Kaibigan Tayo

Monday, 23 February 2026

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

If the next XG album has uncharacteristically shit raps compared to their past stuff, it’s because their songwriters weren’t allowed to write then from jail so they had to get some average-ass rapper like Jay Park to do it

IVE – Blackhole

Like “Bang Bang” it’s definitely more of a hit than a miss, but unlike that song that had a cracking tempo once it got going and cool surf guitar, “Blackhole” is definitely lacking a little something to make it really stand out. Still decent, I wouldn’t pick this song to go to the toilet if I saw them live (which I can’t afford to do by the way for the people asking) but IVE have done better.

Hearts2Hearts – Rude!

Significantly less rude than hyped, the song benefits greatly from some sweet Hammond organ in the chorus (a criminally underused sound in k-pop across the board) but overall it’s just far too polite for its own good. If you’re going to be “Rude!” go all the way, otherwise add some more melody to it to make it a proper pop song, this halfway house isn’t it.

NCT JNJM – Both Sides

The latest in the neverending stream of mid NCT projects, the bland R&B here will definitely ensure that you’ve forgotten about this song by the time NCT GHWLV-3×4#N_9 rolls around.

RIIZE – All of You

I’m really liking how faster pace is a consistent trend now in k-pop across the big agencies, thank you NewJeans, thank you Kpop Demon Hunters. We are finally at the end of the slow-as-shit “in your area” sound being the norm. Riize benefit here with a song that’s pretty punchy and cool mainly thanks to the fast tempo.

LNGSHOT – Backseat

Jay Park sure bet on a lng shot when he thought that anyone would even be interested in this poop.

XG – Rock The Boat

This ad for Singapore tourism has boring R&B music with an incredibly annoying chorus hook, but their aquairium looks nice. I guess they really did feel like a shark chiki chika chu

X:IN – Dazzle Flash

I appreciate the throwback type of sound but there’s no song here to seal the deal. The camera zooming up on a Dubai cityscape is a nice touch though, that’s one way to hint you’re stuck with a slave contract.

ATEEZ – Nasa

Apartheid Clyde said a while back he wanted to defund NASA, which is a pretty on-brand opinion for a narcissist who won’t even support his goddaughter Go Won, but after listening to this, maybe he was onto something. Maybe someone at SpaceX can fire this bullshit into the sky and make sure it leaves orbit for good.

NMIXX – Shape Of Love

Nmixx’s “for the fans” slop is actually a decent shade better than when most groups do it. Actually one of the better songs this week.

Hi-Fi Un!corn – Dreaming

People made fun of Attack Attack back in the day, but I think the dance here is even more stupid. Definitely in the top 10 of stupid dances by bands ever.

TRENDZ – Kart Racer

“Visual sketch”? This is what we’re calling music videos now? I guess it’s not really a music video if the song isn’t music because it changes up 57 times before any music is actually established.

RPZ – Dark Night

I never listened to “Seven Nation Army” and thought to myself that it needed to be a shit Autotuned rap loser version.

TMC – To: you

Because I know that you want to know, here you go, you’re welcome.

Kim Sungkyu – Over It

I’m over ex-boy band members strapping on a guitar and being “we’re all rock now”.

Lunedi – Face Myself

Apparently this girl is from Weeekly and there’s not a lot going on here of interest but we all should just be glad whenever anyone escapes a C-tier group.

Crude feat. Hayun of Primrose – Mystic

It would be terrifying driving around Seoul streets and having your vision suddenly obscured by a CGI butterfly in the way. Perhaps this is how AI plans to do away with the human race.

Omega Sapien – Krapow

Balming Tiger and related projects do have their songs that are cool and then they have the ones where they just put on a loop of random noises and yell a lot.

Cyrrca feat. Lil Cherry, Jungle – Iced Americano Forever

I don’t hate this, but it does feel like it’s missing something. Some more interesting backings probably would have helped, this is just a bit too minimal for its own good.

Nekiru – Zero Gravity

[yotuube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SPgqQyee9-0]

A pretty reasonable stab at J-idol style metal, but there’s no getting around the fact that all the best bits of the song are the parts where there’s no vocals.

CODA BRIDGE – Switch

Someone switch it off.

verycoybunny – Child of Mars

Definitely a boring-ass video and thanks for pushing annoying glare in my face for two-thirds of it. What moron thought that this looked good or was appropriate. Nearly dumped this one from roundup completely just for sucking visually. “But what about the music” hey how about stop offending my eyes with bullshit artsy crap video direction choices if you want me to actually listen to any of it.

Crystal Tea – Humanity Declaration

Promising image, but the music is bland as hell. Don’t even bother. Mind you it’s still the pick of the bunch of all this week’s rock stuff, most of which is even more boring than this and I just threw it out of roundup completely.

Sion – Homes

This isn’t bad I suppose but a little less leaning into the gimmicky switch-ups and a little more writing decent melody and harmony would have been cool. Oh well.

FuturePeerClub – Off The Map

Although this one wasn’t too bad. I’m liking this, it can stay in.

Purynn – Tool Kit

mrcs

Sik-K feat. Dean – Stay on Fire

Listen to this fucking shit. Just listen to it. Everything wrong with humanity, right here. If you’ve ever liked anything Dean ever did, you are directly responsible for this song existing. You are part of the problem. Reflect.

Counter Attack ID – P.Y.C.

This song was actually submitted for roundup a while back, and I’m not sure why because the group are from Indonesia and I am not Indopopalypse. However what it is, is a damn decent song, so it can be the random non-Korean music pick for this week instead. Enjoy.

RANDOM BONUS VIDEOS OF THE WEEK

wireshred. – why kpop will never have real music critics.

Basically exactly the same conclusions I came to and wrote about over a decade ago. Nothing has changed. A good video. Clearly she doesn’t know about kpopalypse.com and the incredibly insightful music criticism here though… ahem cough splutter, actually I’m not a music critic either. Fuck music critics. That’s probably the only thing this video gets wrong, is that music critics aren’t something that you should actually want in your life, which is why I write the way that I do. K-pop not having real music critics would actually be an asset if they didn’t have fandom dumb-dumbs instead.

haevix – Black model for LE SSERAFIM recieves racist comments from K-pop stans

Your semi-regular reminder that supposedly progressive k-pop fans actually love racism and they need it to thrive just as much as breathing in air. K-pop fans are the people who cancel your faves for wearing dreads while shouting slurs in computer game lobbies at the same time. One rule for them, another for everyone else. If we lived in a world without racial slurs, k-pop fans would have to invent some just so they could make it through and live another day.

TEEN TOP – Crazy

Actually not a bad song back in the day, but it mainly sticks out to me these days for the video, a prime example of the street harassment genre, where the Teen Top boys relentlessly stalk some girl who is just minding her own fucking business. I think at the end she says something like “if I hug you once, will you fuck off finally?” but unfortunately he hangs around after that. Oh and enjoy the puzzling thing they put at the end, what the fuck? Those were the days when agencies would do weird shit like this.

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

Sunday, 22 February 2026

Another year means another episode of Kpopalypse Nugu Alert! Let’s take a look at the first crop of nugus for 2026!

It’s nearly the end of February and there hasn’t been any Kpopalypse Nugu Alerts yet this year, so that means it’s time to get started! The nugu stash is certainly piling up and there’s lots of artists out there both new and old all clamouring for attention. These ones probably have no hope in hell of any real success but if we feature them here, it’s possible that they might “do an Ejae” and be thrust under the spotlight in the future – but probably not. Anyway there’s no theme for this episode other than I thought all these tracks were at least okay, or interesting, or funny.

Usual Kpopalypse Nugu Alert rules apply, artists must meet the following criteria:

Less than 20,000 views across official channels
Unlikely to be asked to ghost-write the songs for an award-winning film that breaks international records
Relevant to Kpopalypse

Let’s take a look!

SKAWAKERs – Tiger Spirit Arises

Just scraping in for Kpopalypse Nugu Alert eligibility due to the high viewcount (although it did take them about a decade to collect those views), here’s a more vintage nugu to get us started. SKAWAKERs are, predictably, a ska group. Sure, they present like a girl group here, kind of, but this is an illusion created by carefully crafted dance routine footage plus backing dancers. If in doubt, check out this very recent impressive live footage, which is impressive because not only does it prove that they are still around but there seem to be more members of the band on stage than there are patrons in the audience (relateable).

Looks like a fun time though, I would definitely check them out. Anyway their song is actually pretty damn good, so enjoy.

YouTube views at the time of writing: 19270

Notable attribute: no expense spared on tiger cameo at 4:23 – mrcs

Nugu Alert Rating: high

Lil Sion – Chopper Control Train

I was in a band once with a guy who was a little too into trains. Touring in a car with him was annoying because he’d deliberately take the routes that went along the train tracks, and every time a train appeared he knew exactly what locomotive it was and he’d reel off all these random facts about it like any of the rest of us gave a shit. I’ve lost touch with him now (he vanished a while back in a puff of marijuana smoke) but if he was still around I’d definitely introduce him to this song (right after asking about the money he still owes me) which is seemingly by someone else equally unhealthily obsessed . Anyway this song is pretty crazy and unhinged and even the hard Autotune kind of works for it, because it just adds to the hyper-insanity level of everything. It’s probably better or at least more interesting than any of the music that we played together back then. The accompanying video features a mixture of real and seemingly AI-generated trains and they go along tracks and stuff which is not very interesting although it probably is if you’re that guy. What is up with train people. Apparently it’s a really big autistic thing to like trains so I guess I’m not as autistic as I thought I was, but this video is definitely finding its audience because it has way more views than it feels like it should have.

YouTube views at the time of writing: 6117

Notable attribute: favourite train is definitely the “Damn Contradiction” at 2:04

Nugu Alert Rating: very high

Milli Machine – Hands Up

On the face of it I really shouldn’t like “Hands Up”, but I do. A bunch of rap losers yelling in a basement somewhere should definitely be uncool, but it’s actually great here, giving similar energy to 912 Crew’s immortal “Roller Skate“. I think it’s partly because the beat and rapping is fairly fast, and partly because everyone involved doesn’t look like they’re either posing out trying to be tough, or completely hating life which is the other big cliche in the rap world. Rap is allowed to be fun but nobody realises it because they’re too busy worried about how much “real” they’re keeping. These guys are so “don’t give a fuck” that all the graffiti is basically just flowers, they’re definitely getting in touch with their feminine side. I mean this in a good way of course, this song could only be more LGBT-friendly if someone was wearing a Siwon shirt.

YouTube views at the time of writing: 810

Notable attribute: Anua cream tube at 1:58 shows these boys are taking good care of their skin, maybe that’s what the song means: “hands up” to the cream dispenser?

Nugu Alert Rating: extreme

Peanutbread, imDumberThanYou – Drive into your heart

So I’m not sure if the artist title is actually one artist or two. Is Peanutbread one of the guys and imDumberThanYou is the other guy? If so, which one’s which? Or, is it a group name and “Peanutbread, imDumberThanYou” is the name of the group? All this confusion if having a comma in the artist name might give you the reader some confusion as maybe from the header title of this post you were expective five artists in this episode of Kpopalypse Nugu Alert, so I’m sorry if you got 20% less nugus than you were expecting. Despite this confusion I was compelled to throw the song in anyway because it’s not bad actually and should please readers who have loved other synthpop gems that have charted on Kpopalypse favourites lists in recent times.

YouTube views at the time of writing: 337

Notable attribute: multiple fire extinguishers sitting on the ground at 0:49 is definitely non-OH&S compliant, good luck if you can’t get into that corner when a blaze breaks out

Nugu Alert Rating: extreme

That’s all for this episode of Kpopalypse Nugu Alert – the series will return soon!

Monday, 16 February 2026

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

Apparently k-pop fans are upset with Red Velvet’s Wendy (again) because instructional English content to help you learn dialects is now racist or something. Which means that by that standard, my entire Australian language post must be racist against Australians. Mind you we do deserve it, we really are a bunch of cunts.

STAYC – Mwuah

It’s a slow week for idol groups thanks to Lunar New Year, don’t expect too much from your faves this week. Stayc trot out some “for the fans” thing that isn’t terrible but has absolutely nothing in it to set it apart from anything else in particular. You’d heard this song before. Sure, it was called something different, another group sung it, and the words were somewhat different and the melody goes up in a few places where this goes down or whatever, but trust me, you’ve already heard it.

YOUNG POSSE feat. Koonta – Pilot3

Young Posse’s trio hip-hop concept is just fine when they’re reviving the good bits of retro-hip-hop. The lame 90s R&B junk that was hated by everyone sensible at the time and is still hated now, didn’t need reviving.

Jiwoo – Home Sweet Home

Readers pointed out to me that this song sounds like Ash B’s excellent “C’mon” (which charted in the “2025 most fappable videos” list, naturally) if it was, in fact, total shit instead of awesome. I agree.

Yeojin – My Valentine

Yeojin should stop this yacht-disco nonsense and get back to murdering people like she does in my computer games.

Blackswan – Double Down

The saddest thing about Dr Music pushing this AI slop on us isn’t that they’re neglecting the girls (although they are), or that the song is shit (which it is), or that Fatou has two thumbs at 0:06, but that it represents the death knell of creative cartoon style k-pop MVs. We used to get cool shit like 2NE1’s excellent “Hate You” video, but probably nobody’s ever going to do something like that ever again because these days it’s cheaper and quicker to make the AI slop version. These companies don’t care about you the fan experiencing anything of quality, so you can bet that the slop version always wins. Nobody would have stood for this nonsense back in Frask Mitoi’s days.

TXT feat. HYDE – SSS (Sending Secret Signals)

See what I mean? It’ll never be good again until people finally get so fed up that they start dismantling the data centers. Sim Fiicraiziz must be turning in his grave.

ENHYPEN ft. Soyoon – No Way Back

In the absence of most groups doing much at all except Happy New Year videos, Enhypen knuckled down with a bunch of releases to try and sneak some relevance in. Guess what, they’re all boring songs with stupid AI slop visual effects. I bet you never guessed that.

ENHYPEN – Big Girls Don’t Cry

I like how the wanted poster has a question mark after “wanted” instead of a dollar value, because not even the videomakers were sure anybody wanted this shit.

ENHYPEN – Stealer

The best song out of the three isn’t too bad to be honest, sort of like “Antifragile” but without all the interesting bits. No AI slop here either I don’t think. Maybe there’s a correlation.

idnnt – All I Need

I always read “idnnt” as “I didn’t” for some reason, not sure if that’s intentional or not. Anyway this song is definitely all I didn’t need.

TVXQ! – Identity

You know, while I give the concept of “for the fans” videos a lot of shit (and will continue to), a veteran group like TVXQ actually has a solid case for a “for the fans” video. They chould show all their historic content from the birth of the group right up until today, including that time when they were once five members. Gosh what a great idea, now that really would be “for the fans”… I’m sure SM will consider this suggestion now that I’ve mentioned it, won’t they.

AM8IC – Lukoie

How am I supposed to say that fucking group name? It’s times like these I’m glad I don’t do a radio show anymore.

TRIGER – Wake Up

Not much chance of me waking up this week given the song quality on offer.

Jinsol – Eternal Light

This is Jinsol from April. With this horrible religion-infused ballad junk she’s definitely not beating the bullying allegations (and religion isn’t directly mentioned, but it doesn’t need to be. It’s just as obvious when they’re singing about it’s religion under the radar as when it’s sex under the radar.) I bet when she goes doorknocking for the Jehovahs in her area she really wedges her foot in.

WOODZ – Cinema

It would be absolute cinema if Woodz just stopped making music.

Blue Pongtiwat feat. Ten – You Give Me Butterflies

Oh god no.

Madmans Esprit – Dandelion

“Do you know about Madmans Esprit”, I get asked every so often. Yes I do. This very long song (which should satisfy all the “songs are so short these days oh noes” people who really should just give up on pop music completely and go listen to prog or opera or something) mixes black metal and modern djent-core type stuff in weird ways that work pretty well, but the actual melody writing is a bit bland, and that’s what’s always let this group down. Unlucky Morpheus they are not.

Amutta Band – You know my love

Okay the best song this week is by this band you’ve never heard of. I’ve never heard of them either, I guess these are the guys ghostwriting all your faves’ hits just hanging loose and doing what they want for a change.

Yerin Baek – Mirror

Pretty generic funk stuff but still the best thing Yerin Baek has done by a mile just because she’s so thuddingly bland usually. For some reason everyone is very excited about the male actor who is in this video but I am not one of those people so it just seems totally random to me that this old dude just kind of turns up and stares at nothing.

Tomatomat – Tommo Nova

You know the week in k-pop sucks when the very promising group who had a breakout quality song does bossanova as a joke or something.

Hwina – Hello, Sara

Even 2025 favourites-list champion Hwina is no good this week. Dark times.

Sally – Lost At Sea

Here’s this week’s non-Korean random music pick. As I always keep saying, commercial j-pop is fucking bullshit, absolute crap. No group has anything even approaching a half-decent song catalog, it’s just pure junk right across the board and don’t you even start with “but what about” because no. Just no. Always no, forever. They just don’t get it. However when Japanese groups take pop sensibilities and apply them to other genres, the results are often excellent. They’re probably doing metal better than anybody else right now. How there are still metal groups outside Japan even making a living at this point I have no idea, they’re so far ahead of everyone. Enjoy Sally, who is like Dave Mustaine if he was a Japanese girl, and could sing, and play guitar better.

RANDOM BONUS VIDEOS OF THE WEEK

QWER –sound check for drummers be like

This is true. Drummers are fucking noisy shits, they shouldn’t even be allowed to soundcheck. The audience can always hear the drums, what are you even checking, cunt.

Kuryong – Summoning of Paektu (cassette)

Did you know that North Korea has a black metal band? Now you do. I wonder what the lyrics are about, if they’re not about Kim Jong Il rising up with his army and leading them to revolutionary victory I’ll be incredibly disappointed. Maybe if I feature them here I’ll finally get that North Korean traffic to my site that I’ve been looking for. Also this mini-album is ironically much better than everything in roundup this week.

B.A.P – Power

A somewhat lame chorus is the only thing wrong with what was otherwise a pretty good song back from the “gosh B.A.P are definitely going to be the next big boy group I promise” days. Sadly it didn’t really work out for them like that, but they did leave us with a handful of good songs before disappearing into coffee-shop irrelevance.

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

Saturday, 14 February 2026

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.