It’s time for Kpopalypse roundup!  Let’s check out some new releases!

Everglow – Bon Bon Chocolat

Slow, boring, and even slightly creepy – just try looking at their stylised “torn” school uniforms without experiencing post-Seungri depression.

Stray Kids – Miroh

At first glance I thought that red thing above them in the chorus was an exposed human heart and I thought “wow this song isn’t that great but it’s cool to see a bit of a horror movie theme from a boy group once again, it’s been too long”.  Then I realised it was a cheesy lion head and I got sad.

(G)I-dle – Blow Your Mind

More absolute rubbish from this group, which is inexplicable given that they’re on the same label as CLC who have been firing on all cylinders for the past year.  The only thing that blows me away about (G)I-dle so far is how awkward their group name is to type.  When over 30% of your group name is punctuation marks, you’re failing at existing.

DIA – Woowa

Poor DIA, always coming second in everything.  First they were “the new T-ara” and now they’re “Momoland lite”.  Shannon Williams is right, DIA are going to need a lot of luck in their future.  Shinsadong Tiger is going to milk that damn “Bboom Bboom” formula as much as he can, and it’s probably not his fault, the agencies are no doubt forcing his hand.  After all why wouldn’t they, if you had “that” songwriter at your disposal you’d probably ask him to try and recreate his massive hit too.

Momoland – I’m So Hot

And why wouldn’t Momoland either for that matter, coming back with a slightly less vague than usual electro-swing feel and minimalist dancing that seems specifically designed for Jooe to exaggerate on live stages to maximise potential virality.

Taeyeon – Four Seasons

Taeyeon suprises with a decent reggae-lite/T-ara style combination instead of the horrible ballad we all feared and expected.

Lee Gikwang ft. Kid Milli – Don’t Close Your Eyes

Expect the male solo projects to start coming through thick and fast as performers in veteran k-pop boy groups work to distance themselves from their now-tainted brands thanks to their criminal groupmates getting busted participating in rapey group messaging chats.  This song has a nice beat and literally nothing else, but the ambience of it is cool and it performs its function well enough which is to make you forget about that other guy in Highlight for at least three minutes.

Shaun & Ovan – She Is

In the meantime Shaun oppa is innocent k he just waited until the girls were conscious again a few days later and then used them in his video, why didn’t Seungri think of that.  I hope they had a good counseling session together and he strongly encouraged them to report the incidents to the authorities anti-corruption commission.

Shaun & Ovan – Home

I think if Shaun actually does get busted I’ll be heartbroken.  I’ll be like Seungri stans are right now, sharing anecdotes about how he smiled in a video that one time and it was cute so how can he be a rapist.

Produce 101 – X1-MA

I don’t even know why I bother clicking anything with “Produce” in the title.  And what is that fucking shit breakdown… is that really some kind of flamenco Latin/dubstep hybrid?  It’s like they’re mad scientists trying to find new ways in which music can be shit.

VAV – Thrilla Killa

Less thrills in the title and more in the music would have been nice, this song suffers from dull production and basically sounding like everything else that’s out at the moment.

High School – High Class

When you’re supposed to be miming along to your own vocals but you’re wearing stupid yolo fashion which means that your mouth is covered in 100% of the shots you just look like a gesturing idiot.  I’m blaming (G)I-[D:L]#E for this garbage too.

Girlkind JK ft. Tommy Strate – Split

Splitting sounds like a great idea.

YonYon – Hitomitoi

Another example of a song with a cool foundation but where nobody really knew what to do over the top of it so they just wrote any old thing.

Yoon Jong Shin – Classy (Hello 30)

Yeah I wasn’t this happy to turn 30.  Although my 30s were definitely better than my 20s, and my 20s were definitely better than being a teenager.  Being a teenager sucks.

Jino, Hui, Kino – Miss You

There’s only three of them, they should have called this subunit “Triangle”.  But then Pentagon has ten members, not five (which is confusing) so they could call this “Line & A Half” or maybe if they wanna run with “Triangle” they can just rename Pentagon “Pentagon x 2” so the maths still adds up.  Okay maybe I’m overthinking this name stuff but it’s better than thinking about the song, hey.

Jade ft. Kim Areum – It’s Over

Sorry but your drawing isn’t that good that I just wanna watch it for nearly three minutes while a crappy song plays.

Lee Juck – Numbers

Someone looking at an old-school mobile phone as a way to generate a “nostalgic, earthy” feeling for an acoustic-guitar driven k-pop ballad is a sad indictment of our society at large.

Cracker – Hug Me

I think there was an American band in the 1990s called Cracker.  They sucked too.

Aleph – Slow Dance

Why is she sitting the seat marked “reserved” someone kick this crazy bitch out of the restaurant before she wrecks everything.

Thama – Sing It

Does he really sing “don’t forget The Beatles” and then “don’t forget the double-D’s”?  How do those things even go together?  Large boobs are way more interesting than some crap band from the 1960s with two good songs fronted by a drug-fucked wifebeater.  At least double-D’s should have come first.

Jung Sewoon ft. Penomeco – Feeling

Okay so it’s upbeat, wasn’t expecting that.  How did he even get permission to make this.

Ravi ft. Cold Bay – See Through

Wow he looks awkward in those turtlenecks, he looks like that girl from Theranos who wanted to be Steve Jobs, if she tried to dance instead of just scamming people with fake blood tests.

Suran ft. pH-1 – Don’t Hang Up

Some cool drums and sounds here, imagine if there was some decent hip-hop over this instead of the worst R&B crap you’ve ever heard.

Zia – If I Were Also A Man

I like it how one minute into the video the woman just gives up on the music completely and starts crying.  Can relate.

Haon – Flower

I missed this one earlier this year but it’s actually weirdly catchy despite also being quite annoying.

Saturday – Super Bad

Similar to LaBoum’s “Sugar Sugar” with the same doo-wop inspired chord progression, but I can see why this wasn’t the feature track.

Adios Audio – Make One’s Way

It’s okay I guess.  At least with these type of songs you know you’re not going to get a post-first-chorus trap breakdown.  However they lose points for no bass player.  Would have been a perfect opportunity to get Mina from AOA in the group, they might as well as she’s not doing anything else of worth lately.

Ten To Ten – Time Machine

Try not to let the incredibly awful lyric video put you off, this is okay, although maybe this time that bass is just a little too loud.

Yoyomi – Please Hold Me Tight

Kpopalypse cringe challenge – maintain eye contact with Yoyomi throughout this video.  Don’t look away!

BONUS RANDOM VIDEO OF THE WEEK

Seungri – All the lies and all the hints from Big Bang we should have known

Actually most of this stuff in the video is pretty goddamn innocent and you could be totally forgiven for thinking that anything was amiss at the time.  If all he did was throw boring pool parties and have some adult videos name-sorted on his hard drive by actress (which is just good file management tbh), there would be no problem.  Although it is funny where he pauses before answering a couple questions and he has this funny look where you can see him turning over the thought in his head “hmmm… how much can I actually honestly answer here without giving too much away about the shit I’m really up to”.  It’s easy to be all-knowing and wise in retrospect of course, it’s harder to call this type of stuff out before it gets exposed, like Kpopalypse does!

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That’s all for this week, roundup will return next week – but in the meantime don’t forget to do the latest KPOPALYPSE SURVEY by clicking here!  Don’t miss out and then regret it later!