Kpopalypse roundup – new k-pop releases 14/8/2023

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

Who’s this? Oh, just T-ara’s Eunjung, aging backwards as usual. Meanwhile, some forms of revenge also never get old.

V – Rainy Days

It has to suck hard, being a BTS fan in 2023. Even though time and again they’ve proven themselves to be complete cyberbullying human garbage it’s still impossible not to feel at least a little bit sorry for ARMYs due to the hole in which they’ve dug themselves. Every single one of them is right now being peer-pressured into actually pretending to like this trash, by other people who are also pretending to like this trash. Don’t worry, I won’t tell.

V – Love Me Again

Seriously, not a single BTS fan would give V’s new solo songs the time of day if literally any other singer sung them. To listen to a song that sounds like this and enjoy it you should be at least 80 years old and carrying ID.

Stray Kids – Super Bowl

Furries, trap music, sport – three strikes, you’re out!

Jo Yuri – Taxi

Sure it’s “fun” in that superficial way that a lot of k-pop is “fun” but better topline and better harmony would have been much more fun. The result isn’t bad but it’s a bit like CSR if their songwriters left and were replaced by first-year audio engineering students.

BBGIRLS – Lemonade

Oh it’s not a proper video let’s skip it yay happy days

ARTBEAT v – Dubi Dubi

Listen to them milking those circa 1990 keyboard stabs as if that sound wasn’t popular for a whole three weeks before people learned how to use sample keyboards properly.

TAN – Heartbeat

Very close to good but the melody can’t decide how moody it wants to be and that kind of wrecks the entire vibe. Still, the parts of the chorus which are all grunts and whispers are pretty cool, they should have just gone with more of that and thrown the singing in the bin.

n.SSign – Wormhole: New Track

And people wonder why NewJeans is big. You could fit an entire NewJeans track in the space between two beats in this funeral-tempo rubbish.

DKB – All Yours

Not much of a song but I’m sure these suits are someone’s fetish so I’m just leaving this here.

HORI7ON feat. Haeun of Lapillus – How You Feel

Why thanks for asking, I actually feel like better music… but failing that, I suppose I’ll take girl group members integrating themselves into boy group dances. It’s pretty cool to have her in there doing the moves instead of standing off to the side looking all morose which is what usually happens when they pluck out some random girl to do guest vocals in a boy group song.

ZEROBASEONE – New Kidz on the Block

Imagine thinking about NKOTB with anything other than disdain. I guess I’m torn because on one hand if it weren’t for their huge popularity maybe I wouldn’t even have a k-pop to write about and there might even not be a T-ara, but on the other hand boy did NKOTB suck back in the day.

Xikers – Homeboy

What.

Jaehyun – Horizon

Nobody wants this coffee shop nonsense so here’s your weekly lesson in black music and thanks to one of my readers for recommending Rachel Chinouriri because she’s great and completely deserves to be here. There’s been such a deficit of decent pop songs coming from western countries over the last three decades so I’m really happy to see things picking up again very nicely in the 2020s, and of course it’s black women leading the charge because why wouldn’t it be, that’s how it was in the 1920s also. History repeats, and so does a good chorus.

DXTEEN – First Flight

I wonder if Blockberry are going to sue over that jumping in the air moment at 1:47, I wouldn’t put it past them.

AIDEN – DNN

Onto the nugus now and what do you suppose they’re hiding with those white squares. I mean, besides the smoke machine. It must’ve been a messy-ass room, like when your parents tell you to clean up so you just shove everything under the bed.

ACT – Vroom

I don’t know anything about this group or why they’re on some random TV station channel but I do like the “whoa, I’m trippin” slo-mo dance move.

Libelante – Shine

LOL it’s another group that can actually sing but that nobody cares about because singing has nothing to do with pop music.

APOKI – Hold On

Because in some people’s eyes Korean beauty standards didn’t go far enough. Watching this CGI monstrosity do exactly the same flirting with the camera that k-pop idol groups do just drives home how creepy presentation is in this style across the board.

Luna Snow – I Really Wanna Fly Away (Summer Remix)

And here’s the budget version where they didn’t even have the money to do a decent lipsync.

David Yong feat. DJ Soda – Dripping

Wait, is he the DJ or is he going to let her do it? Make up your mind, there’s only room for one person behind the decks pretending that they’re doing something, more than one is just a crowd.

Eric Nam – Don’t Leave Yet

A strange song where the inappropriate break is actually the best part because at least it livens things up.

Chuflex – Super Korean

Okay, this is pretty funny. Finally some Korean humour that actually hits.

IDIOTAPE – Acid Punk

Idiotape always have fantastic sounds that are way above the generic electro-nonsense most groups of their ilk do. I really wish they’d do more stuff with some form of vocals on it though, because their music does lack the human touch.

Sik-K – See You In Every Party

This week’s obligatory hip-hop loser just to let you know that men are still rapping as if they are relevant. Let’s end it here.

QUEENDOM ALPHABET SHIT SONGS YOU DON’T CARE ABOUT AND NEITHER DO I SECTION

Dohwa, Fye, Yuki, Elly, Yeoreum, Yeeun, Hwiseo – i DGA (DONT GIVE A)

Someone put a moratorium on songs with “I don’t give a what” in the lyrics. It’s this generation’s “saturday night/feelin’ alright”. The people want something less mouldy and stale to listen to.

Bora, Nana, Jihan, Zoa, Jiwoo, Juri, Yeonhee – I Do

You know the songwriters are running out of ideas when they just throw in “Here Comes The Bride” randomly over the top of whatever worthless melody they’re doing, and you know that the song sucks hard, when after you listen to it, the bride bit is the only part you can remember. Yes, thematically it suits, but musically it doesn’t, mind you k-pop fans are notorious for not being able to separate concepts and personalities from actual music.

Riina, Kei, Shiroma Miru, Jiwon, Soojin Wooyeon, Suyun – PUZZLIN’

Wow I am so bored.

SOME OTHER BULLSHIT TV SHOW I DON’T CARE ABOUT EITHER SECTION

Kim Wansun, Uhm Junghwa, Lee Hyori, Boa, Hwasa – Rainbow

I actually quite like the rhythms here but something about it just isn’t fitting together and I mean besides that carrot-puke coloured glitter top.

Uhm Junghwa fest. Justhis – Disco Energy

Mind you this guy is dressed like a menstrual stain, and her outfit looks like a “Zimzalabim” toilet brush, so let’s not be too harsh. We should feel sorry for these people. Who made them dress like this.

Kim Wan Sun – Last Kiss

Sorry I’m not talking about the music here much, but there’s not a lot to say. Disco needs something a little more than just the vocals and the beat to make it worth talking about, the best songs in this genre get over the line because of really good instrumental arrangements, which simply aren’t here.

BONUS RANDOM VIDEOS OF THE WEEK

Why is NewJeans so popular?

Since ADOR have you all by the balls I might as well keep it rolling. To summarise:

• simple music, when everyone else is doing music too tricky for its own good with five style changes per song
• fast beats, when everything else out there is too scared to go over 23 BPM because they’re worried you might not see how they got oppar’s pants to sag just right for the camera
• the girls’ choreo is designed to look cute like they’re having spontaneous fun (even though it’s the exact opposite and very carefully planned)
• targeting the young demographic while heavily dog-whistling to the older demographic means twice the audience

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, MJH is a very skilled artist and she knows what the fuck she’s doing, and since she’s been let off the yoke of SM she’s now completely free to do it without Lee Soo Man’s conservative guidance tsk-tsking over her shoulder. So you get the best aspects of left-field arthouse style (willingness to go against the grain, conceptual continuity, sharply realised ideas explored with depth), and also the worst (underhanded prurience, postmodern excuse-making).

NCT DREAM(엔시티 드림) ‘ISTJ’ (Behind)

A caonima suggested I put this here and I agree it’s a good choice especially the footage from about 15:30 onward. Companies don’t mind this kind of stuff getting out there because it plays into the image they want to portray of their idols being hard workers which goes well with South Korea’s cultural values, but it doesn’t really translate that well to places like where I live. Someone give them a proper smoko.

Sahon – Pig Chief

Oh, so you wanted a k-pop retro review, too fuckin’ bad, listen to Sahon instead. Korea had and still has some great metal groups, which sadly often go ignored by both mainstream Korean press and the alternative-focused sites. I mean Dreamcatcher are great and all but sometimes their half-hearted nods to metal just don’t cut it, ladies and gents. Listen to the skin-shredding vocals on this dude (when they finally appear), it’s like nails across a chalkboard in the best possible way. I’m not exactly sure what’s with the pig masks or even what the song’s message is overall, but whatever it is they seem like they mean it so who is going to argue.

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