It’s time for Kpopalypse roundup! Let’s take a look at some new releases!
“We always go hard – except when we don’t.” If only this song did actually go hard all the way through instead of dropping back to the slow lighter-waving bullshit every 30 seconds, we might’ve actually had something worth listening to here.
Young Posse have the right idea here but the mish-mash of different schools of 90s hip-hop sound doesn’t quite work (Cypress Hill style beats with P-funk synth in the one song is… a choice) and it’s just a bit too smooth for its own good. Still a good attempt even if it didn’t quite work.
Awesome bass guitar work makes an otherwise pretty cheesy and grating song somewhat worth listening to.
This song sounds like it’s going somewhere good in the intro and then decides to just not do anything like that at all.
Middle of the road rocking straight from Korean OST-land, except it’s not an OST so it has no excuse to be this dull.
And here’s the Japanese OST-land version, which isn’t much better.
I usually don’t like putting Dingo Music fake-live performances in these roundups because the songs tend to get videos eventually if they’re even slightly worthy of interest but I don’t think anyone seriously gives a shit about this new mid-ass Soyeon song anyway so fuck it, it can go here and save me the trouble of potentially covering this boring shit again later.
League Of Legends songs have been using exactly the same sonic template for the last ten years with pretty much no variation at all. This sounds exactly like all the other ones.
Devastatingly awful, but at least it’s interestingly awful, the general shitness of it is honestly kind of fascinating.
Actually not terrible, the only real obvious downside here is the ugly visual effects.
Didn’t we have an N.Flying song last week? Well here’s another one, and it’s dull.
Imagine pulling up in the most notorious lemon car of the 21st century and thinking that it looks cool instead of just transferring the contagious joke branding straight to your new k-pop boy group.
Jesus this sounds bland. CNBlue actually sounded somewhat like an idol group back in the day, now they’re in the same snooze-rock territory that everyone else is this week.
SM producer Kenzie actually has some pretty good song ideas that make this NCT Wish song worth a listen. Again, horrible eyesore of an AI slop video, I guess the golden age of k-pop videomaking is well and truly over now that these companies can get the AI to do their videos for cheaper and the fans are too eager to lap up the toenail sweat of their biases to care either way.
The sound of H.O.T’s “Candy” is really trending with the new boy groups lately. I wonder if it will work for these guys. Probably not, but who knows?
It’s a sad week when the latest dull avatar whatsit is actually one of the better songs and videos.
Yeah the Berklee “k-pop group” is actually… not bad? Even if their school is hopeless shit now. Girls, get out of there!
Dull song but I’m pretty sure that one Gyubin fan on my livestreams is blowing their load repeatedly over this video. If I don’t see them ever again I’ll know that they drowned in a freak accident involving their own genital fluids while this video was on repeat.
HYBE are going to give every single artist of theirs this sound precisely so you stop associating it with NewJeans because they want you to forget those girls even existed.
Nobody in the video what is this Pink fucking Floyd or some bullshit? Anyway it’s not as good as “Starry Night“, now that’s a song you could listen to if you wanted.
This is alright I suppose but I was still bored enough to spend the entire time listening to it playing gay idle games for the next Wonho games post in 2027.
You know k-pop video making is really in the shitter when you see something bland like this and are just grateful that they didn’t AI-generate the gas station.
Okay so this is actually rather good. Damn it’s been a shit week. I don’t enjoy shitting on all the songs, you know, I’d much rather hear something good like this. But I’m not going to lie and blow smoke up your faves’ assholes if I think the song is balls. Anyway, this rocks, check it out.
Now that VVS are gone, maybe Keyveatz can step into the gap? This one’s a bit bland but there could be hope for the future?
Well, yeah erm maybe not, hey. I mean the rap doesn’t sound horrible but they’re going to need better beats than this.
From the song submitter: “QWER does songs for PlayStation and power fantasy animes. Aiweo does songs for tennis wear.” Definitely sums it up musically. I support any rockers in Korea getting the bag though, even mediocre ones, it’ll lead to more actual rock bands in Korea getting paid overall. Hopefully.
Some decent track writing here but the big hook that a pop songs needs doesn’t really happen.
Boring shite, at least it mrcs
What, a rap song that actually rocks and goes hard? Can we have more of this please and less of literally everything else that rap has become in 2026 tysm
And this is more of that weak, soft shit.
I want to like this but something about it doesn’t work for me. Reminds me of Lil Cherry (when she’s good) but on valium or something.
The atmosphere here makes this one. A rare example of someone using blues influence for good.
I appreciate the sentiment, the song lacks a little though. Full marks for effort though, plus guitar solos are always appreciated.
What she needs is a better amplifier. Laney amps are pretty bad. The boss at a studio I used to work for swore by his but I always thought it was a bit shit and had no balls, when I needed an amp and saw one secondhand cheap I playtested it against a Vox and there was no competition, I bought the Vox instead which I then used for the next 20 years. You can see the iconic Vox in the video “Stand Up” from one of SM’s forgotten solo singers, J.min. Hey I wonder how Min Jiwoon’s going. Song sucks by the way, in case you were one of the people holding out for my opinion who hasn’t worked out yet that if I don’t talk about the song it’s because the song’s not worth fucking talking about.
Boring song and they made Rothy look horrible with the saturated colour, she needs to fire whoever made that decision.
This shit is a bit maudlin for me but it’s different and the orchestration is kind of cool.
I’m here for Dok2 perving at his missus with a handicam for 4 minutes while he raps terribly. You can see she loves it and why wouldn’t she. If I was a shitty ass rapper I’d probably follow my gf around with a camera to make lazy music videos for my shitty songs too.
Dbo paved the way.
For Žižek, the Real is not external reality but the traumatic, pre-symbolic kernel that every symbolic order (ideology, language, social reality) tries and fails to fully integrate. It erupts as disturbance—symptom, catastrophe, enjoyment (jouissance). Crucially, he reads it through German Idealism: the Real is not simply “out there” but is retroactively posited by the symbolic itself as its own impossible ground. Ideology functions by offering fantasies that mask this constitutive lack, so the Real appears as the limit point where meaning breaks down.
Enjoy this week’s non-Korean music pick. Fun times.
While the opinions of the music here I definitely disagree with (NewJeans were much more of a miss than a hit for me musically overall), and there’s no reason to watch at all beyond about eight minutes in unless you’re a Cortis fan, this is still a good video. The narrator definitely gets it right when it comes to understanding exactly why NewJeans worked and why HYBE (and everyone else) has completely failed to capture the same thing with any of their other girl groups, despite trying about 23458 times over the last few years.
