Welcome to another episode of QRIMOLE – the series where readers asks Kpopalypse questions about anything and everything!  Let’s go with this month’s reader questions!

Hi oppar,

There’s this arrangement of Nmixx song that focus to that middle part

What do you think?

Anyway I started to remember part of this song that I used to condemn few days ago lol. Maybe that’s why big agencies always can have their way out with weirdest song possible? Or is it just my brain that get used to the weirdness it starts to build a pattern do that it’s not strange anymore.

This is kind of what’s confusing me. At the same time, I enjoy more straightforward pop song like for example Viviz Bop Bop, but they usually don’t last long in my playlist rather than weird song, let’s say Aespa songs. Is there any explanation behind that?

Thank you

I think the middle section would make the best standalone song, the person who created this did a pretty good job of envisioning what that could sound like.  The overall reaction to NMIXX’s song has been profoundly negative largely due to the style-switching so here’s hoping JYP takes notice.

I guess having a weird-sounding song is one way to stand out, it just might make your brain pay attention more.  Of course if everyone starts doing it, then it’s not so weird anymore and then the more normal songs will stand out.  That’s why trends like this tend to wax and wane.

Hi Kpopalypse,

I just want to share my experience seeing that new singers (soloist) fandoms in my country start to use every media possible to show their singer’s chart performance up until capturing radio chart from some areas I didn’t even know existed. It’s okay but at the same time, it’s too … trivial? And suddenly I realized that this is similar to KPop fandoms obsession with numbers, votes, and polls. Everytime I’m invested to KPop chart accounts on Twitter, why do I need a local example to prove how unimportant it is lol.

Yes, it certainly is.  Fandom behaviour is much the same across the globe, regardless of the actual fandom.

Hi Oppar,

What do you think about the accusation of plagiarism between these two songs?

It got covered in many news since it seems that Soyeon producing the track for the girls and she just know the similarities after the track released. Personally I thought both choruses sound pretty bland and generic (it’s that tropical house genre isn’t it?) which already sound similar to each other. How do we know that our song is similar to others? Is there any mechanism in the industry or we just Shazam/Google song search every track? And with how many KPop songs using same samples, it’s amazing we don’t get this kinda news each week. Anyway, I can’t believe this is the first time I’m encountering plagiarism issue between KPop songs lol.

Thank you

Yes the two songs sound similar, because they’re both in a super-generic style that is really popular right now, and they have similar vocal meter.  However, as I always point out:

“Similar” <> “the same”

Lots of songs sound similar, right down to the vocal phrasing.  That’s totally normal.  It’s not even a new thing.  Ever heard of blues music?  It’s been around since about the 1890s and literally 95% of songs have the same chords in the same order, and the same melodic template, and the same types of phrasing also crops up over and over again.  The quality of blues musicians is literally determined by how well they can copy other blues’ musician’s phrasing.

I talk about what constitutes actual plagiarism way more in my plagiarism series, which I simply stopped doing because I was repeating myself over and over again ad nauseum, and people still weren’t getting the fucking point, and kept coming up with “but what about THIS example?”  Yawn.  If people even gotta ask me, they didn’t understand the point of the original posts.  That, or they’re tone-deaf.

I’m sorry that I keep bothering you about Hong Kong, but the recent invasion of Ukraine has gotten my family so worried about Hong Kong and our neighbor Taiwan. Do you think China will see this as an opportunity to finally realize their dreams of a “united” China and further imperialistic desires in South East Asia? One of the few hopes we still have (I have been able to convince most of my family to leave thanks to your urging and most have already done so, but there remain a few who just cannot give up their current careers and homes while others have ideal places they’d like to immigrate to but cannot. My cousin still wishes he and his sister could move to Australia but are now trying to go to Canada or the UK instead) is that China will not escalate its aggression to military action. Right now, the police has done a lot of harm, but it’s all “minor” in comparison to tanks and military jets. If Hong Kong turned into a warzone, it would just destroy all my hopes for my family still in Hong Kong.
I know this feels selfish when Ukraine is facing exactly that, so I’ve been donating as much of my disposable income as possible to help their cause. If they succeed, I’d like to think China would back away from the possibility of war.

I’m not military strategist so take my opinion with a huge grain of salt, but – I think Xi would be watching events in Ukraine with great interest.  Xi has no doubt seen the overwhelmingly negative reaction that Putin has been getting, and the massive price he’s paying globally for invading Ukraine (Russia could lose about 30 years of post-Soviet developmental progress in a matter of weeks thanks to some brutal sanctions), plus Putin’s general inability to quickly and neatly actually pull off such an invasion against a fiercely resistant country, and even if he does manage to capture all of Ukraine he then has to deal with a bitter western-backed insurgency that could hold out indefinitely…  Xi is probably saying to himself “perhaps it wouldn’t be wise for China to also go down this road”.  So I don’t see a full-scale military invasion of Hong Kong or Taiwan on the cards, at least not soon.  However Xi doesn’t need to invade Hong Kong by force anyway, because in 2041 Hong Kong is going to completely be handed back to China, this has already been agreed to so he’s going to go in anyway eventually and unlike Putin he won’t even need to break international law to do it, all he has to do is wait for the timer to expire.  In the lead-up to that timer expiring, China will no doubt do some things to “ease the transition” and nobody knows what that will look like yet – that’s why it’s better to get out sooner rather than later.  Perhaps there’ll be opportunities to get out later, perhaps there won’t, your family might get lucky but personally I wouldn’t take the gamble.

I don’t know if you’ve seen it, but the Winter Olympics had the Chinese vocaloid Luo Tianyi sing for its promotional song: Time to Shine. Here’s a “performance” video:

I believe this may be the biggest venue a vocaloid has ever had, so I wanted to ask what’s your opinion on vocaloids and their future as someone with so much experience in the music industry? I’m sure the ability to customize singing to your liking would be useful, but I know you do not care much for vocals in songs. There’s also the inherent distortion in the voices that’s absolutely an acquired taste, though I believe that can be minimized with good tuning and advances in the technology. Do you think this kind of thing will become mainstream in the future?

Well CL performed “The Baddest Female” at an Olympic ceremony but I wouldn’t call that “the future” either.  Vocaloids now that they’re here will definitely always have their place as a useful tool, and yes the technology will no doubt continue to improve, but at the end of the day part of the appeal of singers for most people is that there are actual humans behind the voices (no matter how digitally processed and altered they are).  K-pop fans know this better than most – let’s face it, the broard appeal of k-pop for most fans is the people in the groups, not the music.  Go to the comments of even a song that’s resoundingly hated like the NMIXX song above and they’re not “this music sucks, fuck off”, they’re “gosh this song isn’t very good which is a real shame, but they’re such nice girls, I hope they do well”.  That’s different to the Olympics, where yes looking and sounding cool is important for ceremonial purposes but building an attachment to the performer isn’t required because you’re not really there for that reason.

How do you feel about Jimin from AOA after the dispatch tapes came out and after Mina’s public comments somewhat muddied the waters after that? I notice that she somewhat has a better reputation these days and that no one recommended her solo music video Dodo for roundup.

I’ve always felt very positive about Jimin.

I wasn’t able to find an actual proper official music video for Dodo’s song, hence it doesn’t meet eligibility criteria for roundup.  If there’s one out there, and it’s an actual music video (not a lame “visualiser” or whatever crap) let me know and I’ll include it.

What should you do if your crush hates you

Consider the possibility that they might be J-anime fans trying to hook you in with their tsundere vibes.  If that doesn’t pan out, just hate them back for a while, it’ll help you mentally detach yourself.

Hello Kpopalypse Oppar, I want to ask for your opinions on my arguments with my sibling.

So I accidentally read a post on the opinion of “advocate for the act of telling people that you don’t give a shit when they are telling you stories and walk away bluntly”, and there was a comment (person #1) that said “imagine you’re exciting to tell your friend a story and they act like that”, and then there was a reply (person #2) under the comment (note that person #1 and #2 don’t know each other) said “if you are exciting, that’s your problem, I don’t give a fuck about your story”. And then there was another person (person #3) replied under person #2, basically told the person #2 to fucked off as person #2 was being a rude cunt, and person #2 replied “I actually didn’t give a fuck about your opinion, but I replied you out of “polite””.

I kept thinking of what was the purpose of the person who replied the comment (person #2), like if they truly don’t give a fuck, then why bothered to reply to some stranger’s comment whose opinion was different from theirs? The commenter didn’t even ask for their opinion? And if that replier agreed with the initial argument (the post), they could make their own comment instead?

However, my sibling had a different opinion. She assumed that the replier was just putting themselves in the shoes of the comment OP’s friend, and that I was too antagonistic (she didn’t agree with the replier’s actions though, here she said the replier was just trying to answer the person #1). Although her opinion did seem reasonable, I kinda felt there was something offed about it but couldn’t pinpoint the reason…

So Oppar, I want to ask that whether the replier (person #2) was being a troll who loves riling up other people to feel like an elistist, acting edgy like they don’t care but actually did give a shit and aware of how their actions could rile people up (being anti-social on purpose to feel superior) or they truly didn’t give a fuck and simply replied a stranger’s opinion? And if you face such a person (person #2), what would you do?

I think it plays out differently depending:

Online to anons, or in person to a stranger – why comment at all.  I don’t go anywhere and comment “I don’t give a shit”, because if I genuinely don’t give a shit I haven’t even got the energy to make a comment in the first place.  There’s plenty of websites and articles out there that are directly in my wheelhouse but where I just haven’t interacted because they’re talking about stuff where I feel the best stance is “anmoolangoong“.  Same with interactions with people in public, I’m not a social creature by habit and I don’t intrude on the business of others unless there’s very good, very specific reason.  “Because I want to say I don’t care” isn’t a good enough reason.

Online to someone I interact with on a regular, or in person to a friend – I would possibly give them shit if I thought it was funny, and I thought they would “get it” i.e understand how I am enough to not take it too seriously.  

Sorry for this weird question, but can you recommend some information/news sources that are truthworthy? I keep hearing how people said all Western news websites are “unreliable and biased” but damn I would rather trust your recommendations than listen to them (they seem to be the type to believe in conspiracy)(I know I can continue to be ignorant but lately I kinda want to know what’s going on around me, and you seem reliable to be trusted on for information)

I hate recommending news sites because so many of them have paywalls or constant beg-a-thons.  I still haven’t found a “perfect” go-to news site, there’s always some kind of bias involved (humans are naturally biased so this can’t be helped).  I try to avoid reading news in general when I can.  However if you want one rule, avoid anything that’s Murdoch media, here’s a list of sites and publications to avoid, if you’re reading or watching anything from any of these at the very least always check a second or third source that isn’t on the list.

Hi Kpopalypse Oppar,

I’ve been trying to revive my old movie review blog for a while. When I read some of my older posts, I realized that many of them doesn’t have clarity and lack of focus. I’m always trying to elaborate and compare a movie with other movies with similar themes/genres, but I end up sound like a brag showing off how many movies I have watch.

I like to dig and dissect a movie qualitatively without assigning a score/star, so I’m often analyzing many things from the movie thus my posts’ wordcount never have less than 1000 words. I have tried to practice myself by writing short reviews on IMDb, but many users think my reviews aren’t that helpful (you can like/dislike a review there). Do you have any suggestion/recommendation what practice should I try/tricks to make my writings more concise and clear?

Thank you in advance for answering my questions!

It’s hard to say without seeing examples of your writing, but if you send some I can help.  Do it privately (use my email, it’s in “about”) if using QRIMOLE for this is too humiliating.

i now know the best things to do to engance boobage, but what do you do if you have big boobs that you want to hide/minimise because it doesn’t fit your style? so far ive just been doing baggy black tshirts, layering and bad posture, but i’m sure there’s more science to it

Coming in a future post – soon.  Planning to have it come out before the next QRIMOLE.

best fleetwood mac song in your opinion?

I’m not really a fan of them and I don’t have much familiarity with their music.  There’s only a few songs that I know well, so I’ll abstain here.

Hi Kpopalypse Oppar,

When I’m trying to write a song, sometimes it hits 4/5 minutes mark in the initial recording. I’m always amazed that Kpop can do so much thing in 3-minutes. What can I do to trim the duration and what’s usually thing that makes a song becomes too long/boring?

Thank you

Things to do if you want to shorten a song

• Speed it up – fast songs go through the various elements quicker
• Cut out transitions and instrumental parts, or shorten them, try halving each one
• If a song has multiple choruses consider making the first one shorter
• Do you really need all those verse lyrics, if not remove some
• Shorten or remove solos or breakdowns

Of course k-pop tends to do the above a little too much sometimes, the result being a song which is just crammed with verses, choruses and nothing else.  A good way to get a feel for how a song can be shortened effectively is to listen to an album version of a western song, and then the “radio edit”, back to back, taking note of what was removed.  Here’s an example where over two minutes was trimmed from a seven and a half minute long song.

Using the Junna cover of the shortened version for this post because Junna is more fun to watch than Dragonforce themselves – if Chuu was a drummer she would be Junna.

Hi Kpopalypse, I wonder why Kpop rarely or never release a best-album? While some Kpop acts have their best-ofs albeit Japanese versions, it’s different and the closest one I can get are fans curated songs, which also different. Best-album is my go-to release if I want to check out an artist, and in Kpop with massive selections of music acts, it’s exhausting to look for the best selection the artist may offer.

Thank you

The answer to this is that k-pop agencies are not selling the music, so they don’t care about what a music fan would naturally want (compiling the best music).

1. BAP One Shot was a cool song, as many kpop fans and (probably still) you would agree with, but what the heck is up with the first rap lyric? Besides my utter shock that “Martin Luther King cheoreom” hasn’t become (to my knowledge) a Likey Likey Dis-tier kpop lyric spectacle, it just seems kinda random in context of the other lyrics, which just pushing some vague peak-2NE1-like pop music empowerment theme. Would this be an early example of kpop attempting to “reflect” widely broadcast American culture back at it, in an attempt to gain relevance (for example, certain kpop managers seeing the popularity of traditionally Black cultural elements, like wearing cornrows, and styling their idols as such to try and resonate with a globalized market)?
2. Much smaller question, but how often do you see friends/peers of your age use the 🙂 emoji (the plain yellow smiley face, without tears, etc.)? I always seem to see it used by “older” folks (by older I mean around the demographic of people around 50 or 60), and even you occasionally (don’t know whether you lie in the age range or not) but never by people closer to my age.
3. Finally, what is the sexiest computer bass fart you’ve ever heard on a kpop (or even another genre’s) song? Personally I like Bo Peep Bo Peep’s best.

1. Honestly he raps in such a weird low accent that I didn’t even know he was saying “Martin Luther King”.  I mean obviously the entire song is pushing a “pop music empowerment theme” just in terms of trying to make the boys in the group look powerful, so I wouldn’t say it seems all that out of place.  But the real reason that nobody noticed is because honestly it doesn’t really stand out as significantly more cringe than anything else around it.

2. The biggest emoji-spammer I know professionally is significantly older than me and has a vast collection.  I think maybe it’s just the people you know.

3. Hard to say.  Bo Peep is as good a pick as any!

I have a friend whose immediate family is in the US but has many relatives in the Ukraine. I’m so terrified for him. What could I possibly do to make him feel better? It feels like nothing I do would be able to reassure him in any way that’s not just false platitudes or condescension.

I wouldn’t force the issue.  We all want to be helpful but talking about it isn’t what everyone wants to do.  Perhaps just tell him you’re around if he wants to chat about anything or even just hang out and do some fun stuff to get his mind off it.

So I looked it up because I’m that sort of person, and there are 14 credited composers for “Loser=Lover.” What in the fucking fuck? There’s one TXT member, the CEO, 3 other Koreans and 9 presumably Western people, so even if you assume the member and CEO credits are bullshit that’s still a lot people.

I could understand if it was one of those “5 songs in one” things where it took about 3 people to write each song that they then bought up and smashed together, but it’s a fairly cohesive, straightforward composition isn’t it? What in fuck do you suppose all those 14 people even did?

What people need to remember is that songwriting credits are really just up to whoever the creators agree should be credited.  For instance The Beatles famously credited a lot of songs to “Lennon/McCartney” even though it’s very obvious that Lennon wrote certain songs on his own and McCartney wrote others on his own, but that split is in there because the members agreed to it.  So who knows why in the TXT song, maybe a lot of people worked on it, or maybe the songwriter had a bunch of friends who needed money, it could be something as simple as that.

Oppar, it’s me again. The girl who set her kitchen on fire. Happy early Qrimole (kind of… is this year a leap year?).

Anyways, I have stated before that I am obsessed with my ex. You told me to listen to my rational mind, and not my emotions. Good stuff.
I think before I mentioned how I had nightmares about him too. He wasn’t abusive. They were just nightmares about him neglecting me. Anyways, I didn’t tell you this before, but that nightmare actually made me very suicidal when I woke up. I had to go to the mental hospital. I was getting so much anxiety that I was shaking at work. I wanted to kill myself.

My current partner visited me in the hospital, too. But it was very hard. I had to pretend like half of my anxiety WASNT caused by the hurt my ex gave me. He cried seeing me there, shaking, anxious. The hospital staff also never talked to me at all. They changed my meds and sent me on my way. So I never truly got to address this issue with anyone.

Anyways…
I have recently discovered he has blocked me on Instagram. He took me off Facebook and then Snapchat. Now Instagram. The last social media platform.

Anyways, I’m not sure exactly how to feel about this…. I feel hurt… but also relieved? I don’t know. I just want to know what a normal response is, cause I feel crazy.

Feel great about it.  He was an asshole and now you don’t even have to force yourself to ignore him because he’s done it for you.  He’s clearly not interested in communicating with you anymore, which is exactly what you want.  The opposite would be being stalked – good on him for not going down that path, at least.  He’s doing you a favour.  Happy times.

Hello. I know you’ve talked a lot about dog-whistling content in kpop but I just wondering if you think there’s any difference between the content aimed at the young perverts and the content aimed at the old perverts. Like would the both of them jack off to April’s Dream Candy the same (also R.I.P to my favourite bullies I guess) or would the young pervert find his dick not working for that and go for something like Kep1er or Purple Kiss or any number of the new girl crush groups coming up? Because after all the point of the dog whistle is get the dog and not everyone and of kpop companies are good at anything it’s honing that whistle. If there is any difference who and what music videos do you think would fall into young perv category and old perv category.

I don’t think there’s any difference at all, and I think WAY too much fuss is made in the k-pop community about the supposed age of perverts.  Complaining about the demographics of the perverts themselves is simple discriminatory ageism, no better than sexism, racism, etc.  It’s what’s being sold to the perverts that matters, and that’s where age actually comes into play, because deceptively exploiting a sexually naive person for dog-whistle purposes has another layer of shittiness to it when they’re underage.

Yoooo, (please also use this for austaliansana on the next pod episode too pls!)
Do you think the recent wave of kpop fans intl,and netizens in Korea focusing on “live” vocals come from anywhere. Theres one youtuber in particular that I can think of that initially gained a lot of traction because she was really firm on pointing out that its hard as fuck to dance+sing/those “live” songs are basically regular songs that were edited in the studio+put over a video of them faking it live etc. etc.

I truthfully dont care and never have-I like idols because they put on a whole spectacle and dance, but I do think shes right in the sense that during music shows during 2nd gen the singers sang and didnt do the choreo during their little 0.5 seconds of parts lol. I just dont understand the obsession with it-I remember Tiffany getting ripped to shreds for her voice cracking to the point it follows her to this day-of course Idols lip-synch, they cant be human lol

I deleted your video because it was narrated in a computer voice.  Never watch, or spread, a video narrated in a computer voice, ever.

I think the obsession with vocals just comes from fandom delusion: “my bias is perfect and I want to prove it” etc.  And the vocal-analysis obsession comes from “I know about singing and I want to prove that I know all the things and that my music taste has standards“.  Of course in k-pop singing is barely even a requirement for all except a few edge cases so this looks ridiculous to any normal person.

If you want AustralianSana to answer a question, put it in the AustralianSana question box (see sidebar).  I get so many questions through both channels that you shouldn’t count on me remembering to shift one question from one box to the other, it probably won’t happen, so just copy-paste it.

A)Hi Kpopalypse! I started taking vocal lessons and as of now its just one class but it made me really happy! Happier than Ive been in a while, it felt good to try something new. I was happy also because my teacher said I had a good sense of pitch and despite not knowing what fucking notes he told me to sing along to on the piano, I generally had no problem following along. Im really excited so learn something different and pitch wasnt a problem. That being said, I feel very silly because I understand that we hear ourselves differently-but Im probably a soprano or at most a mezzo. I really really wanted a lower register just because I think those are the voices that tend to have more character in them. I tried to listen to myself speak, and sing and I sounded like a chipmunk lol, but somehow totally devoid of any personality or character too when I sang. I know you said somewhere once that the character/personality aspect is almost the last step in learning how to sing-just generally learning how to make sounds/reliably use your voice is the first step-but how do I get over feeling shitty about the tone/timbre or whatever its called?
B) Do you think Jessica was actually kicked out by the eight members unanimously, or with as much power as she framed them of having? Personally, I think maybe snsd did have a vote of some kind, but it ultimately came down to SMs discretion-and idk/idc if it was for personal/business reasons or not. I appreicate Jessicas honesty in highlighting trainee hardships but its weird that even on sites like AJs that commenters regularly forget that theres no way Jessicas going to admit to ever being in the wrong in fights/buisness ect. Rachel is beautiful and kind and mega-super talented, so beautiful even that unlike other trainees shes never done plastic surgery lol. It a tell all as much as it is a PR story-and that no knock to Jessica on my end, I think its incredibly smart. Why acknowledge that she and two other members(like Hyoeyeon&Sooyoung) were the ones on variety shows admitting/faking stories that they were the most preferred trainees and even playfully picking on other snsd members when they were trainees. Either those stories were true,they were pr or a mix of both. And like a second parter-do you think any other snsd member will acknowledge Jessicas book ever?

A. Don’t even worry about tone, just try and breathe properly and sing with confidence.  We’re all limited by our natural physiology, and while that can be overcome to an extent with training, there’s also a fair bit of “genetic lottery” involved.  The number one thing that will make you improve your singing, is learning to project confidence through your voice.  The number two thing, is doing it with other people, so join or form a musical group as soon as you can.

B. Those other girls are never going to talk about Jessica’s book until such time as they write their autobiographies.  Some probably have strict instructions not to, others probably don’t want to seem catty.  Why would they discuss it anyway, what on earth would be in it for them.  It’s not going to happen for a long time, if ever.

Hi Kpopalypse. I submitted a Qrimole like 5 months ago about [a lot of stuff redacted at reader request]

I’m not really sure what I’m asking from you either but know that it does give me mental relief writing this out. Thank you.

If you can write that big of a rant, you’re obviously at least a little bit better at concentration than you think, you probably just struggle to concentrate on boring things like study.  That’s pretty normal and doesn’t mean you have ADHD (although it doesn’t mean you don’t, either).  Really most people are in your position there.  The parenting stuff, well there’s not much you can do about that.  I would suggest just try your hardest at studying (my university guide might help with some tips) because you’ve already committed to Uni so you might as well just see it through, and pursue your other interests whenever you need study breaks.  When I studied at Uni I’d intersperse my study with playing music just to recharge my batteries.  So just don’t go for the “all or nothing” approach.  You don’t have to study constantly and you don’t need perfect grades.  You just need to go through Uni, get your bit of paper that says you’ve been through Uni, and look after your mental health in the meantime.  Anything else is a bonus.

Because Viviz and Yuju have debuted with sounds that are quite different from Gfriend’s, I’ve been going back to hear their older work. I found this and thoroughly enjoyed it.

My question is why don’t more kpop songs use guitar solos? I just feel like guitar solos elevate the songs that have them.

Guitar solos are just a bit out of fashion these days.  Just like violin solos I guess.  There’ll still always be great guitarists, and there’ll still always be great violin players, and you’ll hear both crop up in k-pop from time to time, but the days when these instruments occupied the absolute forefront of popular music and culture in the way that drum machines and synths currently do, are probably gone.

Was I supposed to know that Jennie had a cameo in this MV? Because I didn’t.

Can I throw a “I managed to escape K-pop” party yet?
Also, is the linked song better than anything Aespa have ever put out?

Not sure what you mean, but no, if you want, and no, respectively.

When will slave contracts stop?
Will idols ever date freely?
Will fans ever stop being delusional?

Slave contracts will stop on March 25th 2196 at 11:27am GMT.

They already do, you just don’t hear about it.  Only a tiny minority of them get caught.

No.

I am kinda upset that 3 exo songs made it on your worst kpop songs of an entire decade😅.

Blame EXO.

For this month QRIMOLE I want to ask for tips to tackle my anger, as I have lived with it for so long and it’s frustrating how I can’t completely get rid of it.

Have you faced a situation of feeling pissed off by someone else’s disguised arrogance and condescending attitude and you want to argue back but you can’t because that person talk passive aggressively? To be more specific, they sort of spite a thing by mentioning other thing as better, such as they don’t like thing A so they often mention how the thing B is better to berate thing A passive-aggressively. I know you sometimes use this method to piss off ARMY but at least you are honest that you do it out of spite (and as you sometimes said, honesty is always better). This person hide behind the mask of “oh I don’t mean to offend anyone, but why you guys haven’t talked about B (a character)? They are so underrated compared to A (also a character). People should like B more because we are the true fan of series, unlike fans of A who definitely like them for superficial shits such as because they are hot and not care about the story” (but the truth is they only talked about B in relation to A. The character they actually like and talk about often is C, another character whose fans tends to be conflicted with fans of A, and they fawn over C similarly to how fan of A fawn over their favorite character).

They also talk about how they write “analysis”, unlike fans of A who likes something for shallow reasons (yes they have to constantly mentioning this point to remind people not to like group A in disguise), and I come to read their supposed “analysis” to see how intelligent and “not like other girls” they truly are and damn their “analysis” feel propaganda as fuck, full of fancy words to secretively flatter C to the sky and berate A as much as possible and written in an offend-no-one way (to keep up their appearance of someone who totally is objective and not biased), even to the point of being misleading to the main point of the series. For example, they only concentrate on and analyze C and praise how great C is despite the story have other themes more prominent. Or when they criticize as “poorly written” because it focuses on A when the truth is that the story is not even about A. They are pissed because fans A talk about A a lot during that arc, but of course they can’t be honest about it lol.

So the question is, as I read these pseudo “analysis” and expose to their fake-ass attitude, I was angry and frustrated as I can’t argue them back because if I do so, people would brand me as being a bitch and “why are you being so confrontational and edgy? Fandom is supposed to be harmonious and acceptance to everyone” (also I’m not as brave and give-no-fuck as Kpopalypse… I’m still too much of a conformist myself, and those words do secretively gaslighting me into shutting myself up and feeling guilty for questioning shits people talk out), I want to ask how to deal with these repressed anger within myself. I do try to block them but damn the anger of reading those shits really is hard to deal with… How can you be so calm and collected when being exposed to all the shits Kpop stans throw at you without feeling like punching every single one of them…

There’s a lot of idiots in the world who deserve a punch, this is true.  However, if you spend your entire day punching idiots all you’ll do is give yourself a sore hand, plus there’s no guarantee that the punch will cure them of their idiocy anyway.  So while your anger is justified, it’s not necessarily effective to act on.  This is essentially a similar response that I gave last month about fighting racists – the same applies to fighting any other type of idiot.  However a key difference here is since these particular idiots aren’t really harming anyone other than themselves, I don’t think it’s imperative to do much about it – just be the better person and eventually the smarter ones will take a seat at your table.  If you just want them to annoy you less the best way is to stop reading their crap.  I spend nearly zero time in fan communities because I know what I’ll find and I know it’ll be dumb and piss me off, so why should I waste my energy?  My time is more valuable than this, and so is yours.  We all only have a certain amount of time on this earth so why not ignore the idiots and instead invest your valuable time in the things that give you pleasure and enhance your life, you’ll feel a lot better.

Do you have examples of songs that you really like that are of genres that you hate? I feel like something must be truly exceptional to overcome the stigma and even better for someone with different tastes that already enjoys that genre. Granted, I mostly share your own opinion on songs even if our rankings may have different orders, so this is more for curiosity than anything else.

Here you go, also one of the cleverest pro-LGBT songs ever written.

Can I just say that I’m so glad Viviz delivered? Yuju’s debut really disappointed me since she’s my favorite Gfriend member, but Bop Bop really is, as the name suggests, a bop. I’ve also been enjoying more songs from the album than I do usual albums, which is refreshingly familiar as a Gfriend fan. I hope they can continue to provide the fix that Gfriend gap took away.

On to my question: would you prefer a group stick to a single sound (and maybe producing and songwriting team) or experiment? I ask since I’ve always felt Gfriend’s best songs were their early ones from Seo Young-bae and Iggy, but I don’t know if that’s nostalgia and bias completely messing with my judgment. It seemed Source Music feared working with the duo after a while since none of the title tracks after Time for the Moon Night were made by them. Since Viviz is under a new company, it’s certainly possible for them to work with Seo Young-bae and Iggy again.

In western music I’ve always enjoyed the output of groups like Bathory, Celtic Frost, Einsturzende Neubauten and Swans where each album sounds completely different to each other one, because they all still have an important unifying quality – the same songwriters (more or less) worked on everything, so there’s still common threads that hang everything together (like a preference for certain melodic and rhythmic choices, etc).  However in k-pop, songwriters chop and change a whole lot more because of the way the pop music system works, so you don’t usually get those unifying elements.  For that reason I prefer it when k-pop groups tend to continually work with the same teams of music creators, it gives the group a kind of “sonic identity”, even if this is ultimately illusory, it still has a positive impact on the material overall, if the chosen songwriters are good and/or permitted to do what they do best.  Gfriend is definitely a good example of this, most of their feature tracks do “sound like Gfriend”.

Hi Kpopalypse! I am 28 year old female from a South Asian family hailing from an underdeveloped part of a India. I’m sorry as this might be a long post as I’m just typing out all my thoughts trying to figure it out in this random online post.
I am a professionally non-ambitious person. I have now realized that work means no more than getting a paycheck to be able to pay bills for me. I have never had any particular passion in life except for caring for my family and their needs.
I have a good enough master’s degree that landed me a job in 2018. However, I had to quit that as my chronic illness became worse. I have been frequently ill since I was 16 but it became worse when I was diagnosed during my 2nd year in Bachelor’s. That was a time when apart from physical difficulties, I was also struggling mentally to make a sense of myself for years and pretty sure in depression (therapy and mental illnesses are a taboo in my country). I said before that I am a non-ambitious person but that is what I’ve realized over a period of time. In my teens and post-teens I did not think that and struggled as I was always one of the best performers in school, but suddenly felt empty and did not perform as well during college entrance (couldn’t muster up any will to study and even took a break for a year hoping things change, having a break year being another taboo). However nothing really changed and the empty feeling continued to loom as I finallly just enrolled in whichever college I got a seat in. When I was diagnosed, my doctor asked me to switch college as I had moved away from home and come back and stay with family, but I was scared that I would really end being a loser if I took another downgrade or break, and just continued on struggling with my physical and mental condition. There were days that I couldn’t even make it out of bed in pain but still finished my Bachelor’s degree where I learnt nothing or could make any important connections (human or skill wise).
To prove myself, I wanted to apply for the same job as my Dad. In my country, all govt jobs are through entrance exams. But my Dad had himself struggled with the same exams taking him 3 years to crack it. He did not want the same uncertainty for me and instead asked me to apply for masters to atleast be able to secure a job and then prepare for the exams along with a job. The 2 years in Masters proved to be a defining time personally for me where I figured out a lot about myself as I was back at home and thus did not have to struggle alone physically, thus meeting more people and learning from them to grow as a person. So, I thought my life is back on track and I actually got fine with the idea of just getting a job and earning a living, without pushing myself to prove a point to pointless people.
Little backstory, my mother has had a harsh childhood which she doesn’t go into details about but we can see the outcomes of it in her personality. She was married off at 16 to my father by her relatives. Arranged marriages are common here, neither of my parents wanted it but they did not want to ruin each other’s life so learnt to care for each other and now get along well. My mom has seen how hard being a non-earning woman has been in our conservative society and says she lucked out as Dad turned out to be decent but doesn’t want her daughters to have to gamble their life and thus wanted us to work hard and make a name for ourselves. She wanted to prove to the people and her family (her own as well in-laws) where mine or my younger sister’s birth wasn’t welcomed and Mom was taunted as she aborted a third son that she was going to have as Dad was working in govt establishment security in a militancy area and she was not sure if he would make it back alive and did not want another child to look after alone. That lost life has somewhere stuck with her making her pour all her efforts into our studies and making us model daughters that others can look up to and want a daughter seeing us.
I realized all this in the last few years that all that I thought as my ambition over these years was actually my parent’s ambitions embedded in me. My Dad’s ambition of having a higher government position, my Mom’s of being a career woman. These realizations came when I had to quit my job within a year of bagging a good job in a bank. I was devastated then, as I had been holding on and holding back all the pain since years just to perform but now when I had the chance I could not. However, I took a grip of my mental state deciding that life and health are more important than some status given by society’s standards. Initially my target was to start re-applying in 2020, giving myself till the end of the decade to take care of my deteriorating mental and physical state (despite protest from all friends and family to not take a break as my previous one year break was futile).
I don’t regret this decision as I had a bit of money saved up so I knew I won’t be a burden on anyone (anyways there was no rent as I lived with my family). However, Covid happened and all plans in the world got delayed. All exams cancelled and I also got Covid twice. It’s 2022 now and it’s been 3.5 years since I quit my job and as I said in the beginning, I have changed a lot as a person in these years.. maybe more mature now that I’m in my late 20s or maybe because I had a lot of time to do things that made me happy and think over my life and figure stuff out. I liked being a caretaker like my mother had always been for us. I had always been doing this as the oldest daughter but I was more involved in every family members life decisions now and their everyday needs of running a household with extended members and I liked being of use to them as unlike during master’s when they were my caretakers, this time I could do the same. Even though the plans got disrupted and I couldn’t make it past the final interview of these gruesome 3 phase govt job exams and interviews, I was surprised that it did not affect me much and i recovered from the disappointment fast while the younger I had struggled for years with any hint of failure. However, being an unmarried woman in her late 20s is another taboo and all these years my focusing on studies has proved to be a good excuse to stay out of it. As soon as I was proven to be a good homemaker, people started being nosy matchmakers and I somehow rejected them. As my Dad retired last month, I asked them to move to a more metropolitan city to live where my younger sister is a medical student, just so I could have a more free life. I have circulated my CV for jobs to help my family in paying off the mortgage loans. Of course, I’m more unemployable now compared to before and I’m not interested in working hard to get a few certification only to get a job that anyways does not mean too much to me. Not saying that I will shrug my responsibilities that come with it, but I won’t go out of my way to be a part of the rat race for better this or that. Currently I’m waiting that whichever interview I crack in whatever time it takes, I’ll join while paying more attention to my personal life. Since I’m asexual and an introvert, I do not have too many demands anyways. The problem is that my family remembers me as the ambitious and well performing girl and they feel that this is just a phase or that I’m being lazy and will regret this in the future. I have always been a transfer student, frequently moving from one disturbed area to another (sometimes within months) thus no childhood friends exist and while I made a few friends in masters that I know won’t shrug me off if I reach out, they are all older than me and have a family and are long distance friendships. Thus my family matters a lot to me and their opinions and I am always grateful that they have eventually backed me up whenever I make a not so community-standard friendly decision. Thus, this is even confusing me if I’m making the right decisions in life. I certainly feel happier and my illness had regressed to a dormant state (it is not curable). But is this temporary enlightenment or sth since I have been shielded from the so called real world while I took a break? I will have a house to shelter in, hopefully will get a job that pays me soon (not as much as my peers), like the idea of being a mother so once that I’m more confident would have a family (whether alone or with a partner is up for debate still, yet another taboo), I just prefer a slow and simple life where I can tend to my plants and family. Is it too much to ask to be respected despite not meeting so called standards? Maybe Mom was right all along, a non-career woman will never be respected if she tries to be independent in her own ways.

(Sorry this turned into a long rant of sorts, just feel better typing this somewhere. Have a good day!)

Don’t worry about being respected, it’s probably not going to happen (clearly, right?)  “Respect” is really just other people’s validation, which isn’t necessary.  Just worry about living the life you want, whatever that is.  It’s not for other people to judge.  Everyone of course is welcome to their opinion, but it’s your life at the end of the day so live it how you want to.  Yes you’re going to cop shit for it, but that’s really other people’s problem.  A good caonima attitude will see you far in life.

What is your OT6 bias ranking of T-ARA?

I can’t really do a bias ranking of a group with my mother in it, feels like incest.

Hello!

I’ll try to be brief: Since last year I have been going to local concerts by different small bands in different bars/pubs. Every time I sit in different places so I’ve been near/across/sideways/afar/in a different floor from the stage. Every single time no matter where I’m sitting it sounds like a loud, muddled cacophony and it’s impossible to hear all the instruments. One time it was so loud I had to shove kleenex into my ears (but I have been in Noise performances in college classrooms with no acoustics and even *that* doesn’t hurt my ears?)

All the pubs have different amplifiers, evenly placed across the stage, connected to different instruments, and I can see everyone diligently playing, I know they can play well because they upload videos playing at home in social media, and the female vocalists do their best, but their voices never come to my ears because it’s all under the overwhelming noise of the drums and the bass. Or sometimes it’s the drums and the guitars covering the bass. When I record videos on my phone, they sound equally awful. I’ve heard contemporary phone recordings aka bootlegs of shitty punk/harsh noise/black metal groups in equally shitty bars all around the world and even in those I can hear the sound better.

The first time I thought the sound engineer was just incompetent and wasn’t mixing the instruments properly but this keeps happening in other bars with other mixing consoles, who knows, maybe they don’t actually have any sound engineer behind the console. But still, why? What is the explanation behind the cacophony? I don’t expect crisp professional sound from local bands but I’d like to hear how their actual songs sound like for once.

and

Hi I’m the same person who sent the question/rant about going to local concerts with shitty sound. This weekend I went to a concert to see two bands with female vocalists I had seen previously but in another new pub. This was exactly as mid-low budget as all the other places I’ve been to but for the very first time both bands sounded a bit better! My ears weren’t buzzing this time.

I am aware that drums are extremely loud in a live setting btw and no, none of the local groups I’ve seen have those fancy transparent soundproof panel things but yes, I have been on livehouse concerts with professional bands that do use them so I have a good reference of how a good live setting is supposed to be. But I don’t think this issue is caused by just the drums. How come punk bands sounded so good when they played on John Peel’s show?

ANYWAYS… here’s what I noticed:

1. This pub had speakers evenly distributed around the place so even though I was sitting at the back I could hear the music from a nearby speaker (so I guess they don’t need to increase the volume in the main stage amps so much and therefore not distort the sound? idk as you can already tell I don’t know anything about soundwaves other than what I’ve read in kpopalypse dot com throughout the years.)

2. The sound in the videos I recorded was very shrill, very “blown out microphone” again. I’m sure there’s an actual term for this. But on videos recorded by other people with other, better phones the sound was just fine which is… to be expected as my phone is very low end, so disregard this part in my early question.

3. The first band sounded more shrill than the second one and I don’t know why. They have been around for seven years and their equipment is mid but not low budget so it’s not an amateur issue. The vocalist could be heard a bit more clearly than the first time I saw them but not for much.

4. Both bands had short sound checks before going onstage and the second one did some extra adjustments (the vocalist talked to the guy on the console and he moved some knobs probably) so they didn’t sound too shrill and the vocalist could be heard very clear and loud. But as the set went on her voice got lost among the sound. The pub in the video I linked is very similar to the ones I’ve been on so far but others were bigger.

TO SUM UP: Why is the sound in these pubs so ass? why can’t I never hear the vocalists? what’s the point of having an amateur band with more than 3 people if half of the instruments never get heard anyways?

That’s it, thank you once again for taking the time to reply to our questions. Hey at least these two were actually about music!

1. Your position in the audience matters more than you think.  Best advice that I can give for someone checking out live music if you specifically care the most about how it sounds (as opposed to getting as close to the performers as possible, which is actually the primary concern of most concert-goers) is – scan the room, find out where the mixing desk is and stand or get a seat as close to it as you possibly can.  Audio engineers who work in pubs are usually not very good, and when they mix, they tend to mix so it sounds the best from their position, without taking into consideration that people in the audience are in all different positions.  A smarter audio engineer will occasionally leave his spot to run around the room and check out what the mix sounds like from the bar, the front of the stage, the back of the stage, the side, and then quickly race back to the desk to make adjustments – but that’s rare.  More commonly, if they leave their post at the mixing desk, it’s to order a drink and forget what their job is for a while.
2. Yes it’s probably your phone.  Specifically, the loudness of the group is probably peaking out the in-built microphone in your phone, leading to distortion (and not the good kind).  Better phones have better quality microphones/circuits with limiters which will smooth out this effect and produce less distortion.
3. When multiple bands play on the same bill, usually the bands later on sound better because by the end of the first band’s set, the incompetent moron behind the mixing desk has finally figured out how to make the bands sound at least semi-okay, so the second band tends to benefit from the audio engineer using the first band as “practice”.  Not always certain – sometimes an engineer can mix six bands in a row and get none of them right!
4. Another quirk of amateur audio engineers is they tend to use more volume than necessary overall.  “But I want it to be as loud as possible!” – well, that depends.  A future music theory post might talk about live mixing, if people are interested in this topic.

The short answer to your question is audio engineers in pubs suck.  Why do they suck?  Because pub work doesn’t pay that well, so the good ones tend to “graduate” from the pub scene quite quickly and move onto other things, so you’ll rarely see them mix a band in a small venue, so the audio engineers you’re left with in the pub circuit are the ones who either have no ability, are beginners, or just don’t care.

That Apink song is one of the only songs that’s better with the fanchants. That’s how crusty that shit was. What are your thoughts on Namjoo’s current nose?

Are your music theory posts gonna culminate finally to a PROD:KPOPALYPSE heavy metal disco mish mash K-pop track? We’re all waiting. Give the people what they want oppa buibui ❤ #**~~

Sorry I can’t even tell which one of these Apink bitches is Namjoo these days.

I didn’t start writing about k-pop to promote my own music and I hate it when other people in the k-pop world create k-pop related content to try and bait people over to their own compositions.  This is what I originally didn’t like about MRJKPOP long before that alleged dick pics scandal or whatever broke, he’d net in the k-pop audience and then “here’s one of my own songs to demonstrate this concept in this k-pop song”… sneaky boy, I see what you did there.  Keep your own damn songs back in your pants along with your pubic hairs, we don’t want to see either kthx.

What is it that causes the audio in music shows to be so terrible? Is it an issue with mixing, the actual microphones used, or some other thing?

Depends on the show, some of them do sound okay, but a lot of them are taken from the PA sound and a PA can subtly change how a song sounds.  The speaker that you’re playing music through makes a big different to the tonal qualities, a live mix is almost always inferior to a studio version for this reason.

Bisexual woman here, I was talking to a girl on a dating app and I thought I quite liked her, we broke the ice by talking about kpop. Then as soon as I mentioned meeting up IRL, she balked and told me that she is actually straight. In hindsight I should have known she’s a bad egg because earlier in our conversation, she told me her favourite BigBang song is Sunset Glow. That was a massive red flag.

Wise words.  People of all sexualities can learn from the experience above.

Hi, Kpopalypse. I hope you’re doing well. Me, not so much, because I was working hard to save up for going abroad, but I probably overdid it and weakened myself while exposing myself to too many people at work and on public transport, because I got MOTHERFUCKING COVID. Now I have to isolate and delay my plans of going abroad, but it could be worse. My country will keep me in a hotel and fed at no charge to me, at least, so I don’t have to worry about ordering food online or risk exposing my family.

On a more k-pop note, why is is that k-pop seems to have very little overt harmonising with multiple main vocals? As in, they seem to have a lot of background vocals for harmonising, but very rarely do they seem to have two k-pops singing at the same time at around the same level in the mix. If it’s just a stylistic choice, it would be weird that such harmonies are so infrequent across the whole genre/industry, because literally the only k-pop song I can think of is Destiny by Lovelyz.

I always thought that was weird too when I first found out about k-pop, until I did about three seconds of research and found out that almost none of them can fucking sing.  Sure, it doesn’t matter much for a live stage cos they’re always mimed, but there’s always a risk that someone on a variety show will ask them “that sweet harmony that you girls did on your most recent song ‘Molest Me Oppa’, can you recreate that harmony vocal part live for us right now?” and put them on the spot.  They don’t want that.

Now that accusations of idols being school bullies have gradually died down, what do you think of the way their companies handled it? In Aisha’s case, Yuehua Entertainment took the netizens to court and made them write letters of apology and promise to never do it again in exchange for dropping the charges. It didn’t have the desired effect because people speculated the netizens initially told the truth and only apologized because they had no way of proving the bullying took place. In Kihyun’s case, Starship Entertainment organized a meeting between him and his accuser. Then the accuser claimed he had been mistaken because Kihyun was friends with the bullies but was not a bully himself. Kihyun published an apology for acting immaturely in middle school which seemed meaningless (who isn’t immature in middle school?). It wasn’t well received and it probably doesn’t help that Kihyun has a mean streak at times so that reinforces some people’s perception that he was a bully. So what is the right way to deal with this? Whether you ignore the allegations, sue the accusers or try to mediate, the outcome seems to be always the same: the person accused has their reputation damaged. I completely understand that victims of bullies want to expose them but it’s too easy to make up accusations and we will never know the truth unless an incident was filmed. Is this always a lose/lose situation or is there a better way to handle these situations?

Personally I think the best way to handle it is to embrace it.  If it was me as the CEO I’d just say “yeah she did it, and she’ll do it again”.  Then I’d hold a fan event where people can pay large amounts of money to be humiliated in public by their bias.

I was just reading back on your past roundups. While reading the 1/2/2016 edition, you wrote that the blog probably wouldn’t have existed T-ara’s “Sexy Love”. How did that song influence the creation of this blog?

Answered here.

I’m just wondering what it is you find attractive about Jamie. She seems to have lost weight too. Did you like her before more?

She still doesn’t look bad now but she looked much better pre-Jessification.  It’s not so much the weight but more her facial features.

Have you ever had a situation where you watched a movie or series or heard a song or read a book that you knew was objectively bad but you liked and enjoyed it anyway

No, because if I liked and enjoyed it, it’s good.  “The Room” is a good film, sure it’s badly made, but it’s funny enough to be a net positive.

Since the real goal of any Kpop agency is to make a group or its members popular enough to score endorsement and acting deals, visuals and personal presentation come before, say, actual vocal talent. It’s not a stretch I think to say that often trainees are chosen for looks first, and then trained to at least some extent on singing and dancing.

However, I’d argue that stage and MV presence certainly ties into popularity, and I was wondering your thoughts on dance skills and choreography. I’m by no means well versed enough to say if this is really true across the board, but in my experience, it seems that dancing is far more of a priority for boy groups than it is for girl groups. There have certainly been exceptions, and lately I’ve been seeing girl groups that are using more complicated choreo; Itzy and Tri.be come to mind as some of the more dance-focused girl groups. Even Twice seems to be adopting more complicated choreographies lately (I saw Twicelights live, and I didn’t notice anything at the time, but on the blu-ray, Dahyun was clearly phoning everything in.)

Am I crazy or is this a shift, and if so, why?

Moreover, why this disparity? Is it because girl groups just have to look pretty, but boy groups have to look “cool” too?

I think that girls are required to be more “feminine” or something due to cultural norms and people in companies are worried that they might lose some of that if they “dance too hard” or something.  Pretty much all these groups phone-in shitty versions of their dance routines during a live concert, probably because the stakes are higher if they fuck up – if you’re going to be doing shit for three hours you want to preserve your stamina a bit.  I agree that there’s been a little bit of a change lately – but not much.

I know that you aren’t a fan of ballads, r&b and jazz type of songs or any slow song for that matter… But could you recommend any slow type of song in kpop that you actually find interesting? Or is it just a genre that doesn’t appeal to you because the catchyness isn’t the main point? Also… what voices in kpop do you find charming? Is there anyone that makes you listen/tolerate their music even if the composition isn’t quite good etc?

Ballads – answered here.

I don’t really care about vocal tone that much, but if I were really going to try and scrape around for a preference at the bottom of my don’t-give-a-shit barrel, I’d say that I do like it when people (male or female) sing deep rather than super high.

Hi Kpopalypse,

I’m sorry using Jpop example here, what is the structure of this song? It seems that instead of verses chorus structure, this almost sounds like two long verses without any noticeable chorus. Is it similar to like a lullaby song structure?

Thank you

Starts with the chorus first, that’s probably why it’s confusing you.  I didn’t listen to all of it, I couldn’t make it through.  What a fucking shit song.  Total garbage, absolute crap, I removed the link for the good of humanity, so other readers wouldn’t be exposed to this absolute rubbish.

What happened to belly buttons in K-pop? Will they ever make a comeback?

I don’t know, it’s not something I’ve ever really paid much attention to.  Can’t say I give much of a fuck about belly buttons.  I’m pretty sure Wonho has been pretty good about showing his belly button though, surely that’s all the “comeback” anybody needs.

About a week ago my friend and I were talking about JYP’s upcoming girl group, NMIXX. He asked me when I think they’ll debut, and I said probably on 2/22/22. Today he showed me their teaser pic with the debut date and I was right. Are your Boram ESP powers rubbing off on me or was it already obvious that such a group would debut on that day?

Clearly you have been reading posts on this website for long enough to absorb some of the Super Boram ESP Powers – so congratulations!  Also if you have any lottery numbers you’re really feeling, let us know.

You’ve mentioned Adam Neely a few times, so I was wondering if you watched this:

It’s 45 minutes, so I wouldn’t expect you to watch it right away if you haven’t, but hey, maybe when you have 45 minutes to kill sometime.

Yeah I’ve already seen it.  Yeah it’s a wild title, that seems like it’s going to be something ridiculous on the surface, but he’s actually right.  The Schenker stuff is true!  Fortunately a lot of music teaching these days is actually pretty aware of the points in this video and does go some way to addressing that.  For instance, when I studied music at university I studied north Indian classical music as well so I actually knew a fair bit of what that section was all about.  I guess it depends where you learn.  I do recommend anyone interested watch all of the video.

How the fuck does Yoyomi manage to always look good at all those shitty clothes?

A future Kpopalypse Fashion Class will cover!  And she’s not the only one due for coverage here…

will you consider reviewing the movie love & leashes, starring seohyun?

It is being considered!

Hi kpopalypse oppar! Long time reader first time responder
First of all big thanks for getting through the unbearable dirge of kpop trash every week so we don’t have to. It’s been a great source of entertainment throughout all these years

I’m from one certain region which has recently been under sanctions for it’s involvement in one certain other region, and as a result will probably suffer insane insane damage to the economy, to the point of making life here completely grim. As a consequence, for the first time in my life I’ve been considering leaving for good, or at least until situation somehow gets better. I have a real option of leaving for Australia through close relatives of mine being citizens, a useless degree (art history), trash resume and sort of decent language skills. Accomodation is not a problem and I won’t starve to death (those relatives of mine are pretty wealthy), but getting a good job seems impossible. My question is – is there a chance to support oneself (on a minimum level) on low-skill jobs, and basically is there any hope for me at all.
I know that this is not a question fit for a kpop entertainment blog (albeit highly intellectual influential and important one ofc) but im grasping at straws here and would like to hear any opinion i could get

Australia is really hard to get into, so if you have an opportunity to do so due to sheer luck I would recommend it.  Right now your country is really no place to be, so notwithstanding a very extreme change in circumstances (say, certain world leaders succumbing to mutiny within their own ranks, certainly not out of the question mind you) jumping ship seems like the smart move.  Who knows, there might come a time very soon where it’s impossible to leave.  Australia does have an unemployment problem like most western countries (the numbers vary depending on where you go) but there’s also a lot of work here for people who have determination and are willing to do unpleasant jobs that others would rather not.  The bigger cities have less unemployment, but also higher living costs. 

So, I know a lot of audiophile stuff is placebo, but do you care about getting high-quality .flac files or do high bit-rate or even low bit-rate .mp4 files suffice?

Best digital quality is 44.1KHZ/48KHZ .wav (not FLAC, believe it or not) but high bitrate mp3 is also fine.  Low bitrate mp3 can get a bit painful but if it’s not too low where it sounds crunchy I can tolerate it for most things.

Interested if you care for hyperpop, since hyperpop artists usually bill themselves as trying to make the poppiest of pop music, something I think you’ve said you enjoy before. A couple kpop acts have taken cues from it now but pretty conservatively, mostly just the plate crashing sounds and commitment to being annoying

The funny thing is that so-called “hyperpop” doesn’t actually sound that poppy to me, mainly because the defining characteristics of it seem to be more about the way samples and synths are used rather than creating catchiness in the melodies or vocals, a lot of that music pays very little attention to what the singers are doing.

Hey! I have no questions to ask you. Just wanted to tell you I’m a new-ish reader and landed at your blog from some twitter comment about your end of year music list. I liked quite a few of the songs on it, but was kind of shocked by the informal writing style and the banner with objectification survey links and all. However still curious as even though the language used was unusual for me, and frankly I did not like it much, but I agreed to quite a bit of the content. Reading a few more posts left me initially even more confused as I agreed with even more of your content and even learnt a bit more about things like dog whistle that maybe as a girl I would not have picked up on, yet the language was still objectionable to me and the boob appreciation posts made me uneasy.
However as I read more posts to make sense of the identity and aim of this blog page, I realized quite a few biases of my own. Even though I have often considered myself a more rational fan and person in general, I still tend to be hypocritical, especially as a demisexual myself, more sex positive people or content turned me off (like your posts). However once I saw past my own biases about the same or the highly informal style that you use, I really liked your content and effort at trying to tell something to the more into the fandom culture fans about K pop or life in general. I did not expect to get some sort of self awareness or awareness of society at large when I started reading the initial posts. I guess I can be classified as a know it all and prude, but I’m glad to have found your blog.

Thanks for your comment and also for demonstrating the stages of evolution of a reader, I think a lot of readers have been through a journey like this.  My writing is actually designed to achieve exactly the result you’re experiencing! Thank you for reaching out.

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That’s all for this month’s QRIMOLE!  This series will return next month!  In the meantime remember to support body positivity!

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