Kpopalypse roundup – new k-pop releases 25/9/2023

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

Irene saying she’d sit out of a concert and then doing it anyway is completely fine and uwu and heart shape boing boing hey SM can I have my cheque now I promise I won’t tell them

IVE – Either Way

IVE have had consistently good songs since debut, so I’ll forgive them this dull ballad which doesn’t quite hit the mark. A better choice of backings (that weedy trap hi-hat tinkling away in the background was certainly a choice) could have probably saved this, but it didn’t.

Kep1er – Galileo

Kep-one-er on the other hand have a song which is just average, and average is pretty good by their standards, so I’ll take it. Gosh I’m so nice. The nicest reviewer in k-pop, that’s me.

VCHA – Y.O.Universe

Is it k-pop, I don’t even know or care but JYP is putting it out so it might as well be. It’s certainly very NewJeans inspired with the fast tempo and the “it’s fun and not torture we promise” dance moves. Pity it’s also poo but whatever, you probably don’t even care and neither do I.

Rolling Quartz – Fearless

The funk guitars are a little dull but in the sections where they heavy it up a little it’s decent. Also it’s great to see the solos getting better and better. Not the greatest song ever but the delivery method gets it over the line.

Yuju – Dalala

You know it’s not bad, the feel of it reminds me of Viviz. You know she should consider getting together with those Viviz girls, and maybe also that Yerin girl would fit in nicely too, because it feels like she would do well in a group. Maybe also add an extra random racist member for some hot spicy racism so they have more chance of going viral on TikTok and that’d be a group everyone could get behind.

Nayeon feat. Felix – No Problem

I really like this song, and sure, Nayeon sounds awkward as shit stumbling over the lyrics, but that’s actually what makes it work. She can’t ruin the song because she doesn’t have the ability – it’s hard enough for her to just follow the pitch correction prompts like a taxi driver trusting their GPS. If an actual good singer got hold of this tune, it would turn into a fucking disaster.

Dami – Destiny

What a letdown after “Beauty Full“, oh well. At least the video’s kind of cute or whatever.

EVNNE – Trouble

Hey even boy groups are picking up the pace again. Thanks NewJeans for starting a trend that doesn’t suck. Song’s not that great but hey at least it’s over 30 BPM.

Tempest – Vroom Vroom

Someone said to the person writing the words “I heard that if you repeat words a lot, that’s what the kids want” and they just ran with it.

Fantasy Boys – New Tomorrow

I always like the Gfriend rip-off water concept because I like the thought of some basic religious fuckheads screaming “you can’t walk on water that’s plagiarism” at their computer screens. We need to stop the trend of apologising to religions and start annoying them even more, this is a good start.

Fantasy Boys – One Shot

There’s something weird about this, like they’ve filmed it on the same camera that they use to shoot daytime TV soaps with. I can picture my mother watching this straight after The Bold And The Beautiful.

Yim Siwan, Winter – Win For You

There might be a good song here but there’s so much overblown orchestral nonsense that nobody can tell.

EL7Z UP – Die for You

It’s little wonder that people like Chuu, Tzuyu and Jooe go viral just with a little bit of extra arm movement – everyone else in this genre/scene/whatever you want to call it is stiff as a board.

Blackswan – A World Without Pain

A whole bunch of people died and it inspired someone at Dr Music to write a song. Whatever works for the creative process, I guess, just don’t kid yourself that you’re changing anything. It’s a bit like “thoughts and prayers” after a mass shooting – if god actually wanted to stop the bullets, he would have done it before they went flying, asking politely afterwards is a little too late.

Roa – Skip Out

Good idea, I’ll skip out on this one.

DKB – The Wave

I love it how they interspersed stock travel footage all over this video to try and distract you from that fact that it’s just the boys from DKB trapped in a beige room pretending to sing together. No catching waves for this lot.

JO1 – Venus

Jokes about this group’s name will never get old, especially when they keep churning out bland music that I have nothing to say about.

FAVE1 – Sirius

Every k-pop group has those sections where they show a face of each member smiling at the camera, and these guys have theirs from 0:33 and boy do they look “over it”. I’m told these are ex-100% members so they’ve been doing this shit for a decade now, I guess who can blame them.

P1Harmony – More Than Words

Nobody has time to review the deluge of pathetic “self cam” videos that get released each week by B-list k-pop groups you don’t care about, so instead here’s our weekly black music feature. K-pop fans act like people who don’t like R&B are racists, but it’s actually people who don’t like punk music who are racists, because black people consistently had the best punk music and still do, so if you’re not listening to punk music but prefer Beyonce or whatever why not just admit that you’re a racist who likes to stereotype black people and go join the KKK? Anyway, Pure Hell were one group that certainly never were paid their dues, and they were many years ahead of their time, their music goes way harder than just about anything else from that era. “Noise Addiction” sounds so fresh and vital that it could have been recorded last week, the only thing dating it back to its true vintage is the grimy 1970s quality TV transfer. Not only that, they could actually play their instruments, unlike a lot of their contemporaries in the punk scene (and that’s a common thread spanning all black musicians in that era of punk rock). Yes I enjoy writing these reviews more than the k-pop stuff and honestly why the fuck shouldn’t I, it’s not my fault your bias is shit.

Xikers – Sunny Side

Back to corporate cocksucking land and it’s pretty dreary over here. Next.

StarBe – Bang

News of Blackpink disintegrating this week is kind of good because maybe it will finally stop the trend of dreary half-time choruses ruining girl group songs.

Ferry Blue – Free

These poor girls. I hope the nugu park roundabout was kind to them.

Koala feat. Jessi – RSVP

The view stats on this show that people only really give a fuck about Jessi here and she’s definitely worth watching more than generic rapper #358. I still miss the days when Jessi would investigate actual music though.

Kim Yohan feat. Cheeze – Blue in You

There’s about ten different jokes I could make up about that song title and how bad the song is, but I’d like to see if my readers can do a better job, leave your worst puns in the comments below.

Gemini feat. Dawn, Blasé – Attention

If they think attention is that important that it’s worth writing a song about, that’s my cue to not give them any – next.

Reddy feat. Lil Cherry, Goldbuuda – Take Back

Where’s Lil Cherry? She’s the only thing that could have saved this track and she’s not even in it? Did she play the hi-hat or something? Fuck, what a rip-off.

Luli Lee – Phoenix

Being in Luli Lee’s band would be dangerous, you’d have to be constantly on the alert for that swinging bass headstock. Getting hit with that shit hurts.

An Shinae – Respect

This girl was in The Barberettes who are one of those groups who are always mega critically acclaimed and I want to like them because they’re not part of the dicksucking idol system but they kind of bore me to tears with their unadventurous retro vibes, and this really isn’t any different sadly.

IDIOTAPE – Vladimir Komarov

Idiotape simply don’t have bad music, ever. What they do have is a lot of music that I wish people would do vocals over. This is good but it would be truly amazing with the right kind of vocalist over the top.

Balming Tiger – Kamehameha

Balming Tiger on the other hand just make noise and fuck around and there’s always too much vocal. Okay, there’s a pretty good jumpscare here but it only works because everything else around it is so dull.

Kachisan – Rock, Scissors, Paper!

These guys didn’t get the memo that “indie pop” bands aren’t supposed to shred like absolute maniacs and I for one am grateful of this.

Summer Soul – Ruby

I’ve had time for Summer Soul ever since she did vocals on “Spacedog“, and this isn’t bad either. Very different mood, but it works for similar reasons – nice sonics and lots of space in the mix.

Park Hyun Ho – 1,2,3 go!

With a song title like that I was expecting… well, I don’t know what, but certainly not this grandparents-music.

Sik-K – Plz

Plz, indeed.

E SENS – Vanilla Sky

I actually really liked the beat here, not so sure about the valium-induced rapping but hey at least there’s no hard Autotune.

BONUS RANDOM VIDEOS OF THE WEEK

K Explorer – Do Koreans listen to k-pop?

Spoiler: mostly not. Oh, and… 3:13. Just saying.

AirplaneTime – a woman who seduces a strange man with her breast

Not a very good description of the content, but does it matter? This is pretty funny, mainly just for how much his partner enjoys hitting him with the hammer. Someone find out who she is and send her my books, I think she’d love them.

T-ara – I Go Crazy Because Of You

Someone posted to me the other day about how sexualised school concepts were a new thing in k-pop but no, it goes way back. In fact this type of concept pre-dates the entire Korean idol pop system itself, but since this isn’t Divinylspopalypse let’s just talk about T-ara. IGCBOY is a pretty obvious knockoff of some Britney “trust your Republican president, he knows what’s best” Spears song, and I can’t remember which one but it’s pretty obvious where the inspiration came from. T-ara obviously do a better job, with a leaner, meaner song with all the fat trimmed off, that wasn’t quite up to the standard of their other features back then, but given how outstanding those features were that’s hardly a criticism, even if the girls are collectively singing on less than 10% of the actual track. They looked the part and that’s what matters in this genre/scene/whatever where people tend to listen with their eyes first… or at least whatever’s left of their eyes after enduring this video’s industrial dance MV levels of jump cuts, an unfortunate early T-ara video trademark.

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That’s all for this week! Kpopalypse roundup returns next week! In the meantime don’t forget that the latest Kpopalypse survey is now LIVE so CLICK HERE and take the survey while you can! Also don’t forget the bonus round! Thanks, caonimas!