It’s time for Kpopalypse roundup!  Let’s look at some new releases!

Weki Meki – Cool

This sounds like the person who wrote the bassline and the person who wrote the vocal melodies were in two separate rooms and not permitted to communicate with each other during the entire process.

WJSN Chocome – Hmph!

It’s not quite enough to make me not miss Orange Caramel, but it’s a pretty close second-best.

Iz*one – Beware

Part of the reason why you probably think this sounds weird is the very strange mixing where the vocals are overpresent and the backing track isn’t really allowed to do any of the work, but it’s also because you can actually hear their voices singing together, something that’s not typical of idol pop in general.

Blackpink – Pretty Savage

It’s nothing terrible and another reasonable addition to Blackpink’s heavy metal catalogue, but it’s easy to hear why this wasn’t the feature track, YG made the right decision here finally.

Itzy – Be In Love

It makes sense that JYP allowed the girls to make their own video for this thoughtless, tossed-off song.  Who else would waste their time?

Kiara – Tomboy

A completely crap chorus ruins all of the atmosphere that everything else generates.

Dahye – Poison

I don’t think “spanish flamenco dance” was the right kind of feel for this song.

Ailee – When We Were In Love

Look, it’s Ailee in a nurse outfit!  Sexualisation!  Objectification!  Bad things!  Everybody prepare your outrage!  Oh wait, this song is boring and it flopped plus only me and three other people find Ailee attractive, so nobody will care about this even though Ailee actually looks better in this than Jennie has ever since Blackpink debuted.  Carry on everyone.

Rocoberry – My Darling

Rocoberry are always boring and that’s that on that.

Hayeon – Eyes On You

I’m told that an artificial intelligence wrote the melody for this song, which just goes to show how machine-like Korean songwriting really is across the board because this doesn’t sound a bit different to all the other boring crap out there.  I dig the subtle diss to the industry though – imagine have your sister Taeyeon’s connections readily at hand and choosing a machine to do your songwriting instead.

Kim Hae Ri ft. Sujin – OOTD (Outfit Of The Day)

They still haven’t moved the props in that room that I featured in the last Nugu Alert.

Sooyoung ft. Hong Hyunhee – Be Yourself

Yes, it’s that Sooyoung – didn’t expect that, did you?  It’s not awful but the only thing that’s really notable about it is that it exists at all.

NCT U – Misfit

So you’re telling me SM knew how to do this type of style all along but has just chosen not to for the last 25 years?

NCT U – Make A Wish (Birthday Song)

Not as shit as that song title would make you believe, I was expecting some horrid ballad but instead I got some generic thing.

NCT Dream – Déjà Vu

I guess it’s an unadvertised “short version”, but I’m not going to question it, I’ll just shut up and be grateful that it isn’t any longer.

Pentagon – Daisy

Actually they really have gone downhill a bit since E-Dawn left.  I’m sure that’s just coincidence though.

Golden Child – Pump It Up

Golden Child try to recreate The Jackson Five and like most k-pop attempts at this, it doesn’t work.

1989 – Jjirit Jjirit

A good try but an average chorus lets the team down.

Nu’est – Drive

I tried to tell them with the whole microphone thing but it’s clear nobody is listening.

NTX – Survive

Hey this is not too bad actually, especially for something on zero budget.  The worst thing about it is the 2pac t-shirt, but at least we now know well ahead of time who the rapist in the group probably is.

Classmate – Splendor

Someone noted in the comments to the video that they bought the physical album but they had to search for it in Hangul to even find it.  That’s because even the people who wrote this crap aren’t stupid enough to think that this is going to have any appeal outside of their home country.

Joohoney – Intro: Ambition

Play at 2:08 for the funniest moment in a k-pop video this year.  Thank me in the comments.

Joohoney – Smoky

It wants to be epic but it doesn’t have the melody to pull it off, it just ends up sounding like something on the second side of a Roger Waters solo album.

Dawn ft. Jessi – Dawndididawn

When the Jessi guest spot turns out to be the musical highlight, you know that the song has some serious issues.

Taemin – Criminal (Minit Remix)

It’s a nice try but the square peg does not fit the round hole.  They should have used that heavy chorus beat to write a completely new song for Taemin instead.

Lee Eunsang – Mirage

What a waste of my time.  Next.

Kyuhyun – Daystar

Korean ballads are the “nice guys” of idol pop – they pretend that they’re different and care about your feelings but they all want to exploit you just the same in the end.

Lee Junyoung – Amen

It always pains me when the do a retro rap track and it’s the crappy mellow lounge boring crap style from 20 years ago instead of all the good stuff they could have been copying instead.

Nine – Daisy

Snore.

Ejae – Joy8

Too much of the stuff on Poclanos channel just sounds like kids fucking around when high.  Don’t give me that “there’s no drugs in Korea” bullshit, Han Seo Hee blew the lid right off that one.

aLf – With Me

Everything about this is kind of cool except the song itself, which is just meandering and a little lost sounding.

Hanae – Rumpled

Not much good ever came out of guitar-based songs where they whack the strings with their hands on beats two and four.  Just hire someone to hit a snare drum you lazy cunts.

Besweet – Wonderland

Are you a boring cunt who likes guitar-based songs where they whack the strings with their hands on beats two and four?  You probably like “More Than Words” as well.  This song’s for you, cunt.

0woo ft. Rang – Beautiful Fire

It’s almost good, if it just resembled that generic rap format a little bit less and pushed the instrumental out a bit more, this would have really worked.

Mad Clown ft. Jin Minho – Heaven

Not even going to wait for the video for this one, I’ll just tell you it sucks ahead of time so I don’t have to sit through it twice.

Mommy Son, Kim Davi – The Celebrated Spoon Waltz

Mad Clown with a mask on doing children’s TV theme music isn’t any better.

Nucksal ft. Don Mills, Los – Brother

Weak shit.  Again, they rarely take the really good stuff from years ago.

Nucksal ft. Gaeko – Bad Trip + Akira

Apparently the trend is to rap without an actual beat worth a damn.

Owen ft. Niahn, pH-1 – Invitation

At least this crap song had some girls in the video to distract me.

Owen – Studio Junkie

One of the funniest choruses in rap music, but not for the right reasons.

Jay Loud & Jay Park – Dior Socks

Here’s your weekly thoughtless written-while-taking-a-shit Jay Park song.

Junoflo – Dead Roses

This guy actually came to my town a while back and I was bummed because I had to miss it but now I’m feeling good that I didn’t encourage him.

Crucial Star, Wynn, Dneirf – Pizza Day

It’s just too nice.  In 1995 this would have been a b-side studio reject on a De La Soul single.

Kik5o – In The Dark

Super boring with lots of hideous vocals and no song.

The Night Of Seokyo ft. Yangpyung Sonyun – Give Me A Hug

Don’t drag some kid into your boring ballad for views, for fuck’s sake.  Kids this age should be out smoking marijuana and hotwiring cars, which are far more wholesome, less harmful activities than singing this trash.

The Night Of Seokyo ft. Kyungbin – Oh-A

They’re not too awful here but this is still boring and not what I signed up to k-pop for.

109 – That Was All Of My Love

And this is all of my indifference.

Joshua – Butterfly

Nice guitar tone you boring R&B fuckhead.

Jang Cheol Joon – To Love Longer

Wow the lipsync is really fucked up here, I guess they don’t teach miming along to the camera in classical opera gay-ass school.

Leewoo – Blind Date

The song is so shit that nobody had any problem with these two actors talking over the top of it literally the entire way through.

Nam Jin, Sul Woon Do, Lee Jayeon, Jung Sura, Park Sangmin, Shin Yu, 6band – Corona Igija

I really do not want to hear any songs, in any style, from anyone, about coronavirus.  Not even two seconds of Sunny looking more and more like Eimi Fukada each day can save this one.  The whole world is sick of hearing about this virus in any manner or form, just write songs about other shit please.

NUGU GREEN SCREEN RETINAL ABUSE SECTION

Choi Ye Geun – Distance

You know that time when AC/DC made an entire video with green screen bullshit because they suck now?  This video looks worse than that one.

Kim Marie – Our Universe

Really, even this nonsense looks slightly better.  At least she looks good standing on the beach for a while in between the icky green screen scenes.

Truly – T3T…

Blur doesn’t look cool or retro either, it just looks like your cameraperson has no fucking idea what they’re doing.

Hwaran – Love!

They got so lazy here that they couldn’t even be bothered projecting any image onto the green screen for half the scenes.  That’s what they call “keeping it real” I guess.

BONUS RANDOM VIDEO OF THE WEEK

The Most Beautiful Quarantine In Life: parts 1 and 2 – fanfiction reading

If you like the idea of Kpopalypse fanfiction but don’t actually like reading things, how about having someone else read it for you?  YouTuber “A Lost Idiot” reads the most recent Kpopalypse fanfiction in two parts.  I’m blown away that someone did this and I think it’s very cool, especially how she’s actually printed out the fanfiction pages and is reading them from a folder, that’s got so much more style and literary mojo than just staring at a screen and reading.  Turn it up nice and loud because she’s very quiet, I promise she probably doesn’t scream and jump-scare you when it gets to the gory parts.   

---

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