It’s time for Kpopalypse roundup! Let’s check out some new releases!
Hate on Jimin all you want, but as long as people keep the focus on her rather than the system that allowed (and probably encouraged) her to pick on Mina for an entire decade, there will always be another Jimin. As long as people continue to play cancel-culture whack-a-mole instead of dealing with the larger issue, nothing will ever change.
Chungha ft. Changmo – Play
It threatens to be good at a few points, but there’s too much tropical/latin tiresomeness and not enough of that vague hint of ska to make this anything but just another boring comeback.
Weeekly – Tag Me (@Me)
A decent song if you edit the stupid half-time drops out of it. There’s a project for someone.
NiziU – Make You Happy
A decent song if you edit the stupid half-time drops out of it. There’s a project for someone. Yeah k-pop really is that clueless right now that the same thing is wrong with all the songs.
Youngest – Can’t Nobody
These kids have beats harder than 95% of Korean hip-hop. All Korean rappers hang your heads in shame!
SF9 – Summer Breeze
The grandfather of electronic whistles as chorus hooks, Ennio Morricone, died today, so let’s all listen to SF9 and remember that Ennio paved the way.
Stray Kids – Easy
Some twists in the harmony help the song along a little bit it’s not quite enough to overcome the plodding trendiness of it all.
Verivery – Thunder
The dark mood of this is appealing, but it needed to go even darker to really make an impact. This is begging for a metal cover.
AKMU – World Love
Okay so it’s just an awful ad for KIA but it still has the most Suhyun content I’ve seen in a while and she’s looking as good as ever so I think I’ll be revisiting this video a bit.
N.Flying – Flower Fantasy
They’re never going to recapture the energy of their debut ever again, are they.
Grace – Planet
Another plodding song that needed to be either heavier or faster.
Yoyomi – Nonexistent
Welcome pace, but not Yoyomi’s best.
Kim Soo Chan – Hip
Kim Soo Chan (who is probably the male Yoyomi) isn’t quite hitting as well as usual either.
Zico ft. Rain – Summer Hate
“Gang” is actually a better song than this by a reasonable margin.
Lee Jinhyuk – Bedlam
Hey computer repair person, I have this problem with this weird guy on my desktop messing with my icons and yelling shit music, can you help.
Park Hong Joo – Look At Hansuwon
There’s got to be a backstory to this one that I’m out of the loop on, because it’s green-screen nuguville all the way but has over half a million views. Anyway it’s undemanding and okay I guess.
Sandeul – Smile Box
Painful like Busker Busker but fortunately not as popular. Let’s hope it stays that way.
Jang Sungkyu ft. Jay Park, Sik-K – Workman
GroovyRoom’s usual low quality where it’s all about sonics instead of songwriting.
Groovyroom ft. Haon – Daylight
They’re better here where it’s pure rap and they don’t really have to try and carry a tune because there isn’t one.
Jooyoung ft. Heize – Love Distance
I wonder if Heize will ever be on a good song.
Bobae – P.U.N.K.S.
Actually some really cool and different sounds here, but a little too much R&B influence drags it all down a bit. Stop trying to be smooth over rough beats.
Ash Island ft. Loopy – Error
It’s like a lot of the ballads Teddy used to write for 2NE1, and actually a shade better than some of the more dreary ones.
Loopy ft. Nafla – Once Upon A Time In LA
I love it how rappers actually think people want them to sound like this. Proof of their lack of intelligence across the board.
Jiwoo – Antiriver
So fucking dreary it’s unbelievable. If those drums could talk they would stay “stop hitting me I just want to sleep”.
None, Bumkey – Pretense
Bumkey continues to be useless, some reasonable walking bass lines can’t save this one.
Sujin – Shadow
Genuinely different and cool minimalist electronica, I don’t hear this sound coming out of Korea all that often.
Jaurim – Hola!
This group are huge in Korea, probably more so than just about any group you actually like. You can kinda tell when listening to them, because they sound boring as fuck. Koreans love this boring soft-rock crap.
The FunCity – It Will Be Fun
I was all ready to shit on this just for the sheer audacity of the song title, and then it actually lived up to its name. If Twice sang this song on some eyesore-colourful video instead of a bunch of crusty bums in an abandoned car park, we’d have an all-kill here folks.
Cotoba – Reyn
Sounds like it’s going for Covet vibes but you need much more different and engaging music arrangement-wise to pull that kind of thing off.
SuperJellyKing – Obirah
They’re all good doing their electro-dubstep-whatever-the-fuck-this-is-thing, and then they have to wreck it by throwing some jazz in there because Koreans can’t help themselves.
Zico – Cartoon
I’d like a cartoon where Zico gets flattened by a random Acme machine Wile E. Coyote style and stops making music as a result.
“INNOCENT” BOYS IN WHITE SHIRTS AHEM SECTION
Stray Kids – Blueprint
Not too bad actually, although I wouldn’t trust k-pop boys in white shirts, we all know where that ends.
Golden Child – OMG
This isn’t bad either although I wish they went for that intro keyboard sound instead of the one they use in the actual song.
N.Flying – E-Yo
On the lower end of the music quality tier we have N.flying who have the shirts and nothing else.
BONUS RANDOM VIDEO OF THE WEEK
I purposely auditioned for scam KPOP companies…so you don’t have to
No comment – just watch and learn. Starts at 0:53, you’re welcome.
That’s it for this week – Kpopalypse roundup returns next week!
KPOPALYPSE 
I completely agree about cancel culture, but Jimin didn’t “pick on” Mina. She bullied her to the point of attempted suicide that has led to long-term, if not permanent, physical damage. That’s on top of the psychological scars, Mina’s lost career as an idol, and the other possible victims who are coming to light. When you do stuff like that, you don’t get to blame the system. There’s something seriously wrong with her in any context, and she would have lost everything even if we didn’t have a cancel culture.
Obviously when I write “pick on” it really just means “whatever Jimin did” which encompasses all those things. Making a distinction between “pick on” and “whatever else” is just playing a “look how much more horrified I can be about what Jimin did than others can” game. This isn’t Asian Junkie’s comments section where everyone competes to be the most horrified about a thing and thus the person with the most “good person” brownie points.
Also if you think that there isn’t a systemic problem just because what Jimin did was very harsh, that’s… an interesting take.
It wasn’t obvious to me that you understood the severity of the bullying. To me, there is a huge distinction between “picking on” someone and what Jimin did, but okay. I don’t know why me specifying what she actually did offended you so much. I also didn’t say there wasn’t a systemic problem; I said Jimin has issues and she didn’t need to be “encouraged” to be such a horrible bully. No one goes as far as she does because of a system, it’s coming from them. What youre saying applies better when it comes to, say, netizens bashing idols online, not a legit psycho. And I said she would have lost everything anyway, regardless of whether we lived in a cancel culture, because her actions were so severe.
It’s not a matter of offense. I could have written up a big thing on all the stuff Jimin did and that would have been fine, but there’s 100 other sites for that, and it’s boring to read description 101 of it. At some point it just becomes tragedy porn to constantly have every site repeating the same details, and my site isn’t a news site anyway so it’s not my bag. Why do you think I link to the Asian Junkie article in the picture – people can click there and read the details if they want to. He covers that stuff fairly well in my opinion.
“No one goes as far as she does because of a system” – police in the US go a lot further than Jimin did, actually killing innocent people, and often. According to your theory, their violence definitely wouldn’t be “systemic” because it’s so extreme. Like I said, an interesting take. I’ll let others decide how they feel about it.
I feel like the “systemic issue” arises from the fact that Jimin was able to do all this and still debut and be part of the same group as her victim for 10 years. If the system doesn’t filter out the assholes, then yeah, I guess there will be more of them around. So I agree with both of you in that sense, but more so with Kpopalypse – Mina wouldn’t have had it this bad if the system wasn’t so messed up.
Kpopalypse’s opinion of Shin Jimin: “Blame the system, not her.”
Kpopalypse’s opinion of Ryu H*******g: “It’s all her fault. No system can be blamed for her being an insufferable cunt who ruined my precious T-ara.”
False equivalence. True equivalence would be if neither Jimin nor Mina said anything about bullying at all, but netizens just took one isolated sketchy incident of Mina complaining and pretended that Mina was bullying Jimin, fabricated fake “evidence” to support their claim, and then ran with it, doing their best to destroy Mina’s career. And failing.
(Also you asterisked out the wrong word – I fixed that for you)
You consider a factual description of Jimin’s bullying to be “tragedy porn,” yet you previously minimized those actions by describing them as “picking on” someone. Is it a tragedy or is it the equivalent of getting pushed down on the playground? I didn’t suggest you should have written up a summary of everything she did; I merely gave my opinion that the wording “pick on” was inaccurate. So inaccurate, in fact, that I genuinely didn’t think you understood the extent of what had occurred. I didn’t see the link to the other article.
Now we’re finally at the point of you making a real argument. Your police brutality analogy is a perfect one, because just like bullying in the idol industry, there is no blanket cause. You are correct that the flaws within American culture facilitate systemic police brutality, and are to blame for its prevalence. However, there are cases where the officer in question is a sociopath who became a police officer in order to exert power over others, and would have been a monster anywhere he went, so bringing up the system in that context only serves to make excuses for him. I am arguing that similarly, Jimin specifically shouldn’t get the luxury of blaming the system, because the severity of her actions shows she’s a monster. There’s a difference between an officer who impulsively shoots someone as a result of “systemic problems,” and an officer who kneels on someone’s neck for almost 10 minutes practically orgasming as another human being loses his life. There’s a difference between talking shit about someone behind their back, and tormenting someone to the point of attempted suicide. And of course, there are all of the shades in between. In addition, just like the officer who killed George Floyd, Jimin has a rap sheet of numerous alleged instances showing a pattern of sadistic behavior. When I say “no one goes as far as Jimin does” of course that’s a generalizing clause; I mean most people will not torment someone for years just because they were enabled or encouraged by a system. Most people would need to be pushed over the edge just to get motivation to torment someone, and then it would only be that person and it probably wouldn’t last for ten years. You say officers go “a lot further than Jimin did” by “actually killing innocent people.” So Jimin is better because Mina happened to survive her suicide attempt? Is it “a lot” less severe to kill someone by pushing them to suicide rather than just shooting them? Is Jimin not responsible for the psychological damage caused by her abuse of others? Is Mina not “innocent”? Is it your view that Mina is responsible because she “chose” to attempt suicide as a result of the abuse?
Tl;dr While I fully agree about cancel culture (the whack-a-mole metaphor is perfect) and the fact that people do not address the overarching issues leading to a lot of idol bullying, sometimes a person does deserve to lose everything, and they do deserve every insult thrown at them, and they don’t deserve to have any of the blame deflected onto anyone or anything else. I just think Jimin is an inappropriate example of your point, because there is no excuse for what she did. I understand you are aware of the virtue signaling SJW “game,” but these are my feelings and opinions, and I’m definitely not going to be shamed into changing or hiding them. I completely reject the false dichotomy of SJW snowflake/unbothered edgelord. I’m a person and these are my views. I appreciate that you allow dissenting comments on your blog, but you don’t attempt to process them and give thoughtful responses, and that’s unfortunate.
This entire comment has some good points but is also a strawman from hell with a metric ton of misrepresentations of what I said. I’m not going to go through them because I already feel like I’ve addressed everything sufficiently and I’d just be repeating myself. Also honestly I don’t have time, it would take me like an hour to pick apart this and show people everything that’s wrong with it. Then you’d just reply with another big-ass comment and on and on it would go – yawn. I ain’t got time for that so you can have the last word on it. I thought it was funny though that your tl;dr is nearly as long as the comment itself, that at least gave me a good laugh.
Go find “A Fist Full of Film Music” It is the comprehensive collection of Ennio Morricone’s best work. Released almost exactly 25 years ago, it is a great set.
Chungha tries to stay relevant by doing a tropical pop song… again.
Or, well, it’s a great song for her because that’s her standard sound everyone associates with her and she’s probably making some bank. So. She’s doing something right.
(Am I the only one who wants to see a kpop group do swing music? No? Just me?)