It’s time for Kpopalypse roundup! Let’s take a look at some new releases!
Given the way k-pop videos are shitting themselves up with AI and CGI crap these days, wouldn’t creating deepfakes just qualify someone to be an agency video producer?
Jin – Don’t Say You Love Me
Jin remains the only BTS member who consistently releases good songs. His new track has some sexy instrumental harmony reminiscent of Julee Cruise, but paired with a beat much punchier than she’d ever investigate, and also sensible vocal phrasing – an extreme rarity in k-pop. Recommended.
Lisa feat. Tyla – When I’m With You
I’m not sure what’s more awkward and ill-fitting here, the weird monstrostity Lisa is wearing on her upper half, the product placement, or the song itself. Gloves-girl with her cute branding videos is probably having a brain aneurysm at this point, everyone please keep her in your thoughts during this difficult time.
I-dle – Good Thing
The best song from Soyeon’s pirated DAW in a while, it could have used a little more rock but I understand that electric guitars are harder to steal than sample packs.
FIFTY FIFTY – Midnight Special
Another decently above-average-but-not-mindblowing song to add to Fifty Fifty’s existing catalogue of decently above-average-but-not-mindblowing songs.
XG – Million Places
Someone warned me before I heard this song that it “felt like someone barged into my room and dumped a bin full of rotten fish onto my head”. After listening to it, I’d have to say that’s about 85% accurate.
BIBI – Apocalypse
As usual for Bibi, the video looks cool as fuck, Bibi herself is stylish as fuck, and the song is mid as fuck.
Seo Eve – Talk Talk
Seo Eve continues to be fucking great and it helps that she isn’t leaning on the “Malatanghulu” meme value for this one. If I was in a punk ska band I would immediately force my bandmates to do a cover of this, at which point they’d probably kick me out of the band and then I’d just start my own competing band and do it anyway.
RIIZE – Fly Up
I’m not sure what you call this exact sound but boy it sure sucks dicks.
BOYNEXTDOOR – I Feel Good
They might feel good but I think I feel just average about it. The riff is the best thing here, everything else is pretty standard.
TWS – Lucky to be loved
Song #562 by HYBE boy group #25 isn’t bad actually. I wish they’d gone for something more hard-hitting than that light fluffy NewJeansified beat but other than that, not much to complain about here.
The Wind – Hello Tomorrow
This for-the-fans nostalgia song goes harder than half their feature tracks and actually isn’t bad at all.
P1Harmony – Pretty Boy
It wasn’t going too badly until that chorus. I’ve been listening to a lot of recent Six Feet Under just for laughs and the chorus here gives me the same uncanny valley feeling as Chris Barnes.
VVS – D.I.M.M
Some very cool synth work makes this almost great, but all the hard work of the backing track is completely undone by the lame vocal choices. It’s not a dead loss though, some industrial group could sample this and actually make a song worth listening to out of it fairly easily as long as they chop most of the vocal out.
X:IN – Attention seeker
If you’re seeking attention, slow “in your area” songs released two years after the fad died out are probably not going to work.
NewKids – Eternal Sunshine
Girls909 will outsell this trash.
Priz-V – We! (with you)
Another CGI project for ex-idols subtly pitch-shifting their voices to target the youth anime bracket which surely must be booming… or maybe not. Probably half the members of After School and GWSN are in this.
Pureundal – Old Song
Shit song but look at those goddamn microphones (not the ones in the thumbnail, but the big serious black ones), they’re enough to get gun nerds excited.
Route 1 – Nayuta
Hey this is cool. It suffers a bit from that trendy beat that’s in everything now (an actual drumkit would have been better) but I like the general mood of it.
Jay Park feat. Ty Dolla Sign – Mayday
Well at least Jay has his soju bottles in the video this time, but I’m still noticing a distinct lack of them arriving in my post office box with a note for my girlfriend. Come on Jay, step it up.
Baekhyun – Elevator
This elevator only stops at the trapanova floor, unfortunately.
Taeyong feat. Seulgi – Rose
These idols are entering their wearing fuzzy jumpers on the couch era. It’s once step away from sitting on chairs singing a ballad.
Yuta – Twisted Paradise
Brain May style lead guitar is the latest weird trend to hit k-pop that I definitely didn’t predict, pity that whenever it’s used it’s seemingly not front and center but always buried miles back in the mix of some shitty ballad.
Jeong Sewoon – Goodbye
This was boring so instead let’s have our weekly non-Korean LGBT feature here instead, yay! I’ve already had Death In June in this feature but it’s also worth mentioning the punk band Crisis that they spawned from. “Alienation” is one of their best songs and unusually for the time they wear their queerness right on their sleeve: “I’ve never made it with a woman, I’ve only made it with men / I’d like to make it with a woman, just to see if I can” has to be some of the gutsiest (and funniest) lyrics of the entire 70s punk movement.
Lim Sejun – Summer
Hey this is really quite good. No idea which Z-list boy group this guy is a refugee from but his song kicks ass even if he’s committing an important music video sin of miming electric guitar on acoustic.
Jaechan – Poster Boy
The mumbly-ass chorus seems to be coming back lately.
Elkie – Everyday
Not as awful as I was expecting fromt he ex-CLC member, good work not sitting on chairs singing ballads.
MRCH – Green we shared
Sadly, not a song about what I thought it was going to be about. Speaking of which, where’s Skull these days? He’s been awfully quiet, I guess ever since my cat upstaged him on his own song he’s gone into hiding.
Rockit Girl – Silence
And here’s your regular Rockit Girl track, it’s so good to have them back doing cool shit every week. This song has Roly Poly chords, lots of guitar and as usual we have the snippets of AI bullshit but hey they’re a Z-tier group I can kinda forgive them, because it’s not like any artists lost their jobs, Rockit Girl didn’t have the money to pay them anyway.
RANDOM BONUS VIDEOS OF THE WEEK
J.Y.Park – “Tell Me” original dance
Got to hand it to Pastor JYP, no other k-pop CEO is willing to do shit like this. Can you imagine Lee Soo Man dancing to A20’s “Boss“? I bet you’re thinking about it now, aren’t you. You’re welcome.
Kiss Of Life something something hey look they’re in office wear
I couldn’t find a way to shoehorn this video of whatever the fuck Kiss Of Life are doing here into my Kiss Of Life POSITIVE post and that’s a shame so I’ll just put it here and you can do what you want with it. They can appropriate my office-having culture anytime.
Dal Shabet – Bling Bling
Minx/Dreamcatcher’s parent group never really hit it big, despite having a few good songs here and there, but this definitely wasn’t one of them. Kind of loud and a little screchy but mainly just gaudy and boring, Dal Shabet like a lot of mid-tier groups of the 2010s (Fiestar, Nine Muses, Stellar, etc) took quite a few attempts to really hit their stride musically and thematically.
That’s all for this week! Kpopalypse roundup returns next week!
When times are getting you down, and the entire k-pop world seems be consumed with negativity, you can count on Kpopalypse.com to bring you the POSITIVE content that you need to help you make it through another day in the toxic world of the kpoponlineosphere! Let’s take a look at all the POSITIVE things about k-pop girl group Kiss Of Life!
REASON WHY I FEEL POSITIVE ABOUT KISS OF LIFE AND YOU SHOULD TOO #1
Easy identification makes for a smooth group appreciation experience (also, horses)
In a scene crowded with lookalike girls and boys, Kiss Of Life don’t have that many members and those that they do have, all have a fairly unique appearance, so they should be relatively easy for me to identify. However I will admit that I’ve been slacking on my research regarding this group. Here’s my current knowledge of the group lineup at the moment.
Clearly I’m missing some key knowledge here, so in order to “learn history and culture”, “educate myself” and “grow as an individual” (something k-pop fans love to tell others to do apparently, even if they’re not quite as keen on doing it themselves because they still act the fucking same as they did in 1997 whenever some new bullshit scandal comes out but anyway…) I will now fill in the gaps in my knowledge, starting with the most important members first.
Now I’ll admit that it’s very difficult for me to keep track of this shit. Veteran readers will know that sometimes I get the images wrong when learning about new groups (it happens in objectification survey results posts from time to time and I always get swiftly corrected, tysm readers) but I’m pretty sure that this is the same horse. After all it’s the first horse that I found in Google image search when I searched up the group and we all know that Google image search never lies.
Here’s the horse again, which seems to be following Natty around. I guess it must be those riding pants, or maybe the horse wants to give her a lecture about her life choices like he did so kindly for Seungri in Seungri Simulator 2. I realise the horse does look a bit different in this picture but I doubt that the horse “got prettier”, you must remember that makeup, lighting and Photoshop can really transform an idol’s appearance.
But what about the other members?
Here’s the rabbit, posing diligently with all four members. You won’t find a harder-working rabbit in k-pop, I mean Pink Fantasy disbanded, and what has Apoki even been doing lately, probably on hiatus for some problematic behavour I suspect, Kiss Of Life rabbit would never.
And here’s the butterfly (also the maknae), flying outside of the local GARIAARRRAAGAIIIAHAR with some other member trying to grope it and also staring slack-jawed in a really creepy way. Poor butterfly must feel like Jeewon felt in Cignature when her groupmates kept trying to feel her up in the dorms. #protectButterfly
As for the less interesting members, I know who Natty is, she’s the one who always has straight black hair, sometimes the length changes but it’s always straight and black. Gosh if she ever changes that hair, or if the others ditch the cornrows and start using her hairstyle as well, how will I even know how to identify her? No idea at all, I guess I’ll figure it out when the time comes, but for now, we’re good.
This member here is allegedly called Julie. I don’t really know Julie that well yet. Some trivia – apparently Julia is American and lived in the USA until she was thirteen, which is why she definitely knows everything about American culture, because I too knew everything there is to know about Australian culture when I was thirteen.
This member is allegedly Belle. I’m told that Belle is the one who can sing a bit, but that’s really not very interesting because nobody with a brain or a life cares about k-pop vocal so let’s just move on. Also, like Julie she’s American, so she has “growing up in the richest country in the world” privilege, so we have to ignore her a little to level the playing field and make things fair for other k-pops.
My sources tell me that the last member is Haneul, she’s the one who gets the least lines in songs. To make sure that this post doesn’t push her out of her comfort zone, this write-up about her also has the least lines.
So overall that wasn’t too difficult. It’s taking me back to the days of other unproblematic groups like 2NE1 and how you could tell all the members apart easily. Bravo to Kiss Of Life for nailing this important aspect of being a kpop.
REASON WHY I FEEL POSITIVE ABOUT KISS OF LIFE AND YOU SHOULD TOO #2
Kiss Of Life are bringing adult sexiness back into k-pop, which is a good thing
It’s no secret that after a mid-2010s peak that coincided with the height of AOA’s chart domination, adult sexiness in k-pop has been on a downturn ever since. We all know why this is. We used to have stuff like this:
…but “concerned” k-pop fans started complaining that it was “sexualisation” (as if being sexual is somehow bad) or “exploiting women” (as if the entire k-pop idol system isn’t already thoroughly exploitative of every single performer both male and female, regardless of what does or doesn’t go into the music videos, but that’s another discussion you’re too chickenshit to have because then you have to confront your own complicity in the capitalist system and oh no we can’t have that so let’s just move on) and agencies keen on maximising their market share decided to listen to the whining and change things up a bit.
Now instead of adult sexy concepts, we get dogwhistling instead, because it sells better and it’s easier to defend:
countries that k-pop is trying to break into that have conservative rules about skin exposure don’t get their feathers ruffled
because there’s less “visible” sexiness, younger people can be pushed into the concepts thereby extending the period that Korea’s shit beauty standards considers them “marketable” because they have a younger start, which means more potential ROI per idol
The young audience and others that are too naive to “get it” don’t get turned off by any obvious sexiness, swallow the agency’s bullshit justifications and will cape for it hardcore
the pervert audience secretly understands what’s really going on
But wait… that’s all changing now thanks to Kiss Of Life.
If you want to keep the tadpoles out of k-pop, why not support sexy concepts where sexy people are allowed to be sexy without any under-the-radar bullshit. Poop song but whatever, it’s not like anybody’s listening.
REASON WHY I FEEL POSITIVE ABOUT KISS OF LIFE AND YOU SHOULD TOO #3
Kiss Of Life cancelled their KCON appearance because they are better people than you
Kiss Of Life were booked to attend KCON in LA this year, but like me at your mother’s house last night, they pulled out before they came.
Nobody knows why this happened, but it’s probably because they had a birthday party to organise.
However whatever the reason, not going to KCON is just smart. Every year when KCON happens there’s always huge mobs of k-pop fans bitching about how horrible it is, waiting in all those queues for the venue, queues for the toilets, queues for the fanmeets, queues for the merch, queues for the food, then you eat the food and it’s shit, the sloppy organisation in general sucks knobs, there’s scammy shit like charging a captive audience house deposit prices for water bottles and so on. “We definitely won’t go next year” they all say… and then they find out their bias is on the list next year so it’s like “oh wow, we kinda HAVE to go now”… Kiss Of Life just saved you all that potential awkwardness. They know that you really wanted to see them and support their “education” and “growing as individuals” after their cultural oopsies but they know you would have a bad time at KCON generally so they decided to make your decision not to go easier. Now you can stay at home and not spend on crazily overpriced concert tickets, you should be thanking them for saving you the money. Angels.
REASON WHY I FEEL POSITIVE ABOUT KISS OF LIFE AND YOU SHOULD TOO #4
Kiss Of Life is a good reminder of the full k-pop scandal defence playbook
Have you ever played a computer game where there’s a character that transforms each time a new level is reached, but for some reason you have to nope out of the whole equation before you get to the final level? Maybe it’s just too hard, or maybe the developers introduced mega bugs plus even more predatory gacha than before plus retconned their entire original storyline and it made you not want to play anymore… well, anyway, following Kiss Of Life lately feels like watching a levelling up process… of hoping your fans like you again, but unlike your computer game character Kiss Of Life actually max out their levelling at the top. This gives us a good opportunity to explore each level of the k-pop apology process.
But wait! K-pop fans do sure love their teasers, so it’s only right that we’ll start off with this “teaser apology”. Julie clearly had a feeling that maybe the livestream wouldn’t go down too well, but let’s not throw a KKK uniform on her just yet – she might have just meant that maybe we thought birthday parties in general were lame or something.
So the first level is the official company apology. Pretty bland and basic, definitely doesn’t contain the appropriate amount of grovelling and boot-licking that k-pop fans wanted to see to fulfill their power fantasies, basically it’s “we’re sorry that you perceived this as offensive, actually we were having a great time, sucks to be you I guess hey LOL” but in corpo-speak. Usually does the trick in most cases because the hardcore fans will still cape and then the fandom has a big Internet fight and then two weeks later they forget about it when something new and shiny appears because nobody actually gave that much of a fuck to begin with.
If that doesn’t work, then it means that someone probably actually did care at least a little, so we move onto the next level which is individual apologies. Oh wait, this is Julie apologising for some other thing… but hey whatever. She does get herself into trouble, that girl, tsk tsk. I like the “thank you for understanding” at the bottom though, sort of implying that understanding is going to be given by default, even though that’s a bit of a stretch because k-pop fans don’t generally understand much at all. Personally I think Julie should apologise to me for making this post harder to write by fucking up in the same way multiple times.
The next level after this is the “handwritten apology”, which will be familiar to T-ara fans and anyone else who has followed an idol that got themselves into very deep shit. If you don’t think you’re hearing faint sucking noises while reading it, you know that you haven’t apologised hard enough. Some people were bummed out because black fans didn’t get a special mention here, with the group apologising more generically to all their fans instead, but that actually makes sense because a lot of the people complaining probably aren’t black fans anyway (remember most people who follow k-pop don’t have a public presence and aren’t as honest about their backgrounds as I am, so a lot of non-black kpop fans use that opportunity to cosplay as black kpop fans online so their opinions have more c-word… a type of “digital blackface“). The group probably avoided singling out black fans deliberately anyway because they were worried that one of them might fly into a Krameresque rage and start writing racial slurs frantically all over the page before storming off in a huff. You can’t be too careful.
(Note that if your idol can’t read or write in the language of the target audience a “90 degree head-bowing apology video” will also suffice for this category of apology.)
The next stage of the apology process, if people still aren’t buying it, is that you have to actually release a video for a song. Don’t worry, you don’t have to write a new song just for this, that’d be too much effort and there probably isn’t time – just find some album filler B-track, or some other song that came out years ago but never got a video the first time around, and throw it out there with a brand new video and just make sure it fits the bill musically and visually. It definitely has to be an emotional ballad, something asking fans to give the group “one more chance” to “let them in” to your heart again, and it can either have the group crying a lot, or alternatively a reminiscing montage “for the fans” type video showing them being happy while pleasing their fans will do nicely, just anything emotional basically. Don’t you miss them? Don’t you remember how they were once your faves, before you CANCELLED them, you MEAN person? Just imagine how miserable your bias is right now. Don’t you want to have fun again? Don’t you remember how you loved them? We know you’re mad, but somewhere deep down inside, you still remember how it used to be, and you crave that connection again. It’s okay, we understand you. We’ll let you turn back time, we don’t mind. We all make mistakes, but let’s make peace. Now stream the fucking album, bitch.
If none of that shit works, then I guess you gotta cancel a show or two so the fans don’t stone you to death… or more likely shoot you, as we are talking about American fans in this instance. I’m sure that’ll help the girls “learn history and culture”, “educate themselves” and “grow as individuals”, as the social media mob are so fond of saying. This is the last phase of the apology process because it involves taking a significant financial hit, so it’s only used as a last resort, beyond this is only the cold wasteland of long haituses, disbandment and sitting-on-chairs ballads in a few years time. All of this is very fascinating just from an anthropological perspective, especially for me because apologising for anything at all really isn’t part of my culture, so I’m learning a lot about how cultures who actually apologise operate. This is my cultural education. I’m learning about history and growing as an individual. Or something.
REASON WHY I FEEL POSITIVE ABOUT KISS OF LIFE AND YOU SHOULD TOO #5
Kiss Of Life have the stupidest acronym ever and now I’ll have to see it a lot less which is great
Does anyone actually know why “Kiss Of Life” is abbreviated to “KIOF”? I mean okay, the answer is here which is basically some bullshit about more sensible abbreviations sounding too much like existing Korean words, but every video ever that I watched about the whole Kiss Of Life oopsy thing said that having that stupid cornrows-r-us birthday party was a BIG DEAL because the group relied so much on international fans, so I kind of don’t buy “we have to make it sound good in Korean” as a very good reason. But hey they’ll probably disband soon and then I’ll never have to see “KIOF” again except for in “whatever happened to” questions, so lucky me. Thanks Julie! (I’ll miss the horse though, I hope it redebuts.)
REASON WHY I FEEL POSITIVE ABOUT KISS OF LIFE AND YOU SHOULD TOO #6
I guess I see your point. I should have been paying more attention all along. This is my cultural education. I’m learning about history and growing as an individual.
Wait… that is Julie, right? Don’t tell me it’s the horse…
That’s all for this post – Kpopalypse shall return!
It’s time for Kpopalypse roundup! Let’s take a look at some new releases!
You know you have a drinking problem when you can only do photo shoots while lying down.
I-dle – Girlfriend
No more “G” for us international fans (they were always just called “idle” in Korea) and despite the conspiracy theories, no return of Soojin either. Maybe they dumped the G from the name because it looked a bit too much like a 6 as in OT6 as in we need to bring Soojin back.
tripleS – Are You Alive?
Actually pretty catchy but I’m not sure if that actually means “good” in this instance, it might just be catchy because they repeat that same hook one time for each member of the group that they recruited. By the way no more copies of “Love Carousel” sold this week, thank fuck for that because this video sure isn’t helping the identification process with its shadowy noir-isms.
MEOVV – Drop Top
It’s an unspoken but undisputably true rule is that a song called “Drop Top” can never be any good, so this song being actually almost half-decent is therefore about as good as any song with that title is ever likely to get.
Chuu – Back in town
There’s two types of Chuu tracks, amazing kick-ass pop songs, and dull boring bullshit that panders to Korea’s taste in ballads, lounge music and other crap. This song is of the second type.
Ablume – Echo
They’re just trying to sound like Fifty Fifty but without Fifty Fifty’s production team, and they do a pretty damn good job… that is, until the shit post-first-chorus rap breakdown, then it all falls apart. Nice try I guess.
KISS OF LIFE – Live, Love, Laugh
Look a nostalgia video, to remind you about them and how much you loved them, before the recent controversy thing. I’m not sure what the awkward music change up at 1:29 is doing in there, I guess that’s the part where we “laugh”.
Seo Eve – ZampaTT
The “change up” idea works at lot better in Seo Eve’s song than most, because the entire thing is so wacky to begin with that it doesn’t feel like so much of a tonal shift when they suddenly drop to EDM madness for no reason.
Kylie Cantrall feat. Yunha & Minju – See U Tonight
Absolute poop that feels like it’s about 2% Illit and 98% this other woman I don’t care about.
P1Harmony – DUH!
K-pop boy groups doing the p-funk sound is always a mistake.
EPEX & Joan – So Nice
I wanted to hate it because of the general cheesiness and cringe factor plus it being yet another goddamn collab but I have to admit that the song isn’t too bad at all.
E’LAST – Crazy Train
Whoever was making all those 8-bit kpop videos has a lot to answer for because it seems now that look is creeping into k-pop itself… mind you I’m just glad that they’re not in the Paradise Diner for once.
DAY6 – Maybe Tomorrow
JYP Christian Ministries is at it again with their mid boy-rock. Just take their pamphlets to get rid of them quickly and make sure you’re out shopping next week when they come around to your front door again.
Young K – Do You Know Turkey?
I was expecting a cultural education about the country Turkey and not a weak ballad about putting slices of bird in a stale sandwich.
VVS – Purrfect
Someone asked me if this was an “in your area” song and it really isn’t, it’s far too uptempo for that. I’m not sure if it really works but I do kind of enjoy the janky silliness of it.
FTIsland – Theory of Happiness
You can always tell which ones the idols are and who is just the session musician in these so-called “rock groups”. There’s definitely an apartheid system operating here where the guitarist and drummer are not allowed to get screentime or look the bassist and vocalist in the eye.
Jackson Wang feat. Diljit Dosanjh – Buck
Patriotic Hong Kong resident Jackson teaming up with an Indian rapper to take on their arch nemesis China and free the student protestors, I’m pretty sure that’s what this video is about.
Chenle – Lucid
I can’t even keep track of all these NCT things. The day SM dump the whole NCT branding and just call their new boy group “Dave” or something, the world will cheer.
Samuel – Rockstar
I was wondering what the fuck was up with Samuel’s belly button and then I realised he’s got a tattoo above it, like permanent navel fluff he can’t remove. How aegyo!
Yook Sungjae – Lie
Four bars of guitar solo isn’t worth wading through this mushy ballad for.
Xion – Camelia
This song was boring and we’ve all had enough of lame boy group solo projects, so instead let’s have our weekly non-Korean LGBT feature here, yay! This week it’s Death, the somewehat-unimaginatively titled death metal group featuring the legendary late Chuck Schulinder on vocals (and not to be confused with the other also-excellent group called Death who were in my black music feature a couple years ago). In 1991 they recruited not one but two gay members into their lineup, Paul Masdival and Rob Reinert of the band Cynic, going double-gay in a scene where almost everyone else is still closeted as fuck. The result was the album “Human”, one of the best death metal records from the genre’s peak period.
DPR CREAM, DPR ARTIC – Drift
I suppose it’s not terrible but the most memorable thing about this is definitely the visuals.
Jannabi – Dream is Beautiful
I think they’re going for the Cherry Blossom Fuckwit audience with this one.
Bryn – Dry
Bryn did surprise me with a good song a while back actually, so I know she can do good again. This isn’t quite it, but it’s not as bad as some of her dreadful earlier stuff, so there’s hope for a banger in the future.
Effie – More Hyper
Effie is great because she just sounds insane. If you’re going to go all electronic stupid, go really electronic stupid. There’s no point going halfway with these things.
Punch – I Hope You’re Happy
Song not sucking? Punch actually IN her own video for once? Yes I’m happy.
Changmo – Hold Up
A pretty wild and weird video here wasted on a song which just sounds like everything else in this style.
Rockit Girl – Joker’s Wandering World
Rockit Girl back with the constant weekly releases of cheap-ass videos and somehwat underproduced but still cool songs, I don’t miss Dreamcatcher at all.
RANDOM BONUS VIDEOS OF THE WEEK
Kpopalypse Oppar – This is How K-Pop Labels ACTUALLY Make Money (the real method)
Since there’s so many wrong-headed videos out there about this issue, I thought it would help if there was at least one with real stuff in it, so I made one. Veteran readers will already be familiar with these observations, but it can’t help to reiterate things sometimes for the new folks. We shouldn’t assume that everyone already knows everything (like “too cool for school” k-pop reddits tend to), remember most k-pop fans these days are young and many don’t even know what Aileegate is and that the world’s most popular k-pop website once spread revenge porn freely and was never prosecuted for it or even had much of a dent in their web traffic for that matter.
Grace – Disturbing Images Surface in KG’s Legal Case Against JYP USA
Oh and while we’re at it, here’s just some stuff about KG from VCHA, just to remind you that the k-pop system in general is still a shit show.
Girl’s Day – Twinkle Twinkle
Looking at early Girl’s Day is a trip just to see them all looking so unrecognisably different, and reminds me of the days when a member leaving a group seemed like a relative rarity. These days it seems like every group is losing more members than that movie Teeth. Anyway this song was a bit nonsense but it did have a pretty cool chorus that was as catchy as any of their others.
That’s all for this week! Kpopalypse roundup returns next week!
Yes it’s back! It’s time for another episode of the most long-running k-pop nugu series on the Internet, that’s right it’s Kpopalypse Nugu Alert!
We’re getting towards halfway through 2025 and the k-pop songs so far this year have been… okay, I guess? We could sure use a quality lift though. So for this episode of Kpopalypse Nugu Alert I’ve selected some songs, all of which I think are pretty decent, and all of which have some form of rock instrumentation in them as well, which I’m sure is just a coincidence… anyway these artists could probably all use a bit of support from you, and this Nugu Alert probably won’t help their cause because as we know nobody really reads this series, but I’m determined to make it anyway just to prove a point, be an asshole, and maybe increase someone else’s streaming revenues by a few cents. You’re welcome.
Usual Kpopalypse Nugu Alert rules apply, artists must meet the following criteria:
Less than 20,000 views across official channels
Can probably do all the “cultural appropriation” they want on livestreams because nobody is likely to be watching and taking notes
Relevant to Kpopalypse
Let’s take a look!
SUNNYKEY – Starlight
Barely scraping in for Kpopalypse Nugu Alert eligibility is Sunnykey, sort of a QWER-lite kind of group. Unfortunately they don’t have QWER’s commitment to distorted guitars or feminism, but they make up the shortfall with a decent enough song plus some truly cheesy acting at the start of the video. Watching these girls smile semi-enthusiastically and plod away mid-tempo during their their all-afternoon-and-night video shoot is probably not going to scratch the itch for people wanting some actual rock music but at least you get a reasonable guitar solo tone and some pretty funny dance moves. I particularly enjoyed “pissing against a fire hydrant” at 0:54 and “subtly doing my kegels” at 1:34. It’s all very nice and inoffensive like rock music shouldn’t really be, but the song is there and that’s what matters at the end of the day.
YouTube views at the time of writing: 19334
Notable attribute: 1:18 mrds
Nugu Alert Rating: average
Dalsia – Welcome to today
If you haven’t got your fill of rock music, silly dancing on rooftops or rock music yet, then Dalsia should satisfy with a slightly heavier and faster sound that meets required rock music standards, even if the actual band is nowhere in sight. I’m not sure why she does her most exuberant dance moves while facing away from the camera, maybe it’s because she’s such a good dancer that she wants to prevent you from overanalysing her technique, like how in early Van Halen days before they had a record deal Eddie Van Halen would allegedly do his trademark two-handed tapping runs with his back turned to the audience to stop the secret from getting out… but probably not. Still, she has a great song and I like her microhphone technique of not actually bringing a microphone to the outdoor shoot but just miming that she’s holding one so Kpopalypse can’t accuse her of doing it wrong. Smart.
YouTube views at the time of writing: 10947
Notable attribute: I have no idea what’s in that bag on her chair in the studio, but hopefully she didn’t forget it was there and sit too hard on it and squish it
Nugu Alert Rating: high
iWish – Connection
Okay so this one’s weird, most of the comments are in Japanese and talk enthusiastically about some sort of Korean expo thing at some pavillion, which is heavily mentioned during the video. They even have their own snare drum head advertising it, so presumably a bit of money went into this “k-pop” adventure, which looks like it was for one show only. The “making of” video sheds no extra light on why this event exists but shows that there was even a separate bunch of outfits and indoor stage setups that curiously didn’t make the final cut… plus there’s a third video which is exactly the same with subtitles. Musically they’ve shot for something that’s a bit like SNSD’s “Into The New World“, a bit like NewJeans’ “Supernatural“, but probably the most like some kind of Christian rock camp thing. The visuals fit the latter, with the loose semi-improvised dancing and courageously putting the backing instrumentalists in the actual music video, I guess conning people out of tourist money and conning people out of god money are similar activities and need similar audiovisual treatments. The song isn’t bad though and I wish more groups like this would do the live band sound thing, my deity approves.
YouTube views at the time of writing: 7333
Notable attribute: everyone fenced off with glass presumably so you don’t attack them for wearing Trump ties
Nugu Alert Rating: very high
Loosen Door – What Is Love
As is often the case for some weird reason, the best song on Kpopalypse Nugu Alert is the one with the least views. Most of Korea’s “indie rock” bollocks is just asspaper that lifts the stylistic elements of britpop and shoegaze but leaves the songwriting behind, but here we have a great song that’s really catchy and fast and doesn’t sound like a bored person picking their toenails for once. The vocals are kind of lost in the mix a bit but it suits the style and even makes for a refreshing change from the over-present vocals in just about everything else from Korea. Nice trippy video too which looks polished despite the low budget just due to good cinematic ideas being present, and I’m not sure what’s going on with the story exactly but I don’t think I care either so it’s all good.
YouTube views at the time of writing: 2309
Notable attribute: nice “missing” poster at 0:42, maybe people would be able to recognise him and alert the authorities if he got his hair out of his eyes
Nugu Alert Rating: extreme
That’s all for this episode of Kpopalypse Nugu Alert – the series will return!
It’s time for Kpopalypse roundup! Let’s take a look at some new releases!
Just letting you know that Fantasy Boys have been going through some (typically k-pop style) hard times latel. Now you won’t have to type their group name into a search engine to find out about it, aren’t you grateful.
FIFTY FIFTY – Pookie
Definitely on the lower end of Fifty Fifty songs quality-wise, but Fifty Fifty are pretty consistent so it’s still listenable enough. It’ll do while we wait for Attrakt to pull their fingers out and give us a video for “Perfect Crime“… which I’m sure is coming any minute, right? Right…?
KATSEYE – Gnarly
Shades of Nada’s “Trippin” in the abrasiveness of the rhythms, which is definitely a good thing, if only the song didn’t waste those amazing sonic textures by being so fucking slow and dragging. This could have been a song of the year contender if it had just a little bit more pace on it, as it is right now it’s still fairly addictive but mainly for the sounds they’re using rather than what anyone chose to do with them.
Maroon 5 feat. Lisa – Priceless
Maroon5 are boring musically with or without Lisa in tow, as this just sounds like any other song of theirs. The video is worth a look though just because Lisa has never looked better.
Hyuna – Mrs. Nail
Remember a decade ago when Hyuna had actual songs? Ah, those were the days.
YOUNG POSSE – Blue Dot
The two or so bars of this where they decided to switch the Autotune off are actually pretty decent, pity about the other 98% of the song. Eric Reprid gets away with this type of nonsense because the soft shitty Autotune is the perfect foil for his type of lyrical content, for anyone else just use your real voice, or better yet, don’t rap at all.
LE SSERAFIM – Crazier
Bland “for the fans” junk, what use is a Skinner box when the pellets it dispenses don’t even taste any good.
TXT – Love Language
2:39 you’re welcome.
RIIZE – Bag Bad Back
It’s shameful that this has a relatively good backing track compared to a lot of actual hip-hop these days. I’m not sure if RIIZE should be proud or everyone else should just be fucking embarrassed. What the fuck are rappers even doing in 2025 besides sucking their cousin’s dicks, this I ask you.
TRENDZ – Chameleon
An apt song title because this tune really does just blend into the background of all the other nonsense that’s been released this year.
ONEUS – Time Machine
Oneus’s take on yacht rock is actually pretty good and weirdly slightly better than 015B’s 57 versions of the same thing.
&TEAM – Kochiru
What is it about Coca Cola endorsements that brings out the very worst in k-pop groups. This is not a rhetorical question, I’d really like to know the answer to this.
Davichi – A Song for You
Finally, a song for me? Maybe not, but perhaps the fashions are for me. The Davichi girls age like fine wine, even if they haven’t been able to escape ballad hell since their second album in 1863.
UDTT – Really Really
This song isn’t too bad and would have been a lot better if it didn’t have awkward time-signature changes in the pre-chorus. K-pop fans have enough trouble counting as it is!
ILY:1 – Secret Recipe
When k-pop girls break out the baking videos you know that there’s always something sinister afoot. Expect controversy soon.
MVP feat. E SENS – Clock It
Instead of clocking this, let’s clock some actual good music and have our weekly non-Korean LGBT feature here instead, yay! Hey, guess which member of “nu-metal before nu-metal existed” rock band Faith No More is gay? If you guessed keyboard player Roddy Bottum, you guessed correctly! Enjoy “Be Aggressive”, his song about sucking men’s cocks that he allegedly delighted in getting his straight bandmates to sing along to.
CATCH THE YOUNG – The Young Wave
A kind of silly instrumental song which obviously exists for live concert use so each member can have a little bit of sectioned-off time to demonstrate that they can actually play fairly well when they’re not being forced to do undemanding pop songs. Still, there’s not much actual value in it for anyone sensible beyond it being a nice break during the concert where you can go to the toilet.
Sikkoo – Bangatgan
A cute but really kind of nothingy song, I like it how they drop Jay Park’s name in there and try to make it look random and casual and “fun” when it’s obviously just because he’s on the same label and there’s probably some contractual condition where they have to either feature Jay in their songs or at least remind their audience that he exists.
YOUNITE (Hyungseok, DEY, Kyungmun) – Who’s Next?
Younite have three different “subunit” songs this week and they all suck about equally so in the interest of making roundup load faster for those who keep complaining about that, I’ll just feature one song here and tell you that all three of them are worthless bullshit.
Mitty – Stuffy Driver
An incredibly unlikeable Rhodes-bullshit style song but decent fashions in the video kept my attention. Hey I’m trying to look on the positive side here.
Jang Haneum – Shine
Not amazing but the old-school style (i.e not jumping back and forth between five different styles just because it can) is appealing.
Anode feat. Moon Sua – Keep It Raw
Supposedly Moon Sua from Billlie is in this nonsense but you wouldn’t know it because she’s only in it for about five seconds. It doesn’t help anyway.
NOWIMYOUNG feat. Sik-K – AH AH
2010 BigBang, the aliexpress version.
SEFO, POY, LOKI feat. Boombeat – Choo Choo Boom
Okay, what the fuck. Let’s just leave roundup here for the good of humanity before it gets even worse.
Rockit Girl – Through The Pain
But wait… Rockit Girl are back to save roundup once again! Okay the AI transitions are a bit shit but everyone’s using that disgusting crap now so why not Rockit Girt too I suppose. If I’m going to destroy the planet I might as well do it while rocking out.
RANDOM BONUS VIDEOS OF THE WEEK
Xiwang Kpop Tea – NMIXX Lily Said WHAT?! Her Savage Response Went Viral!
Imagine trying to get a k-pop singer to sing off-key on purpose, just so you can make an evil edit “Boram’s umbrella” style. Fortunately Lily is smart enough to see through something like that instantly. The worst thing about Korean pop music is, always has been, and probably always will be its fans…
Xiwang Kpop Tea – I’m Being Silenced by Toxic Fans… I Need Your HELP
…wait, what was that about k-pop fans? They’re pieces of shit? Oh yes. We were all well aware. Every k-pop content creator always finds this out eventually.
Nafla – Wu
Nafla’s weak version of a Wu-Tang inspired rap track is dull as dishwater compared to what it’s inspired by, but it’s still a lot better than rap music in general in 2025. We didn’t know how good we had it.
That’s all for this week! Kpopalypse roundup returns next week!
