Kpopalypse roundup – new k-pop releases 20/11/2023
It’s time for Kpopalypse roundup! Let’s take a look at some new releases!
Soyeon x Winter x Liz – Nobody
Now here’s a random dice-roll collab I didn’t see coming, but can it really even be called a collaboration when the three girls are never in the same room together (that obviously composited ending pose doesn’t count) and possibly have never even met or spoken? Whatever the case, the excellent chorus and outstanding styling (Winter bringing 80s goth lower lip piercings back) is enough to stop me from thinking about it too hard.
ENHYPEN – Sweet Venom
A cool bassline does most of the work here, the song’s sadly pretty average apart from this.
THE BOYZ – Watch It
Definitely the best song yet from The Boyz, whoever arranged those keys put in the work that saves what would have otherwise been a boring boy-group trash-fest. And hey it mrcs
Stray Kids – Megaverse
It’s actually silly and brainless enough to work. I laughed out loud a lot at how lame it was but I’ll admit I also enjoyed it. Maybe it’s just because of the Australian accents creeping through in the English sections. Mind you I really wish the song didn’t hit the skids for the second half, they could have had another “Side Effects” here.
VIVIZ – Untie
It might have taken them about 57 attempts, but Viviz finally fully deliver on the promise of a “more mature Gfriend” sound with this stomping dance number that has distinct N.O.M vibes. I guess I’ll have to reluctantly admit that “performance” videos are good for something, after all.
TripleS – New Look
These poor girls. You know with so many people in the group that the chances of any of them ever making any decent money is close to zero, because if they ever do earn anything at all as a group it then has to be split 94 ways between all the members. At least the song’s good, I guess dancing is free entertainment when you’re broke.
BIBI & Becky G – Amigos
Someone said on livestream to me this week that Bibi doesn’t seem that interested in music but just wants to be in the next Tarantino film, and actually that’s a great idea. She’s definitely missed her calling by being involved with music.
ZB1 – Melting Point
Some blink-and-you’ll-miss-it horse footage here but that’s the only reason to care about this one.
Rolling Quartz – Reminisce
Rolling Quartz do their best to breathe life into some bland piece of shit that’s even older and crustier than I am by giving it the heavy metal power ballad treatment, and it’s just not enough to save it. Sometimes old songs should just be allowed to sleep in their graves undisturbed.
Suzy – Undercover
I wonder why this song by this once-A-list star was missed by my roundup when it came out. Probably because it sucks donkey balls? Okay, that settles that, I suppose.
Dream Sweet – The Whispering Spell
Oh and this weird fake group for a TV or whatever it is that she’s in (I’m just guessing that’s what this is but who the fuck cares honestly) sucks too.
UZA – Mada
This is the first, and last, and only time I will ever feature a video here with procedural AI-generated art. This is really just a PSA to let you know that I won’t ever be doing this again, for any artist ever, no matter what. All the NFT grifters are now moving over to this AI shit and I’m against it. I pay an actual artist top dollar to do hand-drawn covers for my books and there’s a reason for that.
KISS OF LIFE – Nobody Knows
I’m really digging the stripped-back, more organic vibe of a lot of Kiss Of Life’s material. Now if only they had songs.
J.Y. Park (JYP) – Changed Man
Hey at least the song is a banger, but why isn’t Kim Wan Sun in this vocally? I don’t think JYP has changed as much as he’d like us to believe.
KARD – Fireworks
KARD are literally the only group keeping all those tropical house musicians employed. Also worth noting is that I’m pretty sure this is the only time in human history that all KARD members have had the same hair colour. It’s like the planets aligning.
Seventeen – Diamond Days
One of the guys there is making a big play for the legs category in the objectification survey next year, let’s all remember him and wish him all the best (once I work out his name, someone fill me in who has the hunky trunks in the comments below thx).
&TEAM – War Cry
I’m pretty sure that actual war cries don’t use Autotune.
DAVICHI – A very personal story
Here’s a very personal story. I listened to a Davichi song. It wasn’t very good. The end.
Epitone Project x Yoona – Knock
Yoona goes back to acoustic balladeering which seems to be what she’s good at, and she’s done better than this before but it’s still on the good side of mid-paced ballads generally speaking.
3YE – LOCO
Not much of a song but I’m glad it came out because it’ll give me something to screencap in a couple weeks when I do my 2024 prediction post.
ICU – Anti Hero
Yeah this is terrible.
Zior Park – Bullet
I left this off roundup last week in the hope that it would go away but people actually requested it for some reason so here it is. Mind you it’s really not bad at all once you get past his very weird voice.
Puzzle – Savior
According to my song submitter, this is a “Korean-Japanese project group consisting of members of K-pop groups We;Na & 1CHU and J-pop group Secret School”. It’s also kind of annoying trash. Hey at least they got their group name right, I bet Elz-7up are kicking themselves now that they didn’t just spell “Puzzle” the normal way before someone else thought of it first.
AMPERS&ONE – On And On
Just kind of average, feels like a typical boy group song template.
EASTSHINE – Double Down
I’m not into it but then I saw it had like three views, and it’s pretty good for an ultra nugu effort, honestly. Mind you the last time I called a boy group nugu in a review they turned out to be BTS so who knows what will happen to these guys.
NTX – Holy Grail
I’ve been replaying Deus Ex a bit lately so I’m really liking the look of this video because it’s kind of similar. The sound of the backings are good too, nice and punchy. Not real keen on some of the melodic stuff that happens but I can let it slide because I already leveled up my EMP resistance.
NINE.i – Like Crazy
Our friend the Paradise Diner is back, and that velvet jacket at 0:17 is pretty sexy so this group at least have their image on point. The song’s reasonable I guess, nothing special but we’re getting a lot less shouty bullshit these days and a lot more actual melody in the boy group songs… is the shouty bullshit trend finally dying? Here’s hoping.
KINGDOM – Love Song
Speaking of image on point I was all excited for another Kingdom video but they’re wearing clothes which look like they might’ve been in fashion sometimes this millennium, which isn’t their strong point.
Giuk – Scratch
This singer is very unique visually, with a fret-light bass, strung ultra high, some weird cap that I thought was his hair for a moment, and even wearing dresses in some scenes, I think this is potentially the LGBT hero Korean rock needs.
Jay Park – Why
Why, indeed.
Narsha feat. Babylon – Blush
G-Dragon’s new song is a bit on the mellow and dreary side, damn. And what happened to his voice? I guess it’s true what they say about marijuana and throat damage.
L – Starting Over
We’re taking the L once again with another dull slow song. Infinite fans who remember “The Chaser” didn’t come here for this.
Young K – Eleven-7 with You
Since you’re so happy to be there can you pick my gf up some keto snacks kthx
SKULL, Jo Gwangil – Count On Me
Jo Gwangil must have been paid a fat cheque for appearing in this silliness, or maybe a fat blunt. Really though I just feel sorry for the girls in this, you can see the one at 0:05 just let out a big fucking sigh as the camera pans up her body, you can almost taste the ambivalence. Notice how at no point are any of the girls seen closer than ten meters from the guys, I’m pretty sure that was the carrot that made them agree to do this. “Yeah okay I’ll be in your fucking video if you pay me a lot and promise to keep that weirdo on the other side of the room…”
Zior Park – Space Z
Furries in spacesuits, that’s a nope.
Vince – UUU
Most of the time when I have nothing to say about a video I just delete it from roundup altogether, but sometimes I instead use the space to promote black music, so here’s this week’s black music feature! I actually played a show on the same bill as Jamaican dancehall legend Lady Saw once, and I was so excited to see her perform because when she goes hard she goes harder than just about anyone in that whole scene, and I’ve heard how wild her shows can get. Sadly I missed her because we were playing at exactly the same time on two different stages (something that sucks sometimes about being part of an act on a big festival bill). Then a couple years later she did a ‘surprise’ performance at another show I was at but since it wasn’t even promoted and she just literally showed up randomly on someone else’s stage with zero announcement and started grabbing men’s dicks I didn’t know about it and only found out after it was over. Anyway her music is great (when it’s upbeat ahem) and her treatment of douchebag male fans is even better, respect.
Tae Jin Ah – You and i going together
Tae Jin Ah has about ten backing vocalists here to help him pitch his notes correctly because he struggles on his own these days but he’s still a trot legend. Listening to him really drives home how weak a lot of the others are.
Crush – Hmm-cheat
If I had to put up with this in the relationship, I’d cheat too.
Sumin feat. Uhm Junghwa – Closet
Incredible visual style and production here tries to get a rambling anemic pile of one-chord nonsense over the line and a lot of people will be fooled because k-pop fans are superficial like that.
THAMA – Baby I Know
The bass playing nearly saves it. Definitely a song that would be ten times better as an instrumental.
Cacophony – End
Cacophony are pretty different, probably too different for the likes of people who frequent k-pop sites, but that didn’t stop me from giving them a Nugu Alert feature. This is probably my favourite song of theirs so far, so sonically different, if more Korean ballads had this kind of energy maybe I’d actually fucking listen to them.
Yohrn – Pale Blue Dot
This song certainly made me yohrn.
Mirae – Good Time
Is this an AI creation or have they added some sort of weird extra BB smoothing filter to the camera. I guess if she really does look like that, she should take it as a compliment. The fact that I can’t even tell the different indicates that I should probably stop roundup about here.
Chad Future – Like That
I had to add this one on though, more as an FYI than anything. Is he even a k-pop any more? The Korean text in the YouTube video title seems to be the only link left to his heady k-pop past, although I’m sure he’ll surprise me by paying for another collab with a C-list k-pop girl six months from now.
RANDOM BONUS VIDEOS OF THE WEEK
Choa – Why Am I So Healthy? Choa’s Daytime Healthy Habits Released!
Ex-AOA’s Choa takes you through some of her healthy lifestyle choices. Definitely worth a look if you’re interested in health improvement.
LE SSERAFIM Live Performance | BlizzCon2023
Le Sserafim performing for Blizzard was definitely good marketing tactics on Blizzard’s part, I got to watch 90% of the hatred on my social networking timelines towards Blizzard for endless sexual harrassment and shit game scandals evaporate almost instantly and get replaced with “omg Le Sserafim at Blizzcon, slay, ate, mother, cunty”. Nice to know k-pop fans have principles ahem.
K’pop – 0.5
A real gem of a retro song here, not because of the song itself (which is dogshit), but more for the story behind it, I’ll let the reader who submitted this tell it:
ngl making your debut song about how japan have been assholes to korea and guerilla filming in the yasukuni shrine and stepping on the japanese flag on a japanese street is one of the most punk things i’ve ever heard a kpop group doing. k’pop (yes that’s literally their name by some accounts they were the ones to come up with that term) has legitmately one of the wildest stories i’ve ever heard i really recommend reading this doc that details all the weird shit that happened to them you wont be disappointed
Have fun, caonimas!
That’s all for this week! Kpopalypse roundup returns next week!
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