It’s time once again for Kpopalypse’s most fappable k-pop video list! Those who pretend that they don’t fap to idols, rejoice as Kpopalypse gives you what you secretly want but are too gutless to ask for!
Writing educational and informative posts for Kpopalypse.com is a lot of fun, but it’s even more fun to annoy stupid people who truly deserve it, and that’s where the yearly “most fappable videos” list comes in. K-pop fans are always quick to criticise adult sexy concepts in k-pop, which is why we don’t have many of them anymore and the entire industry has gradually shifted to catering to pedophiles instead. Nothing bothers k-pop fans more than grown men and women being sexy, and there might be some of that sexiness in this list or maybe it’s just a massive troll, but either way I hope you get something out of reading it, even if that something is just thoughts of “why the hell did I click on this article, what was I actually expecting”.
10. Yoyomi – Dart
Yoyomi had a questionable year for music in 2025 but a good year for visuals, and “Dart” definitely sells the Yoyomi in Yoyomi pretty hard. Isn’t it funny how a fully independent artist like Yoyomi is quite happy to go for an ultra-sexual image whereas men and women employed by the big k-pop agencies do not, it’s almost like labels are selling less sex than what the idols themselves are comfortable with.
9. Ash-B – C’mon
Ash-B has been pretty consistent through the years and has appeared on these lists many times. She’s looking better than ever in “C’mon” which is definitely a song that has the complete package of fapability with Ash-B very much both looking and sounding the part.
8. Wonho – Better Than Me
Wonho has been back from military service for a while now and at first he was easing us back into his “content” slowly, but when “Better Than Me” dropped we all knew that he had returned to creating full strength fap material.
7. Moonbyul – Hoshiakari
Moonbyul is back and she’s definitely throwing a bone to the sapphics here. Not really into the song but the effort they’ve gone into here to lean into Moonbyul’s ideal types of look is outstanding. This video is just shot after shot of Moonbyul in styling and outfits that completely suit her 100%, something that really can’t be said for a lot of her videos – or a lot of anyone else’s videos for that matter.
6. GFRIEND – Always
Gfriend’s stab at a fake-reformation “Forever 1” style song where they try to pretend that they’ll never ever ever break up ever again pinky swear to prolong the amount of time they can keep their fandom clinging on for dear hope is pretty shit. However the girls do lots of dressups and have never looked better. Also, at least the full group actually showed up for the song, unlike certain other groups who have “reunion” videos with gaping lineup holes in them.
5. The KingDom – Last Flower
I was really worried about the KingDom for a while. I saw them live and there was not a hanbok or angrodynous looking outfit in sight, the best I got was a video backdrop with a little bit of ancient Chinese style graphic design in it. I thought they’d turned their back on making me question my sexuality and taking me back to those confused childhood times before my balls dropped when I had heard about sex but had no idea what it meant really. I just thought “sex” back then meant looking pretty like these boys do and rubbing up against things. Looking at this makes me think that maybe I was right back then and everything else I’ve been told since has been a lie.
4. Rockit Girl – I Like You
Leeseul from Rockit Girl takes looking good seriously, and she makes this period-stain-coloured outfit work like a charm by stretching the fabric to breaking point. Of course we know from research that Leeseul isn’t quite this stacked and that this is at least 50% bra, but Kpopalypse.com is a space where we appreciate effort as much as achievement.
3. WILD WILD – Boiler Room
I’m not sure where Wild Wild sits on the sliding scale between “k-pop group” and “bunch of male strippers with a ghostwritten dance track” but then the song’s a banger so I don’t really care. More importantly though, the guys definitely outperformed every other male in k-pop with their fanservice levels. If you want to know who is who, you can check their website, assuming you can keep your hands off your genitals long enough to navigate the mouse pointer over the link and click on it.
2. QWER – Dear
QWER flex their feminist girl-rocking styles once again, and the results are great, if not enough to snatch number one. I think that maybe actually letting the rain from the rain kits fall on the girls might have got us there, and less flanellette might have helped too, but alas it was not to be.
1. Apink – Tap Clap
Apink! They’ve done it again! But how? To find out let’s look at:
It’s time for Kpopalypse roundup! Let’s take a look at some new releases!
You know how last year Haknyeon was accused of prostitution and quit The Boyz? Well, turns out it was probably MC Mong all along and Haknyeon was just the fall guy. Putting Haknyeon here as the image though just because he’s a bit nicer to look at.
IVE – Bang Bang
Whoever cleared this song for release is a dumb fuck, I swear. It’s fantastic when the beat is going fast and boring as batshit when it’s going slow. The songwriters had the good sense to at least make the most important sections of the song the fast ones, so it’s definitely still much more of a win than a loss, but it could have been k-pop song of the fucking millennium if they just resisted the urge to constantly dick around with the tempo for no reason.
ILLIT – Not Me
Illit drink some of KiiiKiii’s debut bathwater here, and the results are as tragic as you might expect. Illit, like KiiiKiii, are one of the more “high risk, high reward” groups in k-pop – sometimes great, sometimes utterly worthless, but rarely boring.
MADEIN – Super Obvious
Madein is out here losing more members than John Bobbitt, speaking of which maybe in their next video when they’re swinging baseball bats they should be hitting their CEO, I think the fans would like that.
Raina – Almost Love
I’m clearly having Orange Caramel withdrawal symptoms because whenever I watch one of Raina’s new solo videos I can’t actually find Raina anywhere and this other girl keeps popping up. I have no idea who she is. Someone book me into rehab.
Chungha – Save Me
Poop visualisers of AI nothingshit are not eligible for roundup but I’m putting this here anyway just so you know I didn’t forget, I ignored this song deliberately.
ATEEZ – Adrenaline
A pretty cool bassline driving the track in the verses is the best thing about this song, it’s sadly lacking adrenaline elsewhere.
MONSTA X – Growing Pains
Monsta X have one of the better hit-rates out of k-pop boy groups but this is just the typical for-the-fans poop that everyone does so feel free to skip.
ZEROBASEONE (ZB1) – Lovepocalypse
They wanted to call it “Kpopalypse” but that name was taken. I think it’s only a matter of time before some hapless PR person actually does do that and I pick up a bunch of extra traffic and go viral for being an asshole for the 298th time.
THE SSYNDROME – Good Boy
Actually not too bad, I’ll take this over the likes of generic boy idol “rock” groups. Although they could have dumped that scratchy Tim Henson-ish rhythm guitar playing that’s trendy now and put a fucking guitar solo in there. And why is the keyboard player’s hands off the keyboard during the keyboard’s big solo moment? We need proper rock music video direction for these things.
LNGSHOT – Never Let Go
Someone gotta tell these kids that before you do “for the fans” videos it’s a good idea that you actually have fans to do them for.
AxMxP – Thereafter
Every boy-rock song is a lost opportunity for a girl-rock song to exist in its place.
Kim Miso x Avion – Jamila
Not entirely sure what’s going on here but it’s not all that great. I just wanted to alert you to the fact that this group has a guy in it who looks like a cross between Shindong and that guy from Lionesses with the really annoying voice.
Navillera – No Limit
This badly-edited mess would be perfect for Nugu Alert but it’s already way too popular to qualify. Hey at least they named themselves after a Gfriend song. What the hell is a “Navillera”, anyway?
Youngest – Night Long
I actually remember this group, from back before they were calculus-solving age when they were “Youngest Posse“. They actually weren’t completely awful even back then, and this new song isn’t amazing but it’s still unironically better than a lot of A-list stuff.
SKINZ – Why U Mad
Not sure about that group name, but anyway, there’s so many of these PLAVE-alikes these days, who can even keep up.
Jeong Eunji – Parrot
A pretty awful ballad but it’s worth checking out just to take a look at Eunji’s impressive mouth dimensions. This is probably the best solid focusing on her mouth in any Eunji or Apink video ever so enjoy if that’s what you’re into.
Sungmin – Godsaeng
I’m told this guy was in Super Junior but who can even be sure about that. SM Entertainment are always doing too much with their boy groups, having 57 members across ten countries in six different subunits nobody can remember, they sure paved the way for TripleS. I think that’s why it was BTS who broke through in the end and not an SM boy group, if you dilute the fan-crazy energy too much, you just end up with people acting normal and that’s no good for selling shitty product.
Sungmin – Dancing under the stars
His other song is marginally better but let’s be real, if SM did a poll asking their fans to pick someone random from k-pop to do a trot song he’d probably be about 573rd on almost everyone’s list of choices.
Hwi – That’s Me
Actually sounds really good up until 0:10 and then it’s all over. When will rappers learn that nobody wants to hear them Autotune.
SLAY & Nam Gyuri – Sorrow at my door
Hey, it’s a decent ballad! They do exist, they are just super rare. Of course it’s Nam Gyuri from Seeya, bringing back the old school Pocketdol style ballad… but without Pocketdol, probably not a bad thing.
Lee Nalchi – Do You Know The Five Virtues?
Oh no it’s the tiger lady back again… I think one of the five virtues is “don’t use AI in music videos”, and another is “don’t let Lee Nalchi near a microphone.”
Uneducated Kid – High
Halfway through the song this guy directly asks us why we’re hating. Dude, why do you think? Holy shit it’s not rocket science, you have shit music, that’s all it is. Get better music, or stop making music, or just do it in the privacy of your bedroom and leave us out of it if you want to suck this badly.
Dbo – Let it burn
I give Dbo points this week, he’s not using Autotune (much). He got the message, finally. If you fake-hip-hop douchebags in Korea won’t listen to me, at least listen to other fake hip-hop douchebags.
Sik-K feat. Ley – Namsan Tower
Or don’t. There was so much crap just like this song submitted this week and I got rid of almost all of it. I let this one survive, the way a movie character slaughters a bunch of gang members but lets the one who represents the least future threat live so they can go back and tell their boss not to try that shit ever again.
Rituality – It’s your turn to shine
Starts off sounding impressive but once the shock and awe of Koreans using actual distortion wears off this is surprisingly generic and dull.
Kyuss – Green Machine
Here’s this week’s random music pick and it’s for the person who went to my ask thingy and wanted stoner rock recommendations, you’re welcome (even though it’s not very stonery compared to say, Electric Wizard or something). I know a guy who went to see Kyuss and Slayer play together and booed Kyuss all through Kyuss’ set because he was a huge Slayer fan, and Slayer fans being intolerant of any support act is just what Slayer fans do, apparently. Years later he became a stoner rock fan and realised how great Kyuss were, PLUS how ballsy Kyuss were to even accept the Slayer support gig in the first place knowing full well the reaction they would get, and this was his deepest regret, not appreciating seeing Kyuss properly at the time. Sadly he’s no longer with us, he took that regret to the grave. Don’t be like him. Stan Kyuss.
RANDOM BONUS VIDEOS OF THE WEEK
Le Sserafim’s Lost Media: Everything HYBE Deleted After Garam Left
Here’s a hot tip for people making YouTube videos: if you want people to believe that the things you’re saying in a video are true, don’t use AI to make the fucking video. Also I’m not sure how this person is going to go with their hard legal stance in the intro when they’re literally just showing another company’s copyrighted stuff. YouTube grifters think copyright is like the fucking Tooth Fairy and Santa Claus and an ATM rolled into one these days, mind you it’s probably not entirely their fault that they’re this stupid given the way YouTube itself encourages the abuse of copyright in unfair ways (by empowering copyright trolls, and by not respecting Fair Use or public domain works, for instance). Anyway I can’t confirm or deny anything in this video, I’m just putting this here to remind you that Kim Garam exists and the legacy of her chalk art will forever be remembered.
Hotelie Pattie – I Became a K-Pop Trainee for 30 Days
Cringe as fuck with tons of unwatchable staged nonsense but I guess if this type of approach is what it takes to get the kiddies who won’t read Kpopalypse.com to realise what it’s like doing the k-pop training thing, why not.
Diva – Joy
Oh come on. How can you even seriously be mad. It’s just funny. But putting aside the old school hip-hop birthday party intro, this song (which finally starts for real at 1:02) is pretty generic for the era and sounds exactly the same as a ton of other stuff from back when it was made. Imagine growing up in a time and place when this was the trend, Koreans my age must feel like they’re on acid when they look at what k-pop is now.
That’s all for this week! Kpopalypse roundup returns next week!
Kpopalypse is back to assess street harassment danger levels in k-pop videos once again! Wait… what? Read on to find out more!
Seven years ago Kpopalypse dropped a post assessesing street harassment danger levels in k-pop music videos. In this post I examined several popular k-pop videos from the birth of the k-pops up until 2019 that romanticised creepy men chasing after women who didn’t really want the attention, and asked the question – what the actual fuck?
At the time of writing this post, seven years later, a lot has changed in the world of the kpoposphere. Men treat women much more respectfully, it’s always safe to wander out late at night alone, and nobody ever stalks anyone in music videos or real life…. oh just kidding, none of that is true, things are just as weird as ever, and the “street harassment” video format in k-pop is here to stay.
Kpopalypse will now look at some newer k-pop videos in this category and assess them on the following criteria:
Creepiness level: how annoying and entitled are the k-pop guys being? Are they like that idiot ex who tries to smash your door down after you lock him out of your room, or constantly tries to beat up your new man? Or are they more like the sneaky ex-partner who contacts you under false aliases and pretends to be someone new, just to keep tabs on you?
Threat level: it’s one thing to be a nuisance, but how much of a threat do these guys potentially pose to the women pictured? Are there obvious signs that the males could instigate events that could make the situation depicted turn violent or nastier than portrayed?
Defense potential: how good are the woman’s chances of repelling these pestering guys? What would be the best self-defence options for her? Could she easily handle the situation with a few basic street-smarts, or does she need to take a quick course of “The Weaker Sex (Sayest Thou!)”?
Of course all this learny stuff might be a bit offensive to some people who don’t think that they should have to worry about this sort of thing. I agree with them. Yes it would be nice if women didn’t have to worry about self-defence at all, but until the characters in my books become reality and start changing the world with their male-genitalia-mutilating ways, it probably pays to promote some street-smarts, because Seungri is out there somewhere right now in a club near you.
LNGSHOT – Facetime
Creepiness level: it’s definitely a special kind of creep who harasses you while you’re buying stuff inside a convenience store. These boys definitely have a “lng shot” of leaving a good impression by annoying this random blonde agency trainee lady in a public area. Yes she’s smiling and later dances with them, but only because her contract says she has to.
Threat level: while the visible ceiling cameras can sometimes be good for assisting with legal action after the event, these are less useful for protection while things are going down. YouTube is full of surveillance footage of people getting attacked in full view of cameras. Tight spaces also make this scenario tricky to navigate, even worse because there’s nowhere to escape from the awful music, perhaps the biggest safety threat in this scenario.
Defense potential: convenience store shelving can be a disadvantage for mobility but also an advantage for making a scene. Enough shopping alleyway destruction can make enough of a noise to attract bystanders and make would-be attackers scatter or at least think twice about attacking the insane person tipping over everything. You’d better hope the clerk isn’t in on it, as the one in this video certainly looks a bit shady like he might be a group member, but if he is and locks the doors on you at least you’ll know that he’s also suffering with you by having to hear his own shitty song.
BamBam – Wondering
Creepiness level: in this video BamBam pursues some girl walking along a beach, who seems fairly irritated until they both get wiped out by a big wave, after which she’s basically fine with it, I guess the water disoriented her enough to affect her situational awareness. Later they’re about to kiss underwater and suddenly he gets pulled down into the depths, I guess BamBam felt like a shark, or maybe a shark felt like BamBam chiki chika chu
Threat level: harassment by a body of water varies in danger levels depending on where you live. In some countries escape across the waves might potentially lead to safety, but where I live that would only lead to being horribly mutilated by various ocean-dwelling creatures. I don’t know where this was shot, but assuming it was Korea there’s a possibility she could sprint along the beach to the safety of some nearby tetrapods, which no idol wants to be seen anywhere near lest they become part of a “risky tetrapod activity” controversy.
Defense potential: throwing sand in the eyes of attackers actually works pretty well as long as they’re not wearing eye protection and you can make a quick getaway afterward, however in this case BamBam has his whole entourage on the beach with him engaging in very harassing symchronised dances to bad boy-pop music. Who knows what other atrocities they’re capable of. If the tetrapod gods are absent her best bet might be to beg for mercy before BamBam starts singing old Got7 songs.
The Wind – Hello, My First Love
Creepiness level: The Wind start stalking some girl who is just trying to pay attention in class. One of the boys eventually splits off from the group and follows her down the road into a wooded area, his groupmates chortling behind him. It all has extremely bad vibes, but soon enough she’s groping his seashells and drinking his flavoured milk, further reinforcing the creepy message that all these videos have which is “if she’s not that interested, it just means you’re not stalking her hard enough”.
Threat level: with lots of other students around, school should be theoretically safe, but then that never helped me all the times that I was bullied. It’s worth taking school stalking as a serious event that can lead to serious consequences, like being framed as the bully instead and messing up your k-pop debut. At least The Wind’s song is uncharacteristically good for one of these videos, so you can listen to a decent tune while you get endlessly propositioned.
Defense potential: the problem with school harassment is that you’re trapped in a room with your harassers sometimes out of academic obligation. Telling a teacher can work in some cases, but not all teachers give a shit, and if you’re not able to pay someone to take care of the problem or befriend a Kim Garam who can give the bullies some of their own medicine, the best option might actually be home-schooling. Don’t worry, the lazy teachers all use AI to mark your homework these days, you’re not missing anything you can’t just learn in your bedroom.
BOYNEXTDOOR – Serenade
Creepiness level: the boys from BoysNextDoor can’t seen to decide if they want to flirt with you the viewer, or flirt with the girl who just wants to walk down the street. If there’s one thing worse than a harasser who won’t leave you alone, it’s one who gets the shits when you start going out with someone new AND who wants to play the field themselves at the same time. Creepy to the max.
Threat level: probably not that extreme in this instance. Unless the k-pop boy group have their own van parked off-camera, she’s probably got a good chance of de-escalating until she meets the much busier road up ahead… or just teleporting somewhere else like she appears to do at 1:07.
Defense potential: at 0:53 the girl walks past something in the window that looks like some kind of new sentinel droid from Boston Dynamics. I think that if she smashes the window it will alert that thing’s sensors and the droid will activate its arm-mounted turrets, then we’ll have one less shit boy group in the world.
YOUNITE – Love It
Creepiness level: Younite chase some girl all around the school in this video. In one weird scene the boys somehow break into her locker to deposit love-heart plushies, which should be enough to get them hauled straight into the principal’s office for both harassment and vandalising school property. Someome expel these creepy delinquents.
Threat level: given that these boys seem to be able to teleport from one sportball field around the school to another at a whim, the danger level is obviously very high and there’s really no escape.
Defense potential: at one point the girl is wearing headphones, probably listening to some much better song, but not being able to hear the approaching k-pop losers could be dangerous. Her only real defence here is to be aware enough of her surroundings to alert the authorities, or perhaps activate area-of-effect boy-group noise-cancelling so at least she doesn’t have to hear this crappy song while she’s being attacked.
Mugi – Love Again
Creepiness level: inappropriateness isn’t just for your bias, nugu rock groups are doing the street harassment videos too! In this one, nobody’s even on this street which is particularly creepy as the guy is deliberately making his move when nobody is around.
Threat level: on a country road is definitely one of the worst places to meet a creeper, especially if it’s in a country like Korea that isn’t riddled with lethal wildlife like my own, otherwise you could probably just push the guy onto a random plant and there’s about a 60% chance it would eat him.
Defense potential: the girl plays along at first, appeasing her attacker, then tries the “look over there, a shiny object” trick at 0:51. She then starts running to get away from the guy, a chase that continues on and off for the rest of the video. Running is a good option only if there is a clear escape in sight, otherwise you’re just making yourself more tired and less able to defend yourself in other ways, like tying this shithead down and playing his own crappy Autotuned vocals at him until he shits his pants and promises to never do it again.
Corbyn Besson & Tzuyu – Blink
Creepiness level: it’s one thing to stalk a woman in your video, it’s quite another to have her singing in the video as well and have the entire song be about the stalking. I can’t decide whether Corbyn Besson is the nicest guy for his “awareness raising” capaign, or the biggest creep ever for this ridiculously pervy video. Maybe it’s both. Or maybe he’s a reader and is just trying to help me out with this list.
Threat level: Corbyn looks kind of weedy and I’m pretty sure Tzuyu with all that idol gym training could take him. Nothing to worry about.
Defense potential: Just keep walking. If the R&B gets too loud in your ear just do some crappy sing-rapping as the video demonstrates and then just quicken the pace a little. Corbyn looks like he has a weak constitution, he won’t keep up the chase for long.
IU – Square’s Dream
Creepiness level: the squares in this video seem to dream of IU a bit too much, and that’s understandable as we probably all do, but their relentless keeping pace with her and mimicking her actions in some kind of bizarre stalking mockery plus catcalling her while floating by in various bubbles and dirigibles is definitely crossing a line. It’s one thing to be a douchebag in a car, it’s worse when your car floats.
Threat level: while the squares do have a height deficit which is a disadvantage in melee combat, things get serious later on in the video when they start discharging some space-age style weapons. We see at 2:31 that the weapons seem to have the power to slow down both the song and IU herself, clearly an existential threat designed to overpower her plus make her recent music even worse.
Defense potential: IU’s strategy of ignoring the threat completely while strolling along the Minecraftian ramparts may be an attempt to prevent escalation but such strategies always need a backup plan. IU sings that the world is round, perhaps she should change her ideology to Flat Earth and build her castle right along the edge of the world so she’s got an existential void to push the squares into.
Taeyeon ft. Chanmina – #GirlsSpkOut
Creepiness level: Taeyeon is here to save us all from street harassment videos with her own anti-harassment video, an unsurprising theme from Taeyeon as she is someone with definite experience in this area.
Threat level: the threat level quickly dissipates after the first minute or so of this video once the guy gets brained with the big-ass sign, but before then, loser guys in cars are a definite menace. Any woman who lives in an environment where there are roads with cars that drive along them has experienced random guys saying shit from cars, or just using cars to be ultra-creepy.
Defense potential: Taeyeon has earned her stripes dealing with shitty men and knows better than to try any flashy moves. She’s A-list enough to have a random street sign on standby to fall on the attacker and crush them c-pop style, now that’s smart. However if Taeyeon is in an area where she might not have access to non-OH&S compliant signage when she needs it, I suggest that instead she quickly call her managers and make them sign the boy into a seven year slave contract with “optional” three year extension. There’s nothing more effective to make the streets safe for women than locking all the boys ino the k-pop trainee dungeon. For the rest of us poors we’ll have to make do with smashing windows.
That’s all for this post! Hopefully you’re now feeling safer and more confident, or atl least know which boy groups to avoid! Kpopalypse will return!
It’s time for Kpopalypse roundup! Let’s take a look at some new releases!
Apparently registering your business is a thing you should do in South Korea. Who knew? It seems not Lee Hi.
i-dle feat. Skaiwater – Mono
Holy fucking blandness. There’s supposed to be some message in here about unity and love or whatever corny fucking bullshit that’s supposedly got everyone into a tizzy at the moment (“what, the hate that fuels my social media bubble could be… bad?”) but good luck even getting far enough through this crap to even notice the theme at all without falling asleep first. You’ll need a race riot in your neighbourhood just to wake yourself up after this one.
YOUNG POSSE – Visa
Where’s my visa to get the fuck off this planet and go somewhere where they have decent hip-hop beats.
Rolling Quartz – Romantist
Rolling Quartz go all-in on the big 80s glam metal ballad style and the results are just as mid as all the originals. Every rose has its thorn, and every Korean rock group has its shit, shit song.
TREASURE – Better Than Me
These kids also doing the ballad thing trying to act all sincere and mature like they don’t have shit even worse than me in their chat histories. Nobody is fooled.
Sunmi – A long long night
Sunmi also in ballad mode. What the fuck? Did a plane full of benzodiazepines get hit with a North Korean test rocket over Seoul and explode and spray its contents over the entire city this week? Someone break out the hazmat suits and save k-pop! Where’s Hitchhiker’s wardrobe department?
IZNA – Sass & Racecar
This is not even really eligible for roundup at all but I’ll throw it in just because this week has been so dull and there’s a real danger you’ll stop reading roundup for good if I don’t put in something at least semi-interesting. “Sass” is kind of mid but acceptable enough, whereas last year’s excellent “Racecar” gets ripped off with a lame shortened version as if it wasn’t already short enough. But it’s a good reminder that good pop music did actually exist and was good last year in places.
LNGSHOT – FaceTime
If you’ve been missing the rapey vibes from boy groups lately, Jay Park’s new one has got you covered, bringing the street harrassment theme back into k-pop once again. The more things change, the more they keep harrassing women who just want to walk around town doing normal shit.
ONE OR EIGHT – Tokyo Drift
Some pathetic song for some shit movie you don’t care about because you still have at least one working braincell gets remade and you didn’t notice because you have better things to do. Wow, me too!
8TURN – Bruise
It’s a sad week in k-pop when the generic millennial-whooping boy-slop is actually on the better side of the songs this week just because everything else is so shit.
WHIB – Rock The Nation
Actually kind of fun because it goes so all-in on the epic pot-clanging nonsense. It’s not something I’d willingly experience again, but it was still pretty funny.
POW feat. Shin Onyu of Shin In Ryu – Come True
The outdoor set looks like that Borderlands game that’s set in the snow, and that’s about all I’ve got to say about this one. Oh my god can I get one good song this week.
Hi-Fi Un!corn – Laila
Yeah yeah this is bland. Next.
SANTO BRAVOS – Kawasaki
Just in case your life wasn’t going badly enough, HYBE have a new boy group that’s focused on the Spanish speaking market. In related news, there’s a court case happening right now where the guy who wrote the first reggaeton beat has sued thousands of other people for using his beat and is trying to get paid from all of it. I feel like whatever way the court case goes, it’ll be a win somehow, because if he loses then people will still legally be able to make music, and if he wins, people won’t legally be able to make music like this.
AB6IX – A Minute, A Second
Good song title because it indicates the maximum amount of time that it’s safe to listen to this garbage before brainrot sets in.
ALL(H)OURS – My Spring, My Light, My Breath
The usual skippable “for the fans” trash.
EVNNE – A Season Drawn In Light
I swear when this started up that I accidentally just played the previous song again. Sad times.
LA POEM – Alive
I wouldn’t exactly say I like La Poem because that delivery of theirs is just such a huge barrier, and this faux metal definitely doesn’t hit, but hey at least they’re different. Some sonic variation is sorely needed in k-pop right now so I hope they keep going.
Luli Lee – You’ll Be My Mad Dog
I’m all for Luli Lee reinventing herself into stoner rock and this is pretty rocking actually. Even the sunny-vibes change-up works well. Finally, a good song this week!
KISEO – Nonfiction
Apparently refugees from the group IHOTEU are in this group, and this is an old IHOTEU song. IHOTEU were a live-idol themed kind of group that had some okayish songs until their CEO got busted cheating on his wife with one of the group members. Anyway this song isn’t very good but it’s a start.
NWHI – Siren Call
And while we’re at it, I’m told about this group that “allegedly their CEO only hires foreign girls to turn them into slaves/traffick victims, by withholding their passports.” So that person who was complaining about human trafficking in porn in QRIMOLE this month… well you don’t need to go all the way to porn for that, human trafficking is in plenty of industries, including right here in k-pop. Allegedly. Oh and completely shit song of course, probably best that you don’t even click at all, don’t worry I’ve watched it so you don’t have to, you’re not missing anything.
MY:RAKL – Wish Upon the Stars
Maybe we actually are better off with the virtual idols. Instead of the creepy “always young, always there for you, wil never cheat on you” marketing, labels should try the angle of “hey the most amount of neglect these boys and girls are ever going to receive is the occasional power outage”.
Lee Jiham – Forever Mine
This guy was from A.C.E apparently. Look how sad he is. It’s your fault, you didn’t vote for his legs enough in my surveys.
Choi Sooho – Something big is coming
You can tell exactly what this sounds like just from the thumbnail. Hey we have enough cringe trot women in roundup, so some cringe trot men is certainly fair.
POLYAMORY – Dopamine
To make this sort of instrumental-focused music work, you need to have either amazingly shit-hot musicianship like Covet, or lots of layers of interesting sound like Cotoba. This group has neither, so the result just sounds empty. At least some bass guitar would have helped.
Pick A Bloom – Carousel
Fucking horrible video direction that will guarantee nobody watches this, which is a shame as it’s a cool song. The right amount of heaviness here, this is what I would have liked to have seen from Latency, Chrockital etc.
Nerdina – Why do you love me?
Like most weeks there was a lot of nugu stuff I just chopped out of roundup because it was the same old slow quiet-verse-loud-chorus midtempo pop/rock stuff, but this one was interesting and different enough to keep. I mean I don’t know if it’s good, but in the absence of good I’ll take different.
Room306 – Sending
mrcs
Linton Kwesi Johnson – Fite Dem Back
Those of you frustrated by the limp hand-holding platitudes in i-dle’s song this week might enjoy the slightly more aggressive lyrical sentiment of this week’s random music pick which is from British dub reggae artist Linton Kwesi Johnson. I’m not wild about a lot of his songs, but “Fite Dem Back” is a classic which has aged well in today’s politically divisive climate, and this sped-up live version is even better than the still quite great original. I was in a mixed-race punk group when I discovered this and we toyed with trying to make it work for us musically but the band sadly disintegrated before we got it up to gigging level, a shame. The weird combination of menacing and joyful really makes this song work, I guarantee that after you hear it you’ll be singing it for a while.
RANDOM BONUS VIDEOS OF THE WEEK
Zach Sang show – XG Talks New Album ‘THE CORE,’ GALA, Cocona’s Story and Jurin’s Solo Debut
My busy writing schedule means I haven’t had time to even watch this myself yet. I did skim it and it seems pretty much like the usual interview drill but it might still be of interest to readers just to hear XG being a bit candid.
82MAJOR – ‘Need That Bass’ SONGCAMP in L.A.
The video submitter here said “given that songcamps have become very common in kpop recently caonimas might be interested in this video which shows how it works when idols are ‘involved”.
After School – Lady Luck
You definitely win caonima points if you even remember that this lost-in-time Japanesse After School comeback even existed, but if you didn’t, don’t feel too excluded because you weren’t missing much. The song has a weirdly chirpy tone that just doesn’t quite work (subunit Orange Caramel did it better) and of course the usual shoehorned-in dubstep segues of the era, it’s a bit disastrous overall. I feel like if someone fed “cute concept After School comeback” into an AI prompt it would actually produce something about this bland… that is, if you could get it to interpret your text correctly, because that’s hard enough for humans let alone AI. All second-generation k-pop fans know the feeling of being ridiculed for telling your non k-pop loving friends that you’re listening to something called “After School”…
That’s all for this week! Kpopalypse roundup returns next week!
