Kpopalypse roundup – new k-pop releases 24/7/2023
It’s time for Kpopalypse roundup! Let’s take a look at some new releases!
Let’s just ban all rap covers, everywhere, regardless of the language used, regardless of who did the song originally. I like rap a lot (when it’s good, and I’ll get to more rap music in my weekly black music features eventually) but nothing good ever comes from rap covers, because covering rap music kind of misses the point as to why it exists. If you wanna be a rapper that’s cool, just write your own raps, k-pop people. It sure would save a lot of people a lot of grief and pointless arguing plus a lot of redundant covers nobody is going to listen to except for the purpose of trying to ‘gotcha’ you years after the fact.
NewJeans – ETA
NewJeans remains that k-pop group creepily marketed at weirdos who own Macs, watch 70s porn “ironically” and buy vinyls that they don’t ever play, but if you can “separate the art from the artist” enough to ignore the creative director projecting her fetishes onto the poor girls (who are probably none the wiser and should all be given victim’s compensation payouts), this thinly disguised iPhone ad is still their best song yet due to actually having a hook worth a damn. A pacy four-chords song where they make the two middle chords the same is actually a pretty cool idea and I can’t think of anyone else off the top of my head who has done anything like this so well in the pop realm.
NewJeans – Cool With You
Their other song kind of sucks though, just the same beat they always use and the same kind of characterless melodies, Pinkpantheress outsold.
OH MY GIRL – Summer Comes
There’s a real shrillness to this song, like someone screwed the settings and aurally excited the vocal track too much while they were compressing and Autotuning the ever-living fuck out of it. It’s a real shame, because this song would probably be listenable if only it was listenable.
ITZY – None Of My Business
Not wildly interesting. Nice ice cream.
MAMAMOO+ – Save Me
I’m not sure why they call Mamamoo minus two members “Mamamoo plus”. Whoever conceptualised this dreariness is about as good at songwriting as they are at arithmetic.
ODD EYE CIRCLE – Je Ne Sais Quoi
The latest Odd Eye Circle doesn’t exactly set the world on fire but it doesn’t do anything too drastically wrong either. I can’t see myself actively listening to this by choice, but if I had some housework to do or something and this suddenly came on I probably wouldn’t turn it off.
ICHILLIN’ – Kick-start
I like the cheesy rock style, but those guitars are just a little too tidy the way they’ve been so heavily noise-gated to kill all the sustain, like someone was too afraid to really rock out. In the end they just don’t quite pull it off because there’s too many concessions to pop music politeness. Don’t be afraid of the distortion folks, electric guitar is supposed to ring out and be a little messy.
ICHILLIN’ – Meme
Their other song is just Red Velvet on a budget, which is a hill many girl groups have died on.
MIRAE – Jump!
I liked the beat of this, but I didn’t like anything else about it. Still, they’re a newer group and it’s tough out there so I hope they do well. You could help them look for loose change in their jeans pockets if you wanted.
PEAK TIME TOP6 (VANNER, SEVENUS, TEAM 24:00, DKB, BAE173, M.O.N.T.) – Your Time
The Shure SRH840 headphones used here are actually manufactured in China. What about supporting local businesses, M.O.N.T? Where’s your patriotism, hmm?
JO1 – NEWSmile
With all those shots of the boys in the one bed together I don’t think my readers are going to need too much JO1 and yes I will keep making shit jokes about this as long as it amuses me.
from20 – Beat It
Holy hell this is actually great. The military theme is a bit wanky especially with those patches on the front kind of ruining it but the music itself is cool, just needs Eddie Van Halen on the track but I guess we can’t exhume him but maybe they can use Sakura Yoshida next time.
Henry – Summer Sky
Korea’s Rick Astley is in his “follow up songs nobody remembers” era but at least he gets his shirt off, blink and you’ll miss it.
Lee Junho – Can I
Junho has been doing well in the objectification surveys for ages so it’s good that he’s getting a solo song now because that means I might have some new performances and images to use on next year’s survey results posts when he inevitably charts again. I was seriously running out of material.
Swan – Be My Everything
I remember sharing earbuds with people back in school days and I only did it once or twice because I always thought it was really gross, like I don’t want your stinky ear wax entering my own ear canal you unwashed freak. I bet Swan syringed her ears for half an hour after this shoot.
Hui – Whale
The wayward tropical synths really fuck this song over hard, although they’re also the only notable thing about it so without them this would probably be even worse.
Dawon – Shooting Star
I love the close-ups of the nugu roundabout as if we haven’t already seen it before. The song is actually reasonable, so maybe he’s just hinting that nobody likes good music anymore.
JAY – Blue Moon
Boring as ass. Seventh chords on guitars should just be banned in all of k-pop along with the pointless covers of American rap songs.
JAY – Wait For You
His other song is even more boring, so it’s time for your regular weekly black music feature instead once again. Someone suggested that I put Baby Storme in for this week and I thought about that suggestion for about 0.0235 seconds and then thought “gosh that’s a really good idea, I might just do that” so here she is because she’s really fucking good and really needs to be more popular given the very high quality of what she’s doing. Baby Storme makes a lot of styles that I usually dislike such as disco sound cool and not shit and I appreciate that. Did you know that no dead people were harmed during the making of this video? Baby Storme makes a point of mentioning that in the YouTube notes which is nice, and you might not think that’s a big deal but a guy I know shot a video in a big cemetery in my town and didn’t even get permission and ended up pissing off a whole bunch of people both living and dead, so it’s important to do that stuff right. Anyway he got bitten by a rat in the process so at least the dead got their revenge, sucked in I guess. Anyway Baby Storme is good go check out all her stuff, stop reading my trash and do it now, you can always come back and read more of my garbage later if you must.
The Rose – Back To Me
I’m pretty sure this is the best song from The Rose, I don’t think it’s outstanding but it has a decent chorus and that helps a lot, reminds me of 1927 if they rocked a little more.
KARDI – Skybound
Cool visual ideas here but I didn’t like the song much and that’s even despite the rock focus of it.
JinE – Tie Dye
I guess it’s sort of Twice on a budget, but the thing is that music like this really does need a budget to work. It’s still a good effort but without ten gazillion layers of production it just sounds like something’s missing.
Brown Tigger – Ravages of Tiger
Dubstep ninjas. Just saying. Next.
015B feat. Lee Taekwon – Wildflower Rangers
015B are always worth taking a chance on because sometimes they’re brilliant but sadly that’s about 5% of the time and the rest is just “yacht rock classics”.
SWJA – Love War
Wow, they threw a piano off a building for this video, which seems wasteful and hard to understand until you hear how boring the song is. If I was playing this on piano I’d be tempted to roll the damn thing off the edge of a building too.
Overdrive Philosophy – If i could
This group’s overdrive philosophy seems to be to not use enough of it.
Rumkicks – Rude Girl Oi
This is more the fuck like it. Rumkicks are so cute and their music is cool, they would be worth seeing live, I hope they come to Australia some time. Please keep me in the loop if that happens. Also, unlike k-poppers, Rumkicks have mastered the art of the media statement.
QUEENDOM PUZZLE SECTION, NOT THAT ANYONE CARES
Nana, Sungah, Suyun, Yeeun, Wooyeon, Kei – Bad Blood
Actually hold up because this song is decent. Okay the scotch snaps in the chorus can fuck right off and die in a ditch, but apart from that, we’re sounding quite good here folks. Who would have thought?
Dohwa, Shiroma Miru, Seoyeon, Lee Soojin, Jiwoo, Fye – Overwater
You know this one’s not bad either. I usually detest this sort of style but it appears that someone contracted for this show actually knows how to write melody and harmony, and those skills go a long way.
Riina, Bora, Yeoreum, Yuki, Zoa, Jiwon, Jihan – Web
Still not terrible. Okay, it’s that lame, boring nu-school -37 BPM sound but once again the committment to having a consistent melodic and harmonic approach saves it.
Park Soeun, Elly, Yeonhee, Jooe, Juri, Chaerin, Hwiseo – Glow-Up
Yeah, all the songs for this show are at least half-decent. Nothing’s blowing me away but certainly nothing really sucks and that’s quite an achievement. It’s certainly not enough to get me to actually watch the shows though.
BONUS RANDOM VIDEOS OF THE WEEK
Aespa’s Karina receives s3xual harassment comments after waterborne performance
So here’s why the Kpopalypse objectification content is actually more important than people realise. Watch this video and listen to the tone of the narrator. Notice how she’s making exactly the same kind of observations that my own boobs analysis posts are also making, as a deliberate measure to counter the ignorance around how people are perceiving Karina’s body, and showing how companies choose to promote OR not promote the sexiness of the performers. She’s even breaking down exactly the type of chest support used, and how this reflects how people perceive Karina’s boobs, etc. This is literally exactly what I do. Sure the YouTuber adds a bit of a “tsk tsk you perverts” tone in there, whereas I deliver the same data with a more neutral tone and some humour (that isn’t mocking Karina herself, but rather her agency’s buried prurience and denialism), but it’s essentially the same thing. And the YouTuber can’t really separate herself from the perversion any more than I can either, because she’s still farming engagement off it too, as you can see…
Kwon Eunbi goes viral for her Waterbomb Festival performance
…in this video right here, and also…
Kwon Eunbi goes viral again for her Waterbomb Festival performance
…this one right here. Sure, Waterbomb is great because everyone’s having so much “fun”, uh huh. It really needed two videos and multiple thumbnail freeze-frames of the most volume-exposing moments to point that out, didn’t it? Of course it did. This YouTuber knows exactly what she’s doing, and I know exactly what she’s doing too, because I’m also doing it (so let’s be clear, there’s no hate coming from me on this). I’m just being more honest about it… and honesty REALLY bothers k-pop fans who are brainwashed into going along with bullshit and lies. I hope you’re enjoying your bullshit-free lie-free experience visiting this site, and if you’re not… well, there’s plenty of other people out there in the k-pop world ready and willing to lie to you and take your money, perhaps go and visit their sites instead if you’re bothered so much by me, you’re welcome. But you probably won’t, because you deserve honesty and respect as much as Karina does, and you know that Kpopalypse.com (and few other places) is where you can get it. After all I had to take down my Kim Nayoon interview last week, because it was basically too honest and it could have gotten some people in trouble. Fighting against “external forces” is hard work, but you can trust that I always will, even if I don’t win every fight.
BigBang – Haru Haru
Kpopalypse taking you back to the days when YG were so desperate to crack the Japanese market that they hard-coded Japanese subtitles onto their music videos. According to some recent bullshit list (I’ve forgotten which one) this is one of the top ten k-pop songs of all time… except it really isn’t of course. I mean it’s not bad, it’s even halfway decent and kind of pleasant to listen to, but it’s not anywhere near on the level of “Monster” or “Fantastic Baby” that’s for sure, even the most diehard pre-molka-dungeon BigBang fan knows this absolutely. Hey I wonder if Seungri already had his club set up by the time this video went out, or if that was a few years later, I wonder which stage of the process he was in by that point. Something to think about, with the aim of safety in mind. Don’t trust guys with a smooth video and a song on a list, be careful out there.
That’s all for this week! Kpopalypse roundup returns next week!
0 comments: