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

Dreamcatcher – Maison

Sure, the hypocrisy of Dreamcatcher coming out with a “save the planet” concept and promoting NFTs at the same time is right up there with BTS giving UNICEF speeches and then rolling over and being Saudi Arabia’s good little PR bitch boys, but I’d actually be fine with them destroying the Earth for a quick buck if they at least turned the guitars up in the mix a bit more.  The energy from just one NFT transaction could power a JCM-800 Marshall stack for an entire year, you know.

Seventeen – Darl+ing

Pleasant but boring, there’s nothing really all that notable to even criticise.  It’s like trying to write an essay about the patterns on gift wrap.

Jessi – Zoom

You have to give credit to Jessi for knowing her audience and giving them what they want.  That audience definitely isn’t me, but for those who this is relevant to she’s definitely giving you the “official clearance to fap card”.

Alexa – Wonderland

Apparently this song was an official entrant for America’s new Eurovision-lite, and I’m told that it did quite well. I guess it makes sense, Alexa’s music is pretty ordinary by k-pop standards, but by the somewhat lower standards of American pop surely she would feel like a breath of fresh air.

Sorn – Scorpio

Not quite the sharp object I was hoping for, but still definitely a cut above the usual ballad fare that clogs up the lower half of my weekly roundup submissions.  Also has anyone noticed how Sorn’s look has improved drastically now that the idiots at CUBE are no longer in charge of her styling?

Oh My Girl – Drip

This song made me feel like a drip, chiki chika chu.

Oh My Girl – Sailing Hearts

The worst kind of utterly boring album filler ballad crap that I really shouldn’t even include in roundup at all just because this type of trash barely even meets notability standards let alone musical standards.  The song submitter told me to check out Yooa at 0:53 but I fell asleep long before then so I’m not even sure what I was supposed to be looking for, did she have a booger hanging out of her nose and I missed it or something?

DKZ – Cupid

Dongkiz changed their name a bit but perhaps they should have tried changing their songwriters.

Min ft. JMIN – Hit Me Up

It’s great to see Min back, she was always my favourite in miss A and she looks better right now than she ever has.  Sure, the song is pretty pathetic rambling R&B nonsense that nobody should listen to twice, but Min rocks a fuzzy jumper more completely than just about anyone so I can deal.

JUST B – RE=LOAD

Every boy group sounds like this right now.  I’m so bored.

Kingdom – The Song of Dann: Promise

Kingdom one again bringing us beautiful cinematography, and the song isn’t too bad either, but that girl is far too young to be in a video gazing longingly at some k-pop boys, couldn’t they have gotten someone a few years older to play that part?  Where’s Chris Hansen when you need him, he’d have his work cut out for him in the k-pop scene.

NiziU – Asobo

There’s one or two okay melodies here but the rest is absolute juvenile childrens-TV-tier rubbish.  Niziu are basically Twice if they were more marketed to idiots.

Yezi – No Name

A step in the right direction as Yezi finally re-embraces the rap style from “Cider” again, gosh it only took her six years, entire groups have trained, debuted and disbanded in the time we’ve been waiting for Yezi to get her shit together.

Taeyong x Wonstein – Love Theory

Grinding and dull with those incessant marimbas, fans will love it of course (because fans will love anything their fave produces) but anyone else will be sick of it long before it’s over.

Me:us – Memories

This is a new duo project from Moon Hyuna and Hyemi who are both ex-Nine Muses.  Don’t get your hopes up though, because this is a 100% pure “sitting-down ballad” in the worst k-pop tradition, that could have been recorded by anyone.  There’s precisely zero of the fire from the better Nine Muses tracks on offer here.

Onestar, Park Woojin – How About Me

If I went to a laundromat and the washing machines looked like that I would sue them.

THE8 – Abyss

Jesus fucking christ what is this wank.  They literally just made a decent looking dance routine and then said to the piano guy “just watch us dance and play whatever you want” and that’s what they ran with.  K-pop fans will literally eat up any old shit.

Cravity – Late Night

There’s nothing to say about this boring trash so I’d just like to give a quick shout out to the people who have been checking out this Kpopalypse TikTok fan account, which isn’t maintained by me but I definitely support what the account is doing.  Watching all you TikTokkers get incredibly butthurt over the fairly tame sledging in my reviews, plus completely fail at reading comprehension time and time again, has been most hilarious, you’re all very entertaining so please keep it up.

Rudrygo Sousa & Purplebeck – Can’t Believe

If you’re a singer who isn’t Korean but feel like renting one out to give yourself some more social media engagement and build your name a bit, there’s probably plenty of nugus who will do it on the cheap.  It’s not such a bad idea, nugu girl groups are used to being ordered around for dollars and helping out with your crap Europop probably isn’t the most unpleasant thing they’ve been forced to do this week, plus you can slip them a little actual money which you can guarantee their agency isn’t doing, so everyone’s a winner.  Except maybe the listener.

Hi Cutie – Circus

The way the enunciate “circus” it sounds just like “suck ass”, but ironically the song itself isn’t too bad, it’s everything else around it that’s terrible.  From the styling and clothes, to the visual design, to the tap-dancing-section-that-isn’t, to the unwelcome overuse of brass, to the hideous lyrics, to the (of course) microphone positioning, it’s clear that whoever’s behind this had no clue about anything.  The core components of the music itself aren’t terrible, but good luck trying to stay focused on them.

CooKie – My Love

I don’t want to be too mean because they’re just kids, but the main thing that sticks out here is the dance, they look like they’re dancing to a routine for a completely different song.  I wish I was listening to that song instead of this weird Gfriend-at-half-speed thing.

Loca – Control

Someone told the set designer “I don’t care what you do, just go crazy” so they did.  The results are great, they’ve totally upstaged both the song and the performers.

Younha – c/2022YH

Younha can be great when she wants to be.  I feel like a better chorus was needed, with the melody disappointingly hanging off one note for the most part, but hey the song in general still really rocks and the producer isn’t afraid to crank up the pace and let the guitars put in some work – Dreamcatcher take note!

Hong Euijin – I Knew I Love

Do you know how rare a white electronic keyboard is?  They shopped all over the city to find a white keyboard just for this video, that’s dedication.

D-Hack x Ryu Sujeong – Maybe We

Woollim didn’t have any clue what to do with the potential of Lovelyz which kind of sucks, so now we have to put up with a disbanded group and tons of solo appearances that recapture none of why we originally gave a shit.

Woo Jinyoung – Unbelievable

The keyboard riffs here are really quite good, what a shame that the most generic beats and vocals imaginable take all the shine right off.

Miyavi feat. Kang Daniel – Hush Hush

All groove and nothing else of worth… but damn, what a groove.  It almost saves the song all by itself.

BE’O – Love Me

Who is this guy?  Why is this song so good?  Oh wait, this is a guy on Viviz’ new label?  Ah okay – that explains everything.

Wooks – Demon

Here’s what BE’O’s song would have probably sounded just like instead if it was written by someone who sucks.

LonerKIT – Monologue

If you don’t like what’s in the book just put it down, ripping out the pages doesn’t achieve anything.  This is what happens when today’s generation of people who actually think their comments on websites mean anything go back to reading paper books.  It’s not “engagement”, you’re just littering like a fuckhead.

JunSung – The Funkiest

Any song with “funk” anywhere in the title, or the lyrics, is definitely not funky at all.  You know, it’s that “lions don’t need to tell you that they’re lions” thing again.

Rich – Curfew

It’s not as fun when they’re too self-aware.

Jung Woo Lee – Everything about you

And again.  Turning the screen purple every few seconds is not a substitute for a song.

Peak N Pitch, Ji Dae Han – Are You Okay

The first lyrics “I met you every day and chatted with you every day” – now that’s where you fucked up.  Perhaps if you weren’t so smothering she might have stuck around, give a bitch some breathing room damn.

Boyz’s Touch – Fuxxxx Crazy

Next time, hit him harder.  Slap him so hard that he can’t sing for six months.

Yangbans – Through the Tunnel

That guy was rocking out before the music even started, I was expecting him to get ready to go hard, turns out he was just jumping around a lot because it was cold, what a pussy.

DGAF – Think About U

I don’t really care that much about the leaden song, but this is fantastic cinematography.  I wish more JAVs were shot with this kind of semi-noir style instead of just the usual “all lights on all the time” thing they usually do.

Owen ft. Kwon Ki Baek – Mowgli

Well, I guess “It G Ma” at twice the speed is at least fixing one of the six or seven major problems with it.

Na Ilkang – Let’s go catch squid

The poor guy looks like he’s about to have a heart attack, he really should stop singing and take his own advice.

G.A. with The A – Bastards

Someone just said “let’s just make the computer squirt a little and rap over it” and someone else said “well okay then, you’re paying”.

ELO feat. ph-1 – Falling Dreams

My dreams of a good song fell off pretty quickly into this.

l!ldumb – Wooeoh

It sounds as stupid as the group and song name looks.

Burgundy Willow ft. D’oud – Higher

Here’s your man-meat content for this week, enjoy.

Ordinary Sound – Obsession

Imagine calling your group “ordinary sound”.  I guess it does sound pretty ordinary, so at least anyone booking this group is going to get what they asked for.

Park Hyeon Jin feat. Hoody – Late night

People who like R&B are weird, like the folks who spend all day by the airport runway taking photos of planes.  If you’ve seen the bottom of one plane, you’ve seen them all.

slchld – Holly’s ego

You know as soon as you hear that first chord, with the clean electric guitar doing that hammer-on, that it’s some garbage.

Dalcom Monster – DM

Defintiely a song where I’m feeling left out of the joke, but as they say, if you can’t work out who the joke is on, then it’s probably on you.

Luci Gang – Brunch

I’m sure even without the nasal Autotuned whine I would have hated this song anyway, but the machine sure isn’t helping.

SOB3R feat. Jaeha, Effie – But!

When that guy in the laundromat just stops the song and screams “yeeeeeah!” in that Autotuned voice I just laughed out loud for a good minute.  Thanks for being so shit, because writing roundup each week is boring, so you really cheered me up and gave me the stamina to keep going.

UNEXPECTEDLY GOOD YACHT ROCK SONGS SECTION

Kim Feel – Spring Night

I was halfway through shitting on this in review form and then I realised it was actually good.  Definitely didn’t expect that especially for a song with this kind of tempo, but an actual good song can save any amount of weird sonic choices.

015B feat. Lee Taekwon – A’s Theme

015B inject a bit more old school flavour into their ballads than most people are probably used to, and the result here is again surprising, my band friends would probably be into this.

Somango – Fly high

When you’re nugu you can’t really afford to get on the yacht so you just have to sort of sing somewhere near one and hope people get the idea.

BONUS RANDOM VIDEOS OF THE WEEK

Twice “Better” cover by Kotono and Li-sa-X

Japanese guitar genius Li-sa-X is quite frankly on another level of mastery to even the average pro guitarist and her guitar playing indeed makes everything “better” including this otherwise fairly standard Twice track.  The art here isn’t just that she’s playing a lot of notes very quickly, but that she still makes it all fit into the song sensibly without any of it sounding like it doesn’t belong.

2NE1 perform “I Am The Best” live at Coachella

I don’t think it’s really all that meaningful that this happened (groups reunite for one-off live shows all the time) but it’s just good to see Bom again, she looks so great.  I wish she’d stop wearing these form-destroying feathery dress things however, I realise Korea is big on body-shaming so I hope she finds the strength to kick against that a bit more and flaunt her curves proudly – and not just for selfish reasons (although there are those, too).

Try Not To Have Gay Sex With Yves 4: A New Hope For Not Having Gay Sex With Yves – teaser 1 of 259

It’s coming, in pride month 2022, so be ready!  But don’t worry if you forget, because like any garbage k-pop agency I plan to drop another 258 shitty teasers just to remind you about it.  Also in true k-pop agency tradition none of these teasers will be in any way representative of the final product of course.  In the meantime feel free to revisit parts 1, 2 and 3 to get yourself in the mood!

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