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

IU – Lilac

Lots of hype, lots of chart success, lots of IU kicking ass in the video, but the song itself is just a passable beat and a whole bunch of wispy, breathy nothingness.

IU – Coin

At least “Coin” has IU singing in the non-helium-induced range but apart from some decent bass guitar it’s just another “shitty pop” number, proving that you can’t substitute aesthetics and trends for songwriting.

IU – Epilogue

And here’s the boring live stage album track that nobody cares about.  There’s a reason why I keep ignoring all your album track submissions, they’re all musically as shit as this, and with no video they’re not even vaguely interesting to write about for non-musical reasons either.  Zero entertainment value in covering this crap, so I mostly don’t.

Jackson Wang – LMLY

Jackson Wang on the other hand has an actual song this week.  Click here for a version that isn’t annoyingly broken up by some uninteresting drama bollocks, like a Hong Kong protestor’s spine after the police go to work.

Kim Sejong ft. Lilboy – Warning

Here’s a warning for you: this song is boring, play at your own risk.

Kim Sung Kyu – Hush

Hey this is cool.  It’s amazing what proper melody, harmony and texture can do when it all comes together.  IZ*ONE members may be shit at music but they’re pretty good at hanging around in the videos of other people’s much better songs, Eunbi should be having her notepad out, taking down key points to bring back to class.

Eternity – I’m Real

If you could make AI avatars look like anything you wanted, why the fuck would you choose this pig-ugly monstrosity, instead of, I don’t know, K/DA Ahri, or Demi from Subverse?  However the real problem here is the dynamics-free vocals and the crap melody they assault our ears with.  The reason why it took a week to unstick the Ever Given was they had to wait for a copy of this song’s vocal track to be shipped over to the Suez to destabilise the rocks under the boat.

Jun – Crow

He doesn’t quite get the angle on that microphone correct enough to fool me into thinking he maybe knows how to use one.

IZ*ONE – 3!4!

After listening to this I understand why IZ*ONE never had anything I liked – their producers can’t write a backing track to save themselves.  The melody is great and the result should have been glorious but it just ends up being a glorious mess because the backings they’ve used don’t fit.  Disbandment can’t come soon enough, then maybe these girls can finally move onto something decent and claw back the wasted years of their lives.

Sorn – Run

Sorn looks great in the video and it’s so cool to actually see her with some decent MV-tier screen time, but as much as I wanted to like the song it’s as generic as they come.  Is there a way I can blame Edward Aliva for this?

Wayv – Action Figure

An action figure is just a dummy with a hinge, and whoever is guiding Wayv’s creative direction is just an unhinged dummy.

Jo1 – Born To Be Wild

I was waiting for the jerk-off instructions and then I realised that they were actually the ones jerking off.

Kang Seung Yoon – Iyah

It just plods along, with a groove like Sam Brown’s “Stop” but without any of the dynamics or variety.  Not even some guitar solos to break it up or anything, despite the constant guitar presence in the video.  Weak.

Bulgogidisco ft. Bassagong – Kimchi Soup

At least it rocks a bit, but a dance track plus a gimmick does not equal a memorable song.

Harrianne – The Breach Of Self Esteem

Harrianne is about 90% hair and normally I’d rag on this for being too slow but I really think she’s going as fast as she can and if she went any faster she might break something.

Lee So Won – Mom

I’m not going to say anything bad because I reckon Lee So Won is getting bullied hardcore at school for this video.  I just get that vibe for some reason – maybe it’s the pristine pink uniform, that looks like her mom really ironed it down, I bet the other kids draw permanent marker on it when she has her back turned.  Let’s just move on and not make her life any more difficult than it already is.

Seo Jieum – Pluto

Some interesting sounds, but sadly coupled with some very uninteresting vocal melodies.  Why create cool soundscapes and just meander all over them like this.

SHINee – Don’t Call Me (Fox Stevenson remix)

Oh shit SHINee just had their best song in years, we’d better put out a remix where we completely ruin it with generic drum and bass beats so k-pop audiences don’t start to expect quality on a continual basis, because that would be tragic.

Kangta – Freezing

Let’s just remove all R&B from the world completely, using some sort of Australian-gun-control-style worldwide buyback-and-destruction scheme.  The price of losing the three maybe kinda good R&B songs that exist will be worth purging the planet of the 2395687 shit ones.

Lees2un – Butterfly

Somehow this nugu has just basically created something that sounds exactly like a mega budget SM boy group solo comeback.

Donna – Oh, Daisy!

Sorry Donna you’re too late for part 7 of the series, you’re going to have to wait for part 14 coming in 2030 or so.

Soyeon – Interview

Nobody liked T-ara because of songs like this.  Grab a tissue, wipe your face down, get it together, come back with something that sounds less like your pet hamster just died.

AcouRain – Picnic

Hey this is kind of nice actually and it’s probably no coincidence that the vocals are by Lim Haram, remember her from the best of 2020 list?  She’s going to pave the way for your oppars one day.

DPR IAN – Scaredy Cat

Eh.

Youha – Zzzz

Accurate song title of the week.

Earth Kim – Say What You Want

Okay then – this song sucks.

Shy – Within Flowing Time

I feel the time that I have to offer my ears in listening to this, flowing right out the fucking door.

Motte – Walk

Garbage right from the very first guitar strum.  A moratorium on seventh chords please.

M.C The Max – In Dreams

I first heard of this guy when he did a song with E.via which actually wasn’t bad and I thought maybe he was some badass.  How wrong was I.

Mew – Ghosting

I think I’ll be ghosting whoever wrote this, excuse me while I delete all my social networking and change my phone number.

Jisokury – Light Chaser

Oh come on.  It’s 2021, decent cameras are available, stop putting stupid filters on everything you’re fooling nobody.

Mugung – Eternity

I’m not sure if I’ve got this guy’s name right but this strikes me as the type of thing Lim Kim has been trying to do for the last few years and completely bombing at.  This guy does kind of get it right though, it’s about time someone did.

Eldon – Monster

The video seemed to have an interesting concept and I tried to watch it about ten times but each time the music was so fucking boring that I got distracted and ended up doing something else instead, so don’t even ask me what happens in the last two thirds of this.

LambC – Jelly

I can never tell whether these bands are trying to look bored as some kind of ironic pose or if they actually hate their own music just as much as I do.

MLMA – My Future Gonna Kill It

Maybe she’s right, but her present sure isn’t killing it.

Hello Ga-Young – Spring Is Gone By Chance

Shitty song but I just thought I’d put it here to show that even a crappy k-pop coffee shop music video knocked up in two days on Flash player has less lazy animation quality than almost all Japanese anime.

Seodo – David

The guy he’s painting has got this great expression of “what the FUCK were you thinking when you wrote this song” on his face and it just conveys my mood brilliantly.

Aoora – Come Close To Me

Easily the best song from Aoora.  What’s with all the YouTube comments with people going off about some Amanda chick, someone fill me in on that please.

Kik5o – Voyager

She’s actually annoying to listen to for the same reason that “Eternity” are annoying to listen to.  Have we found the person responsible?

Ref Yard – Break Ground

Notable mainly for one of the most deliberately ugly videos I’ve ever seen.  Maybe they think this looks good but surely not.

U Sung Eun – I’ll Listen

Imagine ruining hanbok style with R&B music.  That’s like putting vegemite in chocolate.

BONUS RANDOM VIDEO OF THE WEEK

The entertainment worker Lee Jidong – I’ll Present My Dream

IU pretends to be an office worker giving a visual presentation about IU’s Lilac concept, in some bizarre attempt at humour that seems mostly lost in translation from my end.  The eye-gougingly intense Powerpoint slides are so brutal that even IU herself can’t read them despite the fact that she’s the one who created them, but it does go some way towards explaining the video’s sheer randomness, even if it’s probably all bullshit and she just wanted an excuse to beat up some dudes in an Oldboy setting for kicks.  In any event this video is still more entertaining than any actual music she put out this week.

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That’s all for this week, Kpopalypse roundup will return next week!  In the meantime the latest Kpopalypse survey is still live, CLICK HERE if you want to have your say on important topics facing the world of k-pop and Kpopalypse readers!