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

SEVENTEEN – Dream

I had a dream that I was listening to a better Seventeen song than this one.  Then I woke up and here I am, sucks to be me I guess.

Rolling Quartz – Sing Your Heart Out

It’s alright, even if it only really starts kicking off at a decent tempo at the very end.  Hey, good enough for Blackpink, good enough for Rolling Quartz.  

TREASURE (Hyunsuk, Yoshi, Haruto unit) – VolKno

Even though that light the guy is holding isn’t a vintage microphone, if it did happen to be a vintage microphone instead, he would actually be using it correctly by singing into the grille rather than the solid bit.  So why is it so hard for SM to get it right when it actually is a microphone.

(G)-IDLE – Change

“Live MV” my ass.  I love it how they’ve overdubbed a bit of constant traffic noise into the background to try and fool people.  Never forget that k-pop agencies think you’re stupid just for caring about k-pop at all, on any level, so they will always insult you like this and expect you to just accept it without complaint.  They know their brainwashing is so powerful that many are too scared to have an opinion on anything because they don’t want to be ostracised from the fandom peer group.  It’s a self-enforcing system that demands that you continually eat shit, slowly dragging you down into mental illness.  That’s why Kpopalypse is here to show you what a fucking opinion looks like, even if it’s one you hate – if I can have a shitty take and still be breathing tomorrow, so can you.

Sunmi – Childhood

Sunmi b-side that isn’t bad but not all that great either so you can probably just skip it exhibit A

Sunmi – Narcissism

Sunmi b-side that isn’t bad but not all that great either so you can probably just skip it exhibit B

YooA – Selfish

What a load of absolute shit.  No wonder they pushed out her two actually-pretty-good B-tracks with videos last week, they were hoping people would forgive her when this tuneless crap finally dropped.  Also, nice try on the underwater theme but it did not make me feel like a shark, chiki chika chu

AleXa – Back In Vogue

It’s not unusual for Alexa to smash out stunning visuals like this but what’s weird here is that I actually like the song somewhat.  I hasten to add that it isn’t amazing, but it’s by far the best thing she’s done and I really hope that it takes off a bit with k-pop audiences in general just so she stays in the game and I get to see her again in more videos.

STAYC – Young Luv

I really hate covering songs without proper music videos in roundup and I try to avoid it as much as I possibly can.  The main reason why is that if they don’t completely stink and have any noteworthiness whatsoever they tend to just get a video later anyway and then you’ve got two different blurbs about the song in two different locations and it gets confusing.  Besides it’s not like there’s not enough songs to go round, even on a quiet week I have to routinely chop out over 50% of what I get submitted that IS eligible.  So just go and read my original thing about this one if you could be bothered and then you can appreciate how much of a pain in the ass this all is.

Acid Angel of Asia – Rolex

Like this, for instance.  I don’t know if I should even talk about it at all because the audio transfer quality is so garbage, it doesn’t even seem fair to me.  If it’s any good, they can come back when they make a proper video for it.  Okay, if you’re some brokesville underground act you’ve got a valid excuse not to bother with expensive MVs, but anyone on the corporate end of this shit may as well spend a bit of that extra blood money and get some local job creation happening, the song might suck but who cares at least the lights guy gets to pay his rent this week.

Jambinai ft. SWJA – From the place that has been erased

And this here.  I mean, this is just fantastic, and basically identical to the version Jambinai did with f(x)’s Luna that appeared on this site six years ago.  If I’d just not covered it back then and waited six years, I could have reviewed it for the first time with this cool video, and poor SWJA who I’ve been shitting on in song review after song review lately would have finally redeemed herself as she would definitely have a song in the top 30 for this year and everyone would feel better about themselves.  But no – people want me to review live stages, and because of that, we can’t have nice things, there’s no way I can cover this in the 2022 end of year list given the complete similarity between the SWJA and Luna versions.  Oh well, Luna owes me a high five I guess.

PURPLE KISS – Hate Me, Hurt Me, Love Me

Oh it’s a “self MV”, that’s new… ish.  If there’s some kind of special random qualifying word before the term MV, you know it’s really just a B-side with a lazy ass video and probably just some low quality bullshit you can ignore.

CRAXY – Poison Rose

Craxy are always so extra with their videos.  I love the half a dozen zoom shots on the piano before the girl has even played a note, and of course there’s a ring of fire because why wouldn’t there be.  Just waiting for the extra-ness to eventually make its way over to the actual music, which just sounds like 2022 vaguely badass girl k-pop by numbers.

Xdinary Heroes – Hair Cut

I was told “get a haircut” so many times in high school because I had long hair back then, so fuck this song for giving me PTSD.

ICHILLIN’ – Draw (My Time)

You know when they’re not just writing “nursery rhyme” melodies in spirit but taking the melodies from actual real nursery rhymes, that k-pop has gone to shit.  Also that synth at 2:31 actually sounds a bit like my phone’s fast vibrate when someone calls me, and I hate it when cunts call me on the phone so this song can get fucked basically.

Jeong Eunji – A Journey for Myself

A slightly toned-down but still surprisingly faithful recreation of the original song by Buzz, neither are all that amazing but I am supporting these extra strength power pellets Ms. Pacman is eating lately.

Hong Jin Young – Stay

Trot in ballad mode is usually pretty distinctive, even if it’s distinctively crap, so it’s kind of strange to me that when Hong Jin Young does a ballad she just sounds like every other k-pop performer doing a ballad.

VERIVERY – Tap Tap

Actually a good chorus but it would have been great if they didn’t decide to splice in a verse that sounds like it’s from a completely different song.  K-pop agencies are just not getting the memo that nobody wants them to do that, we need to complain louder.

NINE.i – Young Boy

There’s all these rocking songs coming out lately and here’s another one.  This is solid with no stupid sections, it just gets down to the business of delivering melody over a beat and I’m grateful.  See how good a song can be when you don’t switch it up for no reason, Verivery and NMIXX take notes.

TRENDZ – Vagabond

Despite the silliness of the “vag-a-bond” hook, it’s actually not too shameful as far as cheesy boy-pop with compressed shitty guitar lines goes.  I can dig it.

NewKidd – Victory

I love how that piano loop is there for no reason, it just fucks up the song completely by killing any atmosphere whatsoever, but at least it makes the song funny and shit instead of bland and shit.

MUSTB – All Day

All the crap from last week that nobody actually wanted to release last week is coming out now instead, lucky us.

WEi – Moonlight

This song is kind of cute but I’m a bit concerned.  One guy here has some pretty serious bags under his eyes and another one has an eye patch on… are this group okay?  Does someone need to send Hana around?

Yong Jun Hyung – Loner

Oh wow the Burning Sun people are all coming back now, isn’t it great to have Highlight oppar doing his thing again, let’s hang out and watch videos together with oppar after band practice and leave our drinks unattended because we trust him so much uwu

Wheein feat. Colde – Photosynthesis

Look at how everything is so bland and barren and then Colde appears and it’s all flowers and shit.  That’s kind of cool actually because normally the genders would be reversed on that kind of visual gimmick.

Chen – Last Scene

Sometimes you hear a ballad that just touches your heart and makes you feel like the world is a better place.  This isn’t one of those times.

Kim Jonghyeon – Lights (former Nu’est member)

This guy was in Nu’est which is funny because he also copies Nu’est’s silly dubstep breaks from back in the day.

Kim Jaejoong feat. SUGIZO – Big Revolution

I thought “Navigator” was a cheap Fender knock-off brand but I did some research and it turns out that they’re ESP’s top of the line models that actually retail for more than guitars from the real Fender custom shop due to the workmanship involved.  So how the fuck they get away with copying the Fender headstock and not getting sued I don’t know, but then maybe they did get sued, I see a lot of these guitars though so who knows.  Anyway a song with an X Japan member in it has no business sounding this weak.

Ryu Sejeong – Dearest

It’s one of those “yes, I still have a music career, really, look at me doing all the music career things, I am a very serious and important artist, not a B-lister who has been losing money hand over fist since debut I promise” montage videos.

Kihyun – Where Is This Love

I don’t know, but it’s not here, keep looking.

Woo Jinyoung – Buffering

He looks like a cleaning product.

66th Miss Korea – Dream

In another win for society, the latest Miss Korea beauty pageant decided to have their contestants do a shit song for some reason.  Spare a thought for these poor girls… or maybe just “girl” rather than “girls” as she could be just the same woman copy-pasted into the video 30 times for all I know.

Yaochan – Hush Down

JYP gives one of his Chinese soloists a go in Korea and that’s nice but it’s all a bit silly really.  I like how the dancers keep changing genders though, that’s a neat trick they should do that live.

Heeo – Destiny or Challenge

It was a challenge to listen to this, and my destiny is to not listen to it again.

Keith Ape – Mull

In dog-whistle news this week Keith Ape returns with a very morally upstanding song which is totally about drinking water (the subtitles say so) and definitely not about something else which isn’t water.  Be careful though kids, too much water can be dangerous.

J.Fla – The Hare

Everyone’s out here calling everyone else a creep and this girl doing the heavy breathing thing into the microphone just gets a free pass, I don’t get it.

TransFixion feat. D-Hack – Phoenix

Imagine if Leeseul quit Rockit Girl and Oli London joined.

Parannoul – Insomnia

Probably just a little too washed-out for its own good but it’s still a pretty cool wall-of-noise style guitar pop thing and if you like that My Bloody Valentine type of sound where your ears have to duel to the death with the reverb gods you’ll probably dig this.

ABTB – Bully

The first band I ever heard combine DJ style scratching with hard rock was a group called Mordred, and while I didn’t think they were all that great and their formula was definitely improved on later by other groups, they were definitely way ahead of their time.  This song here reminded me of that a little.

015B feat. FIL – Can’t reach the end of the rainbow

015B really do forget everything that’s unique about what it is that they do, whenever it’s ballad time, for some reason.  I couldn’t pick apart this from any other ballad out there.

Limji – Why

If I ever get a tattoo on my collarbone it’ll just be Loren Ipsum placeholder text in really small print so if I’m in a threatening situation I can punch someone while they’re squinting and trying to read it.

M1NU, Kaogaii, D.Ark, Park Jae Yoon, Kitsyojii, Hangzoo, NSW Yoon, Cherry Boy 17, RB NINE, Benny G, Trade L, Roh Yun Ha – Welcome Back REMIX

You don’t want to hear a bunch of random guys freestyling some raps, do you?  I didn’t think so either, I removed their video and replaced it with this, you’re welcome.

OUREALGOAT – No Rest

They’re still not the GOAT.

BONUS RANDOM VIDEOS OF THE WEEK

Jvcki Wai – Catch Why interview

Who knew that Jvcki Wai is smart and articulate and knows exactly what she’s doing.  Well, actually I already did, but now all of you do also.  I talk about being glad that she’s back for more reasons than just the obvious.  Hopefully she becomes a bit more prolific in future and decides to have her next comeback before Putin throws a tantrum and creates a nuclear disaster that he blames on someone else, but if that does happen first at least we’ll have more cool post-apocalyptic wasteland sets for the next Jvcki Wai video.

Toxic ARMYs reaction when some guy from BTS attended IU’s concert

In the strange parallel universe where people actually care what BTS members do, some of their supposed “fans” were upset that Jungkook attended an IU concert, so they bombarded IU with “keep away from Jungkook you trollop” style messages, because presumably they thought that there was a real possibility she was going to walk down into the audience, grab him by the hair, drag him up to the stage and facefuck him against the speakers GG Allin style.  Clearly these BTS followers don’t understand that IU is a nice, polite lady who would definitely not do those sorts of things… yet.  If they push her far enough, who knows what she’s capable of.

IU – Good Day

This is the song that Billboard said was the #1 best k-pop song of the 2010s, proving that they’re probably just a bunch of Starcraft nerds, because the song isn’t really all that.  Don’t get me wrong, it’s still pretty good and it certainly set a good template for IU to work with from here forward, but number one of the decade? I have no idea how a consensus of Billboard writers could come to that conclusion, as every single one of the “orchestrated big-band epic dance number” IU songs that came after “Good Day” has been better than this.  It’s worth noting that this is probably the song that kicked of Korean pop’s hideously creepy “high note” obsession, also proving at the same time that hardly any k-pop fans know what the term “octave” even means, so that’s a pretty good reason to not put this song on the top of any lists if you ask me.

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