QRIMOLE – New Year 2024

It’s time for a new year, and that means a new year of QRIMOLE! Let’s take a look at questions that readers had for Kpopalypse!

Its clear you’ve been doing this for an insanely long time, and the majority of your reviews on kpop songs are neutral or negative. Sometimes I wonder if you actually LIKE kpop, or do you just keep up with this blog out of habit and because its been so long. It seems like listening to so much of one genre would make you tired of it. So, do you still like it at all? Did you genuinely enjoy it at one point and have since exhausted yourself of it over the years?

I deliberately define “k-pop” as loosely as possible so it can basically take in all genres of Korean music that present themselves in the “popular” sphere, as opposed to, I don’t know, classical or whatever (but sometimes even that stuff gets a little bit of inclusion). But really with the way I cover it I don’t feel I’m that tied to musical genre. Korea is a place where a lot of new music happens in many genres. I’m not sick of covering k-pop, it’s just that k-pop (just like metal, or rap, or [fill in the blank]) complies to Sturgeon’s Law, so it’s only natural that if I’m not being blindly biased, I’m not going to find very much of it (or ANY musical style) to be that good. The good stuff I feel is really good, and worth the hassle of trawling through the shit to find.

Hi! I’m pretty new to this blog so I’m not sure if you’ve answered this question before, but I figured I’d ask anyways. So obviously, you have quite strong opinions on your blog, many of which are negative, so I wanted to know your favorites. Who are your top 10 favorite kpop and non-kpop artists? What are your top 10 favorite kpop songs of all time?

Hi, thanks for checking me out! Here’s what I recommend. Go to my search bar on my website and type “favourite” (spelled exactly this way, with the ‘u’). Then you’ll find my 30 favourite song posts for each year since the website existed. If you want a broader overview than this, you can check out my 100 favourite songs for the 2010s by clicking here. I haven’t done an “all time” list and probably won’t (because it would need constant updating to continuously meet the requirement of being “all time”, which would be annoying) but if the website makes it to 2030 (and there’s every chance of that) I’ll do another big decade wrap-up of the 2020s then!

I don’t really have favourite groups because in k-pop the songs don’t usually come from the groups, but from behind the scenes people, who can change personnel from one song to the next, and can also be given instructions that either suit them, and me, or don’t. So it’s hard to generalise about groups. I could list some groups that have had consistently good songs recently (and I will: H1-Key, Trendz, IVE, 82Major, TXT, Dreamcatcher) or in the past (T-ara, History, SPEED, 100%, Orange Caramel) but that can change in an instant if a group changes songwriters, or creative directors, or creative direction (see: Cherry Bullet, Oh My Girl who had great early careers), and none of these things necessarily have anything to do with the idols themselves (they might sometimes, but they usually don’t). Hope this helps!

Do you watch Honest Government Ads? I find it a fun way to keep up to date with ton of the shit our government does on a regular basis that gets downplayed or ignored.

Yes, I do occasionally watch those! They definitely resonate with my sense of humour! Anyone struggling to understand some of my own humour could check out those and maybe some of the things that I write may make more sense after that. Here’s one that’s particularly relevant to my own situation:

How much can a bad MV kill a song for you? (I’m sure it wasn’t entirely serious, but your discussion of KARA’s “STEP” basically only has negative comments about the video—was that a factor in the ranking?)

Doesn’t make any difference. Maybe subconsciously but I do my best to resist that!

Calling Jungkook one of the greatest singers seems like an insult. I don’t even mean to be vocalfag about it. Just, BTS needs to severely process all their voices in all their songs, and you can barely tell who’s singing half the time, even worse with their output in more recent years. If you’re going to try to call someone a great singer, at least find someone whose voice people can actually hear. Even if the people judging have not a clue, expected really from popular media, it isn’t that immediately ironic. The whole thing just comes across as sarcasm. You’d think ARMYs would blast that article and author to smithereens, probably doxxing the latter in the meanwhile, but ARMYs don’t seem to have any sense of irony (or sense generally or really anything resembling functioning brains). I’d also imagine it’d be a damned if you do damned if you don’t situation. If the author ignored BTS, ARMYs would be all up in arms about it (maybe even literally. I can absolutely see an ARMY literally shoot someone for disagreeing with them.), and that’d lead to a similar response.

This isn’t really a question, so I’m not sure what answer you’re interested in here. But if you’re wondering whether I think BTS fans are stupid then the answer is yes. Of course all fandoms are stupid, it’s just that ARMYs stupidity is louder and more noticeable because there’s more of them, which means more stupidity, more of the time. If some other group was at the top of the male boy group tree, it’d be them with the stupidest fandom instead. Comes with the territory.

Why in your opinion the biggest kpop agencies still haven’t reached out to Peggy Gou for a collaboration? I mean she’s the biggest Korean artist outside of the kpop industry and I think her only collab with a Korean artist was a song featuring Oh Hyuk. I guess her style is too much different compared to the usual kpop stuff but that would be another reason to do it

No idea. Maybe as an independent artist she couldn’t be bothered jumping through the hoops, she might have little reason to. Or maybe it’s her sound. I don’t know, it could be anything.

Hey, I didn’t see any mention of this on the website so I’ll paste it here:

It’s a documentary on the Korean metal scene and is probably relevant to you and the website; could be worth a watch .

also post cat pictures

Thanks for this find! I’ll watch this later when I have time.

EDIT: I asked kitty for a pic but she was busy. Proof shot:

Got to love every time LTT fucks over audiophile nonsense. Audiophiles are a group of people with more money than sense and a greater trust in pseudoscience and bad science to actual senses and good science (you know, good old double-blind randomized trials).

As an audio engineer I don’t really need LTT to debunk audiophilia for me as I’m already well aware that audiophiles are nuts, but he does do a good job of explaining why it’s nonsense for people without an audio tech degree and thus for whom the insanity might not be so obvious. The difference between audio engineers and audiophiles is basically the difference between astronomy and astrology, you won’t find ANY serious audio engineers who are audiophiles and that’s for a reason.

oppa annyeong~
I’m gonna be one of those annoying cunts that asks for a sing review on Qrimole. What do you think about Taemin’s “The Rizzness” off his newest album, you know, apart from the rather inspired name? I personally thought it was intriguing especially with all the electric guitar stuff going on and just how seriously he seems to take this rizzness thing. As always, I am not a secure enough caonima to trust my own opinion on a song so I need oppar’s validation and permission to like this song.

This was reviewed in the clearing house post. I found the kicked-in-the-balls hook disturbing and difficult to get past. Maybe it’s because I’m male, and I’ve made those type of noises before after being kicked in the balls so perhaps some PTSD coming in there for me. Maybe women will like the song more?

hey oppar,
I’m having a quarter-life crisis right now in consideration to my identity. I’m a lesbian who was born and raised in a Christian household and I still believe in God. so sometimes, I think about how I want to eventually have a girlfriend, but also feel like it’s wrong because i’d be “acting on sin.” So I feel like it’d be better to be celibate for the rest of my life. I’m pretty much already practicing it anyway since I’m a hermit who hardly goes out and sees people. But I’m in this constant state btwn “Christianity is fucked just go out and be gay” and “God is the only path to true happiness so if you stray from it you’ll regret it.” Since you’re a Satanist I know you’ll lean towards the former so maybe there’s no point in me asking, but how can I reach a good middle ground of still believing in God while also being gay and not feel guilty for lusting after attractive kpop girls? or is it just not possible and I should just pick a side?

While yes I would take the ‘left hand path” on this issue personally if I was in that situation, that’s not really relevant here because it’s you in that situation, not me. I would say however that being a Christian and also a lesbian is certainly do-able, if you really wanted to. I mean, people ultimately believe what they want to believe, and they cherry pick from religious texts to support their pre-existing beliefs all the time, what people want out of a religious text at the end of the day is validation. Gayness and homosexuality together is therefore more common than you might think, not every Christian is a conservative, no matter how the terminally online ones make it look (the online world tends to amplify extremism by its very nature (more on that below), in the real word Christians are much more moderate in practice, on average). The Bible wasn’t written by one person but several people who were all (supposedly) “divinely inspired”, but there’s several contradictions in the text so they can’t all be right, even a religious scholar knows that at least some stuff in the Bible is definitely wrong. So if you have to choose what parts you want to believe, why not check out this link before you make your choice and choose all the best bits that confirm your pre-existing lesbianism?

this isn’t really a question, but I’ve been reading this blog for 6 years now so I want to see if I can predict what songs will be in the top 30 this year. (I’m really into oscar predicting, but this is a bit more difficult). Idk, maybe you’ll find it interesting to see how you’re perceived. i was originally worried about influencing the results but since i am sending this on the 29th I assume the list has already been written (and anyway you always say you don’t give a fuck cunt or whatever so it shouldn’t affect anything). Anyway, here are my predictions

i do – gidle
lime – baek a yeon
i am – ive
changed man – jyp
neon ocean – my yellow pony (or whatever theyve changed their name to)
killer – key
eta – newjeans
shining bright – csr
ay yo – nct
i want – ive
I curse the clear sky at the end of this world – ria
my husband is crazy – joy choi
to. – wgag
chasing that feeling – txt
autopilot – purplekiss
rose blossom – h1key
good day -weeekly
untie – viviz
this love – holyn
maybe 2 more nugu alert songs? probably rest by rolights or that song by the noya. could also be gontoki, sean park, or dohee idk

the difficult thing I find about making predictions is extricating your own taste, instead of assuming that others will like the same things as you. this always catches me out with oscars, i assume that the best performance of the year will be nominated, and then it is totally blanked. but in these predictions i have gone pretty heavy on songs i really like, as most of them were absent from honourable mentions so i figured at least 20% would show up somewhere. anyway, i will probably be totally wrong

*additional predictions: if chasing that feeling makes the list, there will be a ‘paved the way joke’. kitsch by ive will make the top 30 worst songs? unforgiven will be on the ‘worst of list’ and there will be a joke about nile rodgers being irrelevant

peace and love,

-a caonima

Not bad, not bad. You got a fair bit of stuff right! By the time this post comes out you’ll know how much.

Hi Kpopalypse!

I don’t know if someone has brought this to your attention, but NMIXX performed their debut song O.O in a separate version. What do you think of each version? Do you think the debut version is the first (then they develop the full ver.) or they mashed it into one song?

Pretty much my entire readership alerted me to these individual performances when they appeared! “Superhero” on its own is great and exactly how it should have been released initially. It might have even gotten onto the favourites list, had it been released this way at the time. The other song is junk that can be safely discarded.

I’m honestly surprised the boob posts are so disproportionately popular. I know porn and the like’s skewed heavily towards heterosexual male audiences, but your primary readers seem to be women. That’s not to say we can’t enjoy that kind of content. I find it interesting to see what men find attractive in women since I know my personal aesthetic tastes aren’t always “aligned for my target audience.” But, that’s only on occassion, and I’m flat AF, so the big boob posts don’t really have any relevance for me. Then again, I know many of the readers here are also part of the lgtbq+ community. I’m mostly heterosexual myself, but I have found other women sexually attractive before.

Anyway, I’ll hazard a guess that your frequent readers don’t really go to the same pages over and over again. I know I only skim your weekly music posts and more thoroughly read Qrimole, music analyses, and kpop industry posts. For the most part, I don’t really reread these while people can probably find more masturbation opportunities from the same objectification posts, so those get more rereads.

Then again, the people clicking just on an objectifation post probably won’t do your surveys, so for all we know, they’re the silent majority. The traffic doesn’t lie, after all.

The boobs posts have been the most popular part of the website as soon as I made them. This has never changed, ever! However I think most people who click on them are ‘casuals’ looking for k-pop boob, and the regular readers probably click on them rarely, if ever (beyond checking them out just once on the day they are published). The boob posts also probably have the most appeal with the non k-pop audience too. My girlfriend for instance doesn’t like k-pop at all, and the boobs/objectification posts (and sometimes QRIMOLE) are the only content she regularly reads and takes any interest in!

The boobs posts that I make clearly aren’t designed for fap, and that should be very very fucking obvious to anyone who actually reads them properly and has a brain in their heads (which is why the objections fans have had over the years to certain women being in those posts have always been misinformed at best, and wilful stupidity at worst). The drooling that you see on other websites that are purely fap-focused just isn’t there in my posts, I’m deliberately not tailoring my content specifically to that audience. I mean, I don’t mind if they read anyway, they’re as welcome here as anybody else is, but the fact is, if you want to fap to k-pop boobs or abs or whatever, there are other places on the Internet that can serve you better and that cater specifically to that taste much more directly (and we all know what they are) without my several layers of trolling, humour, self-deprecation, social comment, industry comment and general stupidity getting in the way. The labelling of my content as “fap content” isn’t completely literal, and while I’m sure some people use it for that anyway (and good luck to them) if I really just wanted people to fap and that’s it, I’d give up this k-pop writing gig and just start a porn site.

lmao it’s a tropical shithouse question don’t judge me

What’s the actual name for those heavily filtered vocal effects in the chorus of every “tropical” song? Like in IU’s Celebrity and Somi’s Fast Forward.

I assume you’re talking about the noises from 1:01 in “Celebrity”. These are sampled vocals which have been pitch-shifted. The ‘filtered’ effect usually isn’t the result of any deliberate manual filtering but rather a side-artifact of the pitch-shifting process, which gives the result an uncanny effect.

You like Huey Lewis and the News?

Their early work was a little too new wave for my taste. But when Sports came out in ’83, I think they really came into their own, commercially and artistically. The whole album has a clear, crisp sound, and a new sheen of consummate professionalism that really gives the songs a big boost. He’s been compared to Elvis Costello, but I think Huey has a far more bitter, cynical sense of humor. In ’87, Huey released Fore!, their most accomplished album. I think their undisputed masterpiece is “Hip To Be Square”. A song so catchy, most people probably don’t listen to the lyrics. But they should, because it’s not just about the pleasures of conformity and the importance of trends, it’s also a personal statement about the band itself.

not a question but I was the reader who asked what pose to do with Swan for selfies in that one survey (we did a cat heart and punch pose), and seeing her in person she definitely exudes that caonima energy!
saw one guy flex his arm next to her and she had the most “don’t give a fuck” expression I ever saw she also had her sleeves covering her hands the whole time for optimal hi-touch protection. so can confirm she is indeed very biasable (and insanely gorgeous in person!)

If there’s one thing smart girls (or almost any girls, in my experience) don’t give a shit about it’s guys flexing their arm muscles. Not because they don’t like muscles, but just because it indicates that the guy is probably vain, which is a very unattractive quality. Definitely something to not do at a fan meet! Sounds like you made the right choices and so did she!

Does being leader of a kpop group mean something in terms of power and/or responsibility? Or is it another ‘traditional lie’ like “they chose this title track” and “they’re too busy to date”?

It means they probably get to choose whose turn it is to do dishes in the dorms. Also it means they might get assigned menial unimportant tasks that management are too lazy/incompetent to do themselves. The stuff Nari gets lumped with in my book is a good indication, although of course it varies from group to group and company to company.

Hi, Kpopalypse! I hope your holidays were good! A few months ago I told you I was going to see a band live and I was stressed out about meeting them and I’m here to tell you… IT WENT WELL! I was afraid I’d freak out but I was honestly so dead by the time I met them I couldn’t even freak out (I was awake for almost 48 hours in between flying to the show, enjoying the day with a friend and then flying back the following day). They were super nice. I had deluded myself into thinking my two favorite members had noticed me (my friend had validated my delusions, okay?) and then they actually confirmed they’d noticed me from stage because I pretty much looked at no one else the whole show (I was also on the second row so… yeah…) But they found it amusing/sweet. I also got to hug them and they’re all 185cm+ and I’m literally 160cm so you can imagine how that looked lmao. I also had a few gifts for them and I was able to give them and they seemed to really enjoy those. We talked for like maybe 15/20-ish minutes and it was lovely. I expected this to be the end but then… I also met them at the airport because we had flights like 30 minutes apart?!?!?! I was so sleep deprived and tired at that point I thought I was just confusing them with someone else lol. We said hi to each other again and we both wished each other good flights and that was it. It honestly feels like I’ve been living a fanfiction because what the fuck even was all of that It was way more than I could have imagined and I’m really happy about the whole thing. I can’t wait to see them again next year!

People in bands are just regular people, and most regular people really appreciate it when they talk to people who really like what they do! Of course the bigger the band is, the harder this can be to actually have happen, but then there are some bands who really like that sort of interaction and will deliberately leave openings for it to happen. There can be a dark side to that sort of thing too sometimes (like people getting taken advantage of backstage ahem) so it’s wise to be careful, but to be honest the bad ones are rare – most people in bands are just regular people who love music and that’s why they do what they do – if you love it too, you’ll have lots to talk about!

Eek. I originally had two questions… one was longer, but of course I accidentally refreshed the page and lost it, so I’ll keep it shorter.

1. I can’t be the only one who wants to know… was the guitar solo for that new SM clone boy group during the MMAs actually being played live? Lord knows most other “idols play instruments too!” stages have featured extended air guitaring (guitar syncing?) in other award and music shows.

2. Do you have any stance on medically assisted suicide, particularly for someone on the younger side for it (30s) who have chronic conditions that have no cure but also don’t impact lifespan?

I know the last question is a bit triggerish for the participation trophy younglings out there, so feel free to drop it and just use the first one. I’m sorry to hear you were in an accident, and I hope anyone who might have been injured is recovering well. The younger of my two cats who I both love more than any person out there (including my partner and family to be honest) suddenly died two weeks ago from acute kidney failure, so it’s nice to see that your cat is living life to the fullest and sleeping in bizarre places like a good cat should. I hope you cherish your time together and make sure any vets you might see for a checkup test kidney function, or they will cheap out and let it go unnoticed. My cat was given a clean bill of health about 3 weeks before she was gone. Any recommendations for horrendous K-Pop songs, groups or MVs to torture him with when I kidnap him and clamp his eyes open? Maybe I should make that the second official question instead. What playlist of K-Pop songs or MVs would you use to torture someone?

Have a good holiday season and best wishes to you and your loved ones. Take care!

-Beth

1. Answered here (scroll down to the bonus videos).

2. I had an ex-partner years ago who suicided due to chronic pain, and while I was very upset about it and wish she hadn’t done it, I also understood exactly why she did do it. I would still always recommend people not to do it though. Just because there isn’t a cure now doesn’t mean there won’t be one at some point, or at least improved ways to manage the condition. Also not being a spiritual person I think that since nothing that cool will happen to use when we die except some worms getting a meal, it’s better to stay alive. Having said that, it’s easy for me to say such things, not being the one who has to deal with chronic pain. I think anyone thinking along these lines should not act rashly but discuss it with a professional.

Other question: by the time you read this the worst k-pop songs of 2023 post will be out, so any of those tracks should suffice!

Hi Oppar. Would just like to let this out and maybe hear your thoughts and ask for advice on my situation.

So a year ago I got into this new role. The job description, as advertised, I thought, was manageable, so I applied and got in. Unfortunately, I ended up in a new team, which means nothing has been established yet and I had to do things beyond my job description just for the team to run–and so that happened. It was probably the busiest I’ve ever been. I had back pain almost every week due to heavy workloads, hectic schedules, plus a department head that thinks he can do everything without even thinking that his team is just new, so he keeps on accepting projects. I just hated it. But I had no choice, I was contractually obligated and all.

Eventually, the team gradually got bigger and more people started joining. Unfortunately, none of those who joined are tasked to take from my responsibilities, so nothing still changed. Then, after 5 months, 2 new guys showed up, and they’re finally performing the same tasks as mine, so my load will finally be decreased! But not really, because they’re just assigned different new projects, so my workload remains the same. But at least they’re still additional manpower.

Later on, one of the 2 new guys have been offered a role in another department (still the same company). He expressed interest on the role, and told our TL about it. The news reached our department head, who panicked because his new team will be losing manpower! So his move? He rushed on proposing a new Table of Organization for the team, with selected team members to be regularized, including the guy above.

Eventually, the proposal was approved, and we were informed who are the ones included in the new regulars. Now, you’d think I would be included since I was among the first members of the team, since I was part of the OG’s–but NO. I was not included. Instead, all the other guys who came in later than I did have been selected, members who didn’t even do the same level of work as I did. Mind you, some of these guys are even fresh graduates, versus me who had at least 2 years experience. Imagine my frustration.

Despite that, I never said anything to the leaders. I might have unconsciously implied how I felt through my facial expressions and actions, but I never confronted them or anything. I figured they should know how I felt. But ever since then, I planned that whenever there would be an opportunity outside the team, I will grab it.

That opportunity came just lately. I’ve long waited for this to come. The same team who offered the previous guy above has opened another vacant role, and it was for regularization! I submitted my application.

Here’s the catch: For my application to be valid, I also needed to prepare a Letter of Intent and have it signed by my TL and Department Head before my application will be considered. I informed them about my interest for the role and routed my Letter of Intent (will be LOI from now on) for signing. My TL signed, though reluctantly, considering that the role is for regularization. But our department head declined! Ibstead, he promised to help me be regularized on my role. Because of this, I cannot be scheduled for interview.

I personally requested for the Dept. Head to sign the LOI. He may have promised something, but I was not convinced since nothing has been official. He still refused, but promised that he will push through with my regularization, but will also just inform the HR to let me proceed with the interview. I accepted it, because at least I can be scheduled for an interview; I’ll just take care of the LOI later on, I thought.

It took three attempts before I was eventually interviewed. The interview went well, and I was praised for my technical knowledge. However, the issue of my pending LOI was brought up. Still, the interview ended on a high note.

It was also by this time that my contract was about to end. After the interview, I informed my TL that I will not be renewing my contract unless it’s for a regular role, and that I have already been interviewed for the other team. She knew I had potential to be accepted by the other team, so she panicked. Later on, discussion continued whether I will renew, with me basically using the potential to be accepted to the other team as a leverage for my demand. She iterated that my regularization is already on the desk of the General Manager for approval, but there’s no guarantee on the date of its approval yet.

Later on, I was informed that the other team’s hiring manager has already chosen someone for the role–and it wasn’t me. Apparently, I was supposed to be chosen, but since my LOI has not been signed, and the hiring manager did not want to stir conflict between our two teams, he chose to give the role to someone else. So there goes my chance to be regularized, down into the drain.

Now that I have basically no bargaining power anymore, I reluctantly chose to renew my contract, hoping for my regularization in my current role to actually happen.

I might have missed some other details, like how this role is so stressful and full of workload, and that I have issues with how our TL leads us, or how we still don’t have a proper office and we’re so cramped in a small 20-footer container van because there’s still issues on the construction of our new office, or how I just couldn’t not understand almost everything about how the department operates because most of the decision-making has been questionable so far that it just makes me want to leave the team as well. I’ve also tried applying outside our company as well because I was just so sick of my role. It has just been an extremely stressful past year for me and now I’m questioning myself whether I did the right thing in renewing my contract. I didn’t not even receive an increase, though I would say my current rate is still decent and I only have to render 5 days work per week.

I don’t know, I’m just frustrated with how things turned out. Have I done the right thing, Oppar? What should probably be my next move from now on? Any other advice you can give?

Anyways Happy Holidays Oppar, by the time this is posted there have probably been developments on my situation, or i dunno, I might still be stuck as a contractual employee who is regretting his life decisions. Either way, I’ll update next month. Thanks in advance, Oppar!

I guess it just comes down to how you feel currently now about your job. If you hate it, quitting your job springs to mind! If that’s not an option because of the contract, I’d suggest riding out the remaining contract term and then quitting, or giving a very firm “do x, y and z for me or I’ll quit”. On the other hand if the current situation is more of a frustration, it might be worth staying? If you’re stuck for now, perhaps try and find ways to make things more tolerable, maybe there’s some ways you can push the envelope in your favour. Perhaps you can try to restructure the teams yourself? Taking initiative to change your workload might be a good idea. Can you delegate downward, or collaborate sideways? Maybe there’s someone working under you who would be willing to take on some of your more menial tasks? Or perhaps a team member from another team is interested in cross-skilling and you can swap some work around? I’d explore those kind of options if possible. I mean yes maybe you’ll “get in trouble” but we’re you going to quit anyway? If your workplace is completely rigid about things, the… their loss I guess?

Do you ever feel like a choreo/MV influences how you hear a song? Like it enhances how strong the beat/rhythm feels? Or distracts from the boring parts?

No. I sometimes like choreo more (just based on my personal preference and nothing else, certainly no expertise or anything like that) but that only changes how I feel about the video, not the song.

Exception: in some SM videos they deliberately dub a few heel noises in with the dance moves, this does give the beat a bit of a stronger feel. Very noticeable at 0:38 here:

I thought I was imagining it at first, but I checked and these noises definitely aren’t in the album audio!

Last QRIMOLE you mentioned microtonal music and that there are not many examples in k-pop. I don’t think I could recognise it if I did know of any, but got me listening out for it anyway. I am wondering if this part in the song 00001.5 is an example of microtonality or just something different…. Listen to the squelchy 303-like synthesiser loop that kicks in ~0:48. The last two squelches of the first three squelches sound microtonal – like they are sightly down in pitch – could you please confirm this? I am almost convinced I am just making it up in my head though. if they are the actually the same note, any theory why might my brain be hearing it like this?

I’m hearing mainly minor pentatonic scale notes but there are a few bits where it sounds like a smooth gradation from one note to another with a few notes “between the notes” that are played along the way. This would be due to someone using a pitch bend on a keyboard, which allows synth players to pitch between the notes. So you’re not imagining it. This isn’t truly microtonal though, as a real microtonal piece wouldn’t use those notes as a ‘transition’ but as a ‘destination’, they would linger more on the notes rather than whiz by them on the way from one non-microtonal note to another non-microtonal note. I mean when you think about it, if we’re going to call this ‘microtonal’, then the pitch bending that guitarists do when they bend strings during a lead break, or the pitch-bending that a (good, non-Autotuned) R&B vocalist does, isn’t any more or less ‘microtonal’ than this keyboard line. But that’s not what people mean when they talk about microtonal composition. Actual microtonal pieces sound more like this:

So yeah. Not something you will EVER hear in a k-pop song for the forseeable future, unless pop music starts taking some very strange turns. The closest you’ll ever get is what happens in your linked video.

Hi, sorry in advance for asking this political (?) question (I don’t know how much this blog tolerates political matters) but do you think that regading the Israel-Palestine “matter” (tbh I don’t even know what exact word to call), spreading awareness by constantly talking about it in social media really can make everything at least better one bit? The last 3 months really drained me out my usual liveliness with the slurs that both sides threw at each other and my social media was constantly bombarded (not that they approach me but just posts/tweets in general) with “if you don’t say anything you are supporting the other side (aka the “wrong” side) and you are morally corrupted”, and tbh until now I don’t know what’s the right thing to do…

On my website and social media I (mostly) stay away from politics. It’s not because I don’t have political opinions, or don’t care, or think that you shouldn’t care, it’s because the online space isn’t a very good place to make political change. This video is worth a watch, and I’ve shared it in QRIMOLE’s before because it keeps being relevant:

The key point here is that people gravitate the most towards sharing posts that make them angry, and the more exaggerated something is, the angrier it makes people (5000 civilians dead angers people more than 50), therefore the more inaccurate information is, the more likely it will be shared, i.e posts that have been modified to be less accurate but more anger-inducing than what they otherwise would be, will be shared far more than actual true information. The extent of this is way more extreme than you might think – it’s to the point where nearly everything that I see on social media on any side of any political debate, is at least partially falsified. That includes the posts that a lot of my timeline are reposting.

It gets worse though. All that stuff we’ve been hearing about Russian manipulation of the western media space, that’s all true. There’s a reason why a lot of people around the world have become weirdly pro-Russian in recent years in a way that’s never been seen before. It’s not accidental, they’re being manipulated. Russia has dedicated cyber-troll teams and they’ll work on an issue, posting inflammatory, very inaccurate strawman-style posts that are designed to fuel anger and go viral, often on BOTH sides of a political debate, always very hardline, extreme stancces, always “if you don’t agree with me you’re the enemy”, always “no compromise”, always “I don’t negotiate or talk to [x]”, always going for maximum divisiveness. Then they’ll start replying to each other’s posts, this is to drive engagement and boost themselves in the algorithm (because to the algorithm, any engagement is “good” engagement), as well as flooding comments sections etc (see literally any comments section on YouTube for lots of very mysteriously vocal right-wing people) so then it becomes visible outside their circle, to others, like you and me. The idea is to draw in actual real people outside of the troll farm to get so infuriated by what they’re reading that they start then sharing these posts, so they take on a life of their own. (This strategy of drawing people in works a little bit like the three shell game.) If you’ve ever shared ANYTHING political on Twitter, you’ve almost certainly fallen for this, as political content on that platform is now mostly toxic ever since Musk fired his “trust and safety team”. The strategy is to create division, which makes people feel less safe, like they’re constantly in a battle, and it’s proven that in a society that feels less safe, people are more inclined to sympathise with right-wing governments that propose simple solutions. It also makes people cynical (as you are experiencing), and apathy benefits corrupt systems because if you start to fall into the trap of thinking “well, everyone’s as bad as each other” then the really really bad guys escape the extra scrutiny that they deserve. Does it work in practice to destabilise democracy? The jury is out, but my advice for anyone who wants to get into politics and change things, is: actually get into politics. Don’t just share random crap that “feels like it should be shared” because 99% of the time it’s the stuff that “feels important” which is the most inaccurate. This is true especially on Twitter, I can’t stress enough how corrupted the Twitter space is. So research properly, take it seriously, and check every single source of absolutely everything, especially the stuff that makes you angry, look for understanding, not validation. And certainly don’t listen to idiots on social media. You should be questioning everything all the time. Including this answer!

Oh and if you want a quick Israel/Palestine thing I refer readers again to Honest Government Ads:

The funniest thing about Untie for me is that if you read comments on Viviz’s run at Queendom 2, you’d find countless people thinking of Eunha as an adorable angel. And, yeah, Eunha is really cute, but she’s just naturally cute. Eunha has ALWAYS loved doing sexy stuff though. If I remember correctly, she was begging for sexy concepts way back when Rough was promoting (if not Rough then Navillera), fucking almost 8 years ago. Now, obviously, SouMu wouldn’t allow that when the girls were still doing their innocent concept stuff, but it’s just hilarious thinking about it. Every single time Eunha gets the opportunity, she gravitates towards sexy concepts. It didn’t really work back then, especially when she was honestly just far too young, but it sure as hell works now with her greater experience and far better stylists (seriously, Gfriend’s members have always looked good, but their outfits sucked until literally their last years).

Agreed. Eunha has always had that side.

Hi, long time reader, first time interaction. I have recently started a kpop site. It’s a small one, only made to be visited by people in my Discord community. I’m not at all prepare for the negative response from Kpop fanatics, just something for me and my online community. But I still want the site to be ethical and that means credit where credit is due. But I’m trouble giving credit when using Kpop pictures. You find a picture of, let’s say Twice, and then you can’t find out anything about it or you find it on three different sites and now you can’t tell where it originated from. Then I started noticed how no Kpop website are crediting where they found the picture, who took the picture, etc… Is there a special reason why people can post Kpop pictures without giving credit? Aren’t people worried about breaking copyright laws? And where do you source your pictures?

For the website I just get my pictures from wherever I can, which is exactly what every other k-pop website does, the biggest, the smallest and literally everyone in between. Just like you I have no idea who the original people who made those images are or how to get in touch with them, the vast majority of the time. In some cases I do actually get sent official promotional pictures to use, and I’ve almost never been asked to credit these to anyone (they don’t tend to come with credits). However if the photographer is known I will credit, by either linking their socials (AZODi interview most recent example) or just by leaving their tags in where practical so people impressed by the image can find more from that person. Mind you sometimes tags have already been cropped/erased by a third party before I even see the image and I have no way of knowing. To further confuse the issue, quite a lot of fans put photographer-style text tags over images from the agency’s official photobooks and promo material! So it’s really hard to know where a photo comes from unless you are incredibly familiar with the group’s available image material and activity. To this end, if any verifiable official source ever asks me to take down any of their own content then I definitely will, but with over a decade of writing under my belt I haven’t received one single creator image takedown request (interviews yes, but photos never ever). I guess people would rather get that free promo, which makes complete sense, after all that’s why they’re creating the images in the first place, to push the artists onto sites like this one, I’m doing them a big favour and no doubt they know it. Where you would run into real legal trouble would be if you were to publish something in a book or other ‘hard’ format, that’s a very different kettle of fish. To this end, I secure all the rights to images for my books.

Since you’re the premier expert on Rachel Kim books, I had a lore question. In the books, before Rachel debuts, she’s forced to sign a 3-year postdated “renewal” in addition to her 7-year “initial” contract. But why would DB stop there? Why not make her sign 50 such renewals, and have control for the rest of her life?

They’re only interested in keeping her for whatever term they deem her to be marketable, and yeah these companies don’t mind looking like Dr Evil but there’s no point looking like Dr Evil if it’s not profitable. The point of the ultra long initial contract+extension and why it’s considered to be so manipulative, is that by the time it ends, you’re no longer in a position to negotiate a newer, better deal as your marketability as a pop star is close to expiry anyway, if it hasn’t expired already. There’s no point keeping Rachel for an extra 20 years after that “just because”, as her star has already faded (in theory). People like Madonna and Michael Jackson are the exception, very few pop stars have market value after their first decade in the business, and this is true even more in the very ageist, competitive Korean system where experience isn’t overly valued and there’s always new younger talent coming up to steal the spotlight from the previous generation.

was Seventeen on the shortlist this year? I remember you liked their Japanese comeback song

Yes, the shortlist was HUGE for 2023. If I said anything even vaguely positive in roundup reviews, that song was on the shortlist. That’s why I never publish the shortlist – there’s literally no point. It’s all already there in the roundups, just go through and look at all the times I said something nice, there’s your shortlist.

I’m kinda curious to see your YouTube Wrapped for 2024

I don’t see a feature in YouTube for this. I went to a site that claimed they could do it and they wanted all my YouTube data and there were several steps and I decided I couldn’t be bothered sending all my watch data to some idiots who probably designed the app so they could collect that data and on-sell it to advertisers, fuck dark-pattern web bullshit, I don’t put my readers through that nonsense and neither should anyone else put you through it.

Pleasantly surprised by your year-end lists for 2023, mostly because I thought for sure OOTD would end up on your worst list. I didn’t mind it, but I definitely got annoyed at Dreamcatcher fans with their “you just don’t understand the concept” hand-waving to excuse the quality. I find that if you have to overly explain what a concept is meant to be, then you’ve not done a good enough job expressing it. Show don’t tell, as it were. Concepts are just weird to me anyway; I was being an old fart last night and watching Pat Benatar’s Shadows of the Night. A standard 80s pop love song, and yet the video was about Pat and 2 of her band members as pilots during WW2 who carry out a mission to blow up a Nazi base. I thought I’d taken too much Ambien.

So which do you prefer: no concept, songs that have a specific concept, or a video whose concept doesn’t match the song at all?

I prefer to have everything as “in sync” as possible, good concepts that match a song certainly help the overall package stand out and be engaging. No concept is better than a concept that doesn’t fit at all, but even a bad concept isn’t going to ruin a song for me (example: Fanatics Flavor’s “Milkshake” is a great song but has a concept that doesn’t fir the atmosphere of the music whatsoever). It’s not a big thing at the end of the day. Dreamcatcher’s song was just… not that great. I hasten to add, not that great by Dreamcatcher standards… still better than average by the standards of k-pop groups generally! It wasn’t even shortlisted on the “worst” side. Dreamcatcher fans who read my roundups need to realise that I expect more from Dreamcatcher than other groups due to their general musical direction and track record of quality, so when they’re even a little bit disappointing, that hits me harder than if it were just some other group who disappoints most of the time, because of the opportunity cost – I know how great Dreamcatcher can be, and often are, and I was looking forward to that potential amazing song, whereas if it was [insert group that doesn’t have many good songs here] then my expectations were lower, so I’m less bummed when they just churn out something average. As a result Dreamcatcher (and the few other groups who perform at that standard) tend to get a bit more of a roasting from me when they come up short. Doesn’t mean I’m against them or a hater, in fact it means the exact opposite – I’m holding them to their previously-established high standard in my eyes. People should factor this in when reading my reviews but they rarely do.

What’s your opinion on loli hentai? I’ve always found it a disgusting thought, but I also think it’s far better if pedophiles could satisfy their desires on digital media instead of child porn with actual children. After all, these pedophiles are not hurting any real people. Or, should pedophiles just try to control themselves at all times? I must admit I actually feel pity for pedophiles, at least those who haven’t touched any reach children. Having sexual desires that are reprehensible but that are intrinsic must be utterly awful. We can’t really control who we’re attracted to, but I guess, in that case, chemical castration may be just a good release from that kind of existence. Should pedophiles be obligated to undergo such a procedure as a precaution? It’s a drastic measure and violates bodily autonomy, but we all sacrifice certain freedoms for the safety of the general public, and children are the most vulnerable of our society, the ones we should most try protecting with laws and restrictions.

It’s a good question. I don’t like it that pedophiles exist, and I don’t like it that loli hentai exists either, but since pedophiles will probably always exist, because for whatever reason a certain percentage of humans seem hard-wired to be that way, society has to work out what the fuck to do with them. Our current solution at the moment seems to be “let’s wait until someone has raped a bunch of kids and then lock them up”, it would be nice if we could come up with something a bit more effective than that, but I have no idea what that would look like. Chemical castration doesn’t seem like a great option to me, because while some may volunteer for it and that’s fine, most probably won’t and you can’t just go around forcibly castrating unwilling people before they’ve offended (because it breaks the entire criminal justice system), and after they’ve offended it’s obviously too late. Loli hentai isn’t a great option either, because while diverting the sex drive of pedos to some drawings so they don’t abuse real children is definitely a net positive, giving them that material is also potentially dangerous – imagine some pedo luring a young kid into their web using comics as a way to normalise it (“look, these comic books characters can do it, why can’t we?”, I mean that might work on a very young and naive comic-loving kid). Maybe remove the access – they can get access to loli hentai legally but they have to go to the police station to do it and sign in with their photo ID and can only look at it on the premises in a specially designed jail cell after their phones are confiscated? I don’t know, there might be some “cobra effect” unintended consequences of that like people using the cop shop as a browsing catalogue before they go to the dark web at home. It’s a tough problem to solve. Even sex offender lists don’t work that well in practice because the more people you put on the list, the more you just realise that sex offenders are everywhere and a map completely covered with evenly-distributed red dots doesn’t protect anybody from anything. What if we just give all the kids guns? Well the data on that is in (thanks USA) and they mainly shoot themselves and other kids instead of pedophiles. I mean, I don’t like even thinking about any of this much, but are we really interested in protecting children or not? Hopefully someone smarter than me can come up with an actual workable solution, but the problem is that the entire topic makes people so squeamish that nobody even wants to have the hard discussions about it that are probably necessary…

Can I recommend you look into learning to read Hangul? I know you’re busy with the not-getting-evicted but it really does just take a day or two (and this from someone almost as much of a hag as yourself) and it seems like it could be helpful with the novel-writing (and also the, like, pronouncing names on streams but I know you don’t care about that anyway).

I did actually look into this years ago! I do find the knowledge useful sometimes, mainly just to detect if something’s drastically obviously wrong with a song title translation etc. but I don’t have any desire to move to Korea or anything. Also I still to this day cannot memorise dipthongs (although I’m fine with all the regular characters). If I was going to learn another language on any committed level it would probably be Chinese but I know it’s way harder and I definitely don’t have time for something genuinely hard given that Korean is relatively easy and I don’t even fire up Duolingo.

Hi! I got “show me love” for christmas and I’ve already finished it and I enjoyed it a lot. I cannot wait to read the 2nd instalment. I wanted to ask what inspired you to write the Shin Hana series and what we can expect in the future? (sorry if you have already answered something similar to this)

Thank you and glad you enjoyed it! I’ve been writing fanfictions forever and I decided that rather than writing second-person perspective as I usually do, that I would instead try doing something in first-person with completely fictional characters. So I ended up with the “Show Me Love” short story. Reader feedback on it was almost universally positive, much more so than other fictions I’ve written, and readers mentioned to me that there were many other adventures that the characters could potentially go on and it would be a shame to just leave the story there. I agreed and thought why not expand it into something of novel length, which would give readers some more fun adventures to read and also give me the opportunity to touch on several other k-pop related topics in the process that I haven’t been able to explore as of yet. So that’s how I came up with the first novel, which follows more or less the same plot line as the short story just with a LOT more detail about everything, and a few changes here and there but not many (the main one being that Shu is a much more extroverted character in the novel). Of course, then I had to write a second one, because the first story ends just before debut, and I wanted to talk a bit more about groups and tell stories about what happens to them after they debut as well, and not just straight after they debut, but after multiple comebacks, through career ups and downs, how they interact etc. So that’s why it’s now a novel series. The Shin Hana series will have four books, definitely no more than this (although parts of the story from another character’s perspective may turn up in future books). What I’ll write once the series is done, I haven’t decided yet, but I’m thinking maybe the next one will be a standalone book where I give myself the challenge of doing the entire story in one novel. Will see how that goes, nothing confirmed yet! Thank you to all the readers who have supported me through my novel writing adventures, I appreciate it!

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That’s all for this episode of QRIMOLE! This series will return next month!

Oh, and do you have a question that you’d like to see answered in the next episode of QRIMOLE? If so, use the question box below, or if no box appears, click the Qri on the sidebar to open the box as a separate webpage! Kpopalypse will return!