Kpopalypse roundup – new k-pop releases 16/10/2023

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

Jay finally got his soju brand up and running! Good work Mr Park, now send my girlfriend those two bottles that you owe her, address is here, thanks champ.

IVE – Baddie

Despite it being a type of k-pop song that I typically hate, I was surprised by how much I liked this. It’s not their best but it’s definitely a better song than “Kitsch“, despite the similarly awful lyrics, because the whole song is all-in on the same idea instead of chopping and changing between disjointed sections. Also there’s no melodic randomness, everything’s in the same tonality which makes a huge difference. This is about as good as shit songs like this get. Also congratulations Liz for being 2024’s ‘no reason’ sidebar girl, IVE is now officially Liz and everyone else as far as this website is concerned until at least October 2024.

TXT – Chasing That Feeling

TXT’s song this week is simply great, with excellent keyboards really helping the melody along, and no stupid slow sections to kill the vibe. Truly, they paved the way.

Chuu – Underwater

Well, it has Chuu and she’s underwater, so this video does what it says on the box. Not a huge fan of the tedious millennial lighter-waving tone of the music which hardly plays to Chuu’s strengths but I guess after going to court about 235 times over the last 12 months she’s earned herself a break from all that jumping around and being interesting.

tripleS EVOLution – Invincible

Similar to OEC’s “Loonatic” with the layered vocals and punchy drum sound in places, that’s definitely not a bad thing. It doesn’t quite have the same catchiness and they could have ditched the stupid trap part but hey any pre-debut Loona throwback is a good throwback.

Lightsum – Honey or Spice

And this is IVE’s song this week if it was written by people who didn’t have a clue.

Jini feat. Aminé – C’mon

Straightforward and decent, I’m really digging this despite the backing track spending half its time behind a low-pass filter for no reason.

ITZY – Sugar-holic

Someone tries to do a breezy bossanova “Alcohol Free” style jam with Itzy but it doesn’t work because the rhythms are too weak and bogged down in trap bullshit for it to get off the ground.

Xdinary Heroes – Break the Brake

Nice try with the heavy guitars but the song is pretty average and there’s too much smoothness overall. A few rough edges wouldn’t kill JYP’s rock projects.

BOYNEXTDOOR – ABCDLOVE

Again they only give us 30% of the screen space, so here’s 30% of a review. When I listened to this song I really thought that it could use a

Ailee feat. Lil Cherry – Ra Ta Ta

Ailee’s song works pretty well during the high-flying vocal sections (as she’s one of the few in k-pop with the chops to carry something like that) and is a bit awkward elsewhere. I actually wish she’d utilised Lil Cherry more for the chorus instead of just the obligatory post-first-chorus rap section, as the vibe of this song’s hook actually suits her a bit better than it suits Ailee.

Lil Cherry – Miami Beach

And it’s just as well Lil Cherry sounds good on Ailee’s track this week because she sure doesn’t sound any good on her own.

Wheein – In The Mood

I wasn’t in the mood for this plodding coffee-shop stuff.

Lee Hyori – Hoodie e Banbaji

More dreary music designed for you to brush your teeth to before bedtime. A veteran like Lee Hyori deserved better than this.

Hwasa x SWF 2 – Chili

I suppose for a nothingy dance track it’s acceptable enough. If I had a vagina I’d touch it in front of an audience to this song, probably.

82MAJOR – First Class

This group have another good song, they’re shaping up to be quite decent. How come hardly any other boy groups are getting it right? For bonus points they destroy a Gibson Les Paul in the video, that’s always good to see, those pieces of firewood should be worth ten cents each.

Pentagon – To Universe

Nobody cares about insulting “for the fans” ballad garbage except cult members, so let’s instead focus on actual music by having our weekly black music feature! This time it’s TCIYF (The Cum In Your Face) and I’m sorry because I know you people all would rather I put Hemlocke Springs here or whatever and she’s okay I guess I mean she might get in one week in the future once I run out of punk bands from Soweto, South Africa to put here instead. Honestly I don’t mind her stuff but she doesn’t need the promo as much as these guys do. I mean have you read about the load-shedding over there lately, these poor kids are probably lucky if they even have enough electricity per day to get through a roundup’s worth of reading time let alone plug their guitars in again this year and record more kick-ass music. I hope they’re doing well and anyway they rock so you could go and check them out if you wanted.

Skull & Koonta – Stony Freestyle

Skull was actually pretty smart calling his old group “Stony Skunk” because now whenever he drops a drug reference in a song he can say “no, I just mean ‘stony’ as in the style of my old group, nothing to do with weed man, I don’t touch that stuff gosh no”. Maybe that’s how he’s avoided jail time all these years.

Bobby – F

He’s over not showering, apparently the new way to be hip-hop is to say ‘fuck’ a lot. I hope it works out for him just so we get more stupid songs like this to laugh at.

IITERNITI – Wen Moon

The new 11-member configuration of ETERNITY actually has slightly better deepfaking this time around, and the song isn’t too tragic this time either because at least it’s somewhat subtle and not overblown like k-ballads usually are. Who noticed that the girl with the vaguely south-east Asian appearance gets the least amount of screentime, now that’s pretty impressive that they got the simulation of a k-pop group video looking realistic and credible right down to the casual racism.

Bobby feat. JUSTHIS – Hercules!

This looks like a pretty cool computer game and I wish I was playing it and not listening to this music instead.

Adora – 10 reasons for I love you

Not a very good song as far as actual music goes, but the good thing about ballad videos is that if you really bias the artist you get lots of long shots of them wearing nice clothes with hardly any cuts so you can just sit there and admire them, so that’s good. It’s important to look at the positive in any situation.

LIONESSES – Papyun

Lionesses are terrible once again. Who the hell made this beat and what drugs were they on.

Rothy – Something Casual

Rothy has never been this good. It’s the rhythm that makes this song what it is, and Rothy as Audrey Hepburn is a 10/10 styling move.

Gwangil Jo – Reminiscence

I’ll have to wait for English subs before I know what Gwangil Jo is so upset about this time but gosh he does sound very passionate about it as usual, and the backing track really fits, playing into his rare dynamic ability as a rapper perfectly. Pity the song is so short as I was looking forward to where this was going and then it just ended. One day this guy will be happy and not tormented and I hope that day never comes because he’ll probably start releasing shit music at that point, like Celtic Frost did when the singer finally got a girlfriend.

Kang Hyeyeon – What if I just go

It’s that girl from BESTie who became a trot singer, back again. The song’s not great but I have to admire the neck-twisting moves, they hurt to look at. This is like the trot version of Corpsegrinder’s hair whip move, she’s going to have neck muscles as big as his in a few years if she keeps this up.

Jindozin – Character

I’m told this girl is from Ferry Blue. Enjoy this very cringe song with the awful vocal effects, which is definitely on the ‘funny’ end of ‘bad’.

Big Mama – Happy Me

The worst of the worst both in terms of music and extreme cultural body-shaming. I hope I don’t have to explain how this works to morons but I probably do, and they’ll probably miss the point as always but whatever. For now just know that this sucks.

Jang Woohyuk – I feel Hope

This guy is in H.O.T which is as good a reason not to listen to this song as any other.

BÉBE YANA – Vision Getting Blurred

Meh.

Loco feat. Woo – Broken iPhone

I couldn’t work out what this song was trying to say about iPhones but just the fact that they exist and people buy them is shameful so smash one for Loco I guess.

I.Q – Jelly Pop

I expected this to be a nugu alert contender but no it has nearly half a million views at the time of writing. Pretty impressive given what it is, right? What could be causing all that popularity? No idea.

ID:Earth – Stars

I feel like I should like this but something about it doesn’t quite hit.

COCONA – Bounce

Kind of brainless but I dig it, probably because the rhythms are so pushed up. After so many dreary songs this makes me feel like moving.

XXOK – BLink

A bit better than the usual generic club music, but I always feel like something’s missing with these techno instrumental excursion things. Put some vocal on it or something even if it’s just a sample.

Yeon. – I promise we’ll never run into each other again

I was all ready with my “the feeling’s mutual, not gonna lie it’s the tattoos” joke but then the song turned out to be okay. Oh well, guess I’m an asshole, what’s new.

Lee Dae Won – Just kidding

The most impressive thing here is that they managed to get the nugu park roundabout working for an entire song. I wonder if they charge by the minute for firing up that thing.

Bryn – So What

Bryn is always worth checking out because she’s always either disgustingly horrible or appealingly different, never anything in between. Sadly she only gave us 30% of the screen so as usual I’m only going to do 30% of my review which means it’s probably going to run out just before I get to tell you which

Kim Sawol – Knife

Kim Sawol sadly had a one-off with that song she managed to land in my top 30 one year. I don’t think she’s interested in doing something that arresting again, sadly. This sub-Mazzy Star maudlin crooning is pretty decent to be honest, but it’s just too low-key to really get me involved.

Kim Sawol – Signals Across The Night

Her other song is very much the same vibes. It’s decent enough but doesn’t exactly set my world on fire.

Regen – My-oh, My-oh

Here’s a good song to end roundup on, because it’s awful and so that makes it a good enough reason to stop doing anything in particular.

BONUS RANDOM VIDEOS OF THE WEEK

vallgall – I took my boomer dad to a Blackpink concert

He’s not a boomer at that age technically, but whatever. He’s certainly got boomer music taste if he thought everything at a Blackpink concert sounded the same and wanted more slow songs, what a fucking weak softcock. Blackpink’s songs are too slow as it is, half of their feature tracks are already like 2 BPM, and this grandpa wants it ever slower, fuck me. People his age should be cutting their wrists to Slayer’s “Reign In Blood” album and telling their kids to grow a pair, not complaining that today’s music is too hardcore.

ATMUMAN – Making IU figure with paper clay

Holy shit, this is mindblowing. I mean, people making figures of famous people has been around for centuries, but it’s still incredible to see what goes into it. The YouTube view popularity metric is interesting on this one, the part with the most views is where he’s finishing off the naked body before he puts the clothes on! As usual the stats don’t lie. I guess this is as close to seeing IU naked as people are ever going to get.

2PM – Go Crazy

Remember when 2PM actually had upbeat songs? You could be forgiven for not remembering. The song itself here isn’t much to get excited about, just a bassline, a beat and two chords for the most part, but at least it moves a bit and doesn’t degenerate into trap bullshit or some other slow nonsense, so that’s good. A healthy reminder that not every song ever needs a fucking time-wasting breakdown.

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