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

Aespa – Girls

Obviously a sequel of sorts to “Savage“, and much like that song, it’s a real mixed bag in terms of quality.  The brass riff in the verse is cool and the guitar in the first part of the pre-chorus is even better, hell even the dubstep part works pretty well because it actually fits sensibly into everything around it (for fucking once, hey).  Just a pity that we have a chorus that sounds like a cheesy K/DA-tier gamer-power-fantasy afterthought.  It’s still a hit rather than a miss overall especially if you cobble all the good bits together, which I’m sure someone will do…

Viviz – Loveade

I’m pretty sure after watching this gobsmackingly amazing video of pure perfection that nobody is even paying attention to the music at all, so because you’re not actually listening, I’ll just let you know that this is a Sistar summer comeback but without the nauseating synthesised brass bashing your ears into a fucking pulp.  I hope you appreciate the incredible strength of will and sacrifice that I just exercised here to get this information to you.  Roundup took a bit longer to write this week than usual even though there isn’t any more songs in it, and I’m pretty sure that probably had nothing to do with this video.

WJSN – Last Sequence

I’m fairly certain that this is the best WJSN song I’ve ever heard from them as a full group.  For some reason their subunits generally do pretty well but they strangely can’t get their shit together when they’re all in the same room.  Feel free to speculate on why that might be in the comments below so I don’t feel the need to chime in and say it’s Cheng Xiao’s boobs distracting everyone and get cancelled for the 682nd time this year, because we all know how much I hate upsetting folks.

Winner – I Love U

Oh my lord, what is that chorus.  They weren’t doing too badly up until that point.  I guess it’s “catchy”, but the latest Coronavirus strain is pretty catchy too, so I hear.

Chungha – Sparkling

Chunga’s solo career started off crap but lately she’s been investigating singing actual songs and the results have been generally good.  Okay, we have the usual momentum-killing scotch-snap section after the first chorus because it’s 2022 so we have to be trendy fuckstains apparently, but overall she’s been making an effort lately and I appreciate it.

SVT LEADER – Cheers

Woozi looks like Joe Pesci if he was a bit younger and in a k-pop boy group.  I’m only going to say nice things about Woozi from now on so I don’t randomly get an icepick in my face while I’m trying to eat my pasta because I feel like he probably isn’t a very funny guy at dinner parties.

Busters – Tropical Love

You know who I respect?  Rebecca Black.  When she was still back at scam company Ark Music Factory, she was pitched more than one song to go with for her video “release” (you have to use the term “release” loosely with scam companies), and she went with “Friday” because the other main candidate on the table was a love song.  She said to the producers words to the effect of “well, I’ve never had that kind of love situation, so I don’t feel comfortable singing about something I’m not experienced in – but I can definitely relate to liking it when the school week is over, and wanting to have fun with friends, so…”.  The rest is history, and yeah “Friday” was a pretty awful song but you’ll remember it for longer than anything Busters have ever done.

H1-KEY – Run

That big drum and guitar sound plus the opening chord progression are all straight out of Cyndi Lauper’s “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun” and why the fuck not, it’s as good an 80s pop template as any.  “Run” doesn’t have any melodic similarities to that song though and it’s just as well, because the girls probably couldn’t pull it off anyway, and the chorus they’re using instead is actually great and one that I didn’t get sick of in the 80s.  

IRRIS – Wanna Know

Starts good but then shits the bed with a terrible sax-riff chorus, what a pity.  At least the video has a quality horse so consider yourself notified.

MCND – #MOOD

I don’t hate it.  Maybe I’m just biased because they have a guy with long hair.  As a guy who had very long hair before I had no hair, I feel represented.  Having been on both sides of the fence, I can say that being a bald cunt these days gets me nowhere near the amount of grief that being a guy with long hair once did.  People like to pretend they’re woke these days but it’s all performative online bullshit – try breaking gender stereotypes in the real world and you’ll see people’s true colours quickly.

LE SSERAFIM Chaewon, Yunjin X ABIR – Sour Grapes

I was beginning to find Chaewon a bit charismatic after her oddly enunciated yet totally sassy and likeable “get a get a get a way” line in “Fearless“, but after seeing her here acting like every other k-pop girl doing the “let’s pretend I’m recording a shit ballad and looking at my long lost friend at the same time” thing, she’s totally lost all her sass points and is back to square one.  Of course it’s HYBE’s fault, as is most of the world’s problems, like war, famine, climate change, BTS, GLAM’s debt and Gfriend’s disbandment.

Jiyoung Kang – Lucid Dream

Some interesting audio treatments especially in the second half aren’t enough to save me from falling asleep to this dreary shit and having a lucid dream of my own.

Kang Daniel feat. Jessi – Don’t Tell

This song is like that shit mango Tim Tam special edition that launched in Australia a little while ago and that no-one eats.  You just look at it and go “who the fuck thought this was a good enough idea to lose money on”.

Daisy – Tropical Love

Not Momoland’s Daisy, but yet another Future Idol production.  This one actually looks like they filmed it inside one of those mango Tim Tams.  I swear I didn’t plan this segue.

DJ SODA – Starlight

Queen of jumping around a lot behind a DJ desk and wearing many different clothes in one video, DJ Soda goes in search of the nugu park roundabout, and actually finds it at 1:30.  I don’t think I’ve seen a more genuine smile on her face in her entire career.

OnlyOneOf – Gaslighting

It’s actually really sad how the meaning of the word “gaslighting” has morphed through Internet misuse from a very specific type of mental abuse as depicted in the film “Gaslight“, to just sort of something to say to anyone who is being a cunt in general.  Having said that I didn’t mind this song because sure it’s downtempo (fucking SNORE) but at least it’s also kind of appropriately moody and we also have a pretty good selection of guys with their shirts off and some with long hair too, I hope you slung these boys some of your votes in the objectification survey, results on that soon. 

T1419 – When the sun goes down

If I had to pick the most boring-ass name for a k-pop group ever, T1419 wouldn’t top the list but it wouldn’t be too far behind either.  So I can’t hate them too much for this semi-tropical thing that sucks ass because at least they weren’t trying to convince me that it was anything else.

F.able – Cloud9

This song took me about an hour to do this review for because I kept getting distracted by the YouTube rabbit hole and watching stuff about guitars or whatever.  Which should tell you all you need to know about how much it captured my attention.

VICTON – Stay

I don’t know if I should even count this shit.  Let’s just do the Victon boys a favour and move on quickly.

Pixy – Greetings

They think that traffic in the background is relaxing or something, I just kept waiting for one of the cars to spin out of control and come ramming through the glass.

Onew – Life Goes On

It’s bad enough when BTS do it (ugh), imagine someone from SHINee singing a song called “Life Goes On”, I mean, how insulting to his former bandmate can he possibly get.  “Oh you can’t joke about Jonghyun”… but it’s not a joke, I didn’t lose many of my favourite artists and half my friends and a partner to suicide just to get to this point and listen to this rapey boy band dickhead sing about how it’s not that big of a fucking deal.  A moratorium on songs called “Life Goes On” please, at least until Seoul stops being the suicide capital of the world and starts tackling problems like this with more than just token measures.

Vincent Blue – Take It To The Grave

I held back roundup to include this pathetic garbage?

Seouldabansa feat. Enob – Lost & Found

Shoegazey nonsense.  It’s pretty I guess.

OVCOCO – Ice Cream

Don’t go with the masked man, he’s probably a rapist, or even worse perhaps he wants you to make a shit music video for some rubbish funk song.

10CM – Gradation

This actually goes pretty hard by 10cm standards.  Just remember that if someone goes down, pick them up.  Mosh safely, kids.

Shin Mirae – Elegant Love

Sorry but this sounds like music that my dad would be into, and I’m not sure that I give a fuck.

Yoo Jiwoo – Let’s Dance

I don’t like this song all that much but the video is agreeably stupid so I can dig it.

Rainbow Note – Dawn

Rainbow Note are kind of like Yukika… different and cool sounding to appeal to hipsters and kids who don’t know better, but just can’t get the songs over the line most of the time because the melody-writing just isn’t there.

Yunsae – Call This Love

This is kind of the same thing, but perkier and with much better melody writing.  Knowing how to actually topline makes all the difference in the world.

SGO – Shake It Boom

Ugh.

Jin Won Hong – Rooftop

Why is everything all clipping and distorted, don’t tell me that it’s not a shit transfer or something and they actually meant it to sound like this.  Sonic weirdness can work really well but you need a killer song if you’re going to do something this strange, and this isn’t it.

ZNZ – Unjoy

I didn’t feel too much joy when listening to this, so I guess this is accurate song title of the week.  I love how the label is called “beat someone”, is this Kim Hyun Joong’s new startup perhaps?

Cotoba – Love&Art

Cotoba are actually pretty good and a band you should check out, unlike almost everything else on this list.  They’re usually a bit bland in the studio but this is the first thing I’ve heard from them that actually captures the feel of their often far superior live recordings.

LAS feat. Sojung – Everywhere

I don’t care if you were in Ladies Code, this song is boring.

ID: Earth – D.T.I. (Don’t Try to Interrupt)

I despise this type of fake, affected vocal tone, grunge was decades ago fuck off with that Eddie Vedder shit.  However once I got past that I had to admit that this song was really very good.

thatsmyboy – Die Tonight

Look at these kids.  We don’t want to hear about how “hard” you are, go back to school, damn.

Hwang Ji Sang feat. Say Royce, NSW Yoon – Secretly

Oh it’s an It G Clone.  Next.

Mokyo – Rehab

Kim Garam has been busy again, I see.  Good to see a girl staying employed.  It’s tough out there in the art world these days.

VVON feat. Hoody – Why

Will Hoody ever be in a good song?  Maybe one day, but today isn’t that day.

HEIZE RELEASED A LOT OF BULLSHIT MUSIC THAT SUCKS THIS WEEK SECTION

Heize – Supercar

This looks like it was animated by Craiyon.  I guess she had four videos of shit to pump out this week so I can’t be too upset about her not putting too much effort into any single one, so I’ll just have to be disappointed in the music instead.

Heize feat. George – Sad Ending

The best thing about this sub-bossanova trash is the microphone, credit where it’s due that is some cool customisation, I hope whoever did that was paid well.

Heize feat. Giriboy – I Don’t Lie

Probably the best song of the three.  I mean, I haven’t even listened to the fourth one while typing this, but it’s bound to suck, right?

Heize feat. I.M – Distance

Actually I almost had to eat my words here.  I heard the backing track start up and thought “holy shit this could be great” but then Heize started signing and it all went to shit, not because of her singing itself (which there’s nothing all that wrong with) but because they filled out the backing track so that instead of cool minimalist reggae it’s just generic R&B boredom.  What a shame.

RANDOM BONUS VIDEOS OF THE WEEK

Daisy (ex-Momoland) dances to Nayeon’s “Pop!”

I think Daisy is pretty cool.  Look at that confidence, and be happy for her that she’s not with her shitty agency anymore and is doing fun stuff that she wants to do and is living her best life.  Let’s hope more girls and boys escape the soul-crushing corporate death machine.

Arin hit by the spray sprayed by Oh My Girl YooA

Never mind Arin getting sprayed in the face, and just check out how much the other girls obviously think Yooa is a bit much.  Watch them all be happy and then gradually cool off when Yooa gets handed the spray can and starts spraying her hair.  “Oh for fuck’s sake here we go again… there’s nothing wrong with your hair, you’re just a vain bitch” is definitely the vibes in the room.  I could be wrong… I could be right.

aespa – Girls – improved version by Kpopalypse

Fixed it for you.  You’re welcome.

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