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

PSY feat. Jessi – GANJI

This song just sounds like any other song with Jessi in it, even all the parts where Jessi isn’t in it.  For someone with so much personality, PSY’s music is oddly lacking any of its own character.  He goes on YG, he sounds like YG.  He works with artist X, he sounds like artist X, he works with artist Y, he sounds like artist Y.  Courtney Love syndrome.

Golden Child – RATA-TAT-TAT

Golden Child continue to do their best to flush all that “ohmigosh isn’t this Infinite’s follow-up group” goodwill down the toilet.

ONEWE – Montage_

Yeah that useless underscore is somehow part of the song name, just like that useless guitar strumming while no guitar sound is coming out is somehow part of the video.  Brace yourself for the plagiarism accusations from Fromis_9 fans I guess.

ONEWE – Reminisce about All

Their other song is a lot worse but at least they mimed their instruments correctly here, so that’s something.  It’s a sad day when k-pop idols can’t even do “fake” correctly.

ASTRO – Candy Sugar Pop

If BTS did actually pave the way for anything, it wasn’t during their angst-ridden “include mental illness references in our songs so our mentally ill fandom can relate to us” era, but the cheesy latter-day “let’s scoop up all those 1D fans looking for the next trend” hard western crossover era, which has now led to every other group trying to do the bright disco-pop thing, because what we apparently want is some boy group trying to sound like some other boy group trying to sound like the guy who lied about having the Elephant Man’s bones.

HYO – Deep

The final part of the chorus where they bothered to put in actual harmony really sounds great, but unfortunately the rest of it sounds like Hyoyeon fisting me up the ass with that massive crab claw.  This song was only a few more chord changes away from being cool and not a dumpster fire, what a pity. 

CL – Chuck

A pretty funky beat that’s also unusual, some decent bass, some vocalising that actually fits… it’s actually pretty good, for what it is?  Okay, it’s not going to become my favourite song of the decade or anything, but seeing CL finally do something as a solo artist that I can get with and that isn’t either boring or embarrassing is a nice little switcheroo.  Okay so it took her nine years but better late than never.

Yezi – Acacia

Some great visual design is the only thing notable here.

Yoyomi – Cheers (Dream Like Mix Ver.)

Yoyomi throws herself into the “sexy concept” with abandon and holy shit I knew she was hot but seeing her like this really brings it home.  Of course it helps that unlike [insert your bias here] Yoyomi is a completely independent artist so she is actually allowed to eat healthy meals and doesn’t get tortured for thinking the bad thoughts, it makes a world of difference to sexiness levels overall.  There’s apparently a “rock version” up next, I might have to go and eat some celery so my ballsack can handle it.

Davichi – Fanfare

I don’t know what changed over in the Davichi camp but they are suddenly recording songs that are over 35 BPM for the first time in about a decade.  The other weird change is that they really made Minkyung look like shit in this video which is one hell of an achievement because she’s always stunningly beautiful in videos.  Something very strange is going on, if I were in the Korean police force I would check their agency HQ for hidden bodies or a secret meth lab.

NCT Dream – Fire Alarm + Arcade

I’m not going to review two live songs submitted in one because it’s too hard, and will open up the floodgates to people asking me to review entire live sets and etc etc.  This is just a memo to let you know that if SM want me to give a shit they can make proper videos, it’s not like they don’t have the fucking money.

B.I feat. DeVita – BTBT

When even someone as shit as Soulja Boy refuses to be on the main release of your song you know you’re in some serious musical trouble.

Treasure – Darari (Remix)

The better songs this week are coming from some unexpected places and Treasure is one of them, who finally decided to start rocking out for some reason, which is great and all but much like CL I have to ask why couldn’t we have had this earlier. 

Ciipher – Fame

“I’m gonna chase the fame”.  Okay then.  Good luck to them I guess, fly fly, you have a wing.

Tark Sun Young, In The City – Don’t Do That

One of those songs that just needed to be faster.  Play at 1.25x speed for maximum fun, or should that be minimum boredom.

Busters – Aiyah

Look at the girl on the left at 0:11.  For a moment her mind wanders, and she starts thinking about what life is actually like “on the outside”, then she remembers she’s in Busters doing a live stage and the training kicks in.  Tipping one of these girls to do a tell-all Kpopalypse interview in ten years.

JO1 – Walk It Like I Talk It

These poor guys, I take the piss out of their group name every time they have a song, only Drippin has a more shameful moniker.  However it’s their agency’s fault that this keeps happening to them because the songs are always so unmemorable that I just can’t think of anything else to write about. 

Megamax – Hug

A VR video that isn’t full 360 degree rotation is sus as fuck.  I want to see what’s in front of the stage just so I know that the CEO isn’t raping his trainees while these boys are dancing, which might sound cynical, but shit like that has actually happened in k-pop before, so I reserve the right to trust nobody.

Jeong Sewoon – Roller Coaster

Never mind social distancing, let’s go on a roller coaster, yay!  Don’t forget to sanitise your seat, fuckface.

YOUNITE – Ring Ring Ring

Pedophiles, nazis, and record labels who release their music videos in mobile phone format.

Lemonade – Chewing Chewing

Future Idol label are that agency notorious for debuting ultra-nugu tadpole groups that then instantly vanish.  Somehow Lemonade actually lasted long enough to have a comeback!  Is this a first for Future Idol?

Chen – Hold You Tight

“Hold You Tight” holy shit.  Sometimes k-pop is just a parody of itself without even trying.

Lil Cherry – WAMEME

Lil Cherry actually had a decent song for the first time the other week.  I figured that it was an event that probably wasn’t going to repeat itself super quickly and I was right.

BEBE YANA – Space Mulan

This girl used to be in EvoL so I’ll forgive her nasal Autotune sucking the life out of this track because being in EvoL really obviously must have been a hell ride so she probably has earned a break from any sort of criticism for a while.

Stay-C – Young Luv

When you see the opening shot of the video and they’re standing neatly in a row in a very un-fun kind of way like they’re lining up for school roll call, don’t expect that you’ll be having all that much fun either.  If you want to see the opposite of stage presence, here it is.  To be fair this song is about as good as these type of songs get, but Stay-C have yet to top “So Bad” and this isn’t in the same league by a long shot.

Woosung – Phase Me

It’s funny how Woosung is coming off visually like a trimmed-down version of Wonho, and the song itself is like a slightly mellower version of the last few uptempo Wonho solos.  I’m not complaining, I’m all for copies if they’re copies of something good, I’ll leave it up to you to decide in a month or so whether Woosung is worthy of a place on the objectification lists.

ROY – IF I

“If I”?  Maybe he means “If I had only read my Shure Super 55 instruction manual“.  He gets it right for the first part of the song, but when the beat kicks in they switch to a different take where he then holds it the wrong way for the rest of the song, so I guess he just got lucky.  Someone hurry up and teach these Korean idols so I don’t have to keep banging on about this issue in every goddamn roundup and boring you all to death.

MEMI – Hate U

A song with a Big Muff pedal certainly needs the guitar a lot higher in the mix than this, but it still rocks enough thanks to the drums so I guess I’ll take it.

Say Sue Me – No Real Place

Another actually decent song that could have used a bit more of a roar in the mix but is still reasonable enough anyway.  At least it has some pace, yay.

sidbysid – Stranger

This one has the guitars loud enough, but the song is shit instead, oh well.  Loud guitars aren’t always enough to rescue a song, they’re just a minor point on the positive side.

Ji Se Hee – Butterfly

When I clicked on this, an Avril Lavigne song came up in my recommended videos for some reason and I actually went and listened to it for a while instead, that’s how much this one grabbed me.

AKIS KOREA – No Way

Someone asked me if the production on this Kpopalypse Nugu Alerter’s new song was bad and if so, what they did wrong.  While the song is clearly a bit unusual on purpose so “k-pop production standards” really don’t apply because I don’t think they’re actually going for that, I’d say the big issue that I have with the song is the drum sound.  For some reason they’ve picked the most flat and uninteresting sounding default hard rock style drum machine sample kit that they possibly could, it just doesn’t fit with anything else around it at all.  It works a little better at the end where everything speeds up but that’s only because the beat starts moving so fast the the deadness of that snare drum is less obvious.

Mi DRAG – SOAR

The drums are similar here, but they suit the song better.  Not that I’m wild about the song either but it has some riffs so that’s something.

The Paradice – Don’t Know What To Do

Pretty solid for some nugu guys honestly, this is better than most of the boy stuff this year.  Now who the fuck are these people.

Kim Min Soo – Push Off

Korean kids seems to do skateboarding differently – they don’t do crazy flips and stuff, they just sort of dance around on the board in an aesthetically pleasing manner.  I guess it makes sense, given what Korean traffic is like I suppose the ones doing ollies on handrails have a life expectancy of about three weeks which probably isn’t long enough to organise a video appearance.

Quinsha – Raining Stars

Warning sign: pillow fights.  A shredding guitar solo tries hard but it’s not enough.

The Vane – Ocean

If I had a Martin acoustic guitar I wouldn’t put my band stickers all over it, because Martin guitars are massively overpriced for what they are and it would fuck the resale value, which is the only really good reason to buy one.

OSCiiL X Dalzi – Salgeum Salgeum

mrcs (not the humans and their fucking lame cat ears, you have to wait a while for the chonk to appear)

Sinso – Dancing Naked

They were too afraid to dance naked for the video so they did a “drawing” music video instead, pathetic.  Where’s Lubricated Goat when you need them.

Jannabi – Grippin The Green

It’s past 20th April, this is late… what, it’s not about that?  No reason to give a shit then.  Next.

Alice – Drive Away

Her song isn’t all that notable but I’m just putting this song here to give it some promo because I bet Alice feels a bit fucked over that some idol group just stole her name when they could have kept their previous perfectly good name, so she deserves a break.  Life’s hard when you’re nugu.

Kim Doeun feat. Kim Hanjoo – Prophet

Starts strange, and gets stranger, and not a good type of strange.

Kim Sawol – Ritual

The thing about going the Mazzy Star route is you need really killer melody and harmony to compensate for the innately dreary delivery, and this doesn’t have it.

Lee Boram – Attitude

Eh, it’s boring.  Just putting it here so people don’t ask me about it.  Oh wait, that’s why I put every song in every roundup, isn’t it.

dsel with Khundi Panda, Son Simba, OHIORABBIT – Coaster (30MIX)

A reasonable beat but none of the rappers really stand out.

obiegogle, ACHILLO, gamma, unofficialboyy, young dogg, young chang – WING CYPHER EP3

A less reasonable beat and none of the rappers really stand out either. There’s too many of these guys and I don’t give a shit.  Give me a reason to care.

BLSP feat. JUSTHIS, Huckleberry P – No Way

Okay here’s a good one, finally.  They always sound best and bring out the best beats when they’re hating on someone.

Roh Yun Ha feat. lobonabeat! – Far Post

I guess I should be grateful.  Listen to how much worse the other rap songs could have sounded.

Spear Rave feat. maddoaeji – Dream Trigger

When I see those puffy shiny jackets I just want to push the guys wearing them in the water to see how well they float.

Kang Jihyuk – Jammin’s Day

Some random kid doing that autotune R&B crap actually doesn’t sound any different to some random adult doing that autotuned R&B crap.

Airman feat. 1ho, 0back – I Will Stop

Stopping is a good idea, let’s do that now.

GUESS WHAT, QUEENDOM 2 IS FUCKING SHIT SO FAR SECTION

Brave Girls x Loona – Tell Me Now

The best song from the Queendom 2 show that you’re hopefully not wasting your precious time on this planet watching or caring about, is this stunningly awkward and boring jazz-lite thing which is all concept, no execution.

Kepler x Viviz – Purr

The usual melody-less, slow, yelpy, morose garbage that k-pop labels all want to shove down our throats these days for some reason.  The pre-chorus sound like it’s going somewhere interesting and then it just decides not to do that and u-turns straight back to bullshit trendy land.

Hyolyn x WJSN – KA-BOOM

And here’s the worst song from Queendom 2, not only is it just musical total crap, somehow the stage doesn’t even look any good.  How do they fuck up these things so badly, isn’t there quality control, I guess not.

BONUS RANDOM VIDEOS OF THE WEEK

Korean girls try to paint nude for the first time

This is pretty awesome, although of course the girls are reacting for fun and real people in this situation would just shut up and draw and just smirk on the inside.  I know what you’re going to ask and the answer is yes, Kpopalypse has been a “life drawing” model before back in University days!  Highly recommended if you need some extra cash because it actually pays pretty good per hour of sitting around naked, maintaining the same pose for that amount of time is the real challenge, so make sure you pick a comfortable one.  And no you won’t get an erection because it’s super unsexy doing that and you just get cold instead.  Don’t ask me where any of the drawings of me went though, maybe some will turn up on Ebay, or BTS ARMYs will put them in their doxxing reports, I look forward to that.

Wonho – 1 night and 2 days trip to Gapyeong / Gapyeong Cottage / BBQ Party

Speaking of nude guys we should check in with what Wonho is up to.  Oh he’s hanging out in the country with some dogs or whatever, groovy.  mrds also watch out for fluid entering electrical equipment, it can interfere with your battery

Velvet – animal cafe date with me

And how’s the female wonho doing, oh she’s in a cat cafe and also there are foxes.  Something for everyone this week, mrs and mrcs you’re welcome, don’t forget to sanitise your device when you’re finished with it, makeup remover wipes work well or so I hear

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