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

Lunarsolar – Da Da Da

A vaguely acceptable chorus tries hard, but that “da da da” chant section sounds so utterly dogshit that I’m not sure anything could have forgiven it.

Bae173 – Loved You

Bae173 might have stolen their awful name from the almost-as-awfully-named NCT 127, but their new song still brings surprising quality by drawing heavily from BigBang at their pre-sex-criminal peak.

OnlyOneOf – LibidO

This looks very pro-gay on the surface, but thinking about it more, I’m actually not so sure.  There’s something about getting the guy who happens to have long hair and making him the token gay fanservice love interest in the video that doesn’t sit right with me.  It’s like the people who were constantly calling me “faggot” and beating the crap out of me because I had long hair in my high school days decided to make a music video to prove to me how justified their violence was. 

StayC – ASAP

StayC’s long awaited follow up to the excellent “So Bad“, is actually… so bad.  And I don’t mean “bad meaning good”.

StayC – So What

Covering non-feature tracks – always a waste of time.  The songs are pretty much never any good, and even when they’re bad there’s nothing interesting to say.  Zero value was added.  I didn’t forget your bias, I just ignored them.  Next.

SHINee – Atlantis

Kind of ear-grating, where they constantly hang the melody on the third all the time, and that weird beat isn’t doing it any favours.

WJSN – Rewind

The person who sent this in tells me that the girl at 0:27 (sorry I dunno who she is) has a lisp, but I didn’t notice.  I was too busy noticing other things, like how I could barely even see anybody in this video due to the overuse of soft focus, or how one girl really drew the short straw with blue jeans, or how the song sucks.

Davichi – Just Hug Me

Someone should hug me while I cry and remember that Davichi actually had a couple upbeat songs back in 2010 or so.

Gowoon – Weird

The hot girl from Berry Good who isn’t the hot girl that everybody knows, or the other hot girl that only I and three other people care about, has a song and it’s kind of dull.

SuperM – We Do

It’s clever how the group are called SuperM and they’re doing their song in a laundrette, which is obviously the perfect place to get rid of stray ejaculate stains.

Kim Jaehwan – I Wouldn’t Look For You

That’s good, I don’t need that restraining order now I guess.

Elris – Miss U

“Photo MV” usually means “you fans are so deluded and in love with us that you’ll treat some crappy 240p fancam shots like your precious family photo album, you mentally sick poor deluded incels, also here you go, have this shit song”.

Yukika – Insomnia

Obviously it’s just another “shitty pop” track like all of her other ones, but I like it how the bass here is pretty much just playing whatever.  Nobody told the band that this wasn’t just a slowed-down, de-funked version of “Dean Town” and that someone was eventually going to cut some super-uninteresting vocal parts over the top.

D-Crunch – My Name

Just another slow boy-pop song that drags its feet endlessly for no discernable reason.

Dreamcatcher – Eclipse

I love it how the song is all fast and punchy, but the girls themselves are just kind of standing around barely even moving while people take photos for some overpriced photobook that Asian Junkie is going to buy like 20 of.  It’s the polar opposite to the D-Crunch song and all the boy-pop where the song plods along at 30 BPM but the performers are practically giving themselves hernias.

Chanyeol – Tomorrow

The worst way to record an acoustic guitar is to just plug the fucking thing straight into the mixing board when you’ve got one of those shitty built-in piezo bridge pickups.  A surefire way to make a $2000 acoustic guitar sound like a $200 acoustic guitar.

Henry – Trust Your Pace

You know how you get somewhere on time?  You don’t rush like a stupid bitch, instead you leave earlier.  Gosh that was easy.  I just eradicated the need for this song.

Aiya – Dinghowa

One of those videos where I feel like I’m missing out on some huge in-joke, but I guess it’s a mildly entertaining watch even if the song is bad.

Skull ft Mommy Son – Whoo

The best thing that both Skull and Mad Clown sorry I mean Mommy Son have done in years.

Amber Liu ft. Blow Fever – Neon

I guess Amber isn’t “problematic” anymore, or something, making her the only female in the history of k-pop to be forgiven for anything, ever.

Park Ki Young – I’m Not Ok

I was doing just fine but then I heard this weird funk/gospel hybrid with far too much singing in it and now I’m not okay either.

IGHT – Paper

The music is as unlistenable as the video is unwatchable, but paired together they’re quite thematically in-sync and actually make quite a bit of sense.

Pleasepleaseplease – Dive

When he went up to the roof of that building I expected to see Loona.  What a waste of a climb.

BE’O – Bad Love

Nothing much happening here – a snappy beat can’t make a bad song average…

Knoa – Ticket

…but it can make an average song better than average.  The use of rhythm here is making the tune a bit more interesting than the usual coffee-shop whatever that it would otherwise probably sound like.

Ha Dong Qn – Here I Am

It’s not that great but I like it how Blockberry are just renting out different parts of their Tesla-built fortress for nugu videos.

Minhye J – Knock Knock

I wanted to like this because I like the performer, but the blues-based dirge going on here is not interesting to me.

Jessi, Kim Young-Im & Crispi Crunch – Kwaejina Ching Ching Nane

Breaking – Jessi is on a track that I actually like.  The combination of rappers, the beat and the traditional vocal styles works really well, this could have been disastrous if any one of these people took over completely, but they all counterbalance each other’s styles and it all works in context.

Seomingyu – Exit

How come nobody in Korean rap has beats, but this guy has all the beats – in the one song?  Come on, be fair and let others have a turn.  This is the kid who hogged the swings at the playground, all grown up and being a hip-hop.

Paloalto & pH-1 – Mungpal

These guys saw my most recent big boobs in k-pop list and clearly want to be in the running for a male version of the list.

Good Mind – Meow Song

Whereas this group just want to get in the next celebrity sex tape expose post.

BONUS RANDOM VIDEO OF THE WEEK

Someone breaks into Shannon Williams’ house during her VALORANT livestream

All k-pop news outlets missed it because they suck dicks and should be destroyed, but Shannon tweeted about this incident when it occurred and also shared some live video of it a while back.  I was kind of blown away that nobody was discussing or caring about it all that much because she’s a very relevant and newsworthy celebrity and I like her a lot, so I went over to her Twitch channel and grabbed the recording of it happening.  Shannon realises something is wrong at 2:30, and comes back to give a recap at 23:00, fortunately nobody was harmed in the incident.  You don’t see anything really happen in between those two times, maybe there’s some noises in the background, I’m not sure.  Shannon’s attitude to the whole thing is excellent in general, just like her attitude to everything always has been, and this video is a nice introduction to her personality and streaming style.  Notice in particular how vastly different her actual personality seen here is to what we used to see in MBK days, it’s quite jarring and should serve as a good reminder about how people have to self-edit when under the k-pop lens.  Also it’s worth noting that this is content I put on my YouTube channel that wasn’t tied to any specific post, and that if you haven’t subscribed to the Kpopalypse YouTube channel yet please go ahead and do that for this and other possibly interesting (or not) k-pop content that I may put up in the future if I feel like it.  Or don’t.  Thanks, caonimas!

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That’s all for this week’s roundup!  Also survey results are out so don’t forget to check them out here!  Kpopalypse will return!