Kpopalypse roundup – new k-pop releases 31/7/2023

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

Apparently some people online are making a lot of baseless assumptions about NMIXX’s Lily. You definitely won’t see that happening at kpopalypse.com where we treat all Australians with respect, even those cunts from Stray Kids.

NewJeans – ASAP

So insubstantial that it’s barely a song at all even by this group’s ultra-minimalist standards, “ASAP” definitely more resembles some of MJH’s art-experiments with f(x) than anything NewJeans would usually do. That’s not a bad thing, but of course MJH can’t stop herself from the usual postmodern pissing in the bathwater, especially now that “Cookie” has proven that she can basically get away with murder and that fans will shield it to their graves. MJH has successfully shifted the Overton Window of what k-pop fans consider fetishisation, be very afraid of that.

INFINITE – New Emotions

Infinite have a song that I like, it’s only been about a decade since that last happened. The vocal sample driving it is neat and the whole thing is decently pacy and melodic, why is it so hard for every other group this week I swear.

ITZY – Cake

There are some good moments here and there, but the big moment that the song relies on to do all the hard work is ca-ca-ca-ca-cacophonous bullshit.

TREASURE – Bona Bona

Starts off with an excellent verse and pre-chorus but completely comes undone when the horrible chorus arrives in your area, what a ‘bona-killer’. Then just to rub it in the trap shit commences… how someone can write a song this good and this bad is beyond me.

Shownu x Hyungwon – Love Me A Little

Remember when Shownu used to go toe-to-toe with Wonho in the objectification survey back in original line-up Monsta X days? Seems like my readers can only love him a little now.

n.SSign – Higher

Not bad, but I feel like this song is all build-up, no payoff. It seems like it’s going somewhere and never quite arrives.

Soyou feat. Bora – Aloha

Basically just a Sistar summer comeback again, so if you like that sort of thing you’ll like this, and if you don’t, you won’t.

Xikers – Koong

Poor old The Bias List made a negative but basically polite review of this song where he still gave it a very charitable 3/10 and he got rudely shat on by both the group’s fans for his trouble. I’m not sure how they’re going to handle my review then, because if I were to rate this song with numbers I’d have to devise a new numerical system because “negative times infinity” comes close but doesn’t quite describe it. The sooner we all forget about dogshit music like this the happier we’ll be.

OH MY GIRL – Celebrate

A shade better than most of the recent Oh My Girl feature tracks, which isn’t saying a lot. How this group have fallen off over the years. It’s enough to make you feel like a shark chiki chika chu

H1-KEY – Heart Light

H1-Key are that rare girl group who are yet to do anything at all that really sucks and this keeps up the track record well enough. It’s pretty rock-lite but it’s okay, it has some actual melody worth a damn and even a semi-decent solo, can’t ask for much more than that in 2023.

Rockit Girl – Never Stop Rock

The productions are very low-effort and the videos are always just “look at our singer she is hot” but the songs are never awful. They’re probably never going to top “Little Cat” but I feel like they’ve paid their dues, even if Leeseul in that bikini actually discriminates against my colour vision impairment. She does have some different outfits in the acoustic version though, I think that’s important to highlight.

HORI7ON – SIX7EEN

Similar colour vision crimes are being committed in this video but I guess the song’s alright, at least they don’t start shouting random syllables and going into trap breakdowns.

BOY STORY – Z.I.P

Here’s a boy story: once upon a time there was a boy group, they released a song, it wasn’t very good. The end.

Jeong Sewoon – 10 Minutes

I felt ripped off because the song title is ’10 minutes’ but song is barely three minutes, but then once I heard it I didn’t feel so bad, I guess they were doing us a favour by chopping that other seven minutes out.

ATBO – Just For Us

It always feels awkward when these groups with hardly any fans do “for the fans” content. If you really love your fans that much you could probably just individually send them a gift card or something, with a group like this you probably wouldn’t have to write too many of them out.

VAV – Reason

And here’s the same thing but ballad.

Queenz Eye – Domino

Not really a live version but it’s still great to see this group singing with tacky looking SM58s with the marker tape still on them, I guess that’s all this budget studio had.

Fishingirls – Destruction King

I like the rock attitude but something stops me from getting into this group. I think it’s just a combination of the songs being a bit unspecial and that weird vocal tone that always reminds me a bit of ‘Tiger Is Coming“.

The Rose – Alive

Somewhere along the line this group got a bit popular and I didn’t notice. I’m not sure how this happened but their new material is actually not bad at all. Not sure about the tetris stage, that’s got to be an OH&S nightmare, or the dubstep drop for that matter… but hey it’s listenable. Yay.

SM Classics TOWN Orchestra – Sherlock (Clue + Note) (Orchestra Ver.)

Actually not the completely disaster I was expecting, the orchestral treatment kind of suits this song a little given how heavily layered with sonics the original is, so the endless extra orchestral fucking wank don’t seem excessive for once. Still, nobody in their right mind is going to prefer this version, Rachel Kim isn’t even in the video.

Park Jiwon – Talk To Me

Nothing exciting here but I’d happily put this on if I had to spend the next three minutes cleaning syringes or something.

Yugyeom – Lolo

Imagine being on AOMG and not being Jvcki Wai. Just go home.

Hynn – Europa

It’s okay but it just made me want to listen to “Orpheus” again, which probably isn’t what they were going for.

Jambino feat. Jay Park – 119!

I know soju is like a poor man’s drink in Korea but I actually think it’s pretty nice and if I was brought up in Korea and my first taste of alcohol was soju and not stupid beer, I probably would have stuck with it and become an alcoholic. In fact I’d likely be dead by now, which would probably make a few hundred thousand k-pop fans all around the world really happy. Unfortunately for you, Australian alcohol is expensive goat’s piss and I don’t want to drink any of it so I’ll probably live long and keep doing these annoying roundup reviews where I don’t even talk about the song until I’m at least 109.

Jeongmin – Sunrise (former Boyfriend member)

This guy used to be in some group called Boyfriend that were a valid B-list group back in the day and now he’s practically in Nugu Alert status, sad times in this economy.

Yoon Seobin – Love is like a wave

Love is like a wave of shit songs that suck. Mind you at least the guitar and the beat is okay here, it kind of carries it. Just try to ignore the singing.

verycoybunny – I Think I Like You

There’s no excuse for people in a band to use the Shure Super 55 incorrectly. If Rockit Girl can do it right, you can.

Sik-K – 5882 (OPPA ASAP)

The instrumental didn’t sound that bad but then he started with the Autotuned whining just like every shit song that I have to listen to on that awful CrowdDJ app at the gym.

Clazziquai feat. Jaeman, Kei – Static

Clazziquai have always been dreary hipster music, but this is better than what they usually do. The odd nice keyboard arpeggio isn’t quite enough to save this from your friend’s soiree, but they’ve done so much worse.

Fluffy Snow – Sailors

This song’s not exactly great so the weekly black music feature can go here instead. God Forbid might sound a bit dated and predictable these days given how many bands do this style now, but you have to remember that this song was recorded in about 1963 (long before 1080p resolution was invented, as you can see) and it’s not their fault that every lame band out there copied their shit. You can’t blame them for that any more than you can blame Ice-T for Soulja Boy. Anyway I really don’t want to go back to reviewing k-pop songs after listening to this, so let’s not.

Debut-era Gfriend/ITNW throwback section

The Wind – Summer Vacation

If your main gripe with Gfriend back in the day was that they were female, then The Wind has got you covered. Not as good as the originals but then what is?

ILY:1 – My Color

If you’d rather see girls doing the Gfriend thing, here’s ILY:1 working their magic at the cleanest subway station in New York. This video made me think of those driving videos where people just turn their dashcams on while driving through crappy neighbourhoods, it would be super cool to make one of those videos and then right when you hit the alleyway full of junkies, park the van, let ILY:1 out of the back and shoot the music video. The problem with ghettos is not enough wholesome entertainment if you ask me.

SATURDAY – Stay

Saturday’s version is the best of the three because they didn’t forget that essential Gfriend ingredient – distorted guitars lurking in the back of the mix, threatening to bust out into a completely inappropriate guitar solo at any moment. Of course this doesn’t really happen in this song but sometimes the threat is enough.

RANDOM BONUS VIDEOS OF THE WEEK

Why NewJeans will change k-pop forever

This video doesn’t actually answer the question it poses, so I will. If NewJeans bring just one thing to the k-pop table that’s actually new, it’s a fully-realised art concept that’s consistent across multiple releases, all heading in the same conceptual direction. It’s just a shame that the specific direction MHJ picked is incredibly poorly chosen, but one could argue that that’s still one step up from nothing, which is what everything else is. Baby steps for the industry, I guess. I’m not sure if it’ll change k-pop though, I think it’s more likely to just carve out a niche for itself. We’ll see, but I don’t see too many other MHJ clones out there running around svenagli-ing everyone creatively just yet, for better and worse.

K-pop is destroying your brain

It is. If you agree, or even if you don’t, you might enjoy my new book “Love Light” which comes out this weekend. It’s kind of the ‘middle book’ in a series of either three or four and arguably it suffers for this because quite a few things don’t get resolved, plus you really need to have already read the first book “Show Me Love” first, but then people say The Empire Strikes Back is the best Star Wars film so who knows if that’s really a positive or a negative. Anyway you could read it if you wanted. Buy it if you want to support me, but if you think I’m a cunt and would rather not, or are just broke, you can still read it for free on any online library with Libby/Kobo Overdrive.

SHINee – Sherlock

Speaking of fictional characters doing fictional things, I might as well put this here since I was talking about it before. It’s definitely one of the better SHINee songs overall, just because it’s got such interesting sonics – the melodies aren’t that great (that chorus is one of the most cringe in all of kpop) but the punchiness of the rhythms and sounds goes a long way here to make up. Most importantly it’s got everyone’s favourite fictional character Rachel Kim in the video, and holy shit she looks stunning here as some kind of neglected ghost, ominously predicting her own future status in Girls Forever.

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