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

Blackpink – How You Like That

With such a huge group, why take risks with a long-awaited comeback?  Teddy certainly hasn’t, and their new song is basically “Kill This Du-Ddu“, delivering exactly what you expect at every turn, with the usual slow tempo, silly keyboard riffs, cringe sloganeering and now-obligatory double-time jumping-the-shark in the last quarter.  However in the parts where this stops shouting and settles into something resembling an actual song, it has a moody melodic style that makes it the best of the three.

3YE – Yessir

The visual style is great but it can’t hide the fact that nowhere near as much effort has been put into the music.

Sunmi – Pporappippam

Sunmi just released a song and it’s like all her other good ones except even better, with not a shitty trap breakdown to be found.  Hey all you people leaving k-pop because 2020 has been such a shit year, come back and listen to this!

Hwasa – Maria

An awful song but Hwasa looks good enough that nobody will care or even remember what this sounds like.  She’s definitely vying for a high position in the annual objectification survey which is STILL OPEN FOR VOTING so VOTE HERE NOW or don’t complain when she doesn’t come first.

Nada – My Body

Pretty bland really.  The buzzsaw vuvuzela is actually the best thing about the track because it adds some much-needed abrasiveness to this drab tropical formula that we’ve all heard at least a hundred times this year.

BTS – Stay Gold

BTS keep finding new ways to be average.  This time, they’ve taken miss A’s excellent “Bad Girl, Good Girl“, removed everything exciting about it and turned it into a mid-paced cigarette-lighter-waving snoozefest.  I guess it makes sense because their audience are mostly old enough to smoke and take naps by now.

TXT – Eternally

Meanwhile TXT continue to outdo their labelmates with little effort.  I can’t even review this because I have honestly no fucking idea where the song even begins and ends and I honestly don’t even have the desire to watch 20 minutes of some boy group poncing around with some weird existential David Lynch bollocks, but click at any random point in this video and press play and it’s still more interesting than BTS’s entire career after “War Of Hormone” (six years later, still their only genuinely good song).

Taeyeon – Happy (Summer version)

A better song without the awkward leaden beat, but this is maybe just a little too far in the other direction.  Still, I’ll take it, and it gets better as it goes.  Kill the percussion player though with those fucking block things that sound like phone text alerts though.  I thought it was my gf writing me a message “are you fapping?” but I wasn’t going to try and text her back one-handed.

Golden Child – One (Lucid Dream)

Golden Child’s best feature only came about four years too late in their careers, but that doesn’t bother me if it doesn’t bother them.  The dubstep and funk elements that don’t work in so many other songs and contexts work well here because they’re used to build the harmony rather than just the rhythm.

Ab6ix – The Answer

I guess it gets points just for no tropical sound.  It’s a sad indictment of 2020 when this is the case.  The bar is on the floor.

A.C.E – Stand By You

I heard the official product got pulled quicksmart by the agency when they were alerted to the fact that in the video A.C.E dressed up as KKK members and sold heroin to disabled pre-schoolers and then kicked puppies, or something.  While we wait for the new video where A.C.E help old ladies across the street and retrieve lost kittens from dumpsters, just know that this song is bullshit.

Great Guys – In Summer

I love it when they try to do aegyo behind masks and because you can’t see the facial expression it just looks like a dude glaring at the camera like a rapist.

Woodz – Love Me Harder

They just couldn’t be bothered writing a chorus for this one so they hung the microphone out the window and recorded some random homeless bum whistling because he was bored.  Now we’re all bored.

Demian – Karma

Lots of staring into the camera looking sweaty and morose like he just blew his load 10 seconds after he got the condom on, not much else.

H – Bye Bye Bye

The camera focuses a lot more on the token model than the guy singing the song, and that’s probably the best thing for everyone concerned.

015B, Rolling Quartz – Random

Just a really average rock song.

Zhoumi ft. Ryeowook – Starry Night

This song is sung mainly in these guys’ bedrooms, and it never should have left there.

Lee Seung Yoon – Shut Up & Squat

I’ve been going to the gym a lot lately but this song makes me feel like I should have spent more time on the couch eating pizza.

Budy – Stray Cat

Not the rockabilly song I was hoping for.

Ravi ft. Naeun – Rain♡

Why is there only one chair and Ravi has to sit on the fucking wall, are we really that broke over here?

Vinxen – Blind

Occasionally Vinxen has had really good songs but today is not that day.

Pullik ft. Mckdaddy, Iiiboi, Ja Mezz – I Be Like

Nobody can write beats anymore, can they.

Thama ft. George – Do It For Love

Not even those full body hazmat suits can protect us from shit music disease.

Bizzy – Everything Is Everything

It’s just not the nu-school guys either, even veteran rappers can’t stop themselves from doing R&B bullshit.

Lil Cherry – Vitamin B

So ugly both visually and musically that it defies description, the best bit is when the baby hits the water and you can’t hear the music for a while.

V-Hawk – Lag

It has some semblance of a beat but it’s really just the usual bullshit unfortunately.

Reddy – Fade Out

What is the market for this crap, really.  I cannot imagine for the life of me a bunch of people standing around listening to this and thinking “wow, this is great”.  Or even one person, for that matter.

Sik-K – RSVP

A great video concept completely wasted on unlistenable bullshit.  Worth a watch, honestly – with the sound off.

Purple Rain – Waking Up

Anthemic rock that could have been really something special but is just a little too plodding and ballady to get over the line.

The Solutions – Night Swim

Some nice sounds here but not much of an actual song to go with it.

Asian Chairshot – Rocket

Cool guitar and drum work lifts up a song that otherwise struggles a bit to be noticed.

Lim Ha Ram – Secret Crush

Okay this is actually good.  If Gfriend came up with this instead of whatever tropical crap they’re doing now, it would be an all-kill.

20 Years Of Age – 7942

I’m mainly just putting this here so people making all those “Nugu Park” video compilations have got something new to add.

Oh, and this fucking bullshit

Last week, about 298 of my readers alerted me to the fact that I covered all the Road To Kingdom/Good Girl stuff in roundup except this song.  I didn’t leave it out deliberately, it was just such a boring piece of crap that I didn’t even notice that it was missing from the final list.  Anyway it’s in here now and it’s uninteresting garbage so I hope you’re satisfied.

BONUS RANDOM VIDEO OF THE WEEK

Nature – Girls (Uncensored version)

Just putting this here so you’re aware that there’s a better version of this video.  Unfortunately the song itself hasn’t changed and is still the same lightweight bollocks that has a good tune buried underneath all the trendy crap trying (and failing) to get out, but good horror-themed visual style is a good second-best.  Enjoy!

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That’s all for this week – Kpopalypse roundup returns next week!