Kpopalypse roundup – new k-pop releases 10/6/2024
It’s time for Kpopalypse roundup! Let’s take a look at some new releases!
NCT DREAM – Moonlight
Not enough of a tune to please people actually into NCT’s music, and not enough shirt-lifting to please anyone else.
TWS – Hey! Hey!
The new boy group on Pledis actually sounds pretty good. On one hand I’m annoyed that it’s not a girl group, but then on the other hand Pledis have consistently shown that they can’t manage girl groups worth a shit, so perhaps we’re all better off this way.
INFINITE – Flower
Sitting down in a greenhouse wearing bright clothing and looking clean-cut and unbothered by the cares of the world means we’re not getting another song like “The Chaser” here and that’s all you need to know about this.
AKMU – Piece of Cake
Another rubbish song by AKMU but it’s a good year for biasers of Suhyun like myself. Just Suhyun being in a video doing anything at all is all the fanservice I need to give me strength to get me through the hard times in life.
EVERGLOW – Zombie
This song is unusual and different and feels like it’s going somewhere really cool but never quite arrives, and then it just ends. A shame as there was a ton of potential here for something really cool that didn’t quite make it over the line.
Cignature – Poongdung
I guess we have to have a video with cancerous AI visuals in it each fucking week and here’s this week’s entry in the shame file. I guess we’re going to have to put up with this until the AIs eventually become sentient, realise that they suck and kill all the humans for making them add doughnuts and ballons to k-pop videos for no reason.
Candy Shop – Don’t Cry
This was the group that was in the documentary that I linked last week, and their debut song is actually awesome. Of course having an awesome some doesn’t mean a thing in k-pop where it’s all about whether your agency can give you that marketing push, but they’re off to a good start on the musical front and that’s all I really give a shit about.
BADVILLAIN – Badtitude
It’s not just the “titude” which is bad about this song. Kind of like Blackpink’s “Whistle” with the whistle removed and replaced with a whole lot of nothing.
Nicole – 5!6!7!8!
It’s great to see Nicole doing more stuff but this tepid disco doesn’t hold a candle to KARA’s best.
RM – Credit Roll
Not really even deserving of a review due to its length but I just thought I’d put it here as a PSA that RM really knows how to suck when he wants to. That’s one minute and twenty one seconds you’re not getting back.
Moonbyul – Dark Romance
Not much going on here either but Moonbyul is killing the confederacy cosplay.
Soojin – Rizz Me Up
Flighty beats with no punch, wispy vocals, washed-out visuals, stupid graphic overlays, shaky-cam on everything, gosh where have we seen stuff like this before, I can’t imagine. My favourite most-stannable iljin deserves way better than this crap.
Sunny Hill – Hard to Explain
It’s hard to explain why anyone would give a shit about this boring ballad.
CRAVITY – Show Off
I’m all out of cavity jokes so I’m just going to tell you that this song doesn’t belong in any of your orifices and leave it at that.
DXMON – Vitamin You
I wonder if trying to mainstream liberty spikes in Korea is actually going to work. Probably not unless a BTS member sees this and tries it, I guess. By the logic of “cultural appropriation” I guess English punk bands from the 80s have a right to sue these guys.
NEXZ – Starlight
I love the name “Nexz” because it implies that whoever named this group fell asleep during the process. Who can blame them.
GHOST9 – Awesome Day
Why are they “Ghost9” when there’s only seven of them? Do two of the group members have imaginary friends? I guess the songwriter was one of them.
SPIA – Deeep
The songwriter here really had a Casio and a dream.
Yein – I will be your spring
Another week, another sleepytime solo song from an ex-Lovelyz member. This song is only suitable for bedtime or turning off your grandmother’s oxygen.
Han Seungwoo – Blooming
Boy group solo projects are just as bad. (Just as bad as what? Ah, the things you miss when you only look at my stuff on TikTok and don’t visit my site to get the context… mind you understanding context isn’t k-pop fans’ strong point in any case…)
Kim Yohan – Hummingbird
Four minutes of dull jazz-fusion noodling around that only a corporation high on its own supply could think is a good idea.
Han Yohan – First Love
Dressing in rock clothes doesn’t actually make your lame ballad rock any harder, just saying.
DPR IAN – Saint
Pretty cool atmosphere and great visuals but it’s all ruined by the Autotune. When will Korea learn that nobody wants to hear the robot voice.
HYNN – Glowing Light
Hynn has some great music but she also has a lot of total bullshit like this.
Meriberry – Love Equation
I love her bedazzled safety goggles. She looks very scientific. I think I’m going to enlist her help to write my very scientific next boobs rating post, I need someone with science credentials for that.
High Tension – Gonna Be Alright
Well they’re not anywhere near as good as the Australian High Tension but this is still not a bad piece of pop music that is better than most of this week’s bullshit.
200 feat. Goldbuuda – Nightmare
Friends don’t let friends sing Autotuned R&B.
KOALA feat. Eric Minz, Jmin – Ride Or Die
If they’re going to park their car on the basketball court I guess that stops any basketball from happening which is a good thing because we all hate the sportball, so I guess I have to support this even though this music sucks.
Dbo feat. EK – Real Die Fake Live
This wasn’t one of the more interesting Dbo efforts (in a good OR a bad way) so instead this week’s non-Korean non-pop non-world-music Asian music feature can go here. Why don’t you check out this cool punk group “The Rebel Riot Band” from Myanmar, and their fucking fantastic cover of an old Italian anti-fascist song. Since the revolution over there is no joke, you know it’s more than just words for them. You can check out this short promo video to get some context on them if you like. Oh and they can use the Shure Super 55 correctly, a good enough reason to support the rebels in Myanmar as any other.
Coogie – idontfreestyle
Back to Korean rap music and it’s good that this person doesn’t freestyle because we’d rather he not.
Chilin Homie – Very Own
Every now and then this guy gets a good beat. This isn’t one of those times.
Nanomal – Kiwi Shampoo
I’m not a big fan of the vocal style but this is still a pretty good song anyway even if Hofner violin basses absolutely suck ass.
Nuclear Idiots – MCMXCIX
Nuclear Idiots have been around for a while and I probably should have covered them before now but they’re alright I guess. Anyway I probably won’t dig up anything else decent so let’s end roundup here.
RANDOM BONUS VIDEOS OF THE WEEK
Ben Atmos – How tripleS Became The “LA LA LA” Group
This guy has seriously drunk the fandom Kool-Aid and it shows in this video which has generally correct video analysis but is also brimming with delusion about the importance of his faves and toxic positivity in general. He reaches to the stars saying the “la la la” stuff in TripleS songs in there because it’s “powerful” and a “war cry” (what?) while missing the one blatantly obvious reason why it’s there – a chorus without words transcends language barriers, so it’s easy to market and easy to sing along to (hence the fan popularity).
PUBG Battlegrounds & NewJeans something collaboration something
You can buy NewJeans gloves, backpacks and guns in PUBG soon or something. I love wasting my money on bullshit like this, I don’t want to look like a boring generic ‘badass’ in an FPS, I’m already one of those in real life and it’s not all it’s cracked up to be – give me female avatars with girly pink guns any day. So I reinstalled PUBG on my machine in preparation for when this gimmicky crap hits their awful online store, and the game that actually used to run pretty well on my machine back in the day now has mega lag and stuttering every five seconds and is completely unplayable so I guess it’s a miss for me.
C-CLOWN – Shaking Heart
One of the better boy groups from back in the day, C-Clown had a few reasonable songs, and this one definitely has the old Bravesound type of style (although I don’t know if they wrote it, but it certainly sounds like it). It’s funny that one thing Bravesound were really known for back then was writing songs with little variation throughout, a vast contrast to today’s k-pop where everything has a pre-chorus drop and five change-ups nobody asked for.
That’s all for this week! Kpopalypse roundup returns next week!
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