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

Girls’ Generation – Forever 1

SM try to cook up something that recalls the strengths of “Genie“, but the result is bland.  They’ve replaced that song’s direct catchiness with too much millennial-whooping in the chorus and too much meandering bullshit everywhere else.  Rachel Kim would never.

Benny Blanco, BTS & Snoop Dogg – Bad Decisions

I’m not sure what’s the best thing about this, Snoop Dogg quoting CL’s “The Baddest Female” for no apparent reason (he has stumbled across this website at least once, clearly), or the video director’s idea that going to a BTS concert is the ‘bad decision’ of the song title.  Either way, it’s definitely not the music.

Yena – Smartphone

Pleasant enough, but a little bit too over-produced for its own good – the song has some punch in the verses but when the chorus hits everything cool about the track gets choked by brassiness.

Kep1er – Wing Wing

The usual yelpy shouty garbage, where none of the melodies match up because they were just throwing random shit to the studio wall to see what stuck.

Golden Child – Replay

Finally Infinite’s replacement’s group have a song that actually sounds like something Infinite-worthy.  How long did it take them?

The Boyz – Timeless

Stray Kids – Time Out

I wouldn’t go far as to say that I enjoy this track because it’s just a little bit too major-scale cheesy for my liking, but it’s melodic and tonally consistent, and that alone makes it better than most of what’s out this week.

Xdinary Heroes – Sucker Punch!

Not much of a punch here, it’s not terrible or anything but Day7 are still struggling to find anything characteristic about their music, and yes I will keep calling them Day7 until they do.

Purple Kiss – Summer Rain

A bland ballad make only somewhat interesting by the bizarre choice of instrumentation.  The bass drum sounds like my cat kicking a cardboard box.  She’s recovering well by the way, she had the funnel removed from her head about an hour ago and is now happily licking her own butthole.

H1-KEY – Catch ‘n’ Release

You see, shouty and yelpy CAN work, it just has to be in the right context.  Here it fits, because it’s over the right kind of backing track, plus they don’t just throw random nursery rhyme melodies over the top of it for no reason like in every other song like this ever.

Envidia – Who am i?

I don’t get what sort of audience this is aimed at.  Why would an R&B fan even care about k-pop?  They’re almost complete opposites.

Loco & Hwasa – Lemon

Accurate song title of the week.

Koyote – Go

There’s nothing amazing or mindblowing about Koyote’s new track but it also doesn’t do anything drastically wrong so that along puts it in the top 10% for this week.

Kingdom – Blinder

I guess the song is okay but mainly it’s just weird seeing Kingdom in modern clothes instead of gender-bending hanbok.  I was enjoying having my sexuality challenged by their videos and now I kind of miss it.

Soohyun – The Soju Fairy

I think that the soju fairy definitely visited the recording studio on this one.

Isacc Voo – Time Bomb

Yet another example in k-pop where the backing track writer and the topline writer sound like two different people with completely different ideas… or maybe they were just one person with very extreme mood swings. 

WSG Wannabe – When I Close My Eyes

When I close my eyes I imagine a world where ballads are much better than this.

from20 – Chemical

Hey this is a pretty good song.  You can tell when millennials and zoomers make a music video though – look at him drop the needle on the record right at the start of the video.  Way to irreversibly scratch your limited edition baby-blue vinyl special edition first pressing of T-ara’s Absolute First Album, dickface.

Heyne – Run To You

I’m glad Heyne had a great time on holiday but I don’t think I give a fuck.

KISSXS x Merry Monde – YEPPY

If you want people to give a fuck about your “shitty pop”, you need either an amazing song, or some very very cool production, or failing any of that you need to at least look great.  KISSXS only really nails the latter, but still gets the first two at least half-right, so I guess that’s a win overall.

X ARA – Hitchhiker

I’m not sure if I’m ready for X ARA, given that T ARA are still going at this point.  It might even still be a bit too soon for U ARA.

tell a tale – Com você

Look at Xi Jinping there in the blue shirt playing the acoustic guitar.  You can tell that this was his idea and the kids are just being dragged along for the ride.  Living in a dictatorship must be a drag.  Stan Tzuyu, Winnie.

Itzel – New Birth

Big meh for this disco nonsense.

Gaho – Beautiful Night

Okay, he understands how to hold the Shure Super 55 correctly.  Someone employ him at SM!  Maybe it’s not coincidence that the song also isn’t bad.

The Black Skirts – My Little Lambs

I don’t really dig the plodding track but I really like the video concept here – stick with it.

Zenith – Summer Beach

I didn’t just come off a tour of lugging around several thousands of dollars of heavy-ass sound stage equipment to sit my ass down and watch some group too cheap to even buy any instruments, like I did all that lifting for nothing.  Officially the worst group of the millennium, at least for this week.

WEMONDE – Cheunjin

I got so bored watching this that I went and made a Manyvids account so I could give sex workers my money, because that’s something I’ve been meaning to do for a while but I just never seem to get around to it.  I realise of course the high importance of giving sex workers as much money as possible, but there’s always been some other expense that just keeps coming up, like kitty ass surgery, or a new guitar for touring, or site hosting fees for Kpopalypse.com (I just paid those for another year by the way so you’re definitely stuck with me for the next 12 months) or any other number of things so there hasn’t been a lot to go around lately.  Therefore I haven’t started the actual donating yet but I’d thought I’d at least prep myself in readiness for this later on when I have some money, so I signed up anyway, and just to maximise the anthropological aspect of the experience I’m leaving my sexuality preference on there to “all”, which is the default.  Who knows, maybe I’ll run into Siwon’s secret account, wish me luck.

qman (9.10000) – Wwave

Silly song but I approve of the Jazzmaster with the flower print, if you’re going to buy a Jazzmaster you might as well go all out and get something with cool patterns to compensate for your guitar looking like a malformed pancake.

Sparky feat. Takuwa – Heart In The Box

The retro bollocks quotient is really high this month.

Colde – Cat

Does not mrcs

Dbo feat. Chxpo, Digital Dav, Slaylonie – Addicted

Okay I really expected a disaster given that it’s Dbo and he’s always involved in complete shit, but it’s actually alright, just lose the Autotune in the chorus that makes you sound like a bitch and we’re good.

Xin Seha – Sai

I like how he’s singing this to some girl with short hair, it probably means he’s not one of those Korean incel douchebags who has a shit-fit whenever a Korean woman says something like “maybe it would be good if the men who beat the living shit out of the women in their life, didn’t do that stuff”.

youra – Jungle Bike

I usually find this chick a bit boring but here she’s fantastic, the utterly bizarre rock treatment works really well to put a different spin on what she’s doing vocally.

One Way Out feat. Lozik, True Kim, THERAY, Wiz Hartz – Mo

Terrible dancy bullshit that my gym probably wouldn’t even play.

Kid Milli – Benzo

Kid Milli seems like a bit of a dickhead honestly (rapping about your car, sorry nobody gives a shit, just take it back to the hire company and try not to scratch it you dipshit) but at least he has beats sometimes.  This is one of them.

eunoo – Dive

Fantastic ambience, and great visual design, if only she had a song.

Life is good – Tonic

Oh my fucking god.  If your life is good, that’s about to change when you press play.  You have been warned.

BONUS RANDOM VIDEOS OF THE WEEK

Oh My Girl Hyojun – Nonononono

It seems that my message about the Shure Super 55 just isn’t sinking in, because this is one of the worst examples I’ve ever seen, the microphone is literally pointing away from her AND up into the sky.  Someone really needs to translate this post into Korean and put it somewhere where Korean music video directors will definitely see it.  Or just play them Gaho’s video over and over until they can work out why.

IU tries to buy a ticket for her own concert and fails

A good problem to have if you’re an artist, but not so great if you’re that artist’s fan.  Apparently IU’s agency is now going to find all ticket scalpers and resellers, kidnap them, lock them in a room and play them every song on this list, in order.  

Something about how you should subscribe to KOREA MAXIM or whatever

This seemed important.  I don’t know who the girl is but she seems like a nice lady.

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