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

Mamadol – WooAh HIP

The chorus sounds reasonable, but elsewhere it’s a bit of a shambles, most obviously whenever this group of veterans try to go nu-school.  They should have stopped trying to be hip with the tadpoles and doubled-down on the sounds that made their original groups popular in the first place.

IU, Kang Seungwon – Mother Nature

An IU ballad without IU in the video is like a condom with the ribbing on the inside.

ATEEZ – Don’t Stop

Because Ateez are on the crappy useless Universe app that sucks dicks, which means we don’t have access to the full video yet even though it’s officially release date, why not watch this video of a day in the life of Eimi Fukada during drama filming instead.  I promise it’s more entertaining.  By the way the film here that she’s shooting is CAWD-222 and the actress who is blurred out is Hama Himesaki, not sure why Eimi has done this though.  Maybe there’s a contractual reason, or perhaps there’s a spicy feud between those two that they can settle in another drama video one day.

Yena – Lxxk 2 U

I love the neon pink framing of the instruments, I think that looks great and would have taken some effort.  Speaking of which, which do you like more, this guitar with the pink and black hardware, or the version with the green bevels and silver hardware?

Golden Child – A WOO!!

Well I know one particular k-pop writer who will be very happy with this, but for the rest of us who don’t worship at the temple of Janet Jackson, we’re probably going to have to wait a few years to see if Woollim are interested in making something better with their next boy group.

Yein – Plus n Minus

Yein flexes her looks on everybody, hey doesn’t she looks great in that blue pantsuit.  Good enough for Minnie Mouse, good enough for Yein.  Wish the songwriter had done some flexing instead though.

BM – LIE (LOST IN EUPHORIA)

BM not only has another rubbish song, he doesn’t even take his shirt off in the video, pathetic – no wonder he’s losing relevance so quickly.  Hey BM If you want to catch up to Wonho in the objectification surveys you’d better pull your finger out and put in some work.

BamBam – Ride or die

Is it okay if I choose ‘die’?

Cya – Fluttering Island

This song really wasn’t worth the effort for me to find out what the English-language title of it was, so I hope you all appreciate that I looked it up just now.

Won & Dohwan – You Are Me, I Am You

If I was him, I would have nicely asked the agency to give us some other song besides this BTS disco trend thing.  If he was me, he’s probably still write a shitty two-sentence review of the result.

D.S.tar – Dancing Shoes

If you want to do a “princess” theme with a group of kids, hey that’s great and I’m sure the girls in the group dig it, I mean doesn’t every girl want to be a princess at some point, but there’s a way to do it and a way not to do it.  Whoever thought black knee-high boots and exposed thighs would work for a quartet this young should just hand themselves over to child protection services.

Kyuhyun – Love Story

Kyukyun looks so puffed up like a marshmallow that I swear even his tongue has had botox injections.

Ravi feat. Justhis – Virus

Apparently these days Nicolas Cage will work for pretty much any reasonable amount of money.  Ravi should use this opportunity to hire him to do a cameo, imagine Korea’s Nicolas Cage and America’s Nicolas Cage in the one video.  Let’s petition Ravi to make this a reality.

Yoon Jong Shin with ONEO – NFT

Worth a look just for the dance routine, which is honestly great and very very different.  Ignore everything else about it if you need to.

Soombee – Eighteen Winter

As an Australian I’ve never seen snow except on TV, and gosh they sure do make it look like fun in music videos, like frosty fairy floss or something.  Nobody ever gets trapped under it and freezes to death or anything, it’s just a whole bunch of bright pillowy goodness.  Someone make a k-pop video with a snow landslide and a body count just for something different, and so I feel less sad about living in the hottest coastal city in the world.

Yohna – Childhood

Plod plod plod.  Why do these groups strum their guitars in that boring way. They’ve got nearly infinite rhythmic possibilites at their fingertips yet they just hit the downbeat every time 1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4 fucking yawn fuck off.

Retro Classic feat. Jiye – I Hate You

I’ve been learning Fleetwood Mac ballads lately and while it’s fun to shit on that mob of frazzled copyright-stingy junkies, I will reluctantly admit that they could write a song, and this has some of the qualities of some of their better ones.  

Jo Jungmin – Don’t Grab My Ankle

I wasn’t even thinking about grabbing her ankle but now it’s all I can think about.  It’s Jo Jungmin’s fault for putting the idea into my head.  My unreasonable lust for trot singers aside, this song doesn’t suck – trot needs some modern concessions of some type to really work, and most of the better songs in this style do.  Here the balance of sound is correct, just like the balance between Jo Jungmin’s left ankle and her right ankle.

Cheong Yeon – Will You Hold Me?

Nah I’m good thanks.

Lee Jin Ah – Rum Pum Pum

Fascinating to watch due to the weird staging, the randomness of the lighting (on or off, make up your mind damn) and the weird occasional musical drifting off into prog-fusion land, which certainly spices up what would have otherwise just been another boring IU ballad.

Sam Kim – Smile

The Bee Gees suck.

Kim Ha Eun – E Your Banga Yo

Not bad but the rhythms needed to go a lot harder to match that weird-ass vocal.  Maybe they should have got the person responsible for the annoying Battlefield Earth camera-tilts to add some tilt to the music instead.

Hongja – In The Mood For Love

Come on, love isn’t that big of a deal, just get over it already, plenty of fish in the sea etc.  These Korean ballads have no chill.

Coogie feat. BE’O – Good Night + Beat ‘Em Up

Just look at that thumbnail.  It looks how it sounds.  Let’s just move along.

Ellui – Off My Mind

A modelling shoot pretending to be a music video, in the best A-Force tradition.

Kim Sookhyung – Pale Blue Dot

Someone asked me the other week how I liked the Yamaha “silent guitar”, but I hadn’t played one at that time.  Today I actually did get to a music store and tried one out, and it seemed okay.  It seemed well-built but was pretty uncomfortable, because 95% of the weight of the instrument is in the neck, so the instrument has a lot of neck dive (where the head of the instrument is weighted heavier than the body, so it doesn’t balance on your lap easily).  The bracket-body means it’s a bit hard to control the horizontal position of the instrument with your elbow (which is how you’d correct neck dive on other notoriously neck-heavy instruments like the Thunderbird bass), so you just have to support the weight of it with your hand, which is annoying.  I definitely wouldn’t buy one, I can only really see the benefit if your neighbours are such crybabies that the sound of a nylon-stringed acoustic guitar is too loud for them, or if you’re an acoustic guitar performer who people really want to perv at the abdominal region of.

Kino2sly – Coordinator

Not many views for someone with a reasonable looking video.  Song isn’t mindblowing or anything but it’s alright, it certainly should have more views than what it does.  Let’s help them get to 100 views!

Def. – Sunset With You

Now this song is more deserving of double digits but it has half a million views instead, can you feel the injustice.

Choiza feat. Thama – Family

Choiza leaning heavily on mrds and mrcs content to try and make people forgive this bullshit music.  Wise strategy, this might just work out for him.

99honest – Tamed

She’s cool, I dig it how she just bitchstares her way throughout the entire video.  Aegyo-free zone.

Heroincity, Hollow Young, J Way – Don’t Hurt

I love it how the YouTube channel is called “Talented”.  Inaccurate YouTube channel title of the week.

Woori, Ryuri – Don’t get me wrong

Their YouTube link has three dashes in it in a row.  I think these girls are in trouble and are trying to morse code an SOS to us.  If their next YouTube has three of something shorter in a row we’ll know what’s up, then I’ll have to form the search and rescue team I guess. 

V1VA – Moonlight

Warning sign: when the song title is printed in Old English style font, but the artist or group is not.

Nynas – Beautiful

What’s with the old school cameras.  Imagine getting your film developed and having to explain away the stupid shots you took when making your crap MV while making small talk to the girl behind the counter at the only shop in Korea that still does one-hour turnaround photo development.  If she figured out you were responsible for this trash music, you couldn’t just hide out of shame and get your shit developed somewhere else.  Every time you were there again she’d be like “how’s the MUSIC CAREER going, are you a BIG STAR yet?” while laughing at you on the inside.

Kenz – Good Night

I love what she’s wearing, she looks like his piano keyboard.  By the way I already got this video to 100 views so you’ll have to go for 200 here.

Mool – Blue Sky

Imagine what a song by someone called “Mool” that was named “Blue Sky” would sound like.  That’s what this sounds like.  There you go, now you don’t have to listen to it.  Next.

Kwon So Jeong – Yesterday was a dream

Seems like she’s still rubbing the sleep out of her eyes.

Taewoo – Moonlight

I had hope, but then he started singing.  Should have just made it a guitar solo track.

THE MAMAMOO SOLO PROJECT NAUGHTY CORNER

Wheein – Pink Cloud

It’s one thing for the song to suck, it’s a Mamamoo solo song so we definitely expect that, but what’s surprising here is that Wheein doesn’t even look any good.

Wheein – Letter Filled With Light

A slightly better look here, but not by much.  Something’s just wrong.

Wheein – Pastel

Easily the best song out of the four even though she’s dressed like one of those poisonous mushrooms your friend collects in jars and keeps in his fridge because he thinks he can acid-trip off them one day instead of just die.

Wheein – Paraglide

I think Mamamoo’s clothing choices need a thesis to explain, I should try and procedurally generate one.

Moonbyul – Ddu Ddu Ddu

Moonbyul just sounds like Moonbyul.  Fortunately, she also looks like Moonbyul.

Moonbyul feat. Kanghyun – For Me

Music Man are one of those brands like Yamaha – their basses are really popular (I do quite a lot of my bass covers on one) but their guitars just don’t have the same level of popularity.  Not sure why but Mr Onewe is doing his bit to try and help.

LETS PLAGIARISE LOONA FUCK IT SECTION

Jung Dan – You Jinn Indusputable

Look, there are planets suspended in a room, this means he must be plagiarising Loona who had planets in a video once, right kids?

Evelyn Hahn – Every Little Thing

Look, she’s on a bed, this means she must be plagiarising Loona members who were in a bed in a video a few times, right kids?

Jo Ha Eun – Love is Bad

I’m not really into lesbian porn, but if I was, I’d be into this.  Clearly ripping off Chuu and Yves because they shared food a few times, right kids?

Tritops – Pieces of stars shining on you

Speaking of which here’s this week’s porn video.  Tell me how this isn’t porn, it’s as porn as all those age-inappropriate Loona debut concepts, right kids?  Actually for real though if you’re a kid you probably shouldn’t be reading my site at all, where are your parents you little shit.  For the rest of you, JAV of the month for January is PPPE-001.

RANDOM BONUS VIDEOS OF THE WEEK

H1-key – Lunar New Year 2022 greetings

There’s lots of this sort of content being released right now, so be sure to scour your faves’ YouTube channels if you want to see them in hanbok reciting scripts awkwardly to the camera and pretending to enjoy themselves!   Yay!

Loona Note #11

That BC Rich V guitar is also pretty cool looking, hopefully Loona are up to something that really rocks with all those instruments and not another shouty bullshit melody-less yoloturd.  Also, Vivi looks outstanding here.  It’s easy to forget how attractive she is due to her getting three seconds of screen time per year but she’s rocking the military style hat very well there, hopefully Blockberry didn’t forget to scrub the Nazi symbols off it so they don’t have a Gfriend controversy… oh wait, that hat in the Gfriend photo didn’t even have Nazi symbols on it in the first place and Sowon still copped shit for it.  Oh well, here ends Loona’s “woke” period I guess hahaha.

Wheein’s Vlog –  Crazy first start. Wheein’s daily life, recording an album, cat Ggomo, fashion haul, lookbook, unboxing.

Watch this to restore any faith lost in Wheein’s visuals this week.  mrs and mrcs

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