Welcome to the clearing house post!  Let’s look at all the bullshit music that missed roundups this year!  Well, okay not ALL the bullshit music, that would be impossible… but maybe about 0.1% of it!  Yay!

 

NEW BULLSHIT

NCT 2021 – Beautiful

The pandemic’s not over yet, you dickheads.  Imagine gathering every member of your multi-national group conglomerate at once to spread the virus together right when the latest strain of it is kicking in.

Aespa – Dreams Come True

Screechy, bland and dull, nothing worth even talking about.  If “Savage” was a mish-mash of everything, this is a mish-mash of nothing.

Hwasa – FOMO

Full marks for the thigh-exposing outfit which only Hwasa could pull off, pity the song is so junk that even the producer thought it was a good idea to turn off the backing track halfway through.

Minho – Heartbreak

Just boring.  What’s he doing burning cars out in the desert, wasn’t he supposed to be going to kwangya with his SM friends or something.

MapleStory X AKMU – We Are All Adventurers

AKMU looking very very uncomfortable trying to be “rock” or something.  They just don’t know how the rock thing works, do they.  Someone should show them.

Everglow – Don’t Speak

This is ripping off a western song, I can’t remember which one.  Anyway, that’s the main problem with it because they particular western song absolutely fucking sucks – when they deviate from the formula it’s not too bad.

Tri.be – The Bha Bha Song

Despite the terrifying concept, it’s not too bad because that “baa baa” melody is pretty catchy, if they didn’t stupidly include the pointless half-time drop they might have even squeezed an honourable mention out of this.

Moonbyul – Chemistry

Just more R&B, Moonbyul solos remain acceptable but underwhelming.

Rocking Doll – Rocking Doll

Definitely false advertising, there’s no rock here, just a weak combination of ideas ripped from Blackpink and 2NE1 songs, what a shame.

Oh My Girl – Shark

Oh dear.  Anything but sing a chorus, right, k-pop songwriters?  Hey, fixed it for you.

Jeon Somi – Anymore

As far as generic k-pop songs that sound too much like generic western songs for comfort, this is probably the best thing Somi’s ever done, but it’s still the kind of music I came to k-pop to get away from.  I think I already covered this one, but it sounds so generic who can even remember.

Bibi – Never Gonna Come Down

Just a rhythm track where nothing really happens and Bibi vocally meandering over the top.

Kim Hyewon – Winter Poem

All the fucking “winter concept” songs and “Christmas songs that aren’t”, I’m ignoring most of them.  They’re not even worth looking at.  Ten seconds of listening to this will convince you that I’m right.

NCT U – Sweet Dream

And if Hyewon’s song won’t convince you that ALL this stuff is a waste of time, CUN T’s song sure will.

Pixy – Call Me

Boring nonsense, and what’s with the colour choices?  Tartan looks great without any fancy colour trickery, so why wash it out with weird colorisation that makes everything look like a herpes outbreak.

Onewe, Oneus – Stay

These two groups are related?  Shows how much I pay attention to shit.  Anyway now I can tell them to fuck off together.

WEi – Wild Flower

Some actual drums instead of that horrible drum machine beat would have been enough to bring some listenability here.

Apoki feat. Lil Cherry – Shut Up Kiss Me

At first I couldn’t see the frames of Apoki’s glasses, only the clip for the nose, so I thought she was wearing one of those atmospheric breathers like in the Battlefield Earth movie, which seemed appropriate because the song is almost that bad.  Lil Cherry actually provides some welcome relief from the insipid singing though, and when the Autotuned trap-rapping part of the song is the highlight you know you’ve got problems.  At least they didn’t shoot every shot on a 30 degree angle.

The Wild Idol – If you can hear me

Song of the year… if you’re a fuckwit.

Kim Chaewol – To the Memories of April

Is this really one of the girls from April?  That group must have been a fucked up ride because she looks mentally broken here.  Someone who knows her give her a hug or something.

Lulupop & Daisy – Mystic Heart

Here we go with more painful-looking CGI avatars.  That prediction really took off like a rocket, didn’t it?

KittiB – Unicorn

Dreary as all hell, I thought it was a Christmas song at first, but the Christmas songs are actually relatively perky this year.

Woosung ft. BM – CWS

Someone, somewhere out there in the world, thinks this is cool.  Let’s find them and educate them.

Na Haeun – Butterfly

Terrifying.  I hope she’s okay.

Hyolyn – A-Ha

Not really a Christmas song despite the appearance, Hyolyn tries the doo-wops and ends up with her best song since leaving Sistar.

Saewoo in Yunhway – Rewind

The problem here is the singing, it’s just all over the track for no reason.  Backing off on the vocals would have really helped here.

Sikboy – Hercules

Probably the best thing he’s ever done thanks to the atmosphere of the backings, still not great though.

Park Se Eun – Stay Gold

Some kind of jazzy R&B thing with weird wobble-board keys and all sorts of strange stuff that doesn’t fit together.

JT & Marcus ft. Yunhway – First

I’m the first… to tell you this is trash.

Zion.T – A Gift!

If Zion.T wants to give me something nice how about a hiatus.

Johny Kwony – Rodeo Girl

Why do a “producer credit” when it’s just yourself, and you’re a mega nugu, talk about pointless.  Dude we already know you produced it yourself, it doesn’t exactly sound like there was a team behind you, and there was no way anyone else was sitting in your bedroom studio with you while you made this poop.

Lisa – Did You Ever…

Not that other Lisa but some other Lisa.  According to the submitter that’s Stellar’s Gayoung in the video but you could be forgiven for not recognising her.  I wonder if thinking of Stellar days is how she cries on cue for drama videos now… or maybe they just played her the song and she cried while begging them to make it stop.

Messgram – Animal Of Prey

Heavy enough for metalcore stuff but melodically a bit too weak to have an impact.  By the way, why can’t we have one of these groups where the girl screams and the guy does the melodic vocals just for something different?

SOME OTHER BULLSHIT I MISSED EARLIER IN THE YEAR

The vast majority of these submissions I threw out because they didn’t meet eligibility requirements.  Here’s a very small selection of what remained.

DokeV – Rockstar

I was actually well aware of this one but I skipped it at the time because I thought everyone already had their fill of terrible “CGI-avatar-pop” for the year.  Was doing you all a favour, you know.

Kim Areum – Drive

Another one I skipped deliberately.  Lazy screen-saver-ish lyric videos are always a hard no, but even if I looked at it properly I would have just shat on this awful “shitty pop” anyway.

Jeon Dong Won – Don’t Forget Me

Hey this is pretty good, no idea why it’s recorded with my 240p handicam that I was shooting video with 15 years ago, I thought I just lost that thing in a drawer somewhere, didn’t know it had made its way over to Korea.

Effie – Do Or Die

Is it okay if I pick “die”?

2Z – Stupid

They seem to be having fun, which is nice.  I’m glad someone is.  This group had a ton of songs actually and I can confirm you’re not missing anything worthwhile.

G-Idle – Last Dance

Somehow I missed this when I was covering all the crap “Universe app” songs a few weeks back, which is a shame as it’s actually the best one.  It’s not exactly amazing but it’s at least a little different.

Imlay ft. Chen – Too Good

I probably skipped this at the time because whenever I see a full video with nothing but lazy CGI animation I just switch off, honestly.  I made the right decision back then.

From20 – Cigarettes And You

Not too bad, but not good enough to make me regret that I missed it the first time.  Just a bit too plodding to really be cool.  Believe it or not, out of all the tracks here, this was by far the most requested of the lot, that was also a valid request.

TXT – Anti-Romantic

I’ve been doing my best to ignore live stages too when I can, almost all dreary crap and useless B-sides that were B-sides for a reason.  TXT’s song is better than most though, with some slight Julee Cruise vibes, but it’s just too heavy-handed with the triplet hi-hats and the big beat for it to really work out, some more subtlety was needed.

DKB – All In

Yeah this is dull, and that time-signature change at 1:45 sounds like when I used to drive a Daewoo and crunched the gears in it all the time.  What a piece of shit that car was, stick to making guns I guess.

Siyoon – Dance With Me

I feared the worst when that sports car pulled up, but then I forgot that sports cars these days don’t always mean trap, they can also mean cool 80s throwback pop songs.  I feel sorry for the girl in the video though, she definitely seems uncomfortable playing the love interest or whatever.

Seoul Magic Club – Egret

Not too bad, but that cheap keyboard sound is really chafing my ass.  I’m pretty sure I also own exactly this keyboard, which I’ve had since the 1980s, so this might be PTSD biasing me against the song here.

Lanalogue – Erny

Really quite crap.  It sounds as bad as the video looks.

Youra – Pink!

The person who sent this in thought I’d probably hate it and guess what, you’re right, it sucks!  Grinding, repetitive “indie-voiced” nonsense.  Give yourself a pat on the back and a treat for determining my music taste accurately.

Ferryblue – Call My Name

Like a lot of stuff this year, sounds like it was written by an algorithm.  Apparently this group is a university project, maybe part of their assessment was programming the computer to write this.  It’s definitely hurting their GPA.

THE FINAL BONUS RANDOM VIDEOS FOR 2021

Blackswan – Tonight (K-Collaboration)

Is it just me or do they all look fucking miserable.  You thought Kim Lip had it tough, these girls look like they want to kill.  I bet the screaming starts as soon as the cameras are off.

Velvet – Jeju Cafe Chichi’s Forrest Ft. Cheer up, button!

Let’s all press F to pay respects to Velvet’s top button.  It fought valiantly.

Seotaiji 25 Time Traveler

How about a 2.5 hour long Seo Taiji concert to help you see in the new year?  You’re welcome.  Isn’t it sad that one of the k-pop veterans has to put “ft. BTS” in there even though BTS are barely in it, just as clickbait to get the kiddies to watch it and see who really “paved the way”.  These are the sad times we live in, I guess.

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Thanks everyone for supporting roundup in 2021!  Any new releases that come out after this post’s publication will be eligible for 2022 lists instead!