It’s time for Kpopalypse roundup!  Let’s take a look at some new releases!

WJSN (Cosmic Girls)  – Dreams Come True

Definitely the best song from this group yet, but they’ve still got a way to go yet before they enter the realm of something I actually like.

NCT U – Baby Don’t Stop

That descending bassline was a bit annoying at first, but then everything else in the song annoyed me even more, so I ended up digging the bassline in the way that a Guantanamo Bay torture victim digs their 15 minute dinner break of sloppy gruel between 8 hour sessions of getting waterboarded.

Sha Sha – You & Me

I was hopeful, but this is pretty screechy and annoying.

Red Velvet – I Just

Looks like Red Velvet have dumped both their “Red” and “Velvet” concepts and have gone for a “filler album track junk” concept with this one.

SF9 – Mama Mia

Unlike whatever boy group is your bias right now, SF9 actually have some good songs.  Some nice surf guitar sounds helps this one stand out.

J-Hope – Daydream

It’s actually a bit fucking sad that this song is better than anything BTS have put out since 2014.  I’m not sure what that says about their company.

Ego Function Error – Lazy Cat

MRCS

Cheetah – I’ll Be There

At least this one has some nice bass once it gets going but it’s not enough to the hide the fact that one of the supposedly best female rappers in Korea still doesn’t know what a beat is.

Sandy – Teen Swag

This one doesn’t have a good beat either, but is completely redeemed because the girl is rocking the uncoolest first-day-of-school fashion possible but sounds like a Korean V.Nasty for some reason.  Holy shit all your oppars just got outswegged by a girl who is dressed by her mom.

BONUS SONGS

N.Tic – Once Again

After all the hype I definitely expected the purple-haired guy to look like an androgynous Visual Kei-grade plastic surgery mutant, which he does.  What I didn’t expect was the song to actually be alright.

NCT Dream – Go

People for some reason make a big deal about how a while ago I said that NCT Dream had the best songs on average of the NCT units, but this song’s definitely lowering that average so you can pretty much forget I mentioned that now.

Kisses – Blue Lagoon

Right from the first chord I knew this was destined for the “bonus songs” bin.  Don’t get me wrong, I did listen to it all, but I really shouldn’t have wasted my time or energy.

Kim Sung Kyu – True Love

This is some dull-as-dishwater pop-rock shit, I wonder why… oh, it has a Nell member involved?  Yep, that explains it.

AZM – Edge

Apparently this group and now-disbanded Bulldok have something to do with each other but I don’t know what.  Maybe it’s the same label or something.  Anyway in this video I can see the girls setting up their own lighting rig for their own photoshoot, so I guess they’re a bit short-staffed over there.

Jeon Soyeon – Idle Song

If they mean “idle” in the “sitting in a computer game doing nothing because you’re so bored” sense, then yes this is accurate song title of the week.

Weki Meki – Butterfly

This song manages to be 1. better than all Weki Meki’s feature tracks and 2. a song for a sporting event, like, how the fuck does this even exist at all.

Sungmin – Daydream

Another song called “Daydream” this week that is a little better than I thought it would be.  Despite obeying shit ballad conventions, the 6/8 time helps it get across the line.  These type of songs aren’t always shit.

Hyungdon & Daejune – The King Of Math

If any caonimas are struggling with math (and my regular surveys would indicate that yes you are) maybe this video will help.  Or maybe it won’t.  I barely scraped through my high school math, I wouldn’t even know the first thing about this shit, so I’m just going to trust these two guys.

Killagramz ft. Muzie – Up All Night

I’m not sure what Killagramz was doing when he was up all night but it obviously wasn’t perfecting his songwriting craft.

Sleepy – ID

Remember the days back when Sleepy actually made rap songs?  Nowadays he’s all about this boring crooning R&B shit, what a waste.  I’m sure it’s not Gray’s fault – although Gray is garbage and everything he does is complete and utter shit, Sleepy’s last 57 songs that didn’t have Gray anywhere near them weren’t any better than this one either.

Jooyoung – Dive

It’s a dive alright.

Tommy Song – Riverside

A young John Cusack romances some random woman while a boring song plays.

End These Days – Temper

I thought I’d throw this out there even though it’s not that new just because Korean Indie posted it and then Asian Junkie posted it again so people have been asking me about it a lot.  Readers love to ask me about stuff Asian Junkie posts probably in the hope that I’ll disagree and start fun Internet wars.  Anyway onto this band and I’m glad this sort of thing exists in Korea but they’re definitely behind other countries overall for heavy music and this is certainly no exception to the rule.  This song has plenty of heaviness but no decent riffs to speak of, so there’s nothing catchy or interesting about it once you get over the initial “blown away by how heavy it is” factor.  This is a problem I have with metalcore generally, but especially so with most of the Z-tier non-Western groups.

End These Days ft. Ryo Kinoshita – Solace

So here we have the same band doing something just a little lighter, but once again the song is neither here nor there.  This group have nothing to set them apart other than that they’re Korean.  I really like the video for this though, and how they didn’t bother to make it all look “dark” or anything but filmed it in the same kind of setting that a k-pop solo MV might be filmed in, with bright colours and clean surfaces.  I really love the bit with the guy screaming out on the shopping strip.  Watch the girl sitting on the railing at 2:45, obviously this style of music is new to her and she has no idea what the fuck is going on with this dude, she’s nearly dying of laughter.

BONUS RANDOM VIDEO OF THE WEEK

Stellar as the Phonetopia girls

Stellar disbanded recently so I thought I’d post this so we can remember the legacy of Stellar in the best way possible.  Hopefully at least one of the girls consents to Kpopalypse Interview one day, I’m sure they have one hell of a story to tell.  There is a new Kpopalypse Interview coming up, but it’s not Stellar.  Shoutout to YouTube channel Jimmy’s Heys which has a lot of relevant content.

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That’s all for this week’s roundup – more next week!