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

CL – Spicy

CL’s “strong Asian queen” gimmick is a little more palatable than Lim Kim’s version of the same because at least CL has put in some throne time over the years, but regardless this is another song which is a beat, about three notes, and nothing else, and we’ve already had too many of these this year.

Lee Hi – Only

I guess now that Lee Hi is on AOMG we’re going to get Jay Park levels of productivity out of her now, which is kind of cool but it’s probably also going to mean a distinct lack of quality control.

Everglow – Promise

Hey Everglow’s song for UNICEF is actually pretty good, I wonder if they’ll start doing business deals with the regimes that kill the same children that UNICEF is trying to save, like BTS did, who knows, guess we’ll find out in due course.

Youha – Ice T

Sadly not a tribute to the O.G but just some song that’s lame and sounds like everything.  Isn’t it sad that on YouTube when you search “Ice-T” this song comes up before almost everything in Ice-T’s entire catalog, good rap music really is dead in 2021.

BTOB – Outsider

If I were Outsider I’d release a new song called BTOB just to fuck with people.

Key feat. Taeyeon – Hate that…

The song continually sounds like it’s building up to something great but never gets there, just spinning its wheels in 3-3-2 land all the way through.

Kwon Eunbi – Door

The woman with the second-best boobs in k-pop according to readers unfortunately doesn’t have even close to the second-best tune.

Kang Hyewon – First Love Letter

So nondescript that it barely even exists, I’m not even sure if it counts.  It’s here anyway just so people don’t bother me to include it later.

Mirae – Splash

Bland, ultra-slow boy-pop just like everyone else’s.

Jay B feat. Jay Park – B.T.W

I’m going to need one hell of a good moodboard to improve my mood and stimulate some ideas and things for the rest of this roundup after sitting through this boring trash.

Woodz – Lullaby

There was some potential here especially with that chorus sound but too much R&B-ing over the top dulls any potential impact.

Kim Sawol – Someone Like You

Not too horrible but nothing really happens that’s all that exciting either.

Yujeong & Soyeon – The Prayer

Singing a shit ballad is no way to gain sympathy for a political cause.  I can hear the Myanmarians right now looking at this and going “no, stop the ballads, you’ll just make them hate us even more!”

Dain – No Filter

Apparently Dain is from that group Eternity where they’re all creepy ugly CGI avatars, like Aespa but with even less effort.  I can’t work out from watching this if she’s had a serious face upgrade or if that’s actually a real person, but the song is garbage so I stopped caring pretty quickly.

Pastel Girls – Filial Daughter Simcheong

If you think that intro is confusing, wait until the music starts.

Kang Seung Sik – Look for the Silver Lining

I actually saw this guy’s group Victon live, if I knew being there was going to make him this miserable a few years later I would have stayed home just for the sake of his mental health.

Bookku Ddoong feat. Ravi – Shy Ddoong

The Korean sense of humour flies right over my head once again.  Is “look, the guys are in pink wigs looking like girls hue hue, omg lolz how funny lmao” actually supposed to be “the joke” or is there something super-intellectual here that I’m missing?

DPR Live – Summer Tights

Nice little twist two thirds of the way through the song, pity the journey to get there is boring as fuck.

Sucozy, Shin Su Bin – Paradise

I guess now that the shipping crate with all the diagonal-frets-guitars in it has finally made it to Seoul after being stuck in a Shanghai port for 6 months due to COVID, this is what we’re going to see a lot of in music videos from now on.

Goldcola – Trouble Maker

If you’re going to bring a Flying V into a music video there has to be a guitar solo.  Those are the rules.

Bba – Hey Disco

How does anyone think this sounds good?  Everyone stop lying to her and just tell her that she’s rubbish, you’ll be doing her a favour.

South Carnival feat. Kang Huh Dalrim – Seoul Woman

Many readers probably weren’t around for the disgusting early 90’s “soul revival” spearheaded by generically crap film The Committments and the ridiculous overplaying of that horrid soundtrack as the music world tried their best to make everyone forget that Public Enemy existed.  Mustang Sally, you’d better fuck that Mustang off.

Seong Jiwon – Laundry Day

This lazy video and dull, nondescript song about doing the laundry is still better than 95% of roundup this week.

SingersBB – Beginner Driving

I’m disturbed by the lack of OH&S compliance, he really should be wearing a helmet.  Sure they look dumb and are annoying but the only reason why you don’t hear about all the fatalities due to lack of helmet-wearing is dead people don’t tend to post on social media about how dumb they are.

Tory – Fickle Person

Almost in Portishead territory, just a little bit further that way would have been great.

Ju Hyun Mi Jazz Project – Cloudy Rain

When you see “jazz project” in the title you can pretty much just save yourself the click.  I should have done the same.

E-Boss – Gazua

Imagine twiddling knobs on a DJ desk as if it’s actually doing something, it would have been a lot better if he showed us how he actually made the music.

Achtung – Be The Man 2021

Wow he looks kind of like John Lennon.  What a curse, let’s all be really kind to him.

Jungtune, Woojae – Highball Dreams

It looks cool until you realise pretty much all of the sound is just coming from the laptop on the table.

Ember Records – Ember

You’d think if you were going to showcase your label you’d pick a better beat.

From All To Human, Coffee Big – My Sweety

I nearly deleted this straight away because it had “coffee” in the title but then I thought “wait, what if it’s good” and pressed ctrl+z and had a listen.  Needless to say I should have went with my first instinct.

Changjo – Hurting U

He’s hurting me alright.

Nlve – Maybe I Wanna Die

…and this other guy is making me wanna die.

Chung Chung Salon – Seek Damages

I should definitely seek damages for the emotional distress caused by this week’s crappy songs.

Yegny feat. Huckleberry P – Better Rush

Have I seen this video before or is it just because everyone poses in cars like that now with that stupid hair.

YongYong – Rain Star

A good song tries hard to climb out from under all the Autotuned vocal mush and doesn’t quite get there.  This song would have been fantastic if it had about 30% of the singing that it does.

Baada, Lanalogue – Caffeine

I’ve been replaying the original Deus Ex lately and this video looks like it was shot in any one of the 237 generic grey/blue warehouses in that game, complete with mesh fences and pallets placed randomly around for no reason.  Yet somehow the song still manages to be boring and about coffee.  Someone pass me the GEP gun, let’s liven things up.

MoonyCuumy – Laundry Villain

Okay we have talking socks now.  I guess I can deal.

Gracy feat. Lee Sunny – Bury

No more videos from the uncanny valley stare woman, okay?  The videos are all just the same thing in different clothes and the songs are never any good.  Enough now, she’s starting to creep me out.

Jang Haerang – You Are The Only Ocean

Possibly one of the ugliest green screen videos I’ve ever seen, despite nothing in it actually being that ugly.  It’s the combination that does it for me, I think.

Nody Cika – Birthday

My girlfriend just made this laksa and even though I hate eating laksa because it’s so messy, it’s quite good and hers is better than any restaurant laksa.  That has nothing to do with this song which is just worthless R&B trash music that encapsulates everything wrong with society like all R&B music always does, so I’m not drawing any witty analogies here or anything, the song sucks and that’s basically it, I just wanted to talk about something more interesting for a while.

Lee Hanchul x Now feat. Golani Club – Golani Disco

Okay, what is this shit.  Every time something is billed as a “project” I get fearful.

If Enough – Boss

Imagine having four people in your group and actually choosing to play trap instead of literally any other music style.  Girls, you do realise that the reason why trap sounds like total shit is because it’s lazily programmed on a drum machine in literally about five seconds, yeah?

Ha Hyunsang – Burning Sunset

Here we go with some hardcore serious jumping around.  I’m not sure if the tone of the song really justifies it, but it’s fun to watch and it keeps me entertained.

Wang Hae Kyoung – See Re Rung

Painful disco crap, sort of like “Walking On Thin Ice” except that Yoko Ono was married to a wifebeating piece of shit so she had an excuse.

Lee Chan Won – Convenient Store

Okay, I don’t have anything snarky to say, now can someone fill me in on why this song is so popular please.

Loco feat. George – Just Like This

Maybe hanging out with Hyomin long enough to cut the rap on “Nice Body” made Loco go literally loco from blue balls and run off into the woods to become a trap incel.

Penomeco – Shy (eh o)

The usual fucking warble warble bullshit.  P Nation is a good idea but I’m yet to hear any good music from it.

Penomeco feat. YDG – Bolo

This isn’t any better.

Lil Cherry & Goldbuuda – Chicken Bang Bang

The drum and bass doesn’t really work that well here, but it still sounds a hell of a lot better than the garbage Lil Cherry usually does, so I calmly accept.

N.O.L.Y – Hood by air

Imagine showing your kids your Autotuned trap video with your lame poses in 30 years time.  Let’s see if your kids will respect their bedtime curfew or spend it staying up late making parody videos of your dumb ass.

Jiwoo – Lustre

This week’s “I’m the bass player and I’m going to try and make this shit song interesting if it kills me” submission.

Soo-Yeony – Love u too much!

I’m surprised she didn’t run into Leeseul on that beach, she spends so much time there.

Ara – Reason

Sure, cassette walkmans are impractical hipster trash because people old enough to know remember how temperamental they were, but CD walkmans were even worse, because the spin-up to play a CD is so draining on your batteries that you can barely get through a full album before the thing dies while you’re using it.  Let’s not start a CD walkman revival, the world probably doesn’t have enough battery supply left.

Kim Hyoeun & Yunjeong – Dive

When I brought up this video I accidentally muted it because I misclicked the play button and I really should have quit while I was ahead.

Choi Cello – Thirsty

Speaking of things that suck like CD walkmans, Telecasters are crap.  You realise the reason the Stratocaster exists is because customers complained about the Telecaster so much that Fender had to improve their shitty design?  And to think there are people out there these days who play Telecasters by choice, and even insist on stupid vintage design choices like the three-saddle bridge which means you can never get the thing quite in tune.  (Leeseul’s Avril Lavigne Telecaster doesn’t count because at least it has only one pickup and a coil split.)

Cielogroove feat. Siyeon, Eson – U

Hey newsflash – Ariaz still exist!  I hope they’ve cleaned their whiteboard by now.

Due – Drawback

Some really interesting backing track ideas completely wasted on generic hip-hop fluff.

Rockit Girl – Surfin Yang Yang (acoustic version)

The weekly Rockit Girl video has Leeseul and that other girl they recently hired to do all the actual vocals after Della left in the pool together and Leeseul is actually upstaged.  I know, right?  I wouldn’t have believed it if I didn’t see it for myself.  Whoever is behind this group is a marketing genius, all they have to do is pump out a video like this once a week and victory will be theirs eventually.

BONUS RANDOM VIDEO OF THE WEEK

Yua Mikami – cosplay shooting

Enjoy still-queen-of-the-kpops and Kpopalypse bias Honey Popcorn’s Yua Mikami in various popular cosplay concepts.  What a shame that we haven’t seen any of these in Honey Popcorn’s videos yet, I guess fans will just have to catch her in more award-winning drama performances in the meantime.

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