It’s time for QRIMOLE! Let’s take a look at Santa’s question bag for Kpopalypse for 2022!

Hello Mr. K-pop A lips,

Not a question but just wanted to say I finally got the fable Cherry Bullet gun light stick. It’s been in my mind ever since you made that light stick post (bless your journalistic integrity) and I’m glad to finally own one, especially since Cherry Bullet has some songs that I can -finally- say I like (Love so Sweet & Love in Space).

If only FNC would let them come back with more good songs but ha ha who are we kidding.

Have a nice day!

It’s happened twice now, so it could happen again. Congratulations on your lightstick purchase!

There’s a lot of lightsticks that I didn’t cover in that post, so expect a sequel at some point. At some point I’ll ask for suggestions (not now so just hold onto them for the moment cheers).

Who do you think is the most handsome player in the World Cup?

Chuu, because she didn’t play. Good work Chuu! Let’s all support Chuu.

Recently, I’ve noticed that SM tends to schedule its releases clustered together, and around a certain time of the year, especially in Q4. The tail-end of 2022 looks packed for them: Chen, BoA, Red Velvet, Minho, WayV, NCT Dream, and SMTOWN. There was even supposed to be an NCT 127 repack but it apparently got delayed.

Wouldn’t it make more sense to spread things out across the year? Many stans tend to complain about the crowded/crammed/rushed scheduling of these releases. There are accusations that the attention for these acts get spread thin and the workload might be too hectic within the timeframe. What is the possible rationale or context for this release strategy?

No idea, might have something to do with internal cycles at SM, preparations for a big concert (so everyone has something new to show), could even be related to something as basic as support staff having to take time off for COVID which could have pushed releases back and now they all come out at once. Who the fuck knows, but whatever the reason, they wouldn’t be doing it that way if it didn’t suit them to do it that way.

Please more Yua Mikami content.

The usual Yua Mikami themed content will continue to be coming your way at the usual times, as long as she remains fairly active in her usual domains.

[the usual question about why I don’t promote/mention any of my current or past musical projects]

I’ve answered this question many times before, you can find the answer in this post.

I feel like I’ll regret this but apparently nothing is necessarily off-topic in the qrimole thing so what are your top 5 jpop songs?

For #1 you’ll also find the answer in this post, for #2 through to #5 you might as well flip a coin, use a random number program to pick from a list, pin song names up on a wall and throw darts etc…

The lub between a Kpoppy and his aegyoboing can only be matched by the lub NayeonStalker has for Nayeon ❤

Melly Clissumassu
( ˘⌣˘)♡(˘⌣˘ )
me. you.

My gift this yuletide are but a few questions. Can you spare a poor retard some answers? *~~`#

1. Would you rather lick Qri’s mole or the edge of Vivi’s chin? I’ve made a diagram:
◉ or V

2. Please tell us some horrific stories of you being bullied. Your readers would appreciate it baby. In as much detail as possible please, no need for “trauma” objections, sex monster.

3. If you could (or already have) join a cover band, which band would (or did) you cover? Inspiration for this question was an episode of Bob’s Burgers where Gene mentions the Heebie Jeebies being an Oingo Boingo cover band

4. Will you support Yeezy in his campaign? IMO, it’s great to see artists with knowledge of the (((industry))) making political decisions!

That’s it for now my tender baby… We won’t see each other until next year (if I remember this site exists). I LOV– no, I can’t say it. It’s not the right time yet…

(;´༎ຶٹ༎ຶ`)

1. Although this is QRIMOLE I’ll actually pick Vivi’s chin because I’m worried that if I lick the mole I might destroy some of the data in the microdot hidden there and then Qri will be sad, that microdot is where all your precious questions are stored, you know.
2. I drew heavily on my own school trauma when writing “Show Me Love“, when the full-length novelisation of that comes out sometime in 2023 you can read it and then I’ll let you have fun deciding what parts I made up and what’s just a blatant self-insert in Rachel Kim tradition.
3. I won’t answer this for the reasons stated in previous questions above but I think the concept of an Oingo Boingo cover band would be great, I don’t think they’re popular enough to draw a crowd though, that’d be a niche fandom for sure.
4. I’m not really in the loop on Yeezy’s political campaign but anything that takes his attention away from releasing more music can’t be all bad.

Have you seen this account on tiktok? It’s a producer who works on Kpop songs who talks about behind the scenes stuff like changes from demo to final track, who accepted and rejected demos, and the though process behind such decisions. Here’s a vid on fromis_9 love bomb

He doesn’t really explain anything in that Love Bomb video… and he should, because the demo chorus is better.

You say it’s important to read political history so here’s a question for you:
Nazism and other forms of fascism are fundamentally revolutionary rather than conservative, and they traditionally hate capitalism to a degree that can only be rivaled by communists so why are there so many capitalist fascists now when the two are diametrically opposed? Are these not true fascists or are they using the language of conservative capitalism to make moderate voters unwittingly support a revolution that they would never support if the fascists said what they actually want to do when they win?

I’m no political scientist, but I think it’s easy to get carried away by labels when talking about politics. The fact is that most political systems these days don’t neatly fall into designations that were defined in the previous century when the political playbook was somewhat different to now. To take just one obvious example out of many, Chinese communism certainly does not reject capitalism. While it’s good to understand political history (not sure if I ever said “it’s important to read political history” verbatim but perhaps I did, I agree that it’s important at least for AOA’s Jimin) I’d urge anyone with an interest in politics to not try and think that everything happening now has a direct past equivalent and can be easily categorised based on past outcomes. Don’t be swayed by labeling and obsessing about putting things into boxes, or you can miss the forest for the trees.

Is it worth buying a vinyl player? How does the sound quality compare to something like Apple Music/iTunes?

Vinyl is a waste of fucking time and money, don’t bother. Sound quality is better than all but CD-quality digital but only if:

• you look after your records and they don’t get scratched up, warped, etc
• you can keep the mechanisms of your player free of dust etc
• your playback device is actually decent

Mind you even then, assuming perfect vinyl playback conditions and total absence of physical artifacts (dust, scratches, needle drop noises), you’d be hard pressed to A/B blind test a vinyl vs a high-quality high-resolution MP3. It’s a lot of time, effort and money to get a vinyl collection and player up to the standard where it can realistically compete with the better modern digital formats. Also vinyl records are expensive as fuck now, I used to buy vinyl but I don’t now because I can’t justify the money, it’s seen as a ’boutique’ product with inflated ridiculous prices to match, fuck that I’ll just buy your album online if I like it enough.

So Oneus recently had a new Japanese comeback  and Ravn, the guy they kicked out for his abuse allegations, is in the music video and song. Given how thoroughly both company and group members have made clear how he’s not in the group anymore and they wish to not be associated with him, I’m inclined to believe them when they say that that this was unavoidable and that they couldn’t change both between the month he had his allegations and then was kicked out but didn’t leave the company crucially (which I assume is the reason they were allowed to use his likeness) and the song coming out. Which got me thinking about how long it must take for both song and music video to come to fruition and how long song and music video were recorded before the final release date. Do you have any idea about the normal timeline of these things?

Usually it’s pretty fast, but there are things that can hold up the process. In my experience the #1 thing that tends to cause a delay is actually concept artwork and physical packaging – usually a company wants all that stuff to come out in sync with the video release, but if there’s a hold up at the factory making product, because of high demand, or supply chain issues, or just because someone isn’t being paid, then that can put the brakes on everything else. When it comes to physical product creation, big companies doing larger runs of physical product tend to get priority (some nugu wanting 500 copies of an album or booklet is usually made to wait their turn while the big label with the big money pressing 25,000 copies in one hit goes first) so as a general rule, the more nugu the artist, the more chance there’ll be a significant delay between a video release and a physical/online official release. Not always a given, of course, just the probability is higher.

Ngl, as someone from the Balkans I kind of want to hear you talk more about Australian politics, like comparing it to the kpop industry. It’s also reassuring to know that not only our politicians can be dumb or actively malicious. However, you’re probably tired of politics (and I don’t blame you for it) and caonimas might disapprove.

It’s hard to even know where to start talking about Australian politics, I’d need a very good reason to write about it at all, which I feel like I don’t have currently. I guess that could change, but it probably won’t in the near future. In the meantime if people have specific questions I could answer them here, but even simple questions get tricky because the politics here doesn’t map easily to the politics in other countries on a party basis (Australian “liberals” are politically conservative) or even on an individual issue basis (conservatives here are pro gun control). All I know is that I get really tired about hearing about politics from other countries and my own country as well, I don’t want to bore my readers the same way by assuming they’d give a shit about what happens in my backwoods part of the world, so I do my best to keep local politics out of my writing just because I don’t assume anyone else is coming to my website for that. Sometimes a little something slips in here or there, but I try to keep it in the background so it doesn’t interfere too much.

do you think marriage is a scam? i think it sounds good in theory with the monetary benefits and all, but with all the planning and expenses and god forbid anything goes wrong beforehand (at the most recent wedding i went to the flower girl BROKE HER LEG a day before slipping on dog piss) it just seems to be way more trouble than its worth. i wish it was more acceptable to get married to a friend, that way you get the benefits and the clout and all without having such an intense commitment attached to it.

Marriage historically was all about keeping hereditary lines, income generation and property rights going, not a literal scam but hardly something essential, and there’s so many useless industries that hang off of the whole marriage ritual that seem frankly shady. I never bothered with it. I’ve been with the same partner for the entire time I’ve been writing, and we basically live as if we’re married, but we’re not actually married, because the marriage contract doesn’t really bring any benefits that we can see. I guess if there was some obvious benefit to getting married we might make a trip down to the registry office and sign a bit of paper, but honestly I think life is better without it. Why do you have to lock someone into a fucking contract anyway, isn’t it better if either of you can leave anytime you want, then you’ve got a motivation to keep your own personal standards up and so do they.

have you ever cried from watching a movie? i never did as a child but ive found i do all the time now. i was on a flight and i watched the new marcel the shell movie not expecting much and i ended up having to put a mask on so it wasn’t very obvious that i was weeping LMAO

Yes, depends on the film but some films definitely have that effect on me. A big tear-jerker for me is Pan’s Labyrinth, one of my favourite films but paradoxically I don’t like watching it because I know I’m just going to cry all the way through it and then I’ll get a headache from all the crying, which I hate.

Do you use sunscreen with high SPF? How do you protect yourself from the sun? I read that skin cancers are very common in Australia

I don’t go out in the sun much, all my interests are very indoors-based, but if I do have to be outside a lot (for instance if I’m playing or working an outdoor music festival) then yes I always pack the sunscreen, 50 SPF minimum. Hats are also good, and covering up bare skin is sensible. Yes skin cancers are common here, we don’t have much ozone layer in Australia so the sun hits harder here than other places in the world, plus it’s hotter generally speaking. I know several people who have had to get skin cancers cut out.

Are you experienced with any music-creating software that’s useful for guys like me who are basically computer illiterate?

After reading your site, I’ve been more interested in pop music and creating sounds that most instruments probably wouldn’t be able to make. I want to get into making more songs like that but when it comes to making music through computers, I’m basically useless. I took high school band and learned guitar throughout as well. It makes me pretty decent at Musescore, but when it comes to studio and production quality that I actually like after listening to k-pop (too) much, my brain goes dead pretty quickly.

Is there anyway to get into music writing through computer software that a complete noob like me would be able to get into? My brother suggested reaper which is a free music software (for a bit) but once I opened it I realized I honestly have no idea what I’m doing with it.

On a side note, I’m getting really sick of hearing (usually older people) saying it takes no talent to make music through computers. I can play guitar, bass, and drums, and I’m constantly amazed at what I’m hearing through pop music even when it’s all done through a computer, because I honestly don’t understand how to use any of that shit.

No audio software is completely easy to use for someone who has never used one. I’ve never really played around with it, but I’ve heard many people highly recommend Reaper, not sure how noob-friendly it is though, probably not very. Another good one to get started on, especially if you’re interested in creating things from scratch, is FL Studio, a friend of mine with no musical knowledge got his start using that and he eventually scored himself a European record deal just from tracks he made in it. Online tutorials are your friend, there’s plenty of YouTube vids out there of people going through the basics, so if you’re not confident fiddling around yourself, search things up. It’s amazing what YouTube can teach you.

After checking the Roundup twice, it has come to my attention that you disliked Treasure’s Darari. Meanwhile, you express that you enjoy the remix version of the song, which I found to be surprising because you often disparage remixes. Could you provide an explanation about this inconsistency? Thank you Kpopalypse

Even a broken clock is right twice a day.

Do you have a theory why ageism is so severe in K-pop to a much greater degree than in general society?

I think it’s possibly got a lot to do with Korean beauty standards which seems to be a bit more intense than other places in the world. I mean yes beauty standards exist everywhere but in Korea it’s considered acceptable and normal to include a photo with your job resume, that’s not standard in most places in the world and where I live unless you were applying for a specifically visual-based industry, it’s actually considered a little weird. I think what we see in k-pop is just a reflection of the larger society’s values in general where there’s a real focus on beauty and superficial aspects.

On the other hand though Korea has this big “respect your elders” thing so I’m not sure how much of that beauty standards stuff is really ageism. I’m still waiting for my respect for being an old cunt so I’d actually say that international k-pop fans are far more ageist in my experience than Korean fans.

Not really a question just thought this was pretty cool bass cover

Yeah, he’s good. It’s done in a different spirit to my bass covers. Mine are about showing you how to actually play the bassline that’s in a song, they’re not about me showing you how well I can play (because often I’m playing quite badly as I’m literally playing the song for the very first time with zero practice in a lot of cases) or how well I can invent something, because I’m not inventing anything. Whereas this guy is playing the bassline that he probably feels the song should have, but doesn’t. It’s a very different thing. Still cool though, certainly makes the song a little less boring so cheers to him.

What is your wpm

I did a few one minute tests just for you at typingtest.com and here’s what I got:

Not quite up to secretarial speed (that’d be 80+ WPM) but decent enough for most other things.

Greetings, I hope your well. I hope you can help me sort out my life a little.
1.) I recently moved from the lower 48 to Alaska, and its so different from the south. I try and keep myself busy with classes and going to the gym but I still find myself missing home. The non-stop darkness doesn’t help either. Any tips on dealing with homesickness?
2.) I know this might be hard to believe, but I’m a huge MBLAQ fan. I would go as far to say that I’m probably the only MBLAQ fan still left. I recently bought a signed album for $7 if that says anything. Any tips on letting my parasocial relationship die? Their never coming back.
I enjoy reading your blog. Thanks for keeping me entertained in my frozen wasteland.

1. Just find things about your new place that you love. I’m not sure how hard that is in Alaska as I know nothing about it other than it’s cold there.
2. Given that a signed MBLAQ album only costs $7 you might as well hang onto your parasocial relationship as it’s not exactly causing you issues financially.

have you seen oli london recently? he had begun to transition to a woman and it seemed like he finally found a look that actually worked for him, and in retrospect with all the plastic surgery its not all that surprising that “transracial” was really just him being transgender however recently he’s claimed to have “found god” and has detransitioned again. odd because being a woman seemed to suit him much better, he certainly looked a hell of a lot better. hoping he can work that out if it does turn out he is trans, maybe he’ll stop conjuring up races to “transition” to every 3 months or so lmao

He seems to have fallen down the alt-right rabbit hole recently, and like a lot of people who crave attention he’ll probably be there for a while, because if there’s one thing those people are very very good at, it’s farming Internet engagement. It’s the natural home of anyone with narcissistic tendencies, which is why we see people like Kanye there recently. I do hope Oli makes it out of there though, time will tell if they give him enough attention for him to stay in the fold.

Thank you Kpopalypse for placing a mini review of old singles you never discuss in the past at the Random Bonus Video of the Week. My question is: What is the proper channel to request a mini review for the old songs? I don’t think the QRIMOLE is a good place to request the songs. I certainly hope it is not Twitter because I don’t really like using it.

From best method to worst: Retrospring, private email (click “about” on this site to find it), Twitter DMs, livestream form, QRIMOLE, a message on any other site, carrier pigeon, smoke signals… keep in mind that any review is almost guaranteed to be lukewarm at best because if I really liked it I would have already written about it, so proceed in advance knowing that whatever you ask for, the result will be harsh if you’re a fan of that artist. Same eligibility rules apply as per the rest of roundup i.e must have a decent video etc.

Oppar, I’ve been watching this children show with my little brother, and I ended up loving the show more than him lol. It’s something for my inner child. So i followed the VAs on twitter.

Anyways, around two months ago, i’ve found out that the VA of my favorite character followed an account that ships his character and his character’s brother (both characters not adults) and draws incest porn of them. I was very shocked and disappointed, as i don’t really think incest porn of two characters who aren’t adults from a children’s show is a good thing, but i still love him nonetheless. Oh, the parasocial relationship.

[some stuff removed at the asker’s request]

But now here’s the problem. I’m stuck with this damning information about my favorite celeb, but i don’t know what to do with it. Should i go against my moral compass and keep it a secret to protect my fave, or should i be objective expose him at the expense of people turning on him? I’m so torn.

By the way, you don’t have to think incest porn of two characters who aren’t adults from a children’s show is a bad thing too. This is just me asking what should i do.

Voice actors are actors in the same way that any other actor is an actor. Just because you love the character doesn’t mean you have to love the actor. I might think (just an example out of thin air here) Roawn Atkinson is a great actor in the Black Adder series but a complete douchebag in person, and that’s fine, the fact that he’s even more of a cunt than I am as a human being doesn’t mean that I can’t appreciate his appearances in that TV series and admit that he did a good job in writing and performing his parts. It applies even more if the voice actor is someone who didn’t even write their own lines, the task of separation is even easier still, and I know nothing about this particular case you’re referring to but it’s actually quite rare that voice actors write their own parts.

Another thing to consider is that some people follow a lot of other people and may not be always aware of every detail of what the other person does. I don’t know the details of every account that I follow on Twitter. I can’t read Japanese so for all I know Ichika Matsumoto is posting Hitler memes. Let’s assume that’s hypothetically true is the case (and ngl her dressed up like Sowon’s boyfriend would be super aegyo), is someone going to cancel me for that? I don’t know but I just follow her because she mrs so what would I know about it, even if I did know for sure that she was licking Mussolini’s balls I might still follow her anyway because the reason why I’m following her and the reason why others are cancelling her are pretty unrelated (JAV of the month for November JUQ-141 btw). Maybe this VA just thought the other person was a fan, and they were like “I see fan content, I click” and didn’t really look into it. Or maybe they’re secretly pro-pedo-incest, who the fuck knows. Or maybe their anti it and wanted to reach out them to say “hey stop that you clown”. Or maybe the VA doesn’t like that person’s art but the other person was nice in DMs and they got a dialogue going about something. I wouldn’t necessarily interpret a follow on social media as an endorsement of everything that person is about, there could be all sorts of reasons for it. So I think the wisest course of action is to 1. keep it all in mind and not be naive that your VA bias is god’s gift to humanity because it’s healthy to keep some distance there but also 2. don’t be too quick to form an opinion on how they might be an asshole either just based on follows. Almost nobody is a complete angel or a complete devil, everyone has their reasons for doing things which are valid at least in their own eyes, and sometimes those reasons aren’t obvious, especially once the warped, nuance-free lens of social media gets involved. I know I follow people on Twitter who I like but also disagree with quite strongly on some issues (Asian Junkie and Arcadey spring to mind!) I’m sure not everyone who follows me agrees with my complete bullshit either (and if they did agree with absolutely all of it, I would be primarily concerned for their mental health). Friendship on social media is not equal to an endorsement of 100% of the other person’s package of ideas and opinions.

There’s been a bit of discourse lately that if an idol doesn’t speak English/doesn’t speak it well, that they shouldn’t write lyrics or rap in English. The two examples I’ve seen most often have been Soyeon from G-Idle and Dami from Dreamcatcher. I know there are cringe lyrics in kpop songs (I’m a nude & I don’t matter what you say) But I don’t see how it’s not a bit racist/xenophobic to say “If you can’t pronounce these words clearly in proper English, don’t sing them/rap them.” English isn’t their first language, for most idols, of course they’re not going to pronounce things properly at first, unless they’re fluent like Yoohyeon. I’ve never seen kpop stans say that groups shouldn’t put out albums in Japanese, so why is it that English in kpop is such an annoyance for people? Personally as an American I think it’s western arrogance, thinking that everything has to be perfectly catered to us. I think cringy lyrics and messed-up words are part of kpop’s charm, and proficiency in English isn’t a requirement. What are your thoughts?

Also, since I’m drinking one right now: pineapple soda – abomination or gift from a higher power?

I agree that it’s just western snobbery, and westerners recoiling when entertainment from other countries isn’t catered perfectly to them. I dig the sometimes weird English combinations when they appear. I think it’s kind of cool because it reminds me of the idea of using the words more for their sound than their meaning, so the voice as a musical instrument first, which I support, because that’s how I think about vocals in songs too, from a musician’s perspective.

I don’t drink any soda, of any kind. I’ve never even tried pineapple soda so I have to abstain from answering this important question. Pineapple in general I do like, although only in small quantities because the overly citrus aspect irritates my tongue if I have too much.

Not quite a question, but a couple tips for oppa and the caonima trying to diet in this month’s qrimole:

-it helps to approach it with a mindset of empowerment (“I don’t” vs “I can’t” or “I shouldn’t”)

– rewarding a successful diet with cheat foods creates the wrong kinds of associations psychologically, it could lead to a form of emotional eating. Instead, try rewarding yourself with non-food related things like getting a new book/album, a nice bath, a relaxing walk somewhere, whatever you enjoy

Thanks! Hopefully people find this helpful.

I’ve always wanted to ask you your opinion about these… “songs”. A friend of mine found this label called “Shitwank records“.

I found out they are based in Australia. I find fascinating how people just can think of stuff like this, my head can’t comprehend how they even come to post this online. We both find this super disturbing. Did you know about this or do you have any opinion on the matter?

I sure fucking do – everything on this label is great! I actually have a Passenger Of Shit vinyl that I picked up ages ago when I was touring. Every track is solid gold, and so is everything affiliated with them – MC Bushpig, Suicidal Rap Orgy, etc… some of the only good rap to ever exist in Australia, so much Australian rap is such achingly pretentious garbage (“conscious rap” in bogan Australian accents no fucking thanks) that it really needed some people like this to just go fucking all out with gore, nudity and insane music. I don’t love every track but when they hit gold it’s as good as anything out there and the attitude is stellar.

I endorse 100%. I’ve never met any of them but I wrote to one of the MCs once years ago back when I was DJing noise stuff and she sent me some noise music and some artwork she did that was just off the chain amazing, just some of the most imaginative bizarre shit I’ve ever seen, I’m not sure if I still have that stuff but I’m now motivated to go and look for it. They seem pretty cool and if they email me I would buy them a carton to say thanks for all the music.

I’m trying to redesign my animal crossing town, but I can’t stop myself from planning things in way too much detail to look natural. I want a wilderness area but I just can’t make it look anything other than planned out. I’ve tried closing my eyes and drawing a squiggle for a path through it but it’s either too messy to look wild, or not wavy/nonuniform enough to look right. I’m officially giving up on my brain being able to make anything in an unplanned way and I hate it. Please help.

I’ve never played Animal Crossing but I’m going to assume that it’s a bit like RPG Maker in the sense that you have to lay out objects in a grid. I agree that it’s hard to make things “look random” when you’re planning it. For instance in TNTHGSWY4-ANHFNHGSWY I tried to make the placement of trees in the snowy forests look as natural as I could, but it’s pretty hard to do that when there’s nothing natural about it. So what I’m saying is that your struggle is normal and to be expected. It’s worth reading up on the science of randomness, and especially how the human standard for randomness is actually “more random” than true randomness which doesn’t actually feel all that random to humans, that could be part of the issue. At some point I think you just have to let it go and say “that’s good enough” because that’s what I did.

Can you cover Kep1er Chaehyun for next boobs post? kthxbye

nah cbf sorry

Regarding an item in the Nov. ’22 QRIMOLE about the generations in k-pop, I have other guesses/possibilities on what could define/would happen during the fourth generation: (These aren’t meant to be taken seriously, I’m just fucking around.)

1 More k-pop acts achieve international commercial success, with greater consistency and sustainability. For example, more k-pop songs occupy higher positions not only on the year-end charts, but also (eventually) the decade-end ones as well. K-pop acts charting well become a normal occurrence. K-pop begins to have household names overseas.
2 Like the poptimism movement, k-pop gains critical kudos and respect. This would especially manifest in regular appearances in critics’ best-of aggregate lists, like the defunct Pazz & Jop list and the critic list tallies in the Acclaimed Music forum. A related effect is greater presence and success in non-fan voted/charts-based international awards shows.
3 Industry changes influenced by Korean society/economy. Especially with regards to the treatment of people there.
4 Fan and idol culture (incl. the industry) gets greater backlash and scrutiny to a degree of legitimate seriousness.
5 Peak market saturation is reached and the bubble bursts. Unlucky companies either fold, consolidate, or simply get bought out by the big boys.
6 K-pop becomes passé. Either the industry’s expansion causes massive fatigue, something else comes along and steals the show, or (more likely) a combination of the two. Either way, regression happens.

The question is, with the way things are looking now, how could the future of k-pop look like?

I’ll take them seriously anyway because why the fuck not, this is a question and answer series so what am I gonna do, ignore it?  Nah.

1 is possible but would vary depending on country. Probably won’t happen in the USA, but in markets that are not English speaking and don’t have that inherent language snobbery (i.e don’t expect music to be coherent in their own language), maybe.

2 will not happen.

3 not sure what you mean by this.

4 this is already happening and will continue to, but don’t underestimate the power of marketing. Putin can make millions think a pointless war that’s shooting his own country in the foot on about ten different levels is a great idea, your average A-list k-pop CEO is at least as good at propagandist as Putin is.

5 this is already happening and will continue to.

6 massive fatigue no, but a viable competitor could appear. I don’t see anything on the horizon though, so it wouldn’t be soon but it’s probably inevitable that some other country’s pop scene eventually rises to the challenge. They’d need to match Korea’s hyper-competitive soft power focus though, that’s the sort of thing that will take time to build up so I think if that happens we’ll all see it coming a long way off. Maybe if Winnie continues to lose control of his grass mud horses we might see something from China one day. The other possibility is something drastic changes within Korea itself, maybe demographic shifts to an older population make k-pop less viable, maybe war breaks out and the centers of the Korean music industry become targeted to the point where they can’t operate easily. Unlikely though.

To preface thx for making me interested in music theory so now i have maddddd street cred with my band kid friends. I memorized the melodic minor scale and explained Dorian as natural minor but playing the chord built off the 4th degree major rather than minor (oversimplifying i know) and now it looks like i’m actually good at playing instruments.

First question: My band kid friends often are instructed to play jazz pieces for the band. They’re not completely immersed into flat5sharp13 wank yet but i feel like all the extremely long solos they’re given is leading them down a slippery slope. What is the best way to appease the people that are really into jazz, and/or, a funky fact that could increase my Music Knowledge Credibility even more?

Second question: You mentioned you don’t like medleys partially because they interfere with the original emotional message/journey the songwriter intentionally put into the base song. This Mortal Coil’s Song to the Siren and Kangaroo are both covers that differ from the original on a greater level than newer textures, even to an extent changing the tone of the song to something more introspective and sad, yet they are arguably both better renditions than what they are covering. Could someone make the argument that these songs also compromise the artist’s original emotional intentions in making alterations to such a great degree?

Third question: You are a self-proclaimed laid back person that, from reading this blog, any person could gauge that you can be very blunt. I find your honesty comforting, but many people also find it a turn off for reading. In short, Kpopalypse reminds me of one of my history teachers, and if you do teach/have taught music before, I was wondering if your bluntness and your laid-backness carry over to your interactions with music learners. Your opinion on how much the laid-backness carries over will resolve whether you are spiritual dopplegangers with my history teacher.

Thx and soz for typing many words

First question: no, don’t follow the path of jazz, it is the devil’s music. But if you can’t resist temptation and you want to keep jazz people happy, forget solos, learn all the other stuff. Don’t worry about solos so much (because they want to do all the solos, so you can just, you know, let them, and they’ll be happy with that trust me) or even the chord names, learn about things like voicings and how to play jazz standards. If you can reliably give them a good foundation to wank over, they will appreciate the masturbation support. Personally I’d just tell them to all get fucked but you’re probably nicer than I am. A quick thing to keep in mind with harmony stuff especially if you want to impress these eggheads is that due to the complexity of jazz chords, once you start getting into chord extensions like 7ths, 9ths etc, chords can have multiple interpretations depending on where you perceive the root to be. So just like every diatonic scale has seven modes (the original plus six others) every chord also has multiple voicings (a triad has three, a seventh has four, etc) and sometimes those voicings can actually change the chord itself. Here’s a chart which demonstrates some examples, and yes it’s for the ukulele but this concept applies to any polyphonic instrument or group of instruments. So just like scales, chord interpretation can also depend on modal context.

Second question: medleys vs covers that deeply transform a song. A cover that’s quite transformative is still one cover of one song, so it’s making a particular statement in the context of that piece. The nature of that statement may have changed from its original form, it may be different now, but it’s still an isolated musical statement of some kind nonetheless, regardless of its relationship to the original. Whereas a medley is a series of completely different musical statements in a row, all of which were not actually designed to be stapled together in the first place. It’s the difference between a mad genetic scientist getting a wolf and making it a wolf with stronger legs and a bushier tail, vs a wolf with the ass of a rabbit and the mouth of a goat.

Third question: I think it carries over quite a lot. Yes I do teach music and I’m not deliberately insulting or rude to students but if they do something wrong I’ll say very directly “that’s wrong”, because it does them no favours if the teacher doesn’t pick up on the wrong stuff, that’s a large part of what I’m there to do, identify the bad stuff, that’s why I’m being paid. I’m definitely not going to go Fletcher on someone’s ass, but I will tell people if they mess up and I have been guilty of laughing if people mess up really badly, because that kind of comes with the territory with my dark sense of humour, mistakes are just funny – I feel bad about that so I try to apologise for it when I catch myself doing it! Lessons are pretty laid back though, usually I have a lesson plan but sometimes I just wing it, and honestly if the student is like “I really wanna do X today” then I’ll bin whatever I have prepared and we’ll just end up doing X, because I think it’s more important to do what the student is passionate about, as long as they’ve got the rudiments that they need to achieve their goal already squared away (and even if they don’t, I’ll teach them those and then we’ll do X).

Hello Oppar~!! How many times do you fap a week?

It’s well known that I’m a cunt, so my fap schedule depends a lot on my monthly cycle.

Do you think we’re due for another big revolutionary innovation in music making and recording in the near future the same way things like multi-track recording overdubs, pitch correction, samplers, DAWs, etc. brought innovations in the past? If so, do you have any guesses what it could be?

I think the next big thing will be that synthesised instruments will finally be able to convincingly mimic the hardest of all acoustic instruments to electronically recreate, which is the violin. They’ve been getting closer, but no cigar just yet. Once that’s cracked, you’ll be able to record an entire symphony orchestra with any instruments, from a workstation keyboard using multitracking and patches, and it will actually sound like a orchestra. Mind you that’s not really a new idea as such, just something that can’t be done well yet. If I knew the real answer to your question I’d probably be busy making myself a millionaire developing whatever the new thing is! I hope it’s music delivered by suppository, you can plug a ben-wa bead up your ass and the music goes direct to your brain, that’d be cool, all my readers who love pegging would buy it for sure.

I saved a good amount of money for university but didn’t end up using it because I got a full scholarship. While that’s great, the money I had saved was put into a special account from which I can only make withdrawals for education-related expenses, otherwise I get slammed with tax penalties. I work in a tech field where the general consensus is that further university education won’t help me in my career at all, so that leaves me with this dilemma: get a pointless master’s degree for fun or just take the tax penalties. If I were to get another degree, I plan on using it as an opportunity to study abroad and take a bit of time off work to enjoy the student lifestyle. On the other hand, I could just use the raw money to travel without bothering with classes or use it to help buy a house. Seeing as how you mentioned that you just got your degree for fun, I would love to hear your perspective on this! Can you expand a bit more on what it was like to go to university “for fun”? What factors convinced you to do it? How did you get the most out of the experience?

Well I did it because I knew it actually would be fun, and I knew that it would be because I already knew most of what they were going to teach me, it was just filling in the gaps and getting some hands-on experience with certain things that isn’t easily do-able outside of that type of environment (like meeting enough string players to form a chamber orchestra and then write music for them, for example). So my advice is only do the “uni for fun” route if you can be quite certain that it will be fun and you’re not going to get a killer workload of stuff which you’ll struggle to keep up with. If you can’t guarantee yourself this then just withdrawing money and having some chill time might be better.

Another way to deal with this is to work out how to claim your travel as education, there may be a loophole. Might be something worth talking to an accountant about. This might also depend on the nature of your degree.

 OK so I was listening to this song and noticed something weird, that the last chorus was slightly slowed down. I thought I was imagining it but after checking in software, I saw that everything after 2:57 is slower than the rest of the song.
After investigating, I came up with a reason why this happened. The little guitar solo bit ends on beat 2 and the 3rd to last chorus starts on beat 3 of measure 60 (starting from 2:37), so without slowdown, the song would have ended on a beat 3. Because of the slowdown, the song ends properly on beat 1 measure 80 (3:38). It seems the section between 2:57 and 3:38 was slowed down to make sure it ended on beat 1 instead of 3. The question I have is, why? Was this a thing that their DAW just decided to do automatically or was it deliberate? If it was on purpose, was the engineer really that anal about making sure the song ended on beat 2 or was the slowdown a deliberate artistic choice and they just auto-picked a tempo that would make the numbers on their software look nice and even? Idrk all I know is that it bothers me a bit.

One possibility is that it’s an accident and the rhythm track was stretched somewhere in the mixing phase and nobody noticed. Perhaps by the time they finally noticed that someone had done a click and drag without realising, a whole bunch of other instruments were already recorded and it was deemed too late to go back and fix everything because “hey it sounds alright”. Worse fuckups have happened on recordings and been left in the mix.

Another possibility, and this is what I’m leaning towards because it makes musical sense, is that it’s no coincidence that the song slows down right when the beat drops out, and they wanted a more relaxed feel for that final drop and chorus, like the song was “winding down” slightly to give it a kind of comforting non-climactic feeling from that point on, so they decided to stretch out the tempo just a fraction. The amount of stretch probably was done “by feel” and the fact that it’s quantised is for no particular reason other than computers like quantising things and having quantised “snap” functions on is a way to stretch something quickly without making fiddly adjustments, which is probably why it falls perfectly on the beat.

Could be another reason though. These are just guesses, I asked her via YouTube comment so unless she or her producer replies we may never know. Good work picking up on this though, that’s a really subtle detail that most people would miss if it wasn’t pointed out to them.

Do you still play Genshin Impact? How many 5 stars (both from limited banners and standard banners) that you have?

I played it for a while but the lack of mouse Y axis invert makes it honestly impossible for me to continue with. I won’t be playing it again until they add that feature. Every PC gaming review publication should have taken a stand and given that game a score of zero for not having mouse Y axis invert. I can’t even remember what the 5 star thing is, not much point in doing gacha rolls if I can’t play the fucking game because the devs are stupid. I mean I might try the fix here at some point but I shouldn’t have to fucking practically hack the game in order to play it.

So, I was going on a Gfriend binge again (God, I miss the original group so much. Viviz is great, but it’s just not the same. Fuck Hybe.) I came across one of the few songs in which they rapped.

One thing I noticed is that unlike many other groups, Gfriend usually maintains a fast tempo even during raps. Do you think that’s because the girls just aren’t used to rapping so the songwriters stuck to something that more resembles their normal singing? Or is just the generally higher quality songwriters Gfriend had who knew that slowing down for raps sucks? Because I really would like rapping more if the songs didn’t so often slow to a fucking crawl for no apparent reason.

The only reason why rapping is over slow beats in most k-pop songs is because in rap slow beats is trendy. So Gfriend’s songwriters decided not to follow the trend and keep the pace going, which I’m thankful for. It’s nothing to do with Gfriend “not being used to rap”, if you’re a singer the actual act of rapping isn’t difficult whatsoever, unless you’re one of those people who raps at light speed. Rapping is literally talking in a rhythm, if you can talk, you can rap. More info here.

The reason why slow beats are trendy in rap is because if you’re freestyling, a slower beat gives you more time to think up the next rhyme, so slower beats have evolved to become more popular as they tend to be more popular on rap mixtapes etc, if you got back to the 80s rap music across the board had much faster beats and that’s because there wasn’t such a heavy focus on freestyle and rhyme complexity back then.

My prediction for 2023: some big kpop idol will die, shocking the whole industry

Steady on there, my predictions post is coming soon.

You’ve said you don’t use streaming services so idk how you usually listen to music, but apparently Youtube has a Spotify wrapped type thing where you can check whatever your top played songs were on the website. http://yt.be/music/Recap can I ask whatever songs you got near the top? (Or in case it’s favorites list spoilers, just the songs before 2022)

It’s definitely favourites list spoilers central (the currently shortlisted #1, #2 and #3 were all in it!), so here’s an edited version that removes anything Korean released in 2022:

It seems a bit random as videos I only watched once or twice for posts are right up against stuff I’m addicted to and have watched a whole ton, it’s definitely not an ordered list by views that’s for sure. It’s also not completely reflective of my taste in general so don’t interpret everything you see as an endorsement – some of the picks are actually there because my students were learning these songs and I was teaching them from YouTube and replaying the video over and over. Speaking of which I also did this again for my bass covers account, but honestly it’s not worth sharing because it was mainly just a playlist of my own bass cover videos as I tend to watch them back after I record them and not use the account for anything much else at all.

Yeesh I started taking a medication for depression and it made my appetite go away/I became nauseous a lot of the time in the morning or after meals and I lost ten pounds. Then finals week started and it came back, but now I’m eating way too much sugar because I don’t feel full without tons of carbs (and have regained like 3 lbs already). My appetite just can’t win.

Anyway, I feel like classic advice is just “try not to exercise and not eat too much sugar,” but exercising also makes me hungrier. Any other advice?

Intermittent fasting’s been working for me. If you can’t stop eating shit, just eat the shit you want to eat and then don’t eat for longer than usual. Dieting is really just calories in vs calories out (well it’s actually a bit more complicated than that, but not much), so if you can’t be fucked exercising, and you’re also not good at eating healthy, the third option is to cut down the amount of food. Of course don’t starve yourself to death either, there’s people who take it to extremes and that’s not healthy, I’m not saying join anorexiawowitissoawesome.com but you do have to accept that to achieve significant weight loss over time regardless of method you do have to feel hungry from time to time and just deal with that. Disclaimer: I am not a dietician or a doctor and this advice is probably wrong, maybe talk to one of those people and disregard the advice of some asshole k-pop writer.

How are you not getting sick of kpop, doing this for whole years? it’s my 5th year in kpop and i am already sick of it. not been listening to kpop for a while now. it used to be the only thing that i was listening. and releases are not THAT bad… 2021 was definitely worse. i am just not interested anymore i guess..

Oh I probably got sick of it within the first few few months of realising some of it was good, then buying albums and realising that I was wasting my money searching for needles in a haystack. That’s why so much of my writing goes off on tangents that aren’t really all that k-pop related, I gotta keep it interesting for myself, and I would go insane if I only ever listened to k-pop (or any other style for that matter). That’s also why I have my favourites lists for each year – because finding the stuff that is worth the time investment is hard work, and I want to save myself and also some of you that work by being able to hone on the things that I like and describe them, so that way even if you don’t like my specific music taste you still have a “map” of k-pop that you can consult and take as seriously or not as you choose. I agree with you that 2021 was worse than 2020, but I also think that 2022 is better than both years – expect the 2022 lists fondly!

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That’s all for QRIMOLE for 2022!  This series will return in 2023!  In the meantime remember that Gibson guitars are still trash!

Oh, and do you have a question that you’d like to see answered in the next episode of QRIMOLE?  If so, use the question box below, or if no box appears, click the Qri on the sidebar to open the box as a separate webpage!  Kpopalypse will return!