Kpopalypse roundup – new k-pop releases 25/3/2024
It’s time for Kpopalypse roundup! Let’s take a look at some new releases!
NCT DREAM – Smoothie
The SM Entertainment team didn’t take any issue with the lyrics to “Smoothie” when we were making the album because our vision for original and wholesome music was crystal clear to us. Slang terms like “sip it down like a smoothie” and “dirty taste drink it up” aren’t taught in school and not everyone is familiar with them. It’s impossible for people to be familiar with every idiom and offensive term out there and predicting their reception around the world is an even more challenging task. To be sure, we consulted with English professors, professional interpreters, translators and native speakers about this issue… (no I’m not letting this go, deal with it)
ILLIT – Magnetic
Not the NewJeans-lite we all feared, it’s more like f(x) b-side-lite, and that’s not a bad place to be, even if the result is seriously lacking punch. This song is pleasant enough but it’s so whimsical that it almost floats away, what it needed was just a little less pleasantness to ground it, it’s one air raid siren away from being great.
YOUNG POSSE – XXL
Actually pretty good. I like this group’s old-school concept and the Cypress Hill style beat is awesome. Not so keen about some of the switch-ups which the song could have probably done without, but overall I was still popping it like a cheese.
PURPLE KISS – BBB
Not bad but did they really have to go for the absolute worst of p-funk style synth bass, this is the kind of bargain bin keyboard work that ruined Ice Cube’s “Lethal Injection” album, oh how I cried when I heard that mess after finding “The Predator” and having it be one of my favourite rap albums ever…
ME:I – Click
I hate putting in these awful Korean/Japanese industry collab things because it’s edging this site over to shitass j-pop territory and honestly the music here sucks enough as it is this week without sprinkling the cancer that is j-pop into the mix. So instead let’s just take this opportunity to remind you that the latest Kpopalypse survey is now live and you can do it by clicking HERE. Do it, caonima.
SUPER JUNIOR D&E – Rose
Without fail, whenever a male SM Entertainment artist gets into a controversy that causes the general public to question the idol facade, a video for a dogshit ballad will be rush-released in the next week or two following, to tug the heartstrings of the fans, emotionally manipulating them into staying with the group. (The females on SM don’t get the token ballad, instead they just go on hiatus for a year.) It works every fucking time, it worked for Super Junior as a full group, it worked for EXO-CBX recently and it’ll work here too. Brainwashed fans raised on emotional manipulation and parasocial streaming culture can be easily told to suck corporate cock, and they will, always, without fail. If Israel really wants to win the information war in Gaza all they need to do is uncover some secret documents saying that Palestinians don’t stan second-generation boy groups, the fandoms will do the rest.
THE NEW SIX – Fuego
That almost-industrial backing track is pretty cool, what a shame about the generic pop Autoune-isms over the top. There was serious potential here.
n.SSign – Funk Jam
Wow, can we get a less interesting song title? Can we get a less interesting song? Can we be fucking bored out of our brain? What is this crap? If you can’t name it something better than “Funk Jam” it has no right to exist.
LUCY – The knight who can’t die and the silk candle
Just a reminder: lazy videos like this don’t qualify for roundup. That’s also why I didn’t review the Jennie thing from a few weeks ago. Like I give a fuck if you’re “in my area”, proper video or go away.
Raina – Meet Again
I wish I could meet pre-surgery Raina again.
Juniel – Bye
Literally the same song as Raina’s. Hell, it even looks like the same fucking house. Okay, it isn’t, but it might as well be, that’s how generic and dull Korean ballad productions are, they’re all the same right down to the shitty wallpaper.
HELLO GLOOM – Mamacita
The eleventh commandment of the bible is thou shalt not call songs “mamacita” or sing the word “mamacita” in any song ever, lest there be a plague of shit music for 120 days.
Kim Sawol – Default
It’s not bad but it takes such a long time to get going that it’s barely even worth the wait.
Seori – Fake Happy
Okay so it’s a slow week for k-pop so once again it’s time for our Asian-but-not-Korean not-pop not-world-music feature! Now… are you worthless? Are you a waste of oxygen? Are you a complete piece of shit who should be killed? Then redeem yourself completely and immediately by listening to The Tielman Brothers, a Dutch/Indonesian badass rocking combo who played harder, faster, stronger and better than ALL your 1950s and 1960s rock and roll faves, but were sadly never really paid their dues for whatever reason, can’t imagine why hey. Some of you are already aware of them no doubt, but some isn’t enough, you should ALL check them out immediately, and if you think this song is boring when it starts just stick with it, because it gets good, and then just when you think it can’t get even better, it does. You simply can’t go back to puny lightweights like Elvis Presley and The Beatles after getting your socks rocked off by this amazing band.
L.Rody, Jooha, Rumi – Another Story
Back to k-pop and nothing much is happening over here.
Bumkey – The breath of God
Oh look Bumkey is a piano-balladeering Christian now, lucky us. Guess he’s morally compensating for something because that’s how religion always works. It’s not the good people who join up, it’s the bad people who want forgiveness. I wonder what he’s done this time and not told us about yet…
Bumkey – Just as I am
…but whatever it was, it must have been pretty fucking bad for him to make us endure two full songs and music videos of this shit. Someone arrest him immediately, I’m not sure what for yet, let’s just torture him and see what he confesses to.
Socialclub Hyangwu – My Little Baby
Korean groups copying bored-looking westerners like it’s an ‘aesthetic’ but the truth is that the originals were just shitty people who made boring music while they were on the nod from the heroin they robbed their own family members to pay for.
Busyness Mane – Beware!
This is exactly the problem with society today – tolerant, accepting parents. Just one mother who dares to say “no rap in this house” is sometimes all it takes to prevent a disastrous debut.
RANDOM BONUS VIDEOS OF THE WEEK
SKULL – GANJA (ft. Anthony B, KANNON) – Kpopalypse’s cat getting high on catnip in a sock version
I bought a bag of catnip and tied some in a sock so my cat could play with it. She ended up getting baked as fucking shit so enjoy this video of her rampant drug use. Since this was shot she’s been less enthusastic about it though so I think kitty is now on the 12 step program.
Woo – Why was (G)I-DLE’s Wife BANNED? Explaining the LYRICS and M/V Breakdown
Since a lot of people still don’t ‘get’ G-Idle’s “Wife“, here’s a analysis of it that goes into quite a bit of depth about not just the fairly obvious stuff but also some of the more obscure lyrical references. People have been giving me shit for a while now about defending Soyeon’s lyrics, but there’s a reason why I do…
Sonamoo – Cushion
Sonamoo were a girl group lumbered with the misfortune of debuting on TS Entertainment during their last-gasp lawsuit days, so their career lasted about one week as a result. They did manage to crank out a decent song or two in the short time they were around, but “Cushion” definitely wasn’t one of those songs. It’s not all bad, there’s a good bit with some suspended keys in the verses that’s actually pretty decent, pity that everything else here is so awful, especially the dogshit raps that we have to have because every k-pop song every needs a rap in it for some reason. The best thing about it is the girls looking fed up in their fake dressing rooms at the start of the video, I bet they didn’t have to dive too deep into the method acting pool to drag those performances out of themselves.
That’s all for this week! Kpopalypse roundup returns next week!
0 comments: