Kpopalypse roundup – new k-pop releases 7/8/2023

It’s time for Kpopalypse roundup! Let’s check out some new releases!

Kevin from The Boyz has allegedly been using a code to communicate with fans, a practice which is common enough in the k-pop world to have made it into my new book “Love Light” which is now available. Have fun reading it and deciding whether Kevin prefers patbingsu or tteokbokki!

 

Girls’ Generation – Lucky Like That

No need to get excited, it’s not a proper comeback, just some dreary for-the-fans rubbish. I heard Sunny was so bored by this lame throwaway song that she left the group straight after they shot the video.

Kwon Eunbi – The Flash

Not bad but there’s just too much going on. For some reason the keyboard’s been given some weird unrelated melody that criss-crosses all over the vocal line and the result is more distracting than a wardrobe malfunction at Waterbomb.

Jeon Somi – Fast Forward

Actually I was quite enjoying this song until that crap chorus which is just a bunch of shit sound effects in a row.

BBGIRLS – One More Time

Perhaps the best song from Brave Girls yet, at least certainly one of the better ones. Hopefully it gets the same attention as “Rollin” but people are trash so it probably won’t.

THE BOYZ – Lip Gloss

Surely at least one of these guys has to look at her and think “nah, she’s not my type”. Attraction isn’t that universal, folks. Anyway, a pretty crap song but the laughable sexual metaphors still make it an entertaining listen.

MAMAMOO+ – Dangdang

Great looking video, average song.

(G)-IDLE – Play Buldak

Don’t be fooled, those 25 million views are from 25 people replaying the song a million times each because they’re doing that noodle dance challenge or whatever the fuck this is meant to be.

ITZY – Kill Shot

The riff is great and everything else may as well not even be there, but that’s fine, I’ll just take the riff.

LE SSERAFIM – Jewelry

Not a real song, feel free to skip.

Stray Kids – Party’s Not Over

Stray Kids finally have a good song again, guess since I’ve given then 25 shit reviews and one good review over the last 12 months I’m now going to be called a Stray Kids fanboy for the next two years. That seems to be how it works for some reason.

XG – TGIF

As far as being a dance track goes, it does what it should do, i.e it has a beat that doesn’t veer off into any total bullshit. I probably won’t remember how this song goes by next week though.

LIMELIGHT – Madeleine

It’s kind of sad that I think ‘retro’ whenever I hear a song that’s just simple and good, like actual music is out of style.

The Wind – We Go

The Wind have dumped their debut-era Gfriend sound for something a bit more trendy i.e swapping styles all over the place with no real direction like every other group nowadays, lucky us.

xikers – Do or Die

Pretty silly with all sorts of stupid stuff happening, but there’s a decent bit of rock-lite stitching it all together which makes all the yelping make sense.

NINE.i – Turn It Off

I’m not completely sure about the electro 12/8 beat being used in this context but the song has sensible melody and harmony so they can pretty much get away with murder as far as the rhythms go.

Rocket Punch Yunkyoung, Sohee, Dahyun – Soda

I know the look that these girls have all too well, it’s the look of singers that aren’t used to dealing with recording studios and microphones that are actually switched on. I hope they weren’t too traumatised.

Lapillus – Marionette

These days the feature tracks are yelpy shouty downbeat crap with no groove and no sense of fun, meanwhile the actual decent songs get treated like stepchildren with “performance”, “live”, “special” and (ugh) “self cam” videos. So weird how pop music is out of fashion in the pop music world right now.

PRIMROSE – Awaken Light

But then sometimes the songs are just bad anyway.

CRAVITY – Fly

It’s not cute. Put your phones away now.

8TURN – Sketch

More boring ass “performance” videos for bland songs nobody cares about. Unless the song is really amazing (or really bad) I think I’m just going to start junking all this “performance”, “live”, “special”, “self cam” etc fucking crap.

BXB – Planet

See, it’s not that hard to make a fucking video. Even if you gotta use the Nugu Park roundabout, it’s better than just giving up and miming along to the song on your phone during your designated ten minutes of freedom per week.

XEED – Blue

I didn’t hate this. The nature theme is kind of cool and reminds me of one of my favourite songs from last year, and the song doesn’t do anything too stupid, in an era where every second song has great base material but the composer feels the weird need to do something truly stupid to ruin everything, that’s a real bonus.

SEVENUS – Wonder Land

This isn’t bad either. The boy groups are doing a lot better this year than last.

ABLUE – Mad

There must be massive delays in getting exterior work done on buildings in Seoul because all the scaffolding is already rented out for k-pop music videos.

ABLUE – Bite

Just a performance video so no I don’t care about it, let’s have our weekly black music feature instead. While it’s not really correct to say that Suffocation’s Mike Smith invented blast beats, he arguably was the one who perfected them. Most other drummers in the style lose power in their strokes when playing fast, and it really takes a masterful drummer to not sacrifice power at the altar of speed or vice versa when the tempo increases beyond the 300 BPM range. Most modern drummers get around this issue with drum triggers (effectively cheating the dynamics out of the sound), but Mike Smith can make an acoustic drum set sound as consistent as a triggered sample over multiple beat styles, as he demonstrates below.

HORI7ON – Death Or Paradise

Death Or Paradise sounds like a neat name for a grindcore band actually. Maybe a christian one.

Lay Zhang – Pokémon Party

I should have erased this from the goddamn roundup instead of ABLUE, wow what a travesty. Someone needs to make a Pokemon hunting game where you snipe the little shits in the forest and they explode into fluorescent yellow giblets, obviously Pokemon Inc would take legal action but what a way to boost your profile as a dev, someone get on it.

Han Seungwoo – Burn

Eh it’s okay I guess but why the squiggly patterns on the floor, I swear Korea is the only country that thinks that shit looks good.

WOODZ – A Walk In Paris

Woodz should have gone there when there was full-scale rioting. Someone doing their shit jazz ballad acting aegyo while in the background buildings burn, cars get flipped over and riot police fire rubber bullets and tear gas, now there’s a visual concept.

NC.A, unofficialboyy – I’m fall in love

Look at the body/face language when he starts rapping. She’s all like “get out of my personal space with your stinky socks and your tattoos that look like herpes scars”.

Rothy – Rain Drive

I swore that Rothy was like 3 foot tall but apparently she’s 5’2″ which is pretty average female k-pop height, Alexa is actually a few inches shorter. Yes I know this information is irrelevant to everything but if you want actual relevant information roundup is not the place hahaha

Kim Woojin – Say Something To Me

I’m told that this is the guy who was booted from Stray Kids for “straying” a bit too far with the ladies. Go to YouTube and read the comments, seriously, it’s just like that Onion sketch about the college basketball rapist bravely coming to terms with his own raping, that I can’t actually find to link to you because I guess the satire hit so close to fucking home that nobody could tell it from a real news piece so they had to remove it so the actors wouldn’t get death threats.

DPR IAN – Peanut Butter & Tears

I can’t tell where the shirt ends and his tattoos begin and that’s all I’ve got to say on that.

Ahn Yeeun – Hongryeon

I really hate this type of vocal style, but the songs’ actually not too bad despite it.

Kisum feat. Boi B – Let Me Be

Nine years after she was featured on Nugu Alert, Kisum is still doing it. This may in fact be her best song ever, or at least that I’ve heard. Maybe. It’s hard to remember nine years of rap songs.

COOING – The Summer Night

If I was a nicer person I’d probably like this song more, but I’m a cunt so I’ll just say that this is slightly above average. Maybe some of you people who complain about my ‘tone’ will like this song.

Kim Dahyun – Hey! Let’s Play

It’s trot time and actually I thought the dance moves here were great, taking me back to Roly Poly days. Most of the song was alright too, pity the chorus is annoying rubbish because the rest of it is not bad.

Richboy Hardy feat. oceanfromtheblue – Shawty

What’s worse than Autotuned music for fuckheads? Autotuned music for fuckheads that also has too much reverb. It’s bad enough that you’re singing at all with the hideous machine voice, can we not also have it echoing everywhere thank you.

Fleeky Bang – Do Not Disturb

Anyone calling themselves “Fleeky Bang” has forfeited their right to a serious music review in any online publication, especially this one. Let’s stop roundup here before it gets any worse.

BONUS RANDOM VIDEOS OF THE WEEK

NewJeans IFC ‘Get Up’ fansign event

All you kids out there shielding Min Heejin with “…but NewJeans is aimed at teenagers!” yeah that’s just the “plausible deniability” you’re regurgitating that you’ve been spoonfed by ADOR. Anyone not drinking the Kool-aid can see the reality, which is that teenagers aren’t the target market because teenagers aren’t that profitable to market to. Adult single male fans are targeted because they have enough disposable income to repeatedly buy physical albums to collect all the photocards (why do you think this group are charting so well) as well as whatever shitty tech gadgets these girls are cross-selling in their videos. Hating the guys in the video is too simplistic a response, it feels like hating Neo because he’s stuck in the matrix, you can’t expect someone to think properly with the feeding tubes still stuck in them. The signal must be shut off at the source.

How to Get FLAWLESS Makeup Using ONLY Editing Software

Someone sent me this and it’s not k-pop related specifically but I thought this video was really interesting and worth sharing because your k-pop biases definitely do use this tech.

Illionaire Records – YGGR

Your friendly reminder that about a decade ago, mainstream rap was actually just as shit as it is now. You’re welcome.

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