Kpopalypse roundup – new k-pop releases 4/12/2023
It’s time for Kpopalypse roundup! Let’s take a look at some new releases!
NMIXX – Soñar (Breaker)
I really want NMIXX to have a good song so I can have an excuse to stan Lily more, because she’s Australian so it’s a requirement, but whoever is in charge of giving songs to them seems determined to not let that happen.
ATEEZ – Crazy Form
Ateez are also definitely not in crazy song selection form.
MAVE: – What’s My Name
Some weak K/DA knockoff that doesn’t look or sound any faker than the rest of k-pop.
YUKIKA – I Want To Be Closer To You
Yukika’s apparently quitting all her k-pops soon. As this is her final hurrah at least for a while, she doesn’t really give a crap about writing songs for cunts anymore so she’s just given us some lame contractual obligation cover album that nobody tried too hard with.
Dreamcatcher – Shatter
Another below-average Dreamcatcher song with their songwriters running scared from the group’s metal concept as usual. The global market is overripe for a true “metal k-pop” hybrid, Dreamcatcher could be as big globally as Babymetal if only the team behind them grew a brain and turned the guitars up.
CSR – HBD To You (Midnight ver.)
I wouldn’t have minded a better song for my birthday.
VCHA – Ready for The World
“I wanna see the world, does the world wanna see me”, ask the girls of VCHA, someone’s latest “global k-pop” group, and the answer seems to be “meh”.
NiziU – Love & Like
Devastatingly bad even by Niziu standards, somehow this makes everything else they’ve ever done sound a lot better.
TRI.BE feat. ELLY – Loro
This song was garbage the first time around and this ‘remix’ doesn’t change anything significant.
&TEAM – Dropkick
Where I live the word “dropkick” is an insult roughly analogous to “wanker” but surprisingly the song has a decent chorus (I guess something has to be good this week) so I don’t get to trot out my lame Australian dropkick puns, what a shame.
TVXQ – Down
It’s pretty dreary and only lifted up by that weird rock-meets-dubstep breakdown nonsense, but what we all want to know is, where are the other three members? Don’t tell me the group had a breakup? Oh no! Gosh what a shame for all those TVXQ fans out there. Hey I’m sorry SM but I’m obliged to keep mentioning this until you give TVXQ a decent song again.
Adora – Dreams
T-ara ballad vibes and sharp suit-wearing style from Kpopalypse bias Adora help save this roundup somewhat from terminal blandness. Yay, I have a reason to care about k-pop this week.
Omega X – Hey!
It sucks but I’m just putting it here so nobody asks me to cover it next week.
DKB – What The Hell
I didn’t mind this but then I noticed that it featured AI art for a few tiny fragments, so therefore I have removed it from roundup for the good of humanity and replaced it with this week’s black music feature. I don’t know a lot about Dead Air other than they’re from Leeds, England and that they have riffs. Oh boy, do they have riffs. This is harking back to the golden days of stoner metal like Electric Wizard’s “Dopethrone” album, except that this is a lot more accessible, which is certainly not a bad thing as Electric Wizard’s lengthy sludge excursions take a bit of getting used to. Rock on.
ONE PACT – Must Be Nice
That moment where the guy gets punched at 1:19 and the track just stops, now that was the right idea. Pity at 1:21 the music starts straight back up again, but that one second of silence was actually one of the better pieces of music this week.
ATBO – Mayday
You know your favourite k-pop boys are actually from satan when they don’t cast shadows on reflective surfaces.
n.SSign – New Star
See, these boys cast shadows even though their floor surface is similarly reflective. That’s why their music is somewhat better.
WEUS – Fate
A boy group tries the Agust D trick of standing in front of an old building to give you ‘artistic cred’ vibes and really everyone should just leave it to Kingdom. If you’re not going to do the whole sexually ambiguous bit what’s the point.
WEUS – Starry Dream
Someone call the supermarket so they can get their stolen milk crates back.
NCT U – Baggy Jeans (Kim Mincheol & Hayate Remix)
Another week, another garbage SM remix that should never have even been thought of, let alone commissioned, let alone recorded, let alone released, let alone a video made for it. How does garbage like this get through so many checks and balances.
Hi-Fi Un!corn – Stay With You
Sorry FNC, bands like this need to be all-female or at least mostly female. FNC have a once-rocking girl group turned generic-dancey girl-group to atone for. I don’t want to see any more bands from FNC with less than 50% female/male ratio, thank you.
Heejin – Video Game
Well it’s a lot better than her poo song from last week. Click on this one just to prove YG wrong.
Hyolyn – Body Talk
The body might talk, but the music just kind of whimpers. The chair moves were pretty death-defying but those castrated high notes were scarier.
PIXY – Truth or Dare
A nice groove, but definitely lacking a big hook to really make it stand out.
Moon Jong Up – Stuck
Slow swing-feel songs leaning on ‘bluesiness’ while being as sterile as anything else in k-pop production-wise are a hard nope.
Dey – Form
Nugus talking about ‘making it rain’ when they’ve rented the same low-budget indoor studio that every other poverty-stricken group rents.They’d be better off just being honest.
BE’O – Mad
Not mad, just disappointed.
Nam Woohyun – Baby Baby
I was scared it might be the Justin Bieber song for a moment and while it’s not that cringe it’s also not much better.
Jambino feat. Lee Youngji – Happy B!tch
Whenever you see “some rando guy ft. Lee Youngji” you already know to just skip straight to her part and disregard the rest of the song.
DPR IAN – Skins
So short and inconsequential it doesn’t really deserve to be here at all, but I’ve already played my black music card for the week so let’s just move on.
Uptown feat. Babylon & Lauren Evans – Back II Analog
Bohyun from Spica and Keembo is in this, which just goes to show that good talent doesn’t equal a good song.
Meenoi – Ticket
There’s actually a cool chorus here with a great filtered bassline but the struggle to actually make it there is hard.
BÉBE YANA – Vroom Vroom
We’re going to have to put up with this sound for the next few years, aren’t wee.
D-Hack feat. Skinny Brown – About D-Hack
All I know about D-Hack is that he uses too much Autotune and that’s all I care to know.
Tank – Rumors
Hey, remember Tank? Didn’t think so. I assume it’s the same guy, but even if he isn’t his music still sucks so whatever.
SAAY – RollerCoaster
The usual rambling R&B, let’s stop roundup here before it gets worse.
RANDOM BONUS VIDEOS OF THE WEEK
RIIZE at MAMA awards
So the question that I got through Twitter DM, Retrospring, email, carrier pigeon, someone flashing morse code signals with a mirror outside my house etc is… is this guitar performance real? In short, yeah… nah. The first part is probably real, or at least played by him on pre-record, because it’s not very well played, and why would anyone fake a guitar performance that bad. There’s quite a bit of ‘guitar fail’ energy here, especially the part where he attempts a whammy dive-bomb at 0:32 and fucks it up when he pulls the bar and his right hand directly down onto the strings and kills the sound completely. Also you can really hear that tremolo rattle away at 0:10, anyone who ever owned a guitar with one of those cheap shitty Fender style bridges knows that string-pinging noise well enough. However when the band starts, he’s getting a lot of help from the other guitarists that you see come up on the stage riser, so that bit’s not him, until he starts soloing again and then it’s… still not him. The giveaway (just like with the Winter video a few weeks back) is that he forgets to synchronise the slide of his hand with the slide on the recording. On the audio it’s a fast slide down at 1:23 but he doesn’t start actually doing that on the guitar until a full second later, and even then he’s doing it much slower. So yeah it’s real….ly not that impressive. I do dig the straight-to-camera moody glares though, badass.
Blue Betta Creative – Chuu’s reaction when she heard of someone named Seulgi
Seems about right. This is exactly what every girlfriend I’ve ever had for any length of time would do if they found out someone they knew had the same name as a pop singer, they’d just bug them non stop with stupid antics. Stan Chuu.
H.O.T – Full Of Happiness
H.O.T trying to mimic the success of the similarly awful “Candy” with a weird sportball theme and I have no idea if it worked out for them or not commercially but the music is kinda bad so who cares. They sound drunk, seriously. Also, is this where Skull got his voice from, trying to imitate these guys?
That’s all for this week! Kpopalypse roundup returns next week!
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