Kpopalypse roundup – new k-pop releases 11/12/2023, post schedule and 2023 end of year survey!
It’s time for the last Kpopalypse roundup of 2023, before we enter end-of-year post mode! Let’s firstly take a look at some new releases!
Jungkook – Hate You
How many layers of vocal smoothing and computer correction does “one of the greatest singers of all time” actually need, jesus fucking christ on a stick. If he really is that talented you’d think the audio engineers would actually have some faith in him instead of giving him training wheels all the way, damn.
STAYC – LIT
“When I will I stfu about every single song being like NewJeans” when everyone stops fucking ripping them off, that’s when. As usual they’re copying them here right down to the fashions and dance moves. Sorry, I don’t WANT to be this repetitive, but I’m not going to close my eyes and pretend that this isn’t happening, you must have me confused for some other fansite that sucks up to fandoms for clicks.
XG – Winter Without You
As soon as you hear that first breathy fart of a vocal at 0:17 you know that there’s nothing possibly good that could come from this song.
NCT U – Marine Turtle
More like a post turtle.
Shin Jimin – Twinkle Little Star
Nothing at all like her idol music, Jimin the independent rocker is a very different beast. Once it gets going it’s not bad, although I’ve got to say that the instrumental chorus without her vocal is actually the best part.
BM – Lowkey
Not lowkey enough. At least he gets his shirt off, Wonho had better step it up quickly with some army shower streams or something.
Taeyeon – All For Nothing
I’m not sure what’s been more computer-corrected and smoothed-over this week, Jungkook’s voice or Taeyeon’s face. Very deep uncanny valley vibes here.
Soojin – Sunset
Soojin however looks great as always, which is kind of a shame on a mental health level because unlike Taeyeon’s music video it means that there’s no horrifying visual to distract from the dull music.
Fatou – The Other Side
“Pedestrian 90s hip-hop soft serve” is definitely not my preferred flavour of rap music but Fatou sounds solid for the task at hand and does as good as anyone else ever did at this.
Narsha feat. Verbal Jint – Game
Leaves a good impression at first, but once the singing starts the edge is dulled a bit. Still decent overall and probably the best thing Narsha has done solo.
Juju Secret – Maybe I’m not in love
This sounds okay but it seems hugely unfair to review a live stage of it, because the audio quality here is total ass. So I checked out the studio audio and it’s decent T-ara style semi-trot vibes.
Golden Girls – One Last Time
People think this is inspiring or something but it’s actually really insulting. In other cultures older women in music are just allowed to exist freely, but in Korea to get over the line they have to call themselves stuff like “Golden Girls” and their song has to be called stuff like “One Last Time”, implying that they’ll get back in their rocking chairs and resume sewing soon, like “gosh look at all the old people being old, yet still being able to sing and dance, oh my how fascinating”. It’s the same kind of tokenism as Piggy Dolls or BP Rania and then fact people aren’t horrified when Korean pop does this shows that k-pop fans are actually completely cool with bigotry as long as the target isn’t them.
Weeekly – Backwards
Weeekly might actually be that group that takes up the ‘sexy concept’ mantle for 2024 as predicted, they’re certainly edging a little in that direction here and the song is appropriately decent too. They’ll have to try harder than this for me to forget Jiyoon though.
LUCY – Boogie Man
Actually pretty rocking and cool, I actually have nothing snarky to say. People think I actually want to be mean but no – I wish the songs were this good all the time!
TAN – Violet
Not bad, some cool guitar riffs help dilute the genericness of it a bit.
CRAVITY – Dilly Dally
Another song which is actually pretty reasonable. I would think about letting Cravity into my cavity based on this.
&TEAM – Really Crazy
Eh, it’s tolerable.
THE BOYZ – Dear.
Dear, I didn’t mean to bully you in middle school, I just wanted to be cool, you know?
QWER – Secret Diary
Something definitely feels off about the band footage, the keyboardist is doing 90% of the work here but where are they in the footage? Justice for keyboard players.
GIUK feat. Rare, Gray Dot – Happy or Not?
I’m going with ‘not’. Some Tim Henson style guitar playing is nice but isn’t quite enough to lift this song up to where it needed to be.
DKZ – Daymoon
Someone said that they’d buy all my books if I dropped DKZ a positive review, and… yeah I guess you’re not buying them this week, sorry.
Hwiyoung – HBD
It’s alright, it rocks along kind of casually and is pretty cool. I’d probably be more into it if it was an AOA song.
Heize feat. 10CM – Stranger
Heize is as fed up with 10cm’s bland music as we are so she decided to do something about it and blow up their car with the singer inside. Now that’s one way to increase your Kpopalypse bias list placing.
MC Sniper – Hedgehog
To make this kind of sappy beat work you have to be rapping on that crazy emotionally tense Jo Gwangil kind of level, and MC Sniper has never quite been at that level (but then to be fair nobody else in Korea has either).
Zion.T feat. AKMU – V (Peace)
Zion T rather thinks we’d rather see seven Zion Ts dancing in a row, instead of Suhyun. Who wants to tell him.
Zion.T – Unlove
Maybe if you’d put Suhyun in your video, your girlfriend wouldn’t have broken up with you.
Zion.T – Stranger
Even this old dude who’s even older and crustier than me somehow gets screen time but Suhyun where? Tsk tsk.
Solji – One ring
I don’t care about these bland ballad genericisms so let’s instead have our last BLACK BLACK BLACK music feature for roundup! It’s hard to take most other rap seriously after you’ve listened to KRS-One for a while. One of the originals and one of the best at lyricism, and not only that but KRS-One has never strayed away from having actual decent beats in his music (unlike a lot of the unlistenable ‘conscious rappers’ of today who barely seem to know what a beat is), there’s not a single pissweak trend-riding bullshit album in his entire catalog stretching decades. He’s also one of the most consistently prolific rappers, still making music today at more or less the same rate as when he started. I hope you’ve enjoyed listening to and/or discovering BLACK BLACK BLACK music in roundup this year!
3MEN – Let Me Be Your Man
I think I need to see an optometrist, or maybe a mathematician, because I’m pretty sure that I saw four men in this group.
Punch – Just Another Day
Punch breaks the OST rule by only ever being good on OSTs and generally boring the rest of the time. She’s like k-pop antimatter.
Off The Menu – Canyon
Hey I thought this synth-driven rock song was pretty damn nice. Like, holy shit, this is good.
Asiruy – Supanova
Seriously, no.
Lee Jiwon – Jiwon
Don’t blame the poor kid – it’s the adult’s responsibility to step in and show her how to use the microphone correctly.
Samchie&Giri – I Love My Town
This mrcs so let’s leave roundup here while we’re on a good note.
Chuu – A Beautiful Farewell
And here’s your beautiful farewell song, and it’s not that great actually but it does have Chuu and she’s great so that’s good enough. See below for the post schedule.
RANDOM BONUS VIDEOS OF THE WEEK
yveslyn – the most k-poppiest k-pop songs to ever k-pop in k-pop
I think that just means that the video creator likes them, as there doesn’t seem to be much else of a common thread here. A pretty good list, I thought.
Jayegato – Why the Bridge Dying in kpop is a problem
An interesting video, but I disagree. A song that’s very short doesn’t need a bridge. I like it that we’re moving to shorter songs now, it’s like the 1950s and prior where songs stuck to one thing and less than three minutes was a normal pop song length. Of course there’s room for longer songs too but I see no harm in a short song that is consistent.
Trouble Maker – Trouble Maker
Trouble Maker is almost without precedent in k-pop because it’s a song where the whistle hook isn’t only the most memorable part of the song, but it’s also actually fairly listenable and pleasant. Also Hyuna never Hyuna’ed more Hyuna than she does in this video.
KPOPALYPSE (partial) rest of 2023 POST SCHEDULE
25th December – Christmas songs roundup
27th December – Clearing house list posted
29th December – Honourable and dishonourable mentions of 2023 (all songs released after this is published will be eligible for 2024 lists instead)
31st December – Kpopalypse’s 30 favourites and 30 worst songs of 2023
8th January 2024 – roundup begins again for 2024
There will be a livestream just before the honourable/dishonourable mentions and top/bottom 30 lists are published. Links are in the sidebar, or below. Note that unlike the regular weekly livestreams that I do, I won’t be taking questions during either of these streams.
Kpopalypse’s 2023 honourable/dishonourable mentions timer
Kpopalypse’s 2023 favourites/worst list timer
General livestream links and information
There will also be some other posts between now and 8th January not listed here, so keep checking Kpopalypse.com for updates!
END OF YEAR SURVEY
If no survey appears below, click the image of wedding Chuu to be taken to the survey as a separate webpage.
That’s all for this week! Kpopalypse roundup returns in 2024!
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