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

Looks like everyone’s bailing out on BPM Entertainment. Of course here we’re mainly concerned about what will happen to Viviz. Kpopalypse bias list could be due for a shake up?

BTS – Swim

Do you know how hard it was for me to write a review of the “Wings” album the other day and actually stay awake? Eighteeen songs and 95% of them are either slightly above average or slightly below average, with virtually nothing notable about any of them other than that they exist, what an ordeal. Anyway true to form their new song isn’t as great as their circle-jerking “speak yourself, love yourself, but bully everyone else” fandom are pretending it is, nor is it as shitty as the average k-pop fan reeling from a full decade of ARMYs online sexual/racial abuse wishes it was. It’s just the same old mid brand BTS have well and truly established over the last decade. They paved the way – and all the pavers are the same shade of grey.

Yuna – Ice Cream

Definitely one of the best songs to ever be paired with a horrible AI slop video. Imagine how good this video could have looked with actual effort put in, like k-pop video makers were doing only two short years ago. The golden age of k-pop videos is dead and isn’t coming back.

NMIXX ft. Pabblo Vittar – Tic Tic

And this is why I wish people wouldn’t ask me to review every live stage video ever as if it’s a proper release. If the song is any good, it will eventually get an actual MV anyway if the label have any sense. And if it sounds like “Tic Tic”, it probably still will. Anyway since I’ve already thrown down on this song on an inferior video version (which isn’t really fair on NMIXX tbh but that’s your fault not mine for begging that I cover a non-MV) I don’t have much to add, so I’ll just use this space to let you know that you can do the latest Kpopalypse survey if you want, it’s out now and still has some time left to run. If you love what I do you should do it, and if you hate what I do you should definitely do it because it’s a much more effective way of telling me to go fuck myself than yelling at clouds on social media. You even get to be anonymous, I don’t even get your IP address or geo-location or anything I promise. Oh and my new book Girls909 is available for ebook pre-order now and is out in about a week and a half and you should definitely not buy it. Don’t come crying to me with your emotional trauma later if you fail to heed this advice.

Latency – Latency

I really want to support Latency but they do not have a great song as of yet. This is no more or less interesting than what BTS churned out this week.

P1Harmony – L.O.Y.L

This entire song sounds like a fart.

CRAVITY – Blast Out

Not Cravity having a better song than BTS this week. I mean it’s not amazing but just imagine how nuts people would have gone for BTS if their new song had this much fast rhythm in it. People would be like “omg the kings are back, song of the century” but since Cravity has this song instead nobody will care.

ChoCo1 x ChoCo2 – Frenzy

AI-SloPo 1 x AI-SloPo2 are back and their music is certainly nothing that’s going to work the neighbours into a frenzy.

Cosmosy – Chance

People keep weirdly begging me to put Cosmosy in roundups even though nobody cares about them and they’re consistently hot garbage and barely even k-pop so here we go. Wow, they really suck. What a shit group. No songs at all. Get them out of here. Next. There, I hope that made the 1% of my readers who give a fuck happy, I’ll now go back to ignoring them for another year.

SANTOS BRAVOS – Mhm

And this is the other reason why I don’t want to put Cosmosy in roundups – because if I have to include them, then for fairness I also have to include HYBE’s shit “latin boy group” and damn does nobody on earth want that, not even HYBE stans.

BTOB – We Together

Definitely old folks home music, surely BTOB’s fanbase can’t be this decrepit.

N.TOP – Shining Star

I’m not sure what’s worse, the AI slop balloons because somehow depriving a small town of drinking water was easier than going to the local two-dollar store to get some real balloons, or the bullshit part at about 1:50 or so where they break the mood to go all mysterious on us or whatever. Either way, this is ass.

AmbiO – Showtime

Eh.

AFuture – Spring Shower

Definite “Future Idol” label vibes in this song, which somehow isn’t from Future Idol. They should have called the song “Spring Foyer” though to match the video.

Hyunjin – Lover

Hyunjin from Stray Kids has a better boy solo than every single boy solo in my “Wings” review. Not that that’s hard mind you as all those tracks are pretty mid, but the melodic choice here is actually reasonably good.

WOODZ – Stray

What the hell is going on with Woodz lately, he’s somehow not sucking. I’m not wildly into this particular form of Seotaiji-ish nu-metal but hey it’s still something better than what he’s usually known for.

H1GHR MUSIC – Superstar

A pretty cool beat, pity nobody here really knew what to do with it. That lazy-ass chorus hook definitely isn’t cutting it.

DinDin, Cho Hyun Young – Always You

Just an FYI that a Rainbow member exists and is doing stuff. Don’t press play on this horrible ballad though, you have been warned.

Xion feat. Woozi – Blooming

Nothing much happening here. I do like it how he asks a ton of people for directions and still gets lost. Perhaps he was trying to find a better song.

Kevin Woo – No Escape

Some poop for some computer game but honestly it’s not too bad, probably one of the better songs this week.

Ellie – Sugar Rush

No, not that Ellie. You’ll see if you click. Think carefully.

Gabby Onme – Heart’s Racing

Actually really good. The only real problem here is the vocal lines are too crowded, more space would have been better. Still nice, and really nice when the singer shuts up.

Itzel – Whoo!

Cool imagery, not so sure about the music. It’s okay I guess.

Parameter – Surfer

Hey this is alright too. The small bands are making some decent stuff this week, which is great because almost nobody else is.

ChiU – Youth sometimes

Although the voice gets a bit annoying in the chorus, I’m really digging this one as well.

Layyi – I Just Cut My Hair

Here’s this week’s non-Korean random music pick. Layyi is from Singapore and this song is alright actually. Also, more people should play the Yamaha Revstar instead of stupid Gibsons. That is all.

RANDOM BONUS VIDEOS OF THE WEEK

ChocoChipz – Idols who learned new skills for music videos

Given to me as “an actually interesting short” and it is. Learn about four things you didn’t know.

IVEy daeng – IVE WONYOUNG reacted when a fan video called her in the school toilet and was caught by his teacher

Pity about the needless edits here, this video would have been way funnier without them. Gosh I can’t imagine why the fan picked the school toilet to call her. If it was Yerin she would have called him out.

s.e.s – U

The weirdest thing about s.e.s isn’t that they fucking suck, although they obviously do and anyone who thinks otherwise probably didn’t actually spend one second of time other the last month listening to s.e.s but is just pretending to like them because they’re a veteran group and woe betide the k-pop fan who dares to have a non-positive opinion on veteran k-pop regardless of how crap it is because how dare we have opinions on things or any individuality or any challenging of the status quo, this is k-pop which is a hugely right-wing style and and we are conformists damnit. No, the weirdest thing about s.e.s is that the production of their songs was often better than their sibling group H.O.T, as it is here. Waste of time for the rubbish song of course, but it does make me wonder how SM consistently fucked up H.O.T so badly. Five albums in they were still sounding like absolute ass, whereas s.e.s had shit songs too but at least worked out where the knob was for the aux send to the compression unit.

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That’s all for this week! Oh and do the latest Kpopalypse survey if you want. Or don’t, see if I care. Kpopalypse roundup returns next week!

It’s time for another album review – this time Kpopalypse is taking a look at “Wings” by international k-pop sensation BTS!

BTS are all the rage right now with the release of their tenth album “Arirang”, or so their fandom would have you believe. However, it’s no secret that the most casual and the most diehard BTS fans both have one thing in common – they pine for the early days of the group, before the group made the switch to western market focus and English-language songs that the group themselves swore they would never do. But were they really worthy of the hype back in those early days when “Wings” dropped, or was it just the HYBE (then BigHit) marketing savvy that got them over the line where other boy groups failed? Let’s take a look.

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BTS – Wings

Sporting an album design as aggressively uninteresting as Super Junior’s “Magic“, “Wings” was released in 2016 to commercial success and general critical acclaim, charting in several countries outside Korea. Although not as broadly successful as later albums, it formed part of the platform upon which BTS built their later international success, in fact you could almost say that it helped “pave the way”. The album features a huge rotating cast of writers and producers, however a big chunk of the album is actually built up of solo songs of the individual members. The album came in four different versions with slightly different patterns, and was later repackaged as “You Never Walk Alone” which will also be covered in this review.

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1. Boy Meets Evil (J-Hope solo)

An album intro of a sort, once it gets moving (the song starts at 0:38) the descending harmony of J-Hope’s “Boy Meets Evil” makes it feel a bit like Tricky’s “Hell Is Around The Corner” but with more yelling and general angst sprinkled in instead of the original’s hazy stoner dub vibes. Sadly, just like that song it doesn’t really go anywhere all that interesting and just treads water once the main groove is established. It works fine as a dramatic intro but once the beat kicks in and you’ve heard about ten seconds of it, you get the general idea. Eminently skippable.

2. Blood, Sweat & Tears

The pretentious conceptual religious bullshit aeshetics continue on the song’s title track, but when the video stops fucking around with Christian art-wank it becomes quickly evident that what we have here is just a tropical house song like any other. In 2016, tropical house was relatively fresh, and hadn’t yet reached the complete saturation point that peaked about one year later, and “Blood, Sweat & Tears” was actually one of the better examples of the tropical house style in k-pop generally, which would later be done to death by just about everyone else in k-pop (KARD alone would for years attempt to make an entire career out of it). However a “good example” of an incredibly corny and played-out style is still pretty mid in my book, and the song has aged especially poorly, the unfortunate cost of riding the crest of a wave of a now-incredibly stale trend.

3. Begin (Jungkook solo)

Starting off sounding relentlessly dull, cheesy and maudlin, “Begin” improves a great deal when it hits the faster rhythmic treatment of the first chorus. However it’s still severely crippled from then onward by the fact that the song never committs fully to double-time rhythm. The end result is a song that feels like it spends its entire length building up to something that never actually happens. Some better melody writing would have saved it regardless, but the weird crooning never really cuts above the rhythm properly to deliver anything catchy. Definitely a song designed more to swoon over than actually listen to.

4. Lie (Jimin solo)

Jimin’s solo “Lie” is at least reasonable in the verses, using looped classical samples to interesting effect. Things change completely in the chorus for seemingly no reason, with the song suddenly taking on a major-tonality psychedelic rock type of feel that takes a huge dump on the mood built up until that point and pretty much ruins the song completely. Most puzzlingly of all is that the song gets Jimin to do quite a lot of work vocally, an ill-advised choice given what he’s actually capable of, forcing him to of course mime all his live stages of this song (and others). Why they didn’t give Jimin something to sing that matched closer to his real vocal abilities so he could actually pull off the occasional real performance is anyone’s guess, I guess we all know what the “Lie” of the song title is, poor Jimin.

5. Stigma (Taehyung/V solo)

A dull, conservative song, that moves at a plodding tempo, cementing V’s brand as a boring crooner in solo mode that he’s carried to this day. There’s actually some cool Portishead-type things happening with the rhythm track here but they don’t get much airtime – everything’s buried in far too many layers of soft-jazz easy-listening instrumental slop, and multiple layers of Taehyung’s overdubbed vocals squealing at ungodly high ranges make the listening experience even worse. At least Taehyung can probably actually mostly sing this for real, but that doesn’t make the song itself any better. Definitely a song only suitable for your great-grandparents to fuck to, it has no business being this high up in the album tracklist order.

6. First Love (Suga solo)

A rap song with orchestral backing, Suga’s solo “First Love” is actually the best track on the album so far, and the first song here that feels like it somewhat lives up to the hype this group received over “Wings” back in the day. It’s similar to “Boy Meets Evil” but with the key difference being that “First Love” actually has a sense of progression in the backing track’s music that makes you feel like you’re on a musical journey instead of just walking on a treadmill going nowhere. Of course rap like this only requires being able to emotively speak in rhythm, rather than actual singing ability, so it’s a mystery to me why they didn’t take Jimin down the path of making this type of track, as this would have been actually viable for him. Anyway the soaring instrumental here is the real star of the show and works well.

7. Reflection (RM solo)

Much the same as the Suga solo, but a more flat, more depressing version with blander instrumentation and rapping that sounds like RM is about to fall asleep. It’s easy to forget that “RM” supposedly stands for “Rap Monster” but I guess even monsters have to get their baby naps in sometime. Walking a fine line between angst and boredom, there’s nothing much else to say here, this track definitely isn’t worth cyberbullying anyone for, as BTS fans were so prone to doing back in the day (and probably still, I guess I’ll find out when this review gets published).

8. Mama (J-Hope solo)

Finally something a bit instrumentally perky, this is J-Hope’s second solo song on the album and I’m unsure why he gets two but it’s probably a good thing that he did as this is one of the better songs on the album. It’s a better track than most of the others just because it doesn’t sound like it’s drowning in its own tears and angst, and there’s some pretty nice horns in the backing track. It’s nothing exactly great, but it’s listenable and pleasant and won’t want to make you slice your own wrists or jump in front of a train, which puts it in the top tier of songs on “Wings”.

9. Awake (Jin solo)

Regular Kpopalypse.com readers will know that Jin has the best track record of quality solo songs outside of BTS by far when looking at roundups and end of year lists on this site. However his song on “Wings” is a bit of a stinker, a bland ballad that sounds just like every other bland ballad that you’ve ever heard on every other k-pop album ever created. There is simply nothing at all setting this song apart from the acres of ballad slop out there that pollutes k-pop albums, and “awake” is something you’ll be very unlikely to be after listening so put it on loop if you have insomnia I guess.

10. Lost

Four of the seven BTS members get to feature on “Lost”, but you’ll wonder why they bothered as this tune could easily have been carried by just one of them (as long as it wasn’t Jimin of course). There’s no multi-part harmony vocals or anything else here that justifies utilising multiple singers, and while that’s a criticism that could be levelled at just about all of k-pop across the board, it still doesn’t make this particular combination of members make any sense. “Lost” is a boring mid-paced R&B lighter-waving track infused with the angsty dullness that permeates most of this album so far, and it sounds like it could easily belong to any other group.

11. BTS Cypher pt. 4

An actual reasonable beat starts things off, and it improves when the vocals hit – the tone of this rap track is definitely appealingly aggressive. It’s far from the best I’ve heard out of Korea (Gwangil Jo or Black Nut they are definitely not), but BTS are for the most part far more in their comfort zone delivering this type of song than anything involving actual singing. On R&B and pop songs they sound dull or simply generic, but here they deliver squarely on the promise of their hype machine with a menacing mood that’s largely absent from k-pop idol rap tracks. Definitely a track that should not have been buried so far back on the album after all the ballad junk.

12. Am I Wrong

A weird interpolation of Keb’ Mo’s “Am I Wrong“, that somehow needed four(!) producers and eight(!!!) writers including Dynamic Duo’s Gaeko(!!!!) and Kpopalypse bias Adora(!!!!!!!!!!!), BTS’s version somehow remains reasonably faithful to the original while still boy-grouping it up with lots of sub-bass and lame rapping/warbling. In the end it’s not a bad song because it at least keeps things a bit bright and sunny, but it still feels like exactly what it is – a blues track with too many cooks in the kitchen that should have been a lot shorter and simpler. Keb’ Mo’ outsold.

13. 21st Century Girl

Another track that’s reasonably acceptable or at least listenable, buried at the ass end of the album for no reason. “21st Century Girl” like most of the better songs on the album leans heavily on BTS’s core strength which is making somewhat semi-decent rap tracks. The lyrics are all about BTS telling their fans that they’re “attractive people really I promise pinky swear as long as you stay in the BTS fandom” so it’s a bit cringe but it still sounds reasonable enough thanks to ripping off a few other rap songs from back before commercial rap started completely sucking. Overall not bad at all.

14. Two! Three! Hoping For More Good Days/Two! Three! Still Wishing For Better Days

Starts off absolutely disgustingly horribly, but this song (which I’ve given two English titles as I don’t know which one is more accurate) does something which no other song on the album does – it proves that BTS (or someone connected to them) knows how to write a decent anthemic chorus. Unfortunately by the time you get there you’ve had to listen to a truly awful intro and some very dreary rapping, so you may not care by that point, but I imagine this song is a nice singalong live and probably works well in that context.

15. Interlude: Wings

I’ll skip over this final song as it’s a waste of time to cover it, an extended version appears on the repackage which we’ll look at below.

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REPACKAGE – YOU NEVER WALK ALONE

Released in early 2017, coming in two versions and once again featuring some truly scintillating art with all the appeal of staring at a blank wall of a prison cell, BTS certainly didn’t pave the way for interesting cover design with “You Never Walk Alone”. The label scrapped the final track from “Wings” and added some extra tracks, which are below.

15. Spring Day

A mid-paced track that fits pretty well with the “Wings” songs, in other words it’s competent enough but just a bit too angsty and maudlin to actually be enjoyable. The song actually uses a e-bow guitar technique that I really like, but it’s overused here and the endless layer of scratchy guitar overstays its welcome and sounds like nails on a chalkboard long before the song ends. If you love this song and don’t know what I’m talking about, then good – as soon as you hear it you can’t unhear it and it will annoy you forever. Don’t ask me about it, you have been warned.

16. Not Today

Probably the only song on either the main album or the repackage that sounds like it actually belongs on a boy group album, “Not Today” is decent. The quality is almost entirely because of the backing track choices, the vocals actually do very little and those huge synths do the vast majority of the musical heavy lifting. It’s a reasonably good track and the sort of song that I’m surprised BTS doesn’t have that many of in its catalog, given the insane hype around them. I guess marketing is what it is.

 17. Outro: Wings

The extended version of the final track on the original “Wings” release. This song is also reasonably decent, it’s nothing amazing but it has the brightness that a lot of the rest of the album lacks. It certainly had no business being buried right at the end or either album and it’s confirmation that nobody at HYBE knows anything about ordering songs on an album correctly. Perhaps the plan was to put most of the rubbish at the start to scare away all the casual fans so only the diehard BTS fans knew about these tracks… but it’s far more likely that someone just didn’t know what they were doing.

18. A Supplementary Story: You Never Walk Alone

By far the worst song on either version of the album, if you think that song title is awkward, just wait until you hear the music. Pure junk from start to finish, the kind of music that people pretend to like so they can creep onto you at the club, it’s truly disgusting and you should feel disgusted when you listen to this. To BTS’s credit, while they have a lot of songs that are overly angsty, melodramatically cheesy, or just plain boring, they’re pretty consistent and don’t have much in their catalog at all which stinks as much as this does.

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FINAL THOUGHTS

“Wings” is a dull listen, straight up, and while there are occasional bright spots, it’s abundantly clear that the music itself isn’t the main drawcard here, even for those who like it. The entire package is achingly maudlin, self-important and angsty for the most part, and I think that’s actually by design. If you’re an angst-ridden teenager who is depressed and hates the world and can’t read between the lines of corporate bullshit enough to reject pop culture on an ideological level and then “Wings” comes along, maybe you’d relate to it and it might make you feel better. Indeed that’s exactly what most of the album feels like it’s designed to do, and that’s probably true given that BigHit were caught slipping creepy, prying personality-profiling questions into fan surveys to fuel their future marketing back in the day. However I’d argue that you’d have a better time listening to heavy metal instead, a musical style that is actually more self-esteem affirming, plus you’d get better music, too, music that’s actually more worth listening to in its own right, divorced (somewhat more) from image, marketing, fandoms, and cult-like behaviour. The repackaged version of “Wings” is definitely better than the initial release so if you like the songs here enough to spend money then that’s what you should definitely pick up, but if I wanted some “me against the world” music I’d kick this shallow emotional junk food to the curb completely and listen to {insert incredibly good metal band that I don’t want to name lest they cop hate from psychotic BTS fans here}.

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That’s it for this post! Kpopalypse will return!

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

Heesung left Enhypen, which I’m sure isn’t a distraction from anything in particular, like a big k-pop CEO potentially facing life imprisonment for fraudulent activity, no, that couldn’t be possible…

ALLDAY PROJECT – I Don’t Bargain

Allday Project don’t bargain. They don’t do a lot of other things too, it seems. But what they should be doing is the latest Kpopalypse survey which is out now, CLICK HERE to participate and have your say in important matters concerning k-pop today!

YENA – Catch Catch

Yena goes for the old-school T-ara “Bo Peep” electro-banger vibes and certainly gets the sounds right, but the songwriting is lagging behind. Shinsadong Tiger is sorely missed and not just by bus enthusiasts.

BABY DONT CRY – Shapeshifter

A smoother sound than they’re known for so far (and lots of unfortunate AI slop) takes the edge off, but it’s still a pretty decent song regardless.

AtHeart – Butterfly Doors

A reasonably good song almost completely ruined by the wrong choice of rhythm for most of its running length. Why half of it is at funeral tempo in this age where we’ve well and truly established that Blackpinkian tempos just don’t cut it in k-pop anymore is anyone’s guess.

ODD YOUTH – Babyface

Definitely a redemption for Odd Youth after a horrible start to their careers, their new song comes off like a budget version of Twice’s “The Feels“.

NiziU – Dear

Dear Niziu,

This song is fucking boring.

Love, Kpopalypse.

Odetari feat. Soyeon of i-dle – Don’t Die

A song with a fast beat and literally nothing else going for it.

Yeojin – Sugar Talk

I don’t think there’s any “sugar talk” that can sweeten the fact that Loossemble is mentioned in the video title even though they don’t exist.

P1Harmony – Unique

Significantly less unique than hyped. Of course the main problem is the music but the AI slop sure doesn’t help. Did you know that it’s a common belief that my book covers are made by AI but this is in fact incorrect? The artist is the amazing Brazilian artist Caius Augustus and you should check his work out, it’s great, you can do so by clicking the Girls909 book pre-order page here and scrolling to where his social links are. He does commissions, if you hire him tell him I sent you!

ALL(H)OURS – Dead Man Walking

Listen at 1:04, that noise your dad makes after he gargles salt water is actually now a valid k-pop vocal tehcnique.

AB6IX – Bottoms Up

“Screw it, bottoms up” sure is one hell of a chorus, let’s make Korea’s alcoholism problem worse, fuck it. But the biggest mistake here is that they call their own group “A-B-Six” instead of what it really is, which is “A-B-Six-Ix”. Shame.

M.O.N.T – Keep It Slow

The guy at 0:18 is looking out of the window of his dorm at the stars, trying to determine the exact co-ordinates of his particular patch of Korean soil. M.O.N.T random patriotism will rise again!

DAILY:DIRECTION – Self

This group that sounds like a self-help course sure could a bit of help writing songs. They could use some better visual advice too. Check this video at 1:57, what in the random ugly AI crap?

Aoen – Instant Crush

Oh HYBE is launching a Japanese boy group now, gosh I guess crime really does pay for big labels if they’re lucky enough to maneuver themselves into “too big to fail” territory before they get caught that’s nice I hope they do well.

IN A MINUTE – Broken Doll

Well at least they didn’t do a “for the fans” video” although I suppose that’s hardly an option when it’s your second single.

CMDM – Leash

Nothing much going on here of interest but I’ve got to hand it to them for just letting a poorly-lit room be a poorly-lit room and not CGI-ing a bunch of AI slop crashing cars or bits of clocks or something.

V01D – Tug of War

I like it when k-pop boys song on top of rubbish heaps beacuse it reminds me of Einsturzende Neubauten’s “Armenia” which is a banger of a song, and some of these k-pop kids even have the same eyeliner as Blixa.

Dragon Pony – Oh Perfect!

Another bland rock song, another AI slop video. Just skip it, it’s the only way these people will learn.

Hi-Fi Un!corn – Hungry Heart

Hi-Fi Unexclamationmarkcorn’s song is actually pretty good, and the visuals don’t suck either. It is still possible, people.

S2IT – What I Want

Once you get over that the song is 6dB quieter than everything else on YouTube for no clear reason, the song isn’t bad at all.

AFuture – Dream Land

The sort of song that would probably sound okay if a group with a budget did it, but you can’t really get away with this on a shoestring.

SKINZ – Poison Ivy

Where is Asian Junkie? Why isn’t he featuring this? He stanned Plave for about ten seconds but now he’s hung them and all the other avatar groups out to dry.

GIRLZONE – Song of Wave

I guess the budget didn’t extend to grass and foilage. I guess that’s a bit much to code on a tight schedule, but it’s sad when Infinity Nikki makes this look like one of those made-for-Kickstarter asset-flip scams.

Younha – Skybound

I’ve heard that the Younha spam lately is because she’s released a covers album… I didn’t know there were so many mid songs that one could cover in Korea. Oh wait, yes I did. But anyway this is definitely the best one.

Hoshi – Baby, Honey

We don’t want this. Orange Caramel comeback when?

ACE – Bonita

“Bonita” is one of those words where you know instantly if it’s used in a song title A. exactly what that song sounds like without listening to any of it and B. that it sucks. Don’t press play on the video, just try to imagine the song in your head first, then press play and see how close you got. I bet you were at least 85% right.

Rosesia feat. Noducksoon – B.O.M

Just a bunch of nothing at all, really.

M’ewn – Like That

This is a very popular nugu video location that I’ve seen a lot recently from different groups and soloists, all on the Z-tier. Add it to the Korean tourism sightseeing list!

CAMO – Tell Me

That Autotuned poop nobody likes.

Socialclub Hyangwu – Bleeding Cherry

mrcs

A Day In The Life Of An Enshittificator

If you’re wondering why roundup is late it’s because YouTube suddenly decided they won’t let me have a chronological subscription feed anymore, which makes these posts (or indeed any posts) of mine much harder to do. Of course they’ll probably, maybe, give it back to me if I sign up to their Premium tier or something, which is the whole strategy of these companies now – break something, and make people pay for you to fix it. Don’t reward these pricks. If you’re subscribed to YouTube on any sort of paid tier, cancel your subscription, give your money to people who don’t enshittify things. In the meantime this video can go here instead of the random music pick because fuck YouTube. Fucking dickheads.

RANDOM BONUS VIDEOS OF THE WEEK

HYOKEY – I was a K-pop idol for 8 years, and I ended up with DEBT?

I know you’ve all seen this video (after all about 235 of my readers all recommended it to me) and it’s just all the stuff I’ve been saying and writing about already for over a decade, but just putting it here because it’s important and it never hurts to remind people. You never know, someone might be discovering and learning about this for the first time, it’s a good idea to make that process easier. Let’s not all fall into the Redditor trap: “there’s no point because everyone already knows stuff, man”.

Latency’s band practice is just as chaotic and annoying as the band you’re in

It’s just as shit as your own band practice, right down to the bit where everyone annoyingly swaps instruments to waste time, and they even give up after a while to play computer games instead. This is seriously how it goes. Realistic af.

Girl’s Day – Oh My God

A song in the “Roly Poly” style, and it’s inferior to that classic of course, but it’s still aged pretty well even if it’s a bit overlong. Just a shame about the video. These days we have AI slop ruining k-pop videos, 15 years ago it was random sound effects. How far we’ve come.

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

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

“Park Bom drugs something Dara something something”. Sorry I don’t care. Click Bommie to find out the bigger news this week that so far most of your favourite k-pop “news” sites aren’t talking about…

H1-KEY – To. My First Love

H1-key are back saving k-pop once again, bringing back the Christian horse girl music that drew so many people to the style over the last decade but which has been largely absent from the 2020s for no good reason. It’s not the best song in this style that I’ve heard ever, but it might be the best one this decade, or at least very close to it. Get rid of the stupid AI floaties in the video and it would also be visually perfect.

Rolling Quartz, Yoon Ilsang – Red Hot

Rolling Quartz take a stab at something grunge-ish (that recalls Nirvana’s “Lithium” in structure) and they actually do a pretty good job of getting the right guitar tone and general instrumental feel. However the melody and harmony is too blues-based to be interesting (they definitely didn’t co-opt any of Kurt Cobain’s Pixies-influenced songwriting smarts, a pity) and the singer’s vocal delivery is all wrong for this style. Nice try.

EVERGLOW – Code

Everglow made it safely back from Russia and they must have had a round table meeting with Putin because they’re now threatening to destabilise western democracies with below-average music which is nothing like the sounds that initially made them popular. It might be time to enact sanctions.

MADEIN – Pung!

Nice enough but just kind of nothingish and insignificant, like those AI-generated colour-splotches, or their CEO’s press statements.

GIRLSET – Tweak

It’s pretty easy to see why Katseye have had some success while VCHA/Girlset have always struggled. One group is taking risks, one is playing it super safe. I think JYP needs to dump the bible sermons and get a bit unholy on our asses if Girlset are going to actually get anywhere.

X:IN – Who Dat

At first I thought that this song was a tribute to Julie’s birthday party, and after hearing all of it, I’m still thinking that maybe it might be. It’s definitely not as awful as it could have been but why would anyone even listen to this when actual hip-hop exists.

WJSN – Mirror

The usual “for the fans” poop, which is obvious from the thumbnail. You can always tell it’s some crap when they try to make recording studio sessions look actually interesting like a place where performers want to be.

Kickflip – Twenty

I actually caught the YouTube premiere of this one. They’re always worth attending if possible just so you can say your piece in the live chat where the One True Fans will see it.

Of course a lot of people just go and type stuff like “flop” to troll but I think it’s just better to be honest.

Someone has to set an example that it’s okay to just have a basic opinion.

NCT JNJM – Wind Up

K-pop groups still talking about “east side” and “west side” in 2026. It’s never going to get any better, folks. In 2088 Julie’s granddaughter is going to have a birthday party and she will be wearing ten baseball caps at once and bugging her eyes out like Flavor Flav while eating watermelon. You might as well learn to love it because it’s not going anywhere.

Big Ocean – One Man Army

As usual the group full of deaf people have a song which is not significantly worse than that of any of the non-deaf people in k-pop. You can make up your own mind what that says about k-pop in 2026.

TUNEXX – I’m Alive

The best thing about this song is that after the very first note plays, theres’a a reasonable gap before the second notes plays, giving you the listener ample time to reconsider your life choices and stop watching.

NoeurA – Pop It Like

Nothing much here of interest except the usual slow boy-pop nonsense and the usual AI-slop video that the fans will scream “it’s not AI” about as if any k-pop company has the CGI budget to create all those assets within a typical boy-pop release schedule. Come on kids, you’re supposed to be smarter than this.

V01D – Rockrock

They had to call the song “Rock Rock” because Korean idol rock is so pussified and weak that they have to double up on the amount of rock just to make it sound like a normal rock song.

Younha – Sub Character

Younha in rock mode is decent, but don’t die of shock, I actually think her ballad with RM is better than this.

Younha – Seasonal Crime

This other song is boring. At 1:00 Younha does an interesting thing where she plays about nine notes but we only hear five, that’s a pretty good trick she must be very talented.

Younha – Karma

Wow Younha is busy this week. I guess this is meant to be the big feature and it’s appropriately upbeat but again it’s just not a great song.

n.SSign – Feelin’ Good

Big, brassy and boring. People want me to write longer reviews but how about your favourite groups give me something to write about?

NOWZ feat. YRD Leo – Ammo

“Now Z” seems like a great idea, zzzzzz….

SUCTION – Still Hurt

There are still groups out there doing Orange Caramel style fun visuals, they just don’t have good songs, that’s all.

SIKKOO – Kinda Guilty

What is this poop. The YouTube comments are interesting, I’m getting the feeling this guy isn’t liked very much? You always know when Koreans don’t like someone because they laugh a lot in comments sections ㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋ hate seems to bring them joy, bless their cotton socks. I’m pretty certain that this is Busker Busker’s fault somehow.

Solar x Accusefive – There’s Always a Planet That Belongs to You (Your Own Star)

If I were some kid and some singer abducted me to go and see them rehearse in a tent with signs saying “free hugs” I think I’d run and try to find a responsible adult to take me away from there.

Eric Nam – How The Fire Started

Actually… quite good? A good song really can come from anywhere. Also, I’m pretty sure this video will match the interests of quite a few of my readers.

Onew – Tough Love

This song must be about the “tough love” he administers in clubs in Seoul. Anyway, song is poop, next.

Omega Sapien – Hands Up in the Club

I’m not sure what’s going on but that thumbnail was a choice.

WOODZ – Human Extinction

Wow, Woodz has a good song this week too. We really are living in opposite land, I think H1-Key doing Christian horse girl music this week has upset the entire balance of our universe. Go Woodz, Kpopalypse is cheering for you. Release some more songs and make the most of this rift in the space-time continuum quickly before things return to normal.

Kim Sungkyu – When I think about you

When you think about Infinite members, you think about better songs than this.

B.I. feat. Coogie, Gray – Buzzin

Oh my god attack of the Autotunes. Also this just in: Gray hasn’t quit music yet. I wonder if he’ll turn in a banger one day. Probably not… but then if this week teaches me anything, it’s that you never know.

Shin Wonho – Warzone

No not that Wonho, this guy was from Cross Gene apparently, and the song isn’t bad but I don’t know, something’s missing here. Maybe it’s the lack of pecs. Maybe I really am that superficial. Oh well – so are you, probably.

Jay Chang – Feel

I feel like not talking about this song. Let’s move on.

Lim Sejun – Pray For God

Okay so at 0:16, because you folks still can’t tell apparently, the microphone is pointed straight up at the ceiling. He has his fingers over the part that he should be actually singing into. You’re welcome.

Minseo – Deep Dawn

Hey here’s another good song. I like it for much the same reasons that I like Eyedi’s “&New“. Minseo’s song doesn’t feature the same deliberately lo-fi production dicking-around, but they’re both good songs at their core.

Dbo – Real Purpose

His real purpose is to ride a HORSE.

Loopy feat. Foggyatthebottom – Still Lov3

Imagine posing out with sports cars and thinking that makes you look like anything other than a fuckhead. People like this actually exist. Society is in trouble.

Xooos – Pop Pop

Who does she have to shoot her own video in a big ass house on her own? Doesn’t she have any friends to hold the camera? She should reach out to Kpopalypse and I’ll introduce her to all my readers. We can be friends, then for the next video we can all go over to her house and have a party and make her videos look less empty.

DeVita – Tricycle

I guess it’s different but I’m not exactly into this. Anyway that’s enough songs for roundup I’ve punished you all enough.

Milli – One Punch

For this week’s non-Korean music feature I just thought I’d check in on how Thai rapper Milli is going lately. Better than your bias, as it happens.

RANDOM BONUS VIDEOS OF THE WEEK

Winter got scammed by ChatGPT

Since Korea love aespa and they love AI slop, perhaps Winter speaking out about how ChatGPT fucked her up when trying to purchase a phone case will be the kick in the pants that Korea needs as a culture to realise that not a single person alive wants AI slop in their lives in any sort of creative realm.

Wonyoung Wonyoungs for 4 minutes straight

How many products can IVE’s endorsement queen Wonyoung advertise in four minutes? The answer is, all of them. I bet she could afford the Elon Musk tier on my ko-fi with all that sponsorship money coming in. Mind you watching this is a bit of an endurance test, there’s only so much Wonyounging my brain can receive within a fixed timeframe.

Girls’ Generation – Way To Go

Might as well put the original Christian horse girls here, which just shows how close H1-key got to the mark this week. In fact I’d say that H1-key song is better than this due to far better songwriting and production, Girls’ Generation have super-distant drums and that horrible Rocktek-pedal guitar tone which lets an otherwise reasonably good song down a bit. Speaking of which my new Christian horse girl k-pop book which is really very nice really apart from all the horrible parts is now available for pre-order, you could order it from Amazon or Kobo here if you wanted, but you probably shouldn’t read it because it will likely just upset you and give you trauma and make you question how you even got to this point in your life where you’re reading some extremely messed up book from some random asshole who runs a cunty k-pop website, hey at least I’m honest you’re welcome.

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