Kpopalypse roundup is back once again!  Let’s take a look at some new releases!

Ikon – Love Scenario

In one scene the Ikon boys are sitting down on chairs and behind them are the forgotten members of Blackpink, facing away from the camera and patiently awaiting their comeback.  That YG is such a troll.

Jonghyun – Shinin’

Cobbled-together posthumous releases never quite work out, because in the sentiment and desire to hear more of the performer, quality control gets thrown right out the window – also see Queen’s “Made In Heaven” album and the 57 useless posthumous Tupac releases.  We should remember Jonghyun’s legacy through the better SHINee tracks and not this.

Yuri & Raiden – Always Find You

When I was growing up one of my pet hates in music videos was people miming guitar when there was obviously no guitar whatsoever in the actual song.  However even that corniness is outdone here by those awkward pool scenes where the girls can barely contain their laughter from the stupidity of it all.  Song’s alright though.

Rainz – Turn It Up

This song is all over the place, with trop house, dubstep and tempo shifts everywhere, but the only genuinely good moment is when they sing “BA!” and grab their crotches at the same time.  That’s the kind of quality that a k-pop group needs.

Kim Bo Kyung – Morning

Slow pedestrian rock stuff.  And those acoustic guitars with no body are just silly.  Just be done with it and buy a Flying V, seriously.

Fromis 9 – To Heart

The girl group with the worst group name in all of k-pop release their second song and it’s pretty good in a Lovelyz-on-a-budget kind of way.

Target – Awake

I’m pretty sure this is the best song so far from these relative nugus, the trap part could have been turfed but apart from that this is alright.

Ravi ft. Park Jimin (15&) – Nirvana

JYP didn’t let Park Jimin be in the video for this, because in those wide open desert areas there’s a reasonable chance she would have done a runner and escaped for good to some other agency who actually might let her do stuff.

Ryan – Hometown

This song almost works once the chorus starts, and it was a great idea to bury any semblance of tropical shithouse underneath all that reverb, but get ready for one of the most comical, mood-destroying breakdowns you’ll ever hear.

Jeong Sewoon – Baby It’s You

After a slow start this one perks up a bit and isn’t too intolerable.

Lee Byoung Hyeon – Ember

Keep watching, it get weirder.  It’s a bit of a nothingy song but it has the best “green screen fuckery” video since Hyangi’s iconic “Be My First Love“.

BONUS SONGS

Suzy – I’m In Love With Someone Else

Suzy’s new album is called “Faces Of Love”, and when I see the title I always think of the “Faces Of Death” snuff documentary series, which seems appropriate somehow.

Miso & Jisu – Benjamin Button

This is one of those slow rap tracks that you’d always skip on the CD.  It’s great that the CD format has gone the way of the dinosaur now, because nobody will ever feel obliged to listen to even the first few seconds of tracks like this ever again.

VAV – Spotlight

If anything VAV have a better SHINee track than Jonghyun does this week.

Standing Egg – From The Star

If your daughter comes up to you and asks you to busk out in the freezing snow, tell the little shit how she would like to be standing out there for hours in the cold.  Give an inch and they take a mile – come on Standing Egg, show a little backbone next time, it’s just good parenting.  Next she’ll be crying in the supermarket aisle every time you refuse to buy lollies.

Slay – D-Day

How did the word “slay” enter the lexicon of pop fan idiot-speak anyway, does anyone have the back story to that.

E.Hyuk – It’s Nothing

Accurate song title of the week.

Horim – Movin’

People who like hip-hop wet themselves over this type of shit now, but go back to 1994 and this was the type of slow bullshit track on the album from your favourite group that was between all the cool songs you liked and that you skipped past every time it came on.

Davichi – Days Without You

Davichi finally pen their love song to KKS, where they sing “you gave us our name because we left in a compliant manner but this new agency’s got no fucking songs, please save us from ballad hell”.

Celeb Five – I Wanna Be A Celeb

I’m not sure what this is but it’s just too fucking stupid to get over the line, and not stupid in a good way.

Bluebugg – Traffic Light

Never forget that jazz is worthless.

Na Ha Eun ft. Microdot – So Special

There’s some things kids shouldn’t have to worry about until they’re older, and being exploited by the k-pop machine is one of them.  Where are her parents, egging her on with “who’s a pretty girl?” I bet, while feeding her ego and being dishonest with her about how unlistenable this is.

Holland – Neverland

The wobbliness of the vocals (due to lack of correctly-engineered compression, not bad singing) and general musical pussiness means that Holland sounds like he’s mumbling and apologising his way through this track when he should be shouting it out like Limpwrist.  As a result, the gayness comes off more like a marketing gimmick instead of the proud statement that it should be.  What a waste.

Limzy ft. Huckleberry P – No More

And then there are songs which are actually gay.

Nick & Sammy – On Or Off

Just as boring as sitting in a laundromat waiting for your clothes to dry when your phone has no charge and you forgot to bring a book to read.

KCM – Dawn

KCM surveys the destruction wrought by Kim Lip’s “Eclipse” video crew and surmises that he’ll never be as good as a Loona soloist.

MDSZ – 6

Starts promising but when the vocals arrive it’s clear that this isn’t going to be anything special.

Cheeze – In A Long Dream

Here’s a group who are always rubbish, I’m fairly convinced they’ll never do anything good.  Listen for extremely obvious Autotune trying to pass itself off as something else at 0:50.

SBGB – Shall We Dance

When I saw that title I had some reasonable expectations (probably thanks to Block B) but by “dance” it seems that they mean the type of dance your grandmother does after bingo night when they clear the tables and stack them in the corner and crank the stereo all the way to 3.

Younha – Propose

Younha, I propose that you stop being shit and get back to stuff like “Run“.

BONUS RANDOM VIDEO OF THE WEEK

Yves “New” MV – theory and analysis

One of the great things about following Loona is that the music videos are so conceptually smart that they spawn all these wacky “analysis” spin-off videos from fans that all go five times longer and have far more convoluted, twisted depth than any of the content they’re actually analysing.  This person thinks up shit that is interesting but that I’m 100% sure never even occurred to the video directors.  “Why is the sign so low in this frame, is it to represent x” – no, it’s because they wanted to fit the logo into the camera frame you nitwit.   I hate to be a killjoy but sometimes Occam’s Razor is right.  Oh well, better this endearing but culturally off-base god-bothering overanalysis lark than anti videos I suppose!

 

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Thanks for reading!  That’s all for this week, Kpopalypse roundup will return!