Kpopalypse roundup – new k-pop releases 24/2/2025
It’s time for Kpopalypse roundup! Let’s take a look at some new releases!
Jennie & Doechii – ExtraL
Doechii has been kicking ass all over the charts lately and with good reason… but while they try hard, neither her nor Jennie’s lightspeed rapping can get the lead out of this awful beat. Definitely accurate song title of the week.
ZEROBASEONE (ZB1) – Blue
People often criticise it when I say that AI is used in a video, thinking I can’t tell the difference. Actually I can, and you’re just a dumb cunt, but to be honest, you should really hope that it’s an AI shitting up your fave’s music videos, because the alternative is that a human out there actually thought that this looked good, and that’s far worse and should bother you a lot more.
ONF – The Stranger
ONF’s version of the usual SHINee solo project thing has a better chorus than most, but honestly I’m just sick of this sound from boy groups.
Heart2Heart – The Chase
Bland and unexciting musically, the only notable thing here is how they’ve swiped Min Heejin’s aesthetic and played it as safe as possible. Better that than aespa’s Kwangya horseshit or Red Velvet’s dual-concept car crash, I guess. Enjoy your seven year contract plus three year mandatory extension, girls.
KiiiKiii – Debut Song
You all should have fucking shut the hell up about how shit BabyMonster’s “Woke Up In Tokyo” was, because it seemed like someone at Starship listened to you, put it on just for laughs, heard it for the first time and went “gosh I like the sound of that actually, let’s make our new group do something like this”. Now we all suffer. Next time a B-side is trash (and let’s be real, they are 99.999999% of the time, that’s why they don’t get coverage here and why I can’t even be assed checking them out) let’s all just do everyone a big favour and quietly ignore it and hope it goes away.
Lim Seulong x Nana – Be There
The guy is from 2AM but nobody cares about that, this is Nana’s first song in about a decade. Of course it’s poop designed to sell her as a “singer” so you can bet it’s electronically tweaked up the wazoo but we’re just happy that the existence of this song makes an Orange Caramel comeback 4.36% more likely.
Gaeko x Lee Suhyun – Journey
Suhyun still won’t appear in half of her own music videos, which would have been the one silver lining in this trash had it happened, but it didn’t, so it’s not.
LiSa feat. Felix of Stray Kids – ReawakeR
No not the Thai Lisa but the Japanese Lisa… no, not that Japanese Lisa but the other Japanese Lisa with the capital S and the vast catalogue of mid pop songs we don’t care about. She’s roped Felix into this one and it sounds like the kind of song that would play as bland waiting music at a League of Legends tournament when someone’s monitor goes down and they have to spend three minutes changing it over.
BIBI – Bluebird
Bibi didn’t even try here, so I don’t see why I should either.
KickFlip – Knock Knock
Sounds like a boy group comeback from a decade ago, but without the song. I was so bored with this that I started watching videos on American politics.
ARrC – Nu Kidz
Not bad actually, I’m just here for the old guy on the keyboard, he’s my new boy group stan. Not often I see people older than me I can look up to.
ARrC – loop.dll
This song’s so boring that when they were making the promo material for it, they forgot what it was called so they just used the filename from the DAW.
XODIAC – Time 2 Shine
Not a bad song at all, but what happened to all the bass frequencies? It sounds like someone accidentally slapped a high-pass filter on everything.
POW – Gimme Love
I didn’t have any love to give this song, so let’s instead have our random non-Korean LGBT feature! I just want to say that I miss the days when Azaelia Banks was the craziest person on my social media feed. In these times when supposedly responsible important people are all competing with each other to see who can say the most insane off the wall completely untrue pulled-straight-out-of-their-gaping-assholes shit, Miss Banksy’s behaviour in retrospect looks positively chill (and yes I’m calling her Banksy now just to confuse people who are into rubbish art). I also remember back when me and her were the only two people calling out Elon Musk for being a dick, back when she was all “Apartheid Clyde” while the rest of k-pop Twitter was licking his balls because he tweeted “Stan Loona” that one time. Perhaps if you’d all gotten off Elon’s tip back then he wouldn’t have evolved into the malignant narcissist who lies about his computer game high scores that he is today. Come back Banksy, we miss you!
LUN8 – Butterfly
Kim Lip’s missile silo just doesn’t have the same vibes when it’s prettified with those white cloth drape things. I feel like those will just make it more visible to the enemies of k-pop when they fly over with their drones.
BXB – I Wish
The cinematographer seems way more interested in the buildings in the background than the actual group, and I can kind of see where they’re coming from. The first half of this video looks like Justice’s “Stress” if it was uwu’ed up just a little. They should have kept the theme going and had the boys in the group rampaging through the city causing chaos while doing heart shapes.
EVNNE – Birthday
White tops and blue denim bottoms aren’t just for the girls.
The Wind – Hello, My Space
I’m just going to pretend this lazy-ass bullshit didn’t even happen. The Wind? Yes, I heard they had some okay songs last year. They’ve been quiet lately, but I’m sure their next thing will be good, gosh can’t wait until it arrives.
Wooyoung – Sagittarius
Not much going on here of interest.
Blingone – Bubble Gum
We’re really not done with the ripping off of grade-school singalong-in-a-circle songs yet. I guess this is the latest trend which is going to ruin k-pop. Mind you I’m just impressed that their YouTube channel is called “world k-pop center”, why didn’t I think of that, so much catchier and more official sounding than “Kpopalypse”.
AWIN – Hashtag (#Cheese)
Thsi mega-nugu debut is pretty bad, but after looking at what else came out this week I think it’s still a lot better than it could have been.
Olivia Marsh – Backseat
Meenoi – Trapped
I found myself weirdly liking this track and it took me about half of the song to work out why. Then it dawned on me – no Autotune. If this was literally any other rapper it would be smothered in that shit robot voice that has ruined about 95% of all hip-hop worldwide since 2006. Stan Meenoi… at least until she works out how to switch it on.
JinE – Farewell
She looks as bored as I am.
UINONE – Apocalypse
Not bad, but I just wished it would have rocked a little bit harder. It feels like they’re scared of the distortion pedal. To eleven next time please.
Repeat – World War Between You and Me
Not much of a world war here, this is more of a border skirmish that nobody wants to get involved in.
Lillianponylove – Angel..
Poop song but I have to respect the all-in on the ponies thing.
RANDOM BONUS VIDEOS OF THE WEEK
Jack Lo – How k-pop makes simple chords sound complex
This is a great video, Jack Lo’s advice here is quite solid and he clearly knows his shit. If you want to get a perfectly fine sequence of chords that there’s nothing wrong with, and make it fussy and boring like the constant coffee-shop crap that Korean churns out by the dozen each week that doesn’t even make it into roundup because it’s so fucking dull, then this is a really good guide on how to make that happen. Basically – add needless chord extensions like 7ths and 9ths to make straightforward chords sound ornate and stupid, add passing notes to make sure every single chord change in the song is completely predictable due to having a note in front of it that pre-empts where the harmonic motion is going, and attack everything in the most mid way possible. To underline the point, he even has his guitar pickup selector in the “mid” position and makes special mention of it being the favourite position of k-pop guitarists. No shit, we could have guessed.
Josh Bae – How aespa’s beats are next level
Another really good video with a lot of useful information in it. Mind you, you could easily follow all of these tips and still have a shit song, songwriting is much more than “remember to apply these three neat tricks”. But it’s still something to think about, and it does show that whoever is making aespa’s music is thinking about it all very carefully. In high-production k-pop almost nothing is by accident.
Hyuna ft. Junhyung – Change
Hyuna’s first solo venture sounded pretty much the same as what 4minute were doing at the time, which certainly was some foreshadowing of how everyone’s fortunes would go later down the track. Furthermore, Hyuna’s future main squeeze is featured in this track. Enjoy the romantic vibes and don’t forget to check your group chat messages uwu
That’s all for this week! Kpopalypse roundup returns next week!
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