It’s time for another episode of Qrimole!  Let’s take a look at some more reader questions for Kpopalypse!

Hello, oppar! How are you? It’s been some time since I asked anything here. I’m ok a lil bit depressed. Being a grown up is tough. Anyways here are some of my questions. (They’re all over the place, sorry)
1. Why is YG so content to treat BLACKPINK as unpaid interns? Jennie in one of her bts for her music vid revealed that she had written lyrics for their song Stay. As soon as the vid was posted and fans noticed this statement yg ent was quick to change the subtitles to something else entirely. Are all kpop companies like this?
2. Will BTS ever recieve a grammy for their music? I feel like they just got invited for the ratings factor which is a shame coz they should be appreciated for their music.
3. Is CLC ever going to get a breakthrough comeback or will they forever be in the shadows of g-idle?
4. Is Seungri guilty? Yes or Yes?
5. What is the one Bigbang song that you enjoy?
6. What is the one trend that you want to see making a cb in kpop?
7. Why did kakao m did such a massive fuckup regarding loona’s album? Everyone on twitter’s getting a little too happy with their absurd conspiracy theories. What are your thoughts?
8. What do you think about the sopa scandal?
9. I’ve recently started listening to ateez. They’re actually not bad. What is their best song ac to you?
10. If you feel like you’re slipping into depression, what should you do?
That’s all. Give my love to Stiglitz. When are you posting more videos of him/her? Also, I can’t believe you got tix to bp’s australian dates! Where are you going? syd or mel? Have fun. I’m looking forward to a drunk ddu du ddu du dancing vid.

1. Because they can.
2. Who cares.  Read this to know why the Grammys are an awards ceremony that don’t matter.
3. No idea.
4. I respect his choice to shit on his career, but reject his rejection of correct SNS use.
5. There’s more than one, but my favourite has always been “Monster“.
6. Happy to not have any trends but just have more good songs.
7. Loona fans think everything means something, even the fuckups.  They just gotta take a chill pill and realise that sometimes a spade really is a spade.  Occam’s Razor and all that.
8. Like a lot of people I probably haven’t been thinking about it at all since this Seungri shit blew up.  I bet those students are cursing their timing, hopefully they don’t get fucked over (again) by it, by getting completely buried.  I bet that headmaster or whatever is like “thank you Seungri” every morning.
9. I don’t remember.  Nothing really stands out yet.
10. See a doctor, get a blood test.  Also talk to people.

Why does Chanmi make having cats seem like such a chore? My cat gets fed and its litter tray cleaned and then she does her own thing. Certainly not all the things Chanmi has to do for her cats.

Some people really like doing all that shit.  Not sure why – the low maintenance aspect to me is part of the appeal of having a cat as opposed to pretty much any other animal that lives in your house.  If you want to look after your pet’s needs constantly, get a dog.

Hey Oppar, I’ve been reading your blog since the time I was 16 and new to Kpop and you (along with AJ) helped me sober down from my slighty crazy VIP/BlackJack days pretty fast..Thanks for that.But even 2 years later I still find some of the things you say difficult to understand.While I think I kinda get it but what is really your true motivation behind the several ‘boobs posts’ that you have?Also the part about Choerry in the last QRIMOLE went completely over my head and I’m concerned as a Loona fan.
You have said numerous times that you don’t really care about a person being a piece of shit if their music is good but it’s kinda difficult for me and Seungri’s recent issue has kinda turned me off from BIGBANG (except for TOP,I guess) even though I’m aware that Seungri is not really that important because this shit extends to the Korean club system and the prostitution system (and hence to the mafia) and also to their illegal drugs system.
My view regarding drugs is pretty similar to yours,to be honest.But I really don’t get how people can take something called the ‘devil’s lettuce’ seriously and I’m not even saying this as a ‘Hindu’ (many Hindus try to excuse their marijjuana usage because there’s a story about Lord Shiva taking it to so that he doesn’t die from poison).
Once again thanks for everything and I hope that I didn’t bore you too much.Also I really loved that recent post of yours ‘how concerned you should be about your idols’Also your blog looks really cute even on my phone!.Keep up the good work,Chief Caonima!?

Boobs posts – you need to join this study group, one day they’ll figure it out.

The stuff I wrote in the March Qrimole will make a lot more sense if you read this.

The Seungri situation – like all situations where performers are revealed to have questionable morality – doesn’t change how I feel about the music.  It only changes how I feel about Seungri, like, I wouldn’t invite him over to my house after finding out that stuff about him, you know?  I’ll still listen to songs of his as much/as little as I did previously however.  Actually I hadn’t listened to his solo stuff in a good year or two and when the scandal broke it reminded me how good some of it was.  And yeah Seungri is an asshole and you definitely shouldn’t stan him on Twitter but he’s also just a bit-player, if all that happens out of this crazy scandal is that him and some of the other group-chat guys go to jail and the case is considered closed, then we’ll know that the really big villains have gotten away, because the shit goes way deeper than just them.  Here’s a quick look at how deep the rabbit hole goes (original tweets now deleted):

There’s a lot of scaremongering about marijuana (“devil’s lettuce” – that’s one I hadn’t heard yet), but there’s also a lot of bullshit “it’s the cure-all for everything!” nonsense from some people too.  You only need to look up the most famous reggae musicians and their causes of death to realise that marijuana isn’t the magic health tonic that some people claim it is.  All drugs fuck you up somehow, what would be the point of taking them if they didn’t.  The truth is that marijuana definitely does have some short-term benefits especially for relieving stress and chronic pain but if you smoke it a lot habitually you do kind of turn into an unmotivated, overly anxious lazy dickweed because it increases anxiety and clouds your mental state over long-term use.  A friend of mine put it brilliantly – “marijuana is dangerous, because it makes you okay with being bored”.  A lot of people I know who are serious long-term users function much better on it than off it – when they’re stoned they’re just kind of normal, and when they’re not stoned they’re anxious, irritable and have super-short tempers.  Similar effect to people who drink multiple cups of coffee every day, except that coffee is relatively cheap and in most countries you don’t risk a fine or a jail sentence to get coffee beans.  I don’t do or recommend that shit either, by the way – but I don’t think any of it should be illegal either.

I try to keep my blog phone layout user-friendly and junk free unlike certain other websites that start with “A” and end with “sian Junkie”.  Thanks for your support!

Hello again oppar, hope you and those you care about are all happy and healthy with 0 financial problems. So I have 3 questions this time round, I’ll go by order of possible answer length, shortest first.

The wind instrument tune we hear repeatedly in Piri sounds exactly like the intro tune (after the bs noises) in Jimin’s pick up the phone.  I’m sure this 100% isn’t plagirism, but am curious about what makes them different enough for noone to herp a derp about it?

You’ve stated several times that piano man is the only song by mamamoo that you find tolerable. To me piano man, ahh oop and mr. Ambiguous fall in the same type of sound and style so that makes me curious about what makes piano man different to you from the other 2

Lastly, and this is the long one. In true k-drama fashion my partner and I are breaking up after a set date. He wanted the break up but wanted to ‘ween off’, which I have no idea how fuck one does that. So then I suggested we set a date and then break up cleanly after that. I honestly thought maybe by that time arrived we’d come some form of compromise and stay together but that isn’t the case. He sees no hope, while I still do. We’re not on the same page and I know, it takes 2 to tango. I know the relationship can’t go on, and I’ve made up my mind to go through with the break up, but as each day passes I die a little bit inside. I keep thinking about the past 8 years we spent together. I keep thinking about who I am without him, not because I defined myself by him but because we got together so young (midteens) we essentially grew up together. He’s played such a big part in who I am today and what I do, I honestly don’t know what I’m going to do once the proverbial axe comes down. Talking about our philosophies and takes on relationships when we initially got together we said we’d have fun till the end, till we can and that the moment one of wants out, we split. But now faced with this in reality I’m at a loss. I cry almost everyday, haven’t slept properly in weeks, and it’s becoming harder and harder to find any happiness is anything. We’ve established that until this date arrives we’re still together (the reasons for the break up being to do conditions rather than emotions changing) but it’s so hard acting like I’m ok and laughing when I’m with him. It’s even harder when he seems so ok with it all. On one hand I want to make the most of the little time we have left and hold him close, enjoy it. But on the other it hurts so fucking much. I’m exhausted and bitter. I presented a possibile solution to our problem and he didn’t like it so back quit camp. It’s not a question of ‘I want to be with you, what do we do for that’ for him, it’s ‘This is my ideal scenario and I see no way to getting that with you’. He’s free to feel that, I can’t blame him for that or hold it against him but it makes me bitter. He saw no hope, I showed there could be some and he didn’t want it. What do I do to stop myself from imploding with all these conflicting thoughts? To be honest I don’t even know why I’m sharing. You’re a much older dude living on the other side of the world, and don’t have the time nor the wish to give a shit about some random 20yr old girl’s romantic life. But if you had read so far, firstly thank you, and secondly feel free to only answer the first 2 questions if you wish.

Piri – wow, sharp ears!  It’s actually the exact same melody, the Dreamcatcher version is just slowed down and with some echo added.  Technically it could qualify as plagiarism if the two songs have different songwriters, but that depends on where that melody was sourced from.  The similarity of everything including the way the notes are played and texture is so exact that I’m guessing that it’s actually a sample that came from somewhere that the producer of both songs has used.  If it’s a sample off something like a royalty-free sample CD then both Mamamoo and Dreamcatcher are in the clear – no plagiarism here.  If it’s a sample from someone else’s song then they could both be sued by the original writer of that melody, if they noticed it!  It could be a borderline case depending on the context of the original however.

Mamamoo – definitely all three songs have a very similar instrumental sound, but what “Piano Man” has going for it that gets it over the line and that the other two don’t is a much faster tempo.  “Piano Man” seems to be a little ragtime-inspired and rips along at a fast enough pace so that the things that drag down the other two songs (vocal improvs, blues inflections) don’t really get much of a chance to get in the way and annoy because there isn’t time for them.  For some fun play “Ahh Oop” at 1.25 speed and see how much more it resembles “Piano Man”!  Interesting cast in “Mr. Ambiguous” by the way…

Breakup – I had a relationship with a girl, and very early in she revealed to me that she was four months pregnant.  She didn’t want to have any man in her life after the baby was born and wasn’t too keen on having a relationship in late-stage pregnancy either so she said “we could have fun for a month and then call it off”.  I was cool with it, we had our fun no-strings relationship, then a month later we both mutually knocked it on the head.  However, I definitely missed her some months after that time and wanted to get back with her later, which she’d already made clear wasn’t happening (and she understandably reiterated this when I spoke to her about it, saying “that wasn’t part of the deal”), so that was kind of a sucky situation that I just had to ride out for a while until my feelings went away (and for context I was similar to your age at the time).  My point is that the “scheduled” breakup can be a pretty painful route to go down, because while the practicality of it may make sense, it doesn’t take into account that feelings may change over time in unexpected ways.  It’s definitely not for everyone.  Personally I think that if you can handle the feelings it’s okay to just enjoy what you can while you can, but if the axe looming over your head is simply stopping you from enjoying the last days, then there’s no point even continuing until “the agreed date”, just break it off immediately.  Yeah it’s going to hurt both of you, but it’s going to hurt anyway, and the sooner you break off, the sooner you’ll get over it and move on with other things.

I want to ask if you read Kpop fanfiction or not, because for some reason I find them enticing and I can’t help but keep on reading. Some people say that ‘it’s not kpop’ and ‘it is just normal fiction’ but I wanted to hear out your opinion on Kpop fanfiction. Thanks!

Apart from the few book reviews I’ve published on this site, I don’t read it at all.  I honestly can’t get over the cringe aspect of it, because the Mary Sue is laid on so thickly.  I prefer to write my own anti-fanfiction and make others cringe for different reasons!

If you could meet 1 male and 1 female idol who would it be and why?

There was a famous guy (who I won’t name because name-dropping is almost as cringe as Mary-Sue-laden k-pop fanficiton) that I really wanted to meet a while back, and then I did meet him, and have met him multiple times since.  The experience definitely turned me off the idea that “meeting an idol” would be something that I’d want to do.  Not because of any negative qualities that this person had (actually after meeting him I quite liked him and still do), but because he was just so kind of normal and it really drove home how distant the projected media image is from the reality of who people are, and how silly it is to care about meeting people who are just… people, just because they have a little bit of fame or whatever.  Idols are just regular people in an irregular situation.  Yes some of them would be nice people, but then your family or friends probably also are nice people.

Hello~

i have a question regarding a post you made.

” Part of the abuse involved the CEO instructing some of the male idols under his employment to also sexually assault and/or rape these trainees, while he watched it all on CCTV.  Those idols, after weighing up the options and deciding that fear for their music careers was more important to them than not being rapists, complied with the instructions from the CEO.  D.G.N.A (also known as “The Boss”) were one of only two idol groups under the employment of the agency, the other group being X-5.  Were either of these groups directly involved in the incident?  We’ll never know for sure – the media and police did issue very strong denials that they were involved in any way”

im slightly confused. You say that the CEO instructed some male idols to participate in the sexual assault and you explain that X-5 and DGNA were the only two male idol groups at the time. What confuses me is the part where you say ” Were either of these groups directly involved in the incident?  We’ll never know for sure – the media and police did issue very strong denials that they were involved in any way”.

So, when you say that we cant know for sure if they were apart of it, using the sentence ” some male idols were instructed” would indicate that as DGNA and X-5 were the only male idols then, were the ones who did it, which would contradict the statement where you say that “Were either of these groups directly involved in the incident?  We’ll never know for sure” So im confused. Or, did you mean some male idols/trainees other than those two groups,

Sorry, if this comes across rude, that is not my intention! Im just curious XD

It’s possible that the male idol could have been from one of those two groups.  It’s also possible that maybe it was a solo performer on the label.  But the question I’m posing is that it might’ve been X-5, or it might’ve been DGNA, but we don’t really know which one, so it wouldn’t be fair to say that it’s definitely one group, when it could have been the other group.  Or maybe it was both groups – who knows.  But that was my point there – I agree that it wasn’t expressed as clearly as it could have been!

Hi Kpopalypse, in the last QRIMOLE, you said that “if an opportunity came up to converse with someone like that “safely” I’d probably take it, not to promote those people, but just because it would be interesting to talk to someone with such radically opposed morals and points of view to my own. Those kinds of experiences are always educational.”
I am always uncomfortable around people whose moral/attitude/ethic I couldn’t stand. How are you able to talk to those people comfortably? What are things that going to your mind? What kind of mindset do you adopt?
I feel the need to learn from you on this matter, so I can be at ease in dealing these people at workplace.

Having actually done this a few times, I approached these situations in the sense that I’m interested in why they think what they do.  So when you’re talking to them it’s like on the one hand you’re letting them hit you with their ideology, and maybe having a discussion about that or perhaps not, but at the same time you’re also looking for clues.  People who have radically different ideas are fascinating to me in that sense because I think it’s good to study human nature and people can learn a lot by listening to other people with different ideas.  By “learning” I don’t mean that suddenly you believe in those things too (although I’m still open to that possibility if they have a really good argument), I mean learning about what it is that makes certain people believe in certain things or act in certain ways.  Sometimes a person will give me a statement which I’d never considered, which makes me view their behaviour or ideas in a new way.  It doesn’t mean that I suddenly agree with what they’re doing, but it might tell me a lot about how they arrived at that particular point where they decided to go down a certain path.  I can then look at that relative to my own life, so I can more effectively make decisions for myself as well as decisions that affect people I care about.

I’ve been a bit vague here but I’ve done so deliberately, because I think it’s the thought patterns that are of relevance, not the specific thoughts themselves.  If I throw up an example it’s probably easy to lose focus on the point here.  But I think it’s a good thing to try to talk to people even if their ideas suck absolute balls, as long as they’re prepared to listen and converse instead of throw punches or molotovs.

Hi, it’s my first time trying to send a question to you. I’m a new fan and I hope you can keep doing your posts for a long time.

To explain better what my question is about, I need to say that I’m brazilian, my first language is portuguese, I also speak spanish and my english is pretty decent tho. But, I still prefer to read in portuguese than any other language. And beeing honest I have some struggles trying to read in english (I don’t get some of your slangs, sorry).

Well, in Brazil we used to have a blog named “Asian Mixtape”. It wasn’t like yours, but I could call it the “brazilian kpopalypse” (?). The owner (Bruno) used to post something about asian music in general (kpop, jpop, cpop and a little bit about eurovision) for a long time and he was the biggest brazilian kpop blogger through years. But, someday his blog disappear all of a sudden, a few days before he posted something about LOONA xxyx, his review wasn’t that good, soo a lot of orbits came of and starded to bashing him (some rumors said that an orbit, or army, hacked his acount or maybe “prosecute” him). Even his social media was deleted, soo his fandom (k7, wich only makes sense in portuguese) become really desperated and we ask for the second greatest brazilian kpop blogger (“Why, dougie?”) if he knew what happened, but anyone had a clue of what’s going on. Months where passing by, and a lot of other bloggers gave up of posting or even deleted their blogs, just like “Why, Dougie?”.

I become sad at that time, I started to follow them months before this. And some bloggers even talked about it. Today we still don’t know where is Bruno and what he’s doing today (actually, he said a lot of times that he’s a history teacher). I was trying to find some blogs in spanish or in english that have the same vibe of “Asian Mixtape” had, but I couldn’t…

I said all of this things to ask:
1. You had some hard times dealing with haters?
2. You wanted to give up in the past?
3. Wich tips you can give for kpop bloggers around the world?
4. Can you explain to me what “QRIMOLE” and “caonima” means?

Have a nice day, oppar ❤

Asian Mixtape is a blog name that I know, I’m certain that they’ve covered some of my stuff before.  Perhaps they translated one or two articles of mine back in the day, I’m not sure.  It’s a pity that the site closed and I really hope that it wasn’t because of crazy BTS or Loona stans hacking him (although frankly I doubt it, it’s pretty easy to make a site hackproof).

1.  Not really “hard times”, it’s just routine.  I get hate on the Internet every single day.  If you’re doing something at any level where people notice, in any sort of field where there’s room for different opinion (i.e academia, cultural critique, satire etc), you’re going to cop a lot of hate and that’s all there is to it.  It doesn’t really matter what you say or how you conduct yourself.  That’s why I’m pretty comfortable just doing things the way I want to.  If I worked to try and appease everybody who left me a snarky piss-infused comment somewhere about how they were unhappy about this or that, I’d end up making myself miserable, plus I’d still have the same amount of haters anyway.  What’s the point.  That doesn’t mean I’m completely ignoring all criticism at all times, nor does it mean that I won’t engage with the haters (sometimes I do, but honestly there’s far too many of them for me to address each and every one) but I don’t take a lot of criticism seriously if it comes with any sort of shitty tone to it, which it almost always does.
2. No.
3. Use two-factor authentication.
4. See the Kpopalypse lexicon.

Hi Kpopalypse,

How did you remove the word “wordpress” from your blog weblink? Did you simply pay wordpress? If not, what did you do?

Your dedicated Cao Ni Ma

I pay WordPress.  This is one of the things that your donations through the Kpopalypse Patreon directly pays for!  Thank you to all dedicated caonimas who choose to donate through Patreon, I am forever grateful and your contributions are valued and very motivating!

would you rather listen to i don’t care or it g ma (and no, cutting off your ears is not an option)

Too close to call!  If I had to choose I’d just flip a coin.

Is it just me or are the vocals in Tren-D’s Jung badly-mixed? I always feel a weird “echo” effect when I hear them, similar to MOA’s I’ll Call Ya (although not as serious, of course).

Nothing wrong with the mixing at all.  Adding echo to vocals is a deliberate production decision and it’s used because it helps the singing to stand out and it can thicken up the sound and make it feel less “dry” like it’s being sung in your lounge room.  This isn’t a technique unique to k-pop and has been used in almost all western recordings since about the 1950s.

Hey Oppar,

Okay so this is gonna be a medium long question, wich is fulled with personal things, so I don’t know if you’ll end up answering, but I somehow need to tell it all.

I’m gonna sound a bit odd here, so, don’t hesitate to go to the next question. And, lastly, I’m french, so don’t expect to be shakespeare-ed.

A tiny little bit of background : I’ve always been struggling with the way I look. I’ve a very poor self esteem when it comes to looks and I’m always asking myself what others would think of my apparence, in all social situations (Yes, it’s a nightmare).
But recently it’s been a huge problem in my life. I’m a gay guy, approaching my 30’s, and I still don’t know how to manage my insecurities about the slightest things. I’ve made a huge mitsake going to a very toxic place (virtual, a forum) who insecure peope like me go to feel more miserable than they already are. Some people there post pics of themselves (and i’ve done it too…) for getting rates about their faces, advices of possible surgeries, and in the end finally prove oursleves that we don’t deserve to exist. I’ve beed judged “average” there, and, while I was expecting it and though I’ll be doing fine, things are going downhill since this happened.
I’ve visited this harmful place and now I have difficulties to get out of bed the “morning”, and if I do, i’ll eventually spend my all day on this forum, looking for some redemption. I’m desperate to find a meaning in my life, I feel like dying rather than living an half ass pathetic life. I’m eager to try a lot of things in life, such as doing ballet dance, yoga, writings and even find myself a job path that can be fulfilling. But I just can’t, because I’m stuck. When i’m begenning to have a resemblance of what could be a nice day, I remember myself all of my biggest insecurities. When i’m alone, with friends, in the street, in the grocery store, at the movies, at the univeristy (yeah because I’m 27 but still doing studies…) I feel like nobody. I’m thinking about the fantastic life I could have had if I was not so fragile.

Looks always have been a huge topic in my life, and yet I just want to be happy. Beeing that self centered prick who cannot live because his face is not perfect, and knowing deep down that this is utter shit, is reinforcing the though of being a cunt who just doesn’t own the right to be happy. Because of looks, and because of thinking that problematic look can be a leading cause in the general unhapiness.

The thing is that I thought that I was doing better than before, but I’m depressed to see that I’m still the same insecure guy who look for all of his flaws in front of the mirror during hours. I’m stuck.

I’ve also got this problem that maybe several gay guy have : the ultra consumption of themselves trough diverse addictions : from videos games to dangerous sex behaviours. I’ve stop it all recently when I realized that it was just pushing me further in the self destruction (I talk about the unsafe sex, I’ll never stop doing video games huhu).

So here is my questions :
– Did you find yourself or know someone that faced similar problems ?
– What can I do to change myself for the better ?

And to remain in the subject if Kpop like i’v been obviously still there, my favorite groupe was 9muses (RIP) and Loona (thank you Yves’ song producer).

I’ve never been gay, but what I have been is a teenager who thought of myself as phenomenally ugly and worthless – because that was seemingly reflected in the messages I was receiving from others, for instance I was getting bullied and abused all the time.  After receiving a lot of negative messages (like the ones I was receiving in real life, or the ones you might have been receiving in this forum) I think I internalised a lot of it.  I didn’t see any hope that I would ever be someone who was intrinsically worth anything, which then led me into a lot of toxic behaviours (hating myself, being shitty to others for no reason, etc).  However in that process something else also happened – I thought to myself that if I was worth nothing, and never going to be worth anything, and nobody was ever going to like me no matter what I did, then what did I have to lose by doing exactly what the fuck I wanted?  The people who didn’t like me made it pretty clear that there was no path to “redemption”, they were never going to like me anyway, so here there was actually freedom, because if you’ll always be hated no matter what then social approval suddenly doesn’t mean anything anymore.

I think your first step should be to get the fuck off that forum if you haven’t already.  Social networks that focus around looks are really bad because not everybody “presents photogenically”, but that’s a very different thing to “attractiveness”.  Some people I’ve been really attracted to in my real life don’t look all that great in photographs, but they might have other qualities which I really like, that come through more when you meet them – and I’m not talking about just personality stuff, but other things that specifically drive attraction.  One of my ex-girlfriends has an amazing voice, another one has a great posture and a really awesome way that she walks, another has a really animated smile and a cute laugh… but those things wouldn’t be evident on an online profile.  Attraction has so many different facets and not all of them translate well to the online sphere.  So don’t put too much weight into your rating or whatever, only-online people simply aren’t qualified to really be able to rate you (which is why I take my “bias list” rankings so non-seriously and the rankings change all the time).  This is why all those “incel” online places are so toxic, people are mentally feeding themselves slow-acting poison.

Then just start doing stuff and not thinking about it too hard.  If you wanna go and do (for example) ballet, make some inquiries, join a ballet class.  Trust me that people who run classes like that are very used to having absolute noobs walk in off the street saying “I know nothing, where do I start”.  It’s probably a bus trip and a walk just to get to that step, then just see where it leads you.  Achieve the possible, and move slowly toward the impossible.

Hi oppar, I noticed you like a lot playing around with stats, insights and stuff, so you may like my question… Do you know some interesting insights about your radio show? Now that ThreeD Radio has an official app, do you know how many people use the app to stream your liveshow, how many people listen to it on demand and where do they come from?

Also question 2: in your top-30 list you talk about the lyrics of the song saying “The weird lyrics about being the biggest creepy introvert in the fucking universe or whatever seem like an odd choice (picture a guy singing this and see if it doesn’t sound like “nice guy syndrome“)”, but honestly I always have thought that the whole lyrics were a big dogwhistle about showing to a guy their “Pimil Jeongwon” aka “Secret Garden” aka their pussy. I can’t even stand the thought about OMG being lewd in this way but that’s what I read in the lyrics. Am I a gigantic perv? Am I wrong? HELP

Sadly I don’t have access to the app statistics.  This is something that I’ve asked if the radio IT staff can do and I think people agreed that it’d be a good idea but also that it wasn’t exactly their top priority.  What I do know is that the radio station conducted a Neilsen survey a few years back which revealed that on average 9000 people are listening to the radio station at any given moment.  That’s an average figure of course, it’d be less than that in the graveyard shift, but during peak hours such as the one my show is at it’d be… yes, over 9000.  However that survey is quite old, and it also doesn’t take into account online listenership because we didn’t have the webpage streaming link back then, so who knows what it is these days.

As for Oh My Girl, is this really a song about the mystery and wonder of their vaginas?  It doesn’t seem like it to me, because a lot of the lyrics don’t make much sense in that context.  Lines like “the landscape is nothing special yet” seem overly modest for a group on their fifth album with all 18+ members, and “planting something cool and amazing” doesn’t really make sense as a fertilisation reference because the girls are talking about doing the “planting” themselves.  Obviously lyrics can be interpreted in many different ways but even a literal garden makes a little more sense here than a sexual one.  I think it’s drawing a long bow, especially when compared to April’s “Dream Candy” which is far more blatant.

Too much?

Group tattoos are a pretty common thing, it’s not the first k-pop related one I’ve seen.  Korean Indie has several, you can see some of them here.  (I also secretly suspect he has Gfriend tattooed across his foreskin.)

Hello oppar~~
I haven’t written in Qrimole in ages so I figured I’d drop by and ask some questions:
– Is it true that you had to sell your left kidney to get a front row seat to the BlackPink concert? It’s cool that you would make such a sacrifice so that the readers can get a top-notch concert report. I vote for LOONA next. And then whoever (except BTS) for the female readership for equality and progressiveness.
– I know most readers ask for Kpopalypse Fashion Class, and while it would be great to have a new edition for 2019, I wanted to ask if you would be keen to do a piece on Tiffany’s styling? Since you have said that you prefer her current styling over what she got in her SM days, it would be interesting to see how you would explore and interpret her styling evolution, especially hair & makeup-wise. Since you are immune to the Korean beauty ideal, you could accurately pin-point the goals of each look, what worked and what didn’t, what would actually flatter her face shape better and why present day styling suits Tiffany more. I don’t know any other K-pop guy who is into ‘imperfect’ faces like you.
– I was also surprised to hear that you programmed Escape From The Idol Dungeon by yourself. That’s really cool. Would you ever consider sharing your know-how? Nothing too fancy or time-consuming, just the easier fundamental steps you could show on your livestream or something so it doesn’t take up your time or become a chore?
– On that note, do you have any other unspoken talents that you’re keeping hidden? If painting or baking is on the list, please show us some pictures
I know QRIMOLE is very important for a lot of people who look up to you and seek your advice and use it very seriously, so that’s it from me for now. Thank you and take care~

I didn’t get front row seats.  The entire VIP areas were sold out before I even managed to get online to buy a ticket at all.  Obviously I’d go and see Loona too if I could.

I actually really like your Tiffany idea and might roll with something like this if I don’t have any better ones.  It would be cool to make fashion class more regular.

I programmed Escape from the Idol Dungeon with RPG Maker VX Ace.  If you don’t already own it, wait for a Steam sale before you buy it – it’s way overpriced at full price but goes on heavily-discounted sale occasionally.  Using it is more like a “construction kit” than strict “programming”.  They basically give you the template of a game, and then you can sort of fuck around with all the parts and make something out of it, and if you want to get deep into the code (Ruby) you can, but you don’t have to.  I’d like to do something similar again one day but I probably won’t use that specific program again as it’s a bit dated and I’d like to keep things different and fun for the readers.  If you wanted to learn how to use it, I’d recommend watching the tutorial series by Venthros, which is excellent and is how I taught myself to use it.  My programming knowledge is very basic – literally, I taught myself how to do it with BASIC on the Commodore 64, and “high-level” programming has come a long way since then but my brain has come less far.

When I was a kid I’d play computer games a lot, and when our joysticks would break because we were too poor to afford new ones all the time I’d take them apart and fix them.  It’s a skill that has paid off more recently in life.  The other week my cat spilled coffee into my girlfriend’s new laptop and fucked it, I was able to completely strip it down, clean it, put it back together and get it working again.  Even I wasn’t sure if I could do that.  It’s amazing what you can do if you give it a try.

Outrage culture going too far?

I don’t understand who any of the people in this story are, what they do, or what’s so offensive about the comment.  Maybe it’s because I’m Australian – “dumb cunts” is not a gender-specific insult here, but from the tone of this article it seems like whoever was reading this feels like it was directed at women specifically?

Hi, can you please give more explanation about the song Ha Sung Woon – Bird? Because I’m a total amateur in music and want to know your analysis of the song. Thanks anyway!

Analyse what about it exactly?  You would have to be more specific, I’m not sure what you want to know.

Have you ever started to love or hate a song after you had made your Worst and Best lists for its release year, thus making it uneligible for them?

My opinions on songs change all the time, but rarely is it a 180 degree about-face in opinion, more like “I used to like/dislike this song more/less than I do now”.  However I don’t finalise the list order until only a couple of days before the end of the year so generally what you’re describing isn’t an issue (and that’s also why I don’t entertain all the “where is song X on your list” questions before the year is over – the fucking list hasn’t even been thought about yet).  So far the only song that has ever “missed out” because of the end-of-year gap is Chuu’s “Heart Attack” which I simply put in next year’s list instead.  That’s also a good example of a song that I didn’t like that much at first but I liked a lot more the more I heard it.

We’ve reached the point when the ultra nugus are fucking with stupid dubstep breakdowns (Astin’s Pandora is a mostly excellent song and even the first like 3/4 of the bridge is good, but then they have like 4 bars of a pointless dubstep breakdown, and there’s like one bar of dubstep in the otherwise amazing chorus

there’s only live performances bc they’re so nugu that the song was only just put on Spotify.

The audio quality of this video is so shit that I really can’t even comment, not that I even know what you want me to common on exactly.

Hey Oppar!
I hope that you’re having a good day/night! I just came to realise that probably some of the people that are currently angry with Seungri and co about their criminal activities might have written fanfics more classy-sexy than JJY’s videos about their oppas.Isn’t it weird and sort of hypocritical to slam those cunts for doing things similar to what they like to imagine their oppas doing to one another?Not that those bastards don’t deserve hatred so that they don’t try to have shitty apolegetic ballad comebacks about changing or being regretful or some shit (doubtful tho,heard that butthole attacker had or will have a cb and that some rapist actor is popular again).
Thanks oppar!?

Well, one is fantasy and the other is reality, I feel that’s an important point.  Thoughts aren’t actions.  You can fantasise about getting classy-sexy with Yua Mikami all day if you want, but if you don’t actually break into her house and tie her up, you’re not actually harming anyone.  If all that Seungri ever did was have dreams about owning a club and participating in rapey group chats with his friends, and he didn’t actually do that shit in real life, I think that would be basically fine.

Hi Kpopalypse! Recently, there was this song I came across that I remembered being on the radio from about a decade ago, and I was so taken aback at how much shit was in the mix of the song, and that it reminded me so much of a K-pop song for some reason, despite being released at a time where the developed world couldn’t give a shit about K-pop.

I was also trying to find if it had any semblance to any retro songs, and the only one I felt like it had any similarity to was oddly “Take On Me”, but I think that’s largely due to the fact that the song’s key is the same as Take On Me, and the 80s synths that appear throughout lol. But it reminded me of K-pop due to the amount of fucking noise in the song (syncopated handclaps, a string ensemble, those wobbly EDM synths, electric guitars) and the cringeworthy raps, obviously. But would you know any songs or anything that this song might’ve been inspired by or actively interpolates, because I’m just really stuck about it and I feel like there’s some 80s song that straight-up influences it. Thanks if you end up answering this!

It did remind me of a few different 80s songs, all of which I can’t remember the names of, but “Take On Me” certainly wasn’t one of them!  The only thing that I thought were truly similar about the two songs was the tempo, they’re both quite fast.  I wish I had a better memory for 80s songs but I really don’t.

Z-pop dream is describing their project on their website. But being neither from business nor the music industry, I don’t really understand what their project is.

Basically:

• Z-pop is going to have some kind of digital currency token for fans (run by Ethereum)
• You’re going to buy these tokens somehow and use them to vote for things or buy merch or whatever bullshit
• None of the profit is going to go to the performers so they’re going to get fucked once again

That’s about all you need to know.

Hi! I’ve recently discovered this beautiful song that gives me GFriend vibes, and I thought you might like it, too!

Can’t say I like it much, can’t say it sounds that much to me like Gfriend either.

Hey oppa-oppa-nareul-bwabwa,

Explain why this new DIA song is the best gay, trance Momoland song that Momoland wished they could’ve gotten. I feel bad for the Momoland members for the tragic Hootchy Kootchy dance remix they have to perform. And I feel bad for the DIA song since it got stuck with a barely scraping-by group. At least MBK decided to feed us with this bop since T-ara is done for. I suggest listening to Woowa, accompanied with an 8-ball of cocaine and a glass container of poppers.

and

Hi Kpopalypse, back then when T-ara is still active, I quite enjoyed all of their disco title tracks and could manage to differentiate the songs. But now, all disco songs from post-Bboom Bboom are structured like Bboom Bboom … you name it with Momoland/DIA/UNI.T and I find this uninspired pattern have to stop or I have to ignore Kpop disco songs for a long time. Just why they can’t do things differently?

and

Hi Kpopalypse,

So many girl group debuts from these three months and I am just curious how they never really innovate their approach in this saturated world of Kpop

MBK with their fucking strobe lights again, argh.  Maybe this post needs a sequel soon.

I don’t think song is significantly better or worse than the other ones just like it that have come out recently.  Hey at least it moves a bit.  There are worse trends.

Hey, Kpopalypse, do you think this person knows what he is talking about?  After 3 music theory lessons, I don’t feel competent to judge.

Also potentially interesting to readers:

Yes the guy does know what he’s talking about, although he could have saved everyone a shitload of time by chopping out all those early examples of what Soyeon was not doing which weren’t actually relevant.  I don’t really watch or enjoy ReacttotheK, mainly because I dislike the implied message that I get from them that “classical musicians have better opinions” but they are certainly very knowledgeable, which makes sense as they’re trained classicalfags.  Maybe there’s a bit of my own personal prejudice regarding classical music dickheads here, because I had to put up a bunch of them when I studied music and most of them were insufferable rich snobby cunts (hot though).

Thanks for the interview, I didn’t watch but I’ll leave it here for others to check out.

In this performance:

BTS sang some of their older songs. It’s supposedly live but to me their voices sound oddly smooth and flawless. Does it sound like it’s been pitch-corrected? Are there really any kpop performances that don’t have some type of vocal touch-ups going on?

Yeah this recording has had stuff done to it.  Getting a sound like that with seven vocalists all sitting in the same room and bleeding into each others’ microphones plus holding them all shittily, I don’t think so either.  I can’t decide whether it’s a live pre-record, or a live overdub, but then it’s impossible to really tell anyway as both are functionally the same.

How do you feel about this? I think this might be her best since 212 by a long shot honestly.

Generally I agree.  Azaelia Banks has been trying to recapture “212” ever since she did it.  She gets much closer than usual here but wastes most of the song by singing.  When she starts rapping the song gets a lot better.  She has a very distinctive rap style, but as a singer she just sounds like any singer.  Hi Azaelia if you’re reading.

Hey Oppar!! I recently started a band with my friends and we kinda fucking suck, we tried to make a song and and it’s not *bad* but it’s also not very good at all. I feel like I’m relatively talented at writing lyrics, so it’s mostly the melodies that don’t really come together. Do you have any advice or tips on songwriting/composing? Thanks so much for reading!!!

I’ll talk more about this when my music theory series gets to it.  But don’t worry that you suck, with very few exceptions, most people’s creative output when they first start bands is pretty awful.  That’s normal, because you get good by doing.  It’s a myth that people get worse as they go along.  The real reason why some bands have a great debut album and crappy follow-ups is that the introduction of market forces changes everything, and some people are better at dealing with that and keeping their creativity intact than others.

this is much better than the actual song tbh

I find these MR Removed “parodies” where people just say any old stupid shit to replace the vocals really boring.  Funny the first time, but there’s hundreds of these for all sorts of different songs and once you’ve seen one, you’ve seen them all.  Instead of parodying MR Removed, I think it’s better to just debunk it, it’s more effective.

I seems is not only Korea that have pimping via music industry. Did you know about this australian girl called Zheani? She used a diss rap to denounce Die Antwoord abuses with her when she was an young fan of them. Here’s her video:

What’s your opinion about this shit, caonima?

I wasn’t aware of this, so I had a look and did a lot of reading up on it.  I actually spent an hour slo-motioning this video and reading everything, looking for the “smoking gun” and I couldn’t find it.  While the initial impact of seeing the video is definitely shocking, because her claims are so hard-hitting, on closer scrutiny I don’t think her “evidence” amounts to much.  There’s nothing here that proves Ninja is a rapist, from what I can tell (I struggle with his weird South African zef-slang-whatever) he comes off more like a creepy pestering douchebag thinking penis-first, which is unpleasant and cringe, but it’s not rape.  She’s seen in her own texts going along with it willingly at every stage, her turning around after and claiming she was “abducted” or “sex trafficked” to Africa is honestly not credible when the texts indicate that he just bought her a ticket and she said “cool thx”, and despite her throwing around the “pedophile” accusations she wasn’t underage when it happened either.  Zheani’s claims of Yolandi being Ninja’s puppet or whatever also are unsubstantiated – especially as the whole thing went down after Ninja and Yolandi broke up.  Yolandi herself did a great response to this:

“I only have a couple million dollars to myself, he has a few more million than me” hahahaha.  Regardless of which side you’re on that’s pretty funny.  I’m definitely not saying Zheani is lying (I wouldn’t know – if nothing else I have absolutely no reason to doubt her about Ninja being a phenomenal douchenozzle), but if she went to court with just this, she’d lose.  She’d want to have something else up her sleeve if she wants to get serious in a courtroom instead of taking the trial-by-social-media soft option.

I’m pretty confused on what in the right mind is the BPM count for this song here

I don’t know what would be the exact time signature of the song, since it doesn’t properly have the right beat of bass drums at first glance.

Can you help me with it?

It’s in 6/8 with a BPM of approx 63.  The odd time signature might be what’s confusing you, you may be expecting 3/4 or  4/4.

6/8 is “compound duple” which means there are two beats per bar, split into subdivisions of 3:

| V - v - v - V - v - v - | V - v - v - V - v - v - 
| 1 + 2 + 3 + 4 + 5 + 6 + | 1 + 2 + 3 + 4 + 5 + 6 + 

| *           *           | *           *          

Where I’ve put the * is where the beats are.

Hey oppar. With all of the hullabaloo over Seungri and Jung Joon Young, I just had a flashback. So it’s easy not to give too many fucks over this controversy, like I don’t feel disgusted whenever any of the kpop guys involved, and I don’t feel sad for victims but I know what happened to them is terrible. Because I don’t know any of these people. Most scandals are like as if they’re plots in a TV show where it’s not as real as your own life. So I just remembered when a middle school friend messaged me years ago about being sexually assaulted and wanted to know what to do. I can’t find the texts now, I only remember how she knew the man and maybe I tried giving advice. And I’m very certain I didn’t care. She wasn’t quite a favorite friend. She meant well, but I sometimes found her annoying. One time freshman or sophomore year she told me in the girl’s locker room that she was moving. I gave a blank, “Okay.” and kept going my way to her surprise. So my question I guess is, am I bad person? Or is it because this didn’t happen to someone I can trust or whatnot?

Well if you tried giving advice, I don’t think that was such a bad thing?  I mean, realistically there’s not a lot you can say anyway.  Also at the end of the day people have to make their own decision how to handle it.  When my partner died years ago many people came up to me saying “I’m so sorry” and “let me know if there’s anything I can do” but realistically there isn’t anything anyone can do so although I understood that people meant well (or at least wanted to not feel like bastards who didn’t give a shit), I didn’t bother to communicate with them about it further.  I didn’t want to sit around talking about that shit with people I barely knew.  So as for your situation it’s not like you can change what happened to her, if you were never that close to begin with, then… so be it, I guess?  You did what you could at the time, which realistically isn’t much anyway.  If we all forced ourselves to be incredibly upset over every horrible thing that happens in life, we’d spend our whole lives crying and not getting anything done, because awful tragic shit happens around the world every single day.  At some point you’ve got to just accept that shitty things happen and just move on.

Hello Oppa, Hope you are well and I hope Big Bang fans don’t bother you too much. I have couple questions..
Regarding Buring Sun case, Are you surprised so many idols are the one the perpetrators, I thought they didn’t have much power?
How do you think SeungriGate is going to change the industry and Korea? Will the agenices give even less freedom to idols? Will the “classy sexy” rate and blackmail go down? Will the hidden camera incidence go down in Korea?

All the idols that are getting pinged for classy-sexy text action are A-listers with long careers who would have earned their autonomy.  There’s no B-listers or C-listers involved here.  It’s all members of big groups or soloists with long histories of success.

I don’t think much will change in Korea.  I think that the “appearance of change” will probably be enacted on some kind of superficial level, but underneath it’ll be business as usual and people will just be a bit more “careful” about how they ply their trade.  The cameras will certainly be hidden a lot better from now on.

First world K-pop problems story-time. For the past 2 years, I’ve been living in a dorm with 3 other girls (all of them K-pop fans) with whom I get along well enough. Being something of a peacekeeper/doormat, I more or less go with the flow rather then against it, accepting their strange habits and also their attempts to ‘convert me’ to K-pop, in order to maintain a calm atmosphere. Though they listen to girl groups too, their one true love is the 3-lettered beast that must not be named. Somehow, I believe I’ve managed to preserve my sanity and even to become immune to the lackluster music, inane lyrics and disturbing fanservice that define most of the popular/successful K-pop groups that I’ve been exposed to. However, one thing I cannot escape is ‘Fun Fridays’ – the designated day to either reenact stupid variety show games or Gag Concert skits, cook murderously spicy Korean dishes, binge-watch a K-drama series or have ‘dance battles’. Dance battles are a relatively new addition. It started last year when X discovered a K-pop themed Just Dance game existed. Cue the Wii getting dug out in order to subject us all to a ‘fun dance battle’. In a stroke of unexpected inspiration, I had picked from the list Secret’s “Shy Boy”. I got some ahjumma jokes for picking ‘such a weird old song’, but the song was nice and the dance was easy enough that even a rhythmless 2left-feet turkey like myself could learn it over the weekend. I was the most surprised to see myself in 2nd place at the end of the whole thing. I think the wiimote sensors gave me more ‘perfects’ than I deserved, but hey crisis averted. FFwd to present day, next Friday we have to do Karaoke at an actual Karaoke bar instead of our room. I do not like my voice. I cannot sing. I don’t know what head voice, throat voice, chest voice or stomach voice is. How do you even use all those to sing? What is controlled breathing and pitching. So, I wanted to ask what are the simplest K-pop songs to sing in such a situation? Songs that people who cannot sing would still be able to sing? Of course, no vocalwanking should be in them. Please don’t say rap songs, I’m nowhere near cool enough to pull that off. A few examples would be great so I could pick something suitable and not embarrass myself in public. X keeps saying to “Try Expectation. It’s so you”, and while the verses seem accessible, the chorus, especially near the end with Minah and Sojin’s overlapping high notes, makes me panic. You like girl groups and hate vocalwanking, so I trust your selective abilities. What should I do?

Firstly, forget all that vocal training forum bullshit.  K-pop vocal analysists know a lot about singing but usually have NO IDEA how it relates to the real world of music, that’s painfully obvious.  You don’t need to worry about chest voice, head voice and blah blah blah, you’ll give yourself a fucking complex thinking about that bullshit.  You’re only going to karaoke.  As these k-pop vocal anal-i-cysts (correctly) point out, most professional singers aren’t even doing it right – so why do you think it’s important for YOU?  It’s not a big thing, the only requirement is that you actually hit the notes, and even that’s not a huge deal if you fuck it up.  If you suck so what – people suck at karaoke every day.  I’d probably suck at it too simply because almost nothing karaoke-friendly falls within my (quite low) singing vocal range.

So anyway, your hardest task here will be picking a song without rap in it, given that you have an aversion to rap.  I wouldn’t recommend “Expectation” as it’s got quite a few vocal hurdles AND a rap part.  I’d try and pick something fairly simplistic vocally, but with a bit of a fun theme – and no weird rapping.  You probably also want to avoid anything with complex harmony vocal parts as that sort of stuff is confusing to sing at karaoke (i.e which line do you pick).  Suggestions that I think are all reasonably simple vocally provided that they’re in your vocal range, and would all make good karaoke:

With all of these ignore any vocal improv overdubs that happen near the end of the songs – nobody expects you to do that crap in a karaoke bar.  Just stick to repeating the main chorus etc.

Hey kpopalypse,
I need someone to talk to, I can’t right now and I have always appreciated your advice. The one you gave me last time just really comforted me.
My Ex broke up really badly with me months ago, from which I still suffer depression. … [huge amount of text describing the situation edited] … I know I shouldn’t compare myself and I know I’m behaving pathetically but I felt miserable and had to constantly leave everything and cry (which no one saw, but I guess people notice bad mood really quick). And since then I feel like shit. Everyone I want to be friends with will prefer him over me and I feel like telling our shared friends about the situation since then since I don’t know if he told them anything, because everything I hear from them is that I should seek out a psychologist. Which I’m definitely doing but I’m also wondering, why no one asks me about what happened? I have this feeling of wanting some kind of “justice” or something or at least talk about my emotions like friends normally do. i also don’t think I did anything really wrong, or behaved aggressively or anything like that. Or did I? I have been thinking about what he meant when he told me I am running after him or where my mstakes there. But apart from that one particular thing I said in our long talk – I can’t find anything. Does it really make sense to talk with them about it, or will it be selfish? It might leave to more problems, but as of right now, I am the mental one whom no once can trust anymore, I feel, although I also feel that I’m not in the wrong. Is this desire something sick in itself?

If you have made it until down here, thanks for your time for doing so.
I even wrote to you about it on the new year Qrimole, where I had great concerns about our shared friends and worried about not getting respect from him. Thanks again for your reply. I was not able to get that self respect yet. How does it look like? How does a person with self respect behave differently in my situation?

You’re asking the wrong questions.  All your questions and concerns are about the past.  What if I acted differently?  Did I do the right thing?  Was I right or wrong?  Etc.  Honestly don’t worry about it.  You should focus on the present and the future instead.  You can’t change things that have already happened.  People make mistakes in life – I’ve made plenty, and you will no doubt make more in the future too.  These days people like to pretend that everybody has to be fucking perfect or they should be zoned out of existence, but what you need to realise is that the average person who has that kind of “cancel culture” mindset is about 13 years old.  When you’re that age you’re probably not even old enough to make any really big fuckups in your life, so it’s easy to judge everyone else.  So why not give yourself a bit of a break, dust yourself off and say to yourself “right – what others do and how the perceive me, I can’t control that – but I can be a better person to myself, and then I can can work outward and try to be a better person to others too”.  But you won’t succeed in mending relationships with others until you get your own self-respect in check first, and part of that is learning to forgive yourself and not post-mortem over every little thing you did and how it might’ve affected someone.

You’ve mentioned many times that sexual harrassment is extremely normalized in the music industry. Can you share more information on that, maybe some personal experiences?

It’s almost impossible to explain this coherently to an outsider, but I’ll do my best.  In a nutshell – the boundaries are different, partly because objectification is part of the job.  Here’s an example that might help you understand.  Say you’re a female in a group that has pretty high levels of skin exposure (which is most of them), so you get dressed up in your new stage outfit that is meant to make you look like the hottest thing ever in your latest video, so people actually fucking buy it.  You might then show your band outfit to some guys on the video set and ask them how it looks, to see if it’s having the desired impact and that you look good enough for the shoot and don’t have to touch anything up.  Obviously the outfit is designed to make you look as sexy as possible, right?  So for them to even comment on your appearance, they can’t use the same standard of “what constitutes sexual harassment” that works in an office environment.  The boundaries have to be looser here, because you want to know if you’re sexually attractive, and you don’t want a polite “gosh you look rather pretty, miss” response – if the guys can control their reactions so studiously that actually indicates failure on your part.  So if their jaws fall on the floor and they act like perverts for a few seconds, that’s definitely considered an appropriate reaction in that scenario, it means “mission accomplished, people will love the way you look”.  I mean there’s still a boundary somewhere obviously, you wouldn’t want them to suddenly start ripping your clothes off – but some “gentlemanly drooling” which would probably get a guy fired in an office environment or at least hauled in front of the boss for a good talking-to is actually an appropriate response in this context.  Add to this the fact that a lot of people don’t consider the entertainment industry “serious work” because it’s a “dream job” or whatever so people don’t tend to act the same way that they do in a more formalised occupation, everything is very casual, all the time.  Meeting work colleagues is almost like going to a nightclub instead, heightened by the fact that half the time you ARE actually going to a club to meet them and do business of some kind in the first place, so “nightclub-style” rules tend to apply when it comes to what’s appropriate to discuss in front of others, how you would behave, even how you would touch each other sometimes, and in those environments a broader range of sexual behaviour is considered acceptable, and that then tends to translate more over to the music industry environment as a whole.  It doesn’t just go one way either, I’ve had women say and do things to me that I definitely didn’t see coming… which I won’t go into detail about because it’ll probably be perceived weirdly by some (like I’m either portraying myself as a massive victim OR showing off), but yeah some pretty extreme shit has happened like that and in all cases I just kind of tolerated it as part of the job.  Not to say that the entire industry is like this in every corner (there are still things like boardroom meetings where typical boardroom standards of behaviour always often sometimes apply) but it’s certainly like this in a lot of places.  You know how some musical instrument stores are run like any other shop, and some others seem to always have these “casual dudes” running the place that talk to you like they’re your friend and are maybe like a little weirdly sexist and dudebro in ways that you wouldn’t expect when going into any other type of store?  Like you’re a female and you go in there with your boyfriend, and you tell the guy that you want to buy a guitar and he looks you up and down but only really does all the serious talking to him even though you’re the one with the fucking money who is buying shit?  Now you know why that happens.  The funniest thing of all is that people who’ve worked in that environment their whole adult lives don’t even realise they’re doing it.  Not excusing it, just saying – it is what it is… and that’s one of the reasons I talk about it a lot and try to shine a light on these things.  It helps to know what you’re getting into before you get there.

First off, I wanna thank you again oppar for your advice on the tracks I made that made me win TWICE stuff! Also took your advice in starting out on music production; I’ve been learning a lot since and I’ve been having so much fun!

Now for my question, bit lemme provide background first, so I’m working in a fintech startup (barely a year in existence) and shit hit the fan the last few weeks. It first started with our owner pressuring us operations people, to generate leads, win clients, and close contracts. Now, we’re non-sales people, all of us in the team (7 people) are of accounting backgrounds. I’m a bit better off since I know my way in a meeting room but yeah

You know what’s stupid oppar? They hired us ops people with the promise that our pipeline is already full of leads and clients and all we had to do is to implement our system. Then we came in and we actually had to go look for clients? But I digress.

Back to this, so our founder has been shitty, and our country head is also shitty, pressuring us to make revenue. UP TO THE FUCKING POINT OF FORCING US TO MAKE A FUCKING BUSINESS PLAN FOR THE MONTH OF APRIL OR WE’RE OUT. At the back of my mind, they made us do that ‘cos they can’t think of shit as well and it’s really stupid to have us generate revenue in just a month lol especially since all pending projects are to big companies that take a lot of time to finish but I didn’t exactly want to leave just like that without having a new job, I didn’t wanna be impulsive. So I complied and sent my plan last friday and we’ve yet to receive feedback. Oh and for the better part of March I’ve been doubling on generating leads and have secured some new prospects, but that won’t necessarily translate to revenues in just a month lol

I’ve also started applying for jobs that I would really like doing too and applied to companies with urgent needs at that. But looking for jobs take time and the state of the office is really really bad now to the point where two of my colleagues have already resigned, all in the span of one week. The remaining colleagues save for the new hire, have also been looking for new jobs. My question is oppar, do you think I should still soldier on in working for this company until I get hired or do I resign now, take some rest and make sure I don’t end up in an equally bad or worse company because I wanted to get out fast? Thank you!

This company sounds like it’s going to go under and your higher-ups have no idea how to handle it, so they’re hoping that you bright sparks can keep the ship afloat.  It’s always a better option to stay in a job if you can handle it because more money is better than less, the only thing that worries me here if that if the company tanks and everyone else pisses off, you might get blamed for some shit that’s not your fault – your superiors sure don’t seem to want to take responsibility for any of the actual work so I doubt that they’ll be very accepting of any culpability either.  It might be prudent to bail out ASAP and look for something else, as long as your hip pocket can take the fall.

Hi oppar! How are you?
Recently I’ve decided to give mainstream a break and started listening to more underground music, stuff that is usually obscure and doesn’t get any media attention. Thanks to your blog I’ve discovered many wonderful artists, such as Death In June. If it wasn’t for you I would have never known of his existence, since I live in a third-world country with bad internet connection and few record shops.
My question is, where can I find more underground stuff (from any genre) on the internet to listen and/or buy? Also, could you recommend me more artists?
Have a nice day! I hope Australian Autumn isn’t as hot as the Brazilian one.

It’s really hard to answer questions like this because I don’t know what you’re into and there’s so much stuff out there, but if you like Death In June I’d highly recommend this compilation to introduce yourself to many groups in a similar style, which is an amazing collection that is only really missing Current 93.

Why, aside of all the other girls, Haseul wasn’t taken down in Kpopalypse’s heist by Jpopalypse?

Fancy asking the reason why the no reason sidebar girl is there.

I think this is maybe a task for reddit, but it would be awesome to have a collection of videos in which people used Shure Super 55 correctly since I know a handful have come out since your original post. (Though searching for “Shure Super 55 correctly” on your blog brings up… two extra videos.)

Kpop reddit, being k-pop reddit, probably wouldn’t get it right.  To me it sounds like a job for a YouTuber like isaymyeolchigr (who is free to consult with me about this if unsure).

Hi oppar!
Have you heard TXT’s B-side tracks? The vocals are SOOOOOOO on point, everyone hitting those high notes like angels from Heaven ???? they reminded so much of Beyoncé, Whitney Houston and Mariah Carey, and I fucking love them!!! Such great voices, everyone should take inspiration from them ❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️ thank God CSJH The Grace did that, and it’s exactly why they’re my favorite K-Pop group of all times, PLEASE stop caring about that shitty Twice group and give them a chance again, TWICE CAN’T SING!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I don’t give a shit about catchy pop music, we only want BALLADS AND R&B!!!!! R&B IS THE ONLY TRUE MUSIC!!!!! R&B RULES THE WORLD!!!!! Oh, and it also reminded me of this J-Pop song , what do you think about it? Oh wait… But that means it’s plagiarism! Do you think it’s plagiarism? I think so! I would love Is to see you analysing the two songs and show what’s similar and what’s not, your plagiarism posts are my favorite ones and you should do more! Speaking of which, do you know that Butterfly plagiarises I Will Always Love You? They both have the word “I” in the lyrics and it’s sung the exact same way! What a shame…
One last thing, PLEASE review GOT7’s Christmas album from last year, Christmas music is so underrated and deserves more love!
Another last thing: Pungdeng-E are also fucking great, don’t ever mention their shameful 5819733918616738th-grade rip-offs Crayon Pop and Orange Caramel, those bitches should rot in jail for plagiarism. Pungdeng-E is what I call true K-Pop, they literally INVENTED K-POP and their lyrics are so meaningful, I always cry when I read them ??????
Oh, andand ANOT OTHER LAST THING (sorry but I love your blog lol): I’ve also noticed that CLC’s To The Sky plagiaris-

(If you’ve made it through everything, congratulations! This question has been purposedly made to annoy you as much as possible!)

This made me laugh, thank you!

Basic bitch pussies are being put down by listening to EPIK HIGH – Lullaby For A Cat. Would you bother Stiglitz with it and film her reaction to caonimas?

That’s all for QRIMOLE!  This series will return in a month, in the meantime be sure to look both ways for passing k-pop careers!

Oh, and do you have a question that you’d like to see answered in the next episode of QRIMOLE?  If so, use the question box below, or if no box appears, click the Qri (or Rion, lol) on the sidebar to open the box as a separate webpage!  Kpopalypse will return!