Kpopalypse roundup – new k-pop releases 3/6/2024
It’s time for Kpopalypse roundup! Let’s take a look at some new releases!
ARTMS – Virtual Angel
About 57 of you told me this week about how ARTMS made a “human eye” version of this video, because the original has such retina-shreddingly fast editing that took you all back to the days of the Front Line Assembly vs T-ara video face-off. Which makes me wonder, if they clearly knew this would be such an issue, why the fuck did they do it. Song’s not bad anyway and actually the best ARTMS song yet by far so I guess that’s another thing they now have in common with those other two groups.
Yves feat. Lil Cherry – Loop
Huge disappointment in Lil Cherry not being in the video, and she doesn’t make much of a dent musically either, leaving this song to float along in the same middling NewJeansy direction everything seems to be going in lately. There’s some very cool bass playing though and Yves is an S-tier visual so I’m willing to take the good with the bad.
RM feat. Little Simz – Domodachi
It must be somewhere in Little Simz’ contract that if she guests on your song, you’d better bring a beat worth a damn for her to rap over, because this song sucks flat out right up until the point where she starts rapping, then it gets good, and then it immediately sucks again as soon as she leaves. It reminds me of that one rap collab where they gave KRS-ONE a way better beat than all the celebrity rappers he was with because he probably wouldn’t have agreed to do it otherwise.
RM – Groin
RM’s other song is actually pretty reasonable with a decent 90s Beastie Boys style beat and no real stupidness going on. Maybe now he’s put in his popstar dues he can get back to a bit more of why people liked him in the first place.
Kep1er – Shooting Star
Someone on Kep-one-er’s team very obviously saw Loona’s “Star” and said “let’s do something kind of like that, sort of ish, but not really”, and this is what we get. It’s really not a bad attempt, but they didn’t learn the most important lesson that they should have learned from that song which is that the near-total lack of momentum-killing dicking around is a large part of what helped it shine.
AKMU – Hero
Okay it’s the most drab, dull bossanova easy-listening crap you’ve ever heard but best girl Suhyun looks so good here that I’m still glad it came out. AKMU have had a good run lately, I’ll give them a pass for only delivering on the visuals this time.
WayV – Give Me That
This boy-group-by-numbers stuff wasn’t worth me bending my “is it really a k-pop or not” rule.
TREASURE – King Kong
This sounds like a BigBang song from 15 years ago, and I mean that in a good way. Don’t let it go to their heads though, we don’t want any more of these YG kids getting too full of themselves and starting a nightclub up, we all know how that pans out.
BABYMONSTER – Like That
A pretty pissweak song that’s not going to help BabyMonster realise the 2NE3 destiny that’s been laid out before them, but the sharp black and white clothes are definitely a “good look on her” as that one guy in my livestreams keeps asking. Also I dig the BM logo in the background that doubles as a neat little concrete ramp that none of the girls want to go anywhere near because it looks like it’s made of steel bars suspended by styrofoam.
ATEEZ – Work
It feels like not a lot of work went into this one.
A.C.E – Supernatural
A.C.E must have been completely traumatised by their leg-fetish friendly debut era because they’ve never gone back there. I guess they feel like that girl in Stellar who had to drink the milk from the fridge, the A.C.E boys probably can’t go into the beachwear section of their local department store without shaking and convulsing.
Jay Park feat. Natty of KISS OF LIFE – Taxi Blurr
This collaboration doesn’t feel like an accident, clearly Jay Park is a man of culture. Unfortunately that appreciation of culture doesn’t extend to good musical taste but hey we can’t have it all.
BADVILLAIN – Badvillain
Okay yes it’s Badvillain “in our area”, but they actually do a pretty good job because the song keeps the same tonal scheme throughout and never goes off the rails like these things usually do. I didn’t think BabyMonster were ever going to reinvent the wheel but if they were to pull off something like this I wouldn’t be so massively disappointed in them. I definitely didn’t expect someone else to beat them to it.
Yerin – Summer Charm
She’s not much of a solo artist, is she. She needs a group. Maybe she should get together with Viviz, and that Yuju girl, and perhaps throw in a Nazi lover just to mix it up a little and draw the clickbait press and the outraged fans… I feel like that combination really could work.
SEVENTEEN – Headliner
The road to hell is paved with millennial-whooping boy groups.
Xikers – Break A Leg
Better than the usual “for the fans” stuff, but still, I don’t think I care too much.
Xdinary Heroes – Boy Comics
The heaviness is appreciated but this group are still missing the songs they need to make anyone actually give a damn.
TRENDZ – Forever More
Right down there with “for the fans” videos is “travelogue” videos. Nobody will ever beat Gangkiz the queens of travelogue videos who had the most expensive travelogue video in k-pop where they actually tried to integrate a story into the thing while driving through Europe wasting everyone’s money. Just “we are in a place, look at us” doesn’t cut it, fuckheads.
ONE PACT – Full Stop
I don’t remember asking for this Autotuned trash the last time I sacrificed a goat in the bunker under Jeffrey Epstein’s island mansion.
WATERFIRE – Possible
Too much water, not enough fire.
GLAY x Jay – whodunit
It’s not horrible, but wow the Autotune was really the wrong choice. A potentially good song just got all the life strangled out of it.
PINKVERSE – Call Devil
Wow what a bunch of shit.
LIONESSES – Like Christina Taught Me
According to my song submitter “the title refers to Christina Aguilera’s “Beautiful“, a song known for its message of self-empowerment and inner-beauty”. I can actually see where they got that inspiration from, not just because of the lyrical themes (which I support) but because Christina’s song was completely ruined by far too much ear-shredding vocals crowding out the mix, and so is this. Just because you can sing that high note doesn’t always mean you should.
Club Gemini – G-dasher
Ex-Nugu Alerters Club Gemini are still nugu as fuck, but their new song is pacy like Azaelia Banks without the social media meltdowns and they’re outdoing a lot of groups with a much higher viewcount.
Elkie – Future Without You
This one actually nearly made it into last week’s roundup but then I thought “nobody’s going to give a fuck about this boring conservative crap” so I left it out. Then I was going to put it in this week but I thought “wait, I left it out last week for a reason” and so I put this week’s non-Korean non-pop non-world-music feature here instead. Japanese nugu metallers Isiliel have one of the most low-ass budget MVs I’ve ever seen, with a really cool concept and a lot of effort hamstrung by amateurish editing, which is a real pity. Mind you heavy metal in general is notorious for shit music videos across the board so if anything it’s probably on the upper end. Anyway song is cool so check it out.
Suho – 1 to 3
Accurate song title of the week – I’ll give it a 1 to 3 out of 10.
Chen – Empty
Fucking ballads.
Wooseok, Taka Perry – You
A rule with outdoor videos in the grass – the longer the grass is, the most shit the music usually is. Here the grass is only at about shin height so the music’s semi-acceptable.
Hyemin x Dalsooobin – GOOSEBUMPS
I half expected her to start singing “Goosebumps-san! Goosebumps-san! Goosebumps-san! Goosebumps-san!” with different syllabic emphasis each time because that seems to be what she thinks constitutes a song. Mind you if the alternative is this boring ballad crap, I’m not sure if we’re any better off.
Lee Boram – Love, Always
Leopards don’t change their spots and Seeya members don’t ever fully leave the Core Contents Media era ballad style. It’s a better ballad style than most of them.
Yangpa – Seoul
Yangpa was part of that team for a while too and her new song is just good. There’s a lot that today’s Korean ballad snoozer songwriters could learn from this.
Hanroro – Home
This is pretty good too. I have nothing smartass to say. For once. Enjoy it while you can because it won’t last!
Taeha – Satellite
Taeha gets the sounds right but she’s into that boring Japan yacht-rock sound that weebs masturbate over without realising that Japan just ported that same sound over from boring USA boomer rock bands on the retirement circuit in the late 70s. Also I get why the video is washed-out to sort of capture that vintage vibe but honestly it just looks like ass and Taeha deserves more.
Xita – Terrified
I didn’t like it musically as much as I thought I would when I saw the video. Cybergoths in Korea sure do make an effort visually though, some seriously impressive styles here, they just need to amp up the sounds a bit.
RANDOM BONUS VIDEOS OF THE WEEK
Unreported World – The K-pop Dream Factory
While most of the stuff in this doco won’t be news to my readers (agencies creepily hovering over kids, fans being dicks, shitty dieting advice, T.O.P’s Minsoo being a caonima), I’m putting it here to serve as a reminder for people deep down the k-pop rabbit hole that the k-pop system looks fucking terrifying to normal people who haven’t drunk the Kool-Aid. This is what happens when one of those normal people makes a documentary – to the extent that they’re allowed to: it comes out full of normal observations that normal people can generally agree with. The amount of cope in the YouTube comments of this one from k-pop fans saying “they got it wrong” is certainly amusing. No the documentary didn’t get it wrong, you’ve just normalised being a cunt.
GIGGLE – “Are you an AI?” Koreans meet Beautiful European Girl For the First Time..!
And of course she’s Polish. My girlfriend (who I’ve been with for longer than I’ve been writing) is also Polish, it’s well known that only beautiful women come from there. And no I’m not writing this to suck up, she doesn’t even read these roundups and will most likely never see this – she’s an old-school goth who doesn’t give a fucking shit about your k-pops, she only reads for QRIMOLE and anything I write that’s about tits or ass.
SEOTAIJI – Internet War
Speaking of which, I was quite shocked to find out that my non-kpop-giving-fucks-about girlfriend was actually quite familiar with Seotaiji – apparently their songs are on the playlist at goth clubs here. They were certainly a cut above a lot of nu-metal from the same time period which hasn’t aged as well, and “Internet War” is as relevant now as it ever was.
That’s all for this week! Kpopalypse roundup returns next week!
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