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

Lisa – Lalisa

A deliberately minimalist dance song smartly custom-built for Blackpink’s eventual return to stadiums, with little demands on the performer or the listener, so Lisa can phone in the vocals onstage and milk the track for maximum gymnastic effect.  I also like how it’s lightly dusted with the tiniest of nods to Lisa’s Thai heritage so all the shit k-pop sites who care only about superficial fluff instead of music can write their “15 ways Lisa is so woke” engage-with-us-you-dumb-fan-fuckheads articles, and every fan with an opinion and the ability to string words together can write their overreaching cultural appropriation/appreciation essays.  If only YG were as good at consistently manipulating their music as they are at manipulating their fandoms.

TXT feat. Mod Sun – 0X1=Lovesong (I Know I Love You) (Emocore Mix)

The washed-out guitars ruin some of the impact of the original in this needless remix.

Hyuna & Dawn – Ping Pong

Probably the best thing either of these two have done since leaving their respective groups, but I’m still not really sold on it.

LeeHi feat. Yoon Mirae – Red Lipstick

Lee Hi looks great these days and YG not giving her anything to do for like a decade will always remain a mystery, at least until 2059 when she’s finally allowed to talk about it.

Mamamoo – Don’t Be Happy 2021

Only worth checking out for the seriously upgraded visuals, the stripes usage on Solar is next level, she should do a video about it.

Monsta X – One Day

One day Monsta X will be able to upstage their ex-groupmate, but today is not that day.

Red Velvet – Hello, Sunset!

Album filler trash that barely even qualifies for roundup at all.  Do something proper and stop wasting our time.

Purple Kiss – Zombie

A pretty good song with a kicking rhythm track, only let down by a slightly underfed chorus.

Rocket Punch – Let’s Dance

Just too sunny and bright for its own good, a screaming distorted guitar would have saved it.

Ateez – White Love

I’m not sure what they were going for with the weird jazz vibe but a video that looked anything other than like this one would have been great.

Stray Kids – Cheese

“What’s so funny about a headache?” ask Stray Kids, and it’s a good question.  I actually do have a headache while writing this and I’d appreciate these cunts not adding to the problem, cheers.

Stray Kids – Sorry, I Love You

I’m sorry too.

Bibi – Pado

I’d just like to say in the name of OH&S compliance that I am down for giving Bibi chest compressions on the beach if she should ever require it.

2PM – With Me Again

Probably the most uptempo 2PM have been in years, not sure if that’s saying much though.

Seunghee & Jeong Sewoon – Flip It

Flip it off.

Mirae – Bang-Up

Nothing all that great in terms of catchiness but at least the tempo is there.

Omega X – Baila Con Ox

Another song with an agreeably fast pace, more of this please.  Just a pity that it sounds like my high-school orchestra trying to be a k-pop, everything’s so crowded with extra brass layers that don’t really add anything.  A bit of stripping back would have worked wonders.

Ichillin’ – Got’ya

The leaden verse beat sets the tone at “plodding and boring”, by the time the chorus appears it’s too late.

Megamax – Painted Love

Megamax is a cool name for any group in any style but their songs feels decidedly un-maxed.

Luminous – Run

Some reasonably okay melody writing which doesn’t just sound like the usual pentatonic improvised mess helps the track a lot, and the boobs-harnesses are also widely in effect, so there’s something for everyone here.

Ferry Blue – Call My Name

A song with a ton of ideas, but the problem with writing a song like this is that the more ideas you throw in, the more chance one of them will be shit enough to ruin the song completely.  Maybe keeping it all a bit more simple and in line with the chorus would have helped.

Artbeat – Lovefool

This looks like a bunch of girls 50 years in the future doing Gfriend circa 2015 live-action roleplay, like they’re trying to recreate the spirit but too much time has passed historically and nobody quite knows how it was done anymore.  The girl on the right didn’t even turn up in the right clothes but she’s a friend so the others let her be in the group anyway.

Nell – U-hee

Nell had that song last week that was really quite good but they also had this other song that wasn’t.  Not sure why I noticed one and only noticed the other just now but whatever, serves me right for being nice to a group I guess – that’ll teach me, won’t it.

Shin Hyunhee – Happy!

This is the girl from Seenroot, being insufferably shit for some reason.  My girlfriend just came into the room coughing and it sounded better than whatever sub-ragtime crap she’s showing down our throat. 

Baek A Yeon – 0%

Seems like 0% effort was put into this song so I’m going to spend 0% of my energy writing this review.

Sungmin – Goodnight, Summer

There’s quite a lot of fairly high-profile songs this week.  Pity they’re all fucking bullshit.

Adoy – Antihero

Look at these bitches stealing toilet paper, they’re the reason why I can’t find any during lockdown.  If you’re not going to mail it to my P.O Box, put it back where you found it!

Hong Ju Hyun – Flower

When you’re some nugu making a song, you pretty much have to put your faith in the video production team.  They’ll say “don’t worry, we’ll make this look cool during editing and post-production, you’ll see” and you just kind of have to hope like fuck that they’re right, because you don’t know how it’s going to turn out really until it does, and then the money’s already spent and it’s too late to change anything.

DaDaBoo – Into You

Cat at 2:10 steals the show and definitely looks better than anything else here.  It also sounds better.  “But… you can’t hear the cat?”   Correct.

General SSO – Esp

“SSO” has to be an acronym for some kind of insult.

Deul – False Hope

Hey singer guy get out of the way of the earthworks, we’ve got a freighter to unstick you know.

LowpassIndustry – Ordinary People

The fast sections are cool but the more ethereal parts don’t match with them at all.  They must have had a fight in the studio about what kind of song to do and worked out a shitty compromise I guess.

21univ. – Totally My Style

This is actually a pretty pleasant mid-tempo chill song with nice melody, it makes me want to go to the local park and set my cat loose so it can go mauling pigeons.

Liel – I Don’t Want to Move Out

Someone ask the landlord to ring the police, the idiot from downstairs is singing again.

Meaningful Stone – Dancing In The Rain

The Smashing Pumpkins mostly sucked and so does this.

Bandmaroo – Lonely

I can’t decide if that’s a really ugly girl or a really unfunny guy, but either way this is another example of Korean humour that misses the mark completely.

Doorlesshouse – Space Center

I’m really over people fucking around with analog synths just to make crap so it’s good when someone actually makes something resembling a song.

Sulgi – The Last Travel

Dwelph just linked me a cool Merzbow track and then the neighbour started with the fucking leaf-blower again, and those two things kind of cancelled each other out and my headache went with it.  All that was left was this song which really isn’t all that good but I feel a bit nicer towards it now that I don’t want to trepan my skull to let the pressure out.

Low High Low – Singer Layla

If you’re not Jimi Hendrix, you can’t do things that sound like “the Hendrix chord”.  Those are the rules, I didn’t make them.

illoo – Just The Way I Am

If you put on 3D glasses this video apparently turns into DASD-865.

Scott Brenner – You Must Increase

All the yucky greasy white people bringing their crap religion and shit rock-preaching culture to Korea and wrecking everything have a lot to answer for.  This type of bullshit is why we can’t control COVID, everyone thinks that if they just get together in a room and produce enough “healing energy” the germs will get zapped by the miracle rays and go bye-bye.  There’s probably enough virus to kill a continent in one of this guy’s nasal hairs.  If Christ was alive he’d tell you all to shut the fuck up.

FreezyBone with UU Milan – FreezyVogue

I guess completely butchering traditional Korean music so it sounds like a generic dance track with lame raps is one way of promoting it.

Luli Lee – About Summer

Definitely the best Luli Lee song yet.  A Fender P-bass isn’t even all that large and it’s huge compared to her, she must be tiny as fuck.  I guess that might help her when it’s time drop the pick halfway through and rip out complex slap lines while singing at the same time – don’t ask for a bass cover of this, I know when I’m outmatched.

Dawon – Cherrish

Yeah the bossanova trend is here folks, but it’s the nugus picking up on it instead of Everglow or whoever.  JYP paved the way.

Bamsem – Alex

Super-cool visual style and very eclectic music from someone I’ve never heard of.  I’m not sure if I “like” it yet but I appreciate the effort to do something different.

GEMma – Meself + After The Rain

Two songs, neither of which are that great, but damn she’s attractive.  If my band was playing with her and she came off stage and asked me what I thought of her music I’d feel under pressure to be really honest and say “I really like your look but can your music be less of a bland mush” just out of respect.

Wonstein – Magic Stone

This song makes me not want to go to the gym for a month.

Triss – In My Palm

Not that bad but just a bit too syrupy.

Nafla – Mobb Tang

Nafla is one of those rappers who occasionally gets it very, very right, which makes it even more mystifying how he manages to suck so badly the rest of the time.

Yoon Seo Ryeong – A Love That Speaks

Nothing good happening in trot this week, in the unlikely event that you were wondering.

Gray feat. meenoi – Eternal Sunshine

Just checking in on Gray and he’s still wasting carbon by powering up microphones and assuming anybody gives a shit.

Sujin feat. Ryu Sera – Signs to Break Up

No song with a video featuring two people sitting in chairs facing away from each other at 90 degree angles was ever any good.

Lee Kyungmin – Baptism of Blues

That long sustained Autotune note in the chorus is just a no.

Panthepack – Buzz

This whole thing is just a no.

Gari – Blues Cluster

This rhythm track really needed a songwriter to intervene and actually do something with it.

Damye – Snap Snap Snap

These 3D computer avatars do not look cute just stop it.

Shuuu – Samot

If someone comes up to you randomly on the street and tries to sell you some bland acoustic pop from someone you’ve never heard of, shuuu them away. 

oceanfromtheblue feat. SOLE – Icy Girl

That nowhere music everybody hates.

Heldtum & WayL – Stockholm Syndrome

There is not a single live rap album anywhere that is any good, and the reason why is the dumb audio engineers always crank the vocals super loud in the mix while the beat is toned down in volume until it is the meekest of shadows in the background.  I have no idea why this is common mixing practice for live rap music, but as a result, to this day there is no such thing as a “good” hip-hop concert album or video, or at least if there is, I definitely haven’t seen it.  Anyway this song has the same problem, with a reasonably good beat buried too far back in the mix for anyone to actually appreciate. 

S1ne – Uncharted

Here’s the bossanovas again.  All my Brazilian readers are like “I told you this shit trend was coming, we’ve had to put up with this trash for years now it’s your turn”.

Kim Jin – Down

Are you bored yet?

Veautiful Biew feat. Boil – Dumped

Whoever thought that “Veautiful Biew” was a cool artist name needs to be pushed off a cliff into the oucking fcean.

Jung Whale – At The End Of Our Memories, We’ve Met Again.

If ballet is hurting you that damn much, stop crying and just take a five minute break or something, maybe give yourself a foot spa.  It’s not anybody else’s fault.

Duckbae – Redemption

Here’s a rare example of how to use Autotune correctly – instead of using it to warble like a stupid bitch, try using it to fit into the song’s harmony part.  Good job.

Poppin Juno feat. Hyukmi – On The Floor

About fifteen people all linked me this one.  I’m digging the C&C Music Factory vibes, do you know how much we laughed at that group for being the shit that they were back in the 90s?  It got so pervasive and so bad that even the decent rap groups back then started taking the piss.  It’s good as a one-off but we don’t want this to become a trend, trust me on that.  You think the bossanova’s bad…

Rockit GIrl – Violet Fragrance

Here to save roundup once again, Rockit Girl come back with a rejigged version of an old pre-idol song, given the usual Rockit Girl treatment of big drums, scooped guitars, wimpy vocals double-tracked just so they can compete in the mix, and the usual low-effort gravure porn that Leeseul excels at.  Did anything else even come out this week?  

THE BIAS LIST WILL BE FAPPING AT LEAST FOUR TIMES PER DAY ALL THIS WEEK SECTION

Golden Child – Fanfare

It’s kind of slightly above average okay-ish, which I guess means that it’s going to make The Bias List‘s top 10 songs of the year.

Y & Jangjun – Poppin’

I guess he’s wetting himself right now because the entirety of Golden Child seems to be in more than one comeback this week.

Joochan & Bomin – Singing In The Rain

At the start of this video two people are actually fighting over who gets to read the back cover of a Friends DVD.  That tells you all you need to know about the boring no-life people this shit is aimed at (no offence to TBL as I really don’t think he’s the target audience for this anyway).

Seungmin & Donghyun & Jaehyun – That Feeling

Messing around on some random beach is very much nugu territory for k-pop music videos, there should be signs at the beach saying “no A-listers or B-listers allowed”.  Oh wait, these are Golden Child members, I guess it’s okay then.

Daeyeol – Out The Window

Who’s dick did this guy have to suck to be the only Golden Child member to have a solo song instead of a subunit?  Look at the next Woollim corporate function photo collection for the exec with bleach-blonde stains on the front of his pants I guess.

TAG & Jibeom – Game

None of these sings are notably good or bad, by the way, although this is probably the pick of a fairly limp bunch… at least until the inevitable trap comes crashing in to ruin everything after the first chorus, right on schedule.

BONUS RANDOM VIDEOS OF THE WEEK

BTS feat. Megan Thee Stallion – Butter

No idea what all the fuss was about, and no idea how this fairly generic rap verse benefits either Megan or BTS given how huge both of them already are, it’s not like either of them needed the publicity.  While certainly a marginal improvement to the song because it’s just a little less “smooth like butter” now, it hardly feels like anything worth taking legal action over.

Jihyo Is Too Thiccc To Do This

The pain of being bigger than average is real.  People only ever look at the upside, but the reality is that there’s so many activities that other people take for granted that you can’t enjoy in quite the same way.  The top comment is wrong, Jihyo doesn’t need “protection” (she’s a grown-ass adult, stop trying to make her into a child inside your head, you pedo) what she needs is “support”.

Eimi Fukada and Moko Sakura talk about some stuff

I don’t know what’s going on here but I thought I’d share.  Eimi Fukada’s YouTube channel is definitely worth a follow and this week she invites Honey Popcorn’s Moko Sakura along to talk about stuff and things.  I have no idea what’s going on but EDIT: a lovely reader of mine just told me what was going on, here it is!

Quick summary of the eimi fukada and moko sakura video, sharing because I thought it was really interesting

things that happen a lot to JAV actresses

(0:40) get sent dick pics a lot (esp. erected, including the context of the erection)

(1:50) if an external sound like ambulances, dogs or kids playing is heard during filming, they pause the filming until the sound can’t be heard anymore (wow there’s no sound insulation in these studios???). Especially when there are children playing outside, there shouldn’t be any kind of resemblance of a child’s voice on the recording because it might be labeled as cp so they definitely want to avoid that. They getting close to one another is an example of the awkardness that fills the air when this happens. It’s also forbidden to put words that display the age or hint to the fictional age of the girl like “grade/middle/high school student” on the cover, in these cases only “student” is allowed.

(3:47) they drink a special kind of tea that’s really diuretic to make them “squirt” (sorry not used to jav lingo so that might not be it, it’s called shio/brine btw) better during filming

(4:33) during threesome scenes when they have to suck on both dicks if one of them is smelly or difficult to swallow they tend to stick to the other one

(5:45) there was a trend of jav girls spreading capsaicin on their lips to make they seem fuller during filming but that made the actors suffer a lot because it feels like the girls sucking are rubbing red pepper against their thing (eimi is reproducing the actors’ face)

(6:40) they don’t eat a lot during deep throat filmings to avoid vomiting

Thanks for your services in caonima action, anon!

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