocchas or whatever.

ALL(H)OURS – ‘Bout That Issue

If the issue is boring slow-paced shouty boy-pop I feel like it isn’t adequately addressed here.

WHIB – Play

This is the super old-school first-generation sound where nobody knew anything other than choruses with I, IV and V in them. I’ll take it over most of today’s stuff.

8TURN – You Are My Reason

0:12 – “Baby Snakes“!

Burvey – Clap

I thought this might’ve been something cool for Nugu Alert but then I had to do a double-take when I saw that the video had more views than every video I’ve ever posted online put together. Sorry, what was that about people wanting mature adults to debut in k-pop again, I can’t hear you over the sound of Gangkiz flopping.

Kino – Everglow

Didn’t really light my fire, despite being rock.

Sungjin – Check Pattern

The “rock” band members are doing solos now, god help us. This just sounds like any slower Day6 song, and they would have used a band to record it, so why isn’t it just a Day6 song? Who the fuck knows.

Yesung – It’s Complicated

That girl at 0:22 looks like someone just told her to be in a k-pop video for some loser she’s never heard of and she did a massive eyeroll. We can all relate.

Doyoung – The Story

I felt staggeringly unmotivated to review this trash so here’s your weekly Asian but not Korean not pop not world music feature instead, yay! This week it’s Hanabie, and chances are you’re already aware of them, I’m mainly just posting this here as a reminder to myself to get down and see them as they’re playing in my city this week. Due to some personal reasons (that may get in the way, forcing me to waste a ticket) I’m holding off on whether I should see them or not until the very last minute but hopefully I get to go to this, I’ve heard that they’ve an excellent live band.

Jeon Hayeon – Love you, silly

SM might suck absolute balls at trot, but people you’ve never heard of are still good at it. The only thing wrong with this one is the over-present voice, dialling back the mids just a little would have really helped the listenability here.

Stella Jang – Earth is Flat

Reminds me a bit of IU’s “Bbibbi” in both sound and look, but Stella Jang has a slight advantage due to the video mrcs

Kim Boa – Weekend

Damn this poor girl is still living in her campervan after all those years of paying her dues being in Spica plus doing ghost vocals for your bias. I felt sad for her so I went to Soundcloud to see if she was there so I could support her, and you know what? She is. Guess how many followers she has? No, guess again, lower this time. No, still too high. Keep going. Oh my god I think I’m going to cry…

UV feat. Yoo Byungjae, Jonathan – You are so cool

I have no idea what’s going on here, it certainly feels like there’s a joke that I’m not in on. However it’s worth noting that whether they’re kidding or not, the beat here is still better than a lot of Korean rappers these days.

Homies – K.I.A

See what I mean? This shit sucks, and these guys aren’t even trying to be ironically shit or anything.

Simaron feat. Kim Seungmin – Crosswalk

A bit goddamn slow but other than that I didn’t mind this one.

ROAD TO KINGDOM: ACE OF ACE ORIGINAL SONGS

CRAVITY – Historia

According to my song submitter, “Ace of Ace is another tv show that belongs to the Queendom/Kingdom franchise but with b-list boy groups”. This sort of stuff is usually characterised by overlong “dramatic” intros followed by generic songs that take no chances, and Cravity certainly fits that formula here.

8TURN – Speed Run

At least 8turn get on with it, even if their song isn’t much and their set design reminds me of something…

ONEUS – I Know You Know

Okay, this one was worth watching just for the imaginative set design and use of props.

The CrewOne – Hit The Floor

More imaginative staging paired with songs nobody will remember in two weeks.

Younite – Faith

I tried to care but then I stumbled on this random Viviz stage and that was the end of that.

Myungho (8TURN), Bain (The CrewOne), Seoho (ONEUS), Woobin (CRAVITY), Eunho (YOUNITE) – Continue

Don’t we love a good collab, and this one isn’t bad actually. Notice how they’re all in the studio for this one, recording it separately, so they don’t trip each other up on purpose during the live stages or spit in each other’s faces. It’s a competition after all, supposedly.

RANDOM BONUS VIDEOS OF THE WEEK

ROSÉ Needs a Stress Ball While Eating Spicy Wings

Watch as Rose eats chicken wings cooked in progressively hotter and hotter spicy sauces. I bow to her chilli tolerance. Also doesn’t she look better than ever immediately after leaving Blackpink, it’s amazing what not being in YG prison can do for a person’s disposition.

Kaylawmochi – XG – HOWLING – Fancam – Korea Fansign Chaotic Ver

Someone in XG’s wardrobe department took a look at NewJeans and all the other groups influenced by their “let’s staple random plushies and other weird shit to ourselves” trend and decided that they were going to go all-out. The results are spectacular. If you’re going to lean into something, don’t half-ass it, go all the way, that’s what I think. Also I enjoyed the sheer amount of silliness in this video, these girls actually make it look fun even to my jaded ass.

f(x) – Chu

Nobody wants to admit it (understandable I guess), but early f(x) were generally just… kind of not that great. It took until “NU ABO” for them to really find their form, before that time they just sort of sounded like a dumping ground for confused SM offcuts. “Chu” is definitely a song from that early debut time when the group didn’t have anything all that remarkable in the tank, there’s no real indication here that they would eventually evolve into a group with some of the most musically forward-thinking cuts in all of k-pop.

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That’s all for this week! Kpopalypse roundup returns next week!