It’s time for Kpopalypse Nugu Alert!  Let’s check out some fresh k-pop nugus!

I live in Australia where the population is part of the global minority who don’t have northern hemispherian privilege.  Due to this lack of privilege we’re just getting to the end of one of our usual shitful winters where all man-made structures are destroyed by the weather and wildlife and then we have to rebuild it all in spring.  However in the privileged northern half of the Earth there is right now a summer thing happening where there is sunshine every day and the weather is always lovely and warm.  Well okay, except certain southern parts of the USA right now where you’re all getting fucked up the ass by massive flooding, and let’s not forget southern Asia is also getting a major ass-reaming from the weather right now.  If you live in any of these places and you’ve actually got Internet access and are reading this, my thoughts go out to you – I think you’ve temporarily rescinded your northern hemispherian privileges and are allowed to feel bitter along with all the Australians at least until you have shelter and a steady food supply again.  For the rest of you privileged northern hemispherians with your privileged privilege, it’s probably hopefully warm enough for k-pop girls to wear bikinis and flash abs yet mild enough for them not to get 50 skin cancers after five minutes like they would where I live doing that shit.

Now wasn’t that a boring introduction to this week’s Nugu Alert – yes it fucking was.  That’s because it was about the weather, and weather is naturally boring, it’s the uninteresting common ground we all experience that you talk about with people at parties and in elevators when you don’t really give a fuck about them and don’t want anything to do with them but you just want to get through a socially awkward situation.  Of course Korea’s music scene is nothing if not expertly acquainted with boredom on many levels, and k-pop songwriters give even less a fuck about you than the distant acquaintances who get stuck having party conversations with you, hence each season in k-pop always brings with it the cancer of “seasonal k-pop songs”.  Korean musicians are mostly so uninterested in you that just like your work colleagues by the office photocopier talking about how they were too warm on the way into work today, their continual peddling of “seasonal pop” trash is proof that they couldn’t care less about creativity, self-expression or engaging you in any manner.

Of course, nugus are no exception.  Nugu groups don’t necessarily have the budgets for wide Taeyeonesque helicopter-shot pastoral vistas, so they have to work out cheaper ways to invoke those seasonal feelings and impart precious weather-related boredom into their music videos.  Since summer is just about to finish for Korea, let’s take a look at some nugus and how they’ve incorporated the theme of summer into their ultra-cheap videos and musical productions over the last few months.

Usual Nugu Alert rules apply:

• Less than 20,000 views on official YouTube channels at the time of writing
• International fans have been observed to give generally no fucks about these artists
• Kpopalypse thinks you should experience these nugus, just because

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Impro9 – Tropical

It would logically seem that tropical shithouse would be the most obvious musical style of choice for a summer comeback, and we’ve all seen plenty of that in these last few months haven’t we.  However it really has nothing to do with the weather – regular readers of Kpopalypse roundup will know and remember that Korea has been boringly flogging this exact sound to death at every stage of the last year.  Some of the better songs from this horrible pop subgenre like Blackpink’s “Playing With Fire” and BTS’ “Blood Sweat & Tears” came out in autumn last year and even came with gloomy autumnal videos to match.  Also we have to remember that tropical countries don’t even have summer, autumn, spring and winter anyway, just “hot and everything’s dead” and “hot and everything’s underwater, and dead”, so the association between “tropical” and “summer” is in reality somewhat fraudulent.  Nevertheless people from milder climes rightly or wrongly do still associate the “tropical sound” with “summer” so here go Impro9 with enough toot-toots compressed into the first 16 bars of their song “Tropical” to power KARD’s entire career.  Add some bright fashions plus a rented sports car and boat that must have cost the video company at least $300 for the day and the “Sistar on a budget” vibe is complete.  Of course they kind of fucked up the actual song with all those squirting flatulent toot noises cutting in everywhere, but hey you can’t have it all, and I get the feeling that like with most k-pop the song wasn’t really a priority anyway.

YouTube views at time of writing: 176

Notable attribute: subliminal health message at 2:10 should help you increase your nutrition levels

Nugu Alert rating: extreme

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Golden Doodle – An Alpaca On The Beach

Nothing says summer quite like the beach.  Throwing frisbees, catching salty waves and removing sand from your genital area in the communal showers after trying to fuck between two sand dunes and nearly getting busted, what’s not to like?  There’s also lots to like about alpacas, a distant relative of the grass mud horse which is ever-relevant to Kpopalypse.  Golden Doodle’s cruisy inoffensive song features a video with alpacas, and it also briefly features the beach, but unfortunately the video budget didn’t extended far enough to get the alpacas actually on the beach as per the song’s title, so instead you get the members of Golden Doodle observing the beach for no particular reason other than to say “technically there’s some beach in our video” and then feeding alpacas on a farm.  Much of the video seems to be shot vertically on mobile phones fancam-style but in a pleasant editing decision, Golden Doodle have frequently placed two panels of vertical footage side by side so less screen space is wasted, which is really something that more fancam makers should think about doing more often.  If only the band were able to find something interesting for us to actually look at other than dull holiday footage that would have been nice, but better to have dull visuals than a shit song I guess.

YouTube views at time of writing: 2003

Notable attribute: scruffy, fatty Hwayoungpalca hogs all the food and bullies the other two alpacas away from the feeding bowl

Nugu Alert rating: extreme

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Sweet Fresh Thrill ft. Serri – Melon Shake

It’s tough being a big-titted girl at any time, but especially in summer, and being someone who has consistently dated more heavily-endowed women I hear about and know their struggles fairly well.  You can’t always wear the air-circulating, boob-displaying fashions you want without dickheads yelling stupid mostly inaudible things at you from cars, you have to be careful wandering around the empty streets or unwelcome admirers driven crazy by the heat might try to whisk you away into a dark corner for a Gain video re-enactment, and there’s also underboob sweat and back pain which just isn’t pleasant.  Often the more buxom ladies may choose to stay in the comfortable air-conditioned indoors during the summer months instead of out in the heat, and who can blame them.  However that brings up the problem “how do I shoot my boob-displaying summer k-pop video?”.  The answer lies in this video from Sweet Fresh Thrill – various images of tropical fruit, tropical plants and tropical cocktails are interspersed with the female singer to impart a “summer” vibe to the proceedings despite the video being shot 100% indoors.  The view count may seem high here, but is actually one of the lowest in k-pop for a video with this degree of boob-friendliness.  I’m not sure if the Serri who is featuring on this track is the one from Dal Shabet, but I couldn’t find anything linking the two anywhere on the Internet so I’m going to assume that this is just somebody with the same name, and in any case I don’t remember the other Serri’s melons being quite this shakeable.

YouTube views at time of writing: 2912

Notable attribute: the hand-held shower being used as a substitute microphone is disappointingly never switched on during the video

Nugu Alert rating: extreme

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That’s all for this week’s episode of Kpopalypse Nugu Alert!  Nugu Alert will return at a future date, as always with more nugus to share!