It’s time for Kpopalypse roundup! Let’s check out some new releases!
Daesung depicted with the face mask he wears to protect himself from STDs during quarterly landlord inspections.
Itzy – Icy
It actually starts off pretty good but it doesn’t have that killer melody it needs to take it somewhere interesting and the chorus is lame. Twice sucked at first too, so give Itzy time I guess.
Kang Daniel – What Are You Up To
What am I up to? Well it’s Roundup once again and I’m listening to possibly the worst ring-modulated synth noise put to a song in 2019.
CIX – Movie Star
Oversized shopping dockets with junk written on them doesn’t really fit with this song’s ambience somehow, but it’s still probably the best thing about this package.
Woosung – Face
The super-self-conscious “transgressive” video is a little bit cringe, but the song at least has some nice rhythms to it if nothing else.
Mamamoo – Gleam
More tropical crap. It would be good to get these girls in a good song one day, but today is not that day.
Taemin – Famous
Fantastic production and sonics let down by some not-very-good writing.
EXO-SC – Closer To You
This otherwise very average song is almost saved by a drum-machine programmer who didn’t get the memo that he was working on cookie-cutter R&B slop instead of a John Bonham dub remix.
Bewhy – Gottasadae
Holy crap this is good. And weird. Bewhy has never been good so I don’t know where the fuck this came from but I support.
GWSN – Red Sun
Whereas this is average and aside from a bit of noodling around with drum and bass sounds, is exactly what you’re expecting.
Dongkiz – Blockbuster
I never liked the original “Ghostbusters” tune by Ray Parker Jr even back when it came out, and I like this semi-ripoff-remake-whatever even less. The fact that the ripoff parts are the best parts of the song tells you how crap it is because the original was cheesy bullshit so to actually write something worse is an achievement.
Park Boram – Do As I Like
It’s not the One True Boram so it’s hard to care, but even notwithstanding that the song isn’t great and has too much plink plonk shit.
NCT Dream – Boom
Doesn’t boom enough to be called “boom”, maybe it should have been called “splat, whimper”.
Swervy ft. Reddy – Art Gang Money
No video but this is cool, like Azaelia Banks with better music and less social networking trolling. Swervy is actually saving her piece of shit label full of talentless losers.
Boy Story ft. Jackson – Too Busy
It sort of rocks, kind of, a little, so that’s something.
Oh My Girl – Shower
You people who are rubbing your hands together whenever your bias group performs a B-side on a music show because you think I’ll do a good review of it – I pity you. It must be hard going through life having futile hopes and dreams.
Object Brothers – Charging Cable
Nothing that I write here will prepare you for this.
Yenjamin ft. Jinbo, Paloalto – Pull Up!
Devastating blandness.
Loopy & Nafla – Shot
They even look like coked-out Californian rappers. Progress of a sort, I guess.
Onsu – The Rain
Girl, buy yourself a mic stand, they’re not that expensive.
N.flying – Lupin
The amount of sheer stuff going on is sufficiently distracting that you don’t really notice that there’s no real song here.
VAV ft. De La Ghetto & Play-N-Skillz – Give Me More
Whenever a song opens with a tropical coastline these days, that’s a bad sign.
Jeonghan – Love Season
Yeah nah.
Kimhwol – Down
The lack of pace here is actually an asset, but it’s just a little too meandering and undisciplined for its own good.
1Team – Ice In The Cup
This song doesn’t know whether it wants to be plink plonk or swig sweg.
Shin Youme – Nights Without You
Oh my god the inappropriate T-ara speed cutting is back.
Lil Nas X ft. RM – Seoul Town Road
Lil Nas X is as garbage as anybody else working the tired fossil that is the yolosweg trap circuit in the US, just because he uses the word “horse” in his trash songs every so often doesn’t mean he’s any different to the rest of them. Neither does having some random rapper from BTS in his song.
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That’s all for this week’s roundup – Kpopalypse will return with more roundup next week!
I swear to god, I could count good songs from this month on one hand and even then I would have fingers left.
Really kept me going:
Taemin – Famous
Woosung – Face
Bewhy – Gottasadae (pleasant surprise)
Not so pleasant:
Little incel boi in the chat on livestream.
Wow, that Bewhy song is utter shit…
wow Bewhy – Gottasadae is great, finally none of these boring trap shit
Itzy’s Icy seems to have some kind of garbled garbage drenching the chorus, else it might be a good song…? Going by things I’ve read from better musicians than me, what if JYP is producing good club bangers, but we can’t hear it from our pathetic pc speakers and phones? Mr JKpop (remember him?) had excellent speakers, and got suprisingly different results from the tiny things we use… Just curious.
there’s been so few decent rap songs in the last few years (basically zero imo) but im glad bewhy figured how to make a good song, gives hope for the rest of k-rap
A slow end to a miserable month.
Art Gang Money is a fucking heater. I liked Red Lite in that “I should hate this but kind of love it” way, but Swervy stepped her game up big time.