It’s time for Kpopalypse roundup! Let’s take a look at some new releases!
Apparently Blizzard were going to bin Overwatch 2 until Le Sserafim came along and made people suddenly give a shit about their failing game by releasing a line of character skins, so I guess it makes sense that there’d be a “you scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours” song collab. Unfortunately the song we got is a little too much like the game: pretty but unmemorable and inferior to the competition.
Some drama thing designed to sell IU as an actress some more by having her play a bit role to some k-drama vets. The music hardly even seems like the point.
Lazy NewJeansification and AI slop because I guess Kia already threw down the money for this advert so the music barely mattered.
Like a lot of k-pop remakes of early k-pop songs, this one improves the production of the original a lot, which definitely makes it an improvement overall, but there’s no getting over how tired it sounds. All the upbeat songs from this era had exactly the same sound and harmony progressions, if you’ve heard one you’ve heard 90% of them.
Sounds like something from an anime TV show, which could make it either good or bad for you, but personally I like my music to hit a bit harder than some random cartoon theme.
This is the right idea. If you’re going to do this kind of crazy shit, make it as crazy as possible. I think they could have gone even harder and faster still but hey it’s k-pop so I’ll take it. I can’t expect too much.
Very much the second-gen mid-paced ballad YG sound. You can sing the melody of 2NE1’s “Ugly” over this and it would fit. That’s not necessarily a bad thing but I wouldn’t say that this is the better version.
I didn’t find this very interesting but at least it has melody so that’s something. The bar is really on the floor.
This other song is probably a bit better, maybe. These Studio Choom things are honestly a waste of space in roundup unless the song is that much of a banger that I can’t wait for the possibility of a proper video later on, but hey it doesn’t suck so it’ll do to fill up space this week.
Being this bland is actually new territory for NCT 127 who are usually either really great or thuddingly awful and not much in between. I guess BTS really did pave the way for something after all.
Someone told me that Cortis wrote this song and I have no idea if that’s true or they were just taking the piss but I’ll admit it does kind of sound like it.
Goddamn someone decided to incorporate just a touch of a modern metal sound into a k-pop song to make their boys sound tough or something, and… honestly it’s about fucking time. This sound was right there all along but k-pop agencies are so scared of Rux’s dingalings that their idea of heavy is making a synth burp and fart a bit. Heaven forbid we pick up the guitars in this house.
This one’s more of a rock sound, although it’s softened a bit by all that “yayaya” stuff. I guess T-ara really did paved the way,
This isn’t horrible. I can listen to it. Hey by the time you read this the Kpopalypse Objectification Survey will be over for the year, so expect the results of that soonish i.e when I could be bothered. Let’s light a candle for the poor person who thought that I run the survey monthly and that there are only women in it – as if I’d miss out on featuring your favourite slabs of man-meat, I have a majority LGBT readership after all, statistically most of you swing both ways. Anyway, a new regular Kpopalypse survey will be out soon so enjoy that when it happens.
The budget Kard is slightly better, as it happens.
If only this had one verse, it probably would have bored me slightly less. Some good ideas in the track mind you but the topline is just nursery rhyme tier silliness and that kind of wrecks it.
A group of deaf people with a song that isn’t exactly good but still isn’t significantly worse than your average k-pop song is a fact that tells you all you need to know about k-pop in 2026.
This song is pretty boring I’m only including Omega X in roundup out of sympathy at this point because after what they went through there’s gotta be a silver lining somewhere.
It’s okay I guess but I’m bored. Give me some excitement please.
We can’t get visual queen Adora in music videos anymore and have to put up with horrible animated stand-ins instead because Korea is a beauty-standards shithole.
The kind of music that Heart Of Woman do surprisingly well and nobody else in Korea seems to be able to get right.
Well, that was a letdown. The guitar in this song is about as useful as Jason Newstead’s bass on “…And Justice For All”.
“And the record goes on, and on, and on…” it sure does.
Sujeong released videos for about a dozen songs this week, or at least it seems like it, and they’re all painfully boring. This is the best one because at least there’s a reasonable rhythm track, I won’t even bother linking any of the others.
I like it how she labels this one as a fan song, in the actual song title itself. It’s a good indicator not to get your hopes up.
Hayoon was in BonusBaby and is another entry I’m putting in roundup just out of sympathy and to maybe get her some promotion because it’s pretty dreadful honestly, but any clicks is good clicks after what she probably went through in her old group.
Not at all bad once it gets going, some really nice use of orchestration, even if those organs are giving me 70s music cover band PTSD.
This song has no right going this hard. Some very cool track ideas elevate this above the usual boy-slop.
Bland generic acoustic song and not that keen on Gyubin’s choice of guitar inlays either (really) but she looks good here so I’m including this anyway because otherwise that one Gyubin fan who is always on my livestreams will be heartbroken.
When you listen to random trot stuff it really becomes clear how similar it all is. This is definitely on the better side thanks to featuring some unusual harmony and melody choices that you wouldn’t normally hear in trot songs.
Pansori vocals combined with a stoner rock type of feel is a combination that really works, the effect is sort of like a more vocally-focused Jane’s Addiction. Just wish they would have lost the voice pitch-correction which really doesn’t work in this style at all, but that’s the only thing wrong with it.
Rappers are always at their best when they’re annoyed about something and want to write about it. Far from the best song like this I’ve ever heard but also definitely the best thing anyone involved here has ever done that I can remember.
Probably the worst song Rockit Girl have ever made, but I’m still kind of grateful that it exists. It’s been that kind of a week.
If you’re confused by what this is, don’t worry, so am I and I’ve known about The Great Kat since the 1980s when I first read her unhinged press releases in heavy metal magazines. She’s a virtuoso/thrash guitar player who got known around the late 80s when shred first became a thing. Her videos all have this weird dominatrix vibe, the album I first found out about was called “Worship Me Or Die!” which should give you some clues as to what she’s about ideologically. Musically she’s gloriously messy and makes Yngwie Malmsteen seem relatively placid and restrained, she has a gazillion videos and they are all look and sound exactly like this. And you thought those recent ARTMS comebacks were hard to watch. Also just putting it out there that The Great Kat is 60 years old and still rocking hard as fuck, no sitting on chairs in white rooms singing ballads to be found here. An example for us all.
Anyone who has ever written on TikTok “wah wah Kpopalypse doesn’t like anything, wah wah why is he such a hater, wah wah useless bald old man” misses the point and the context of my site completely. I have a hugely big-time POSITIVE outlook on k-pop because I don’t give in to cheap hatred of the idols themselves (or ad hominem attacks on my haters ahem) and I’m willing to spend week after week digging through the shit that idols are forced to sing by their lame companies in order to find the gold. If you want true negativity, forget about me, check out the crybabies over at YouTube. If your song is maybe a little less successful than your last few songs you’ll get an avalanche of “[group x] is OVER” videos (Katseye average a few dozen per week lately), and then if you’re actually world-beatingly successful you’ll get a video about you like this – some girl ranting on for half an hour about how “APT” isn’t like Rose’s other songs, so it’s a massive marketing mistake, or something. Sorry Rose, I know you have a hit with 2.6 billion views and counting but you’re doing it all wrong, listen to this random YouTuber, she’ll tell you how to run your career from here on out.
A caonima gave me some podcast annotations, I’ll just copy them below.
VVS podcast:
3:29 talks about SNS nontroversy. Illit – Iconic by Mistake MV was shot similarly shot to VVS – Dimm, saying that if ppl liked the Illit song, they should check out Dimm. Angry Illit fans started harassment campaign after Kpop news accounts misreported news as “VVS accuses Illit of plagiarism.”
37:40 commentary on their “controversial” styling. critics say that should dress more “conservatively” since they’re rookies. Producer Paul says they’re “deconstructionist” on purpose, i.e. not like traditional kpop groups. Aussie Lena was a long time SM trainee, says that she didn’t like restrictions of trad kpop system. Girls style themselves using their own clothes. The one minor member Liwon is styled by the older girls (all early 20s). Paul says they previously had a trad kpop stylist, but she ripped them off for $100k, so he fired everyone in the agency except himself and the girls (if we follow timeline from prev podcast eps, this was prob early 2026.)
47:43 they talk about how they’d rather be in a small company with freedom + gradual growth. ex-SM trainee Lena + ex-Black Label Brittney say they have no regrets and prefer their current style of music + group theme vs. hypothetical of debuting with Hearts2Hearts + Meovv and having instant success of being with a “Big Four” agency. Paul says that currently have more net following than similarly very small groups.
Stream “Bottles”, folks.
“Come Closer” came out at the time when sax riffs had suddenly gotten really big in k-pop and it shows, as the sax is probably all that you’ll remember from this song. I didn’t even remember that much and it was only thanks to my retro song submitting caonima that I remembered this existed at all.
That’s all for this week! Kpopalypse roundup returns next week!
