It’s time for Kpopalypse roundup! Let’s take a look at some new releases!
Some decent basslines and grooves here but everything comes apart when that chorus hits. I am definitely not addict.
When Yves gets her post-Loona artsy bullshit right it works pretty well, and she’s been justifiably making a name for herself as a result, but this sadly isn’t one of those times.
Heart Of Woman hand the waiter their debut concept back, look over at the next table and say “I’ll have one of what that girl in the green striped shirt and the blue cap is having”. The results are as bland as expected.
While ignoring Cosmosy is fun and completely justifiable because they are essentially j-pop and therefore all that is wrong with the world, I might have to stop that if they start writing half-decent music. Although I probably won’t. The song here isn’t great, to be clear – cool beats but basically zero hook – however it’s at least an attempt to not suck and I can’t help but at least acknowledge sincere effort.
A song that reminds me of Oh My Girl’s awful “Shark” in that most of the song is chanted rather than sung, in places where some singing would have really helped things along, chiki chika chu
It’s depressing to know that Giselle actually has a pretty eclectic and interesting music taste yet somehow manages to make music like this. I mean I guess it’s interesting just in the fact that her name is on it and it sounds like ass and that’s kind of a weird thing for her to be doing.
I was mainly shocked by how dated this sounds. I expect some nugus to chase a dull five year old trend but I don’t expect the label who started that trend to do it.
The latest song from not-a-Pledis-girl-group isn’t bad actually. Maybe TWS stands for “Tunes Without Shielas”.
The kind of concept that Lim Kim tried over and over again but never got right because someone felt that her yelling about being an “Asian queen” was more important than writing a song. XLOV do it properly with a traditional feel that integrates into k-pop style without feeling gimmicky and pandering to “world music” racial fetishism, I guess that means they’re the true “Asian queens”.
Yeah, they really called it that. God help us. Anyway, I dig the crunchy distorted bass guitar sound throughout this one, even if the song itself is nothing special at least it grooves.
I have nothing much to say about this song except that there’s no berets worth a damn so just a reminder that the latest Kpopalypse survey is out now, it’s not the one where we objectify all the people but the other one where I just ask random dumb shit, do the survey at this link! Have fun!
The most awful warbling melodies kill any possible appeal that this could have had due to the NCT-ish backing track.
Not much of an alpha drive here to speak of, this one seems stuck in neutral. Go do the new survey if you haven’t yet, I promise it’s way more interesting than this.
Someone’s been having a party of their own with those fucking AI filters, haven’t they. I don’t mind this one, the 2010-ish vibes are obviously getting trendy right now. The Deep paved the way.
Pretty bland stuff, and what’s with those guitar tones. Some of those guitar chords sound like someone left the deep-fryer on too long and it ran out of oil.
It’s better than their ballad though. Whose idea was it to have sections where everything drops out except that balls-tightening voice.
Your semi-regular reminder that Hi-Fi Unicorn are still putting out about a song per week and they’re all equally uninteresting.
The BADING vibes are strong here. That’s about all this one has got going for it, but just a memo if you’re after a bit of BGP in this week’s roundup N.TOP have got you covered.
Maybe there was a song here worth listening to but the beat choice ruins everything. Who just left the drum machine running in the studio for no reason.
I’m probably going to make Los Santos or whatever ineligible for the end of year list simply because I don’t want the worst list crowded with only this boring crap. There are standards even for complete dogshit. Awful AI video too but since it’s Santos Latinslops nobody cares anyway.
You know that Girlset aren’t doing that well commercially when they’re just as scantily-clad as Katseye but none of the social media kiddies are making a fuss.
Some people are confused how Lee Hi got on the Kpopalypse bias list this year but I really don’t see why. What a great couple these two are. If your man is such a massive pervert that he sticks you in all his songs and videos that’s true love right there. I mean I’m sure they could have a messy breakup one day but for now we’re good. Jennie and that BTS boy should have made a few videos like this, I mean they’re pretty much married at this point, right?
I am really not into whatever this is. Just too light and fluffy. Imagine strapping on a guitar and this is the type of music you really want to do. I can’t relate.
The “attitude” style comebacks don’t really work for virtual groups, because if they were really that sassy they’d just show their faces.
This kind of nonsense honestly works better conceptually even if the song is poop. Lyla here might even get in the next boobs post, whenever I do another one of those (probably 2030 the way we’re going with potential new entrants so far).
Possibly the worst name a virtual group could possibly have, these girls go for a cheap knockoff of IVE’s “Bang Bang” and it would probably work okay if the sonics were better. And the song was better.
Another Keyveatz solo and like the others it’s disappointing, like VVS if the spark that made them too hot to handle was gone.
They’re really not getting out of Nugu Alert territory anytime soon, are they.
The top comment: “This gives off such a Disney main character vibe I love it“. They’re right, it does give off that vibe, however some of us want our entertainment to actually be good instead.
It’s unfortunate for KG that she got cozy with Fender right when everyone hates that company’s guts for their crazy brand-devaluing litigation nonsense. Anyway this song isn’t anything special but hey neither is Girlset’s so I’ll call it even.
Why do music video directors always think that trapping their camera subject in a fucking dirty bedsheet looks good? It’s a really weird visual choice and it never looks interesting with anybody ever.
We mainly just ache for better music.
Hey this is alright actually. It reminds me a little of Vincent Park and Griffy’s “Guilty Pleasure” which has seemingly been wiped from all of the Internet forevermore. If anyone has audio of that song, get in touch!
Could have been good but everything’s too controlled, too nice. Lose the soft Autotune and the vocal layers and really scream the fuck out of it and we’d have something worth listening to here, but when they start moshing the whole thing looks like a parody of itself because it’s just not raw enough to elicit that type of emotion.
Again, it’s okay, just a little too smooth. Can we rock for real, folks?
And again. Korea is in love with this almost garage-rock sound which is just a bit too nice and polite to care about. Like it’s not really the garage but the granny flat next to the garage and their grandmother still lives there and would like the noise kept down just a little, please.
According to the song submitter this is a “former History member and producer of many kpop hits”. I don’t know what I was expecting but this Marilyn Manson type thing certainly wasn’t it. It’s not bad. Finally someone gets rock right this week.
This is… pretty good actually. That is, until it hits 1:45 and it suddenly becomes the worst song ever. AI bunnies doing hip-hop poses, our society doesn’t need this.
This is decently okay. God knows the big groups aren’t doing jack shit worth paying attention to this week so you might as well give this a go.
I’m sure we’re going to get the IVE PUBG collab songs coming out soon, in the meantime to warm you up here’s some rappers who obviously wish they were doing a PUBG collab but aren’t. It’s ruined by too much hard Autotune and a lame as fuck beat, but I’m just impressed they had the balls to do this nonsense at all.
Unlike a lot of Korean rappers Bewhy is actually really good when he wants to be, so fuck knows what he’s doing slumming it on this trash. I hope he got paid a lot.
If you’re someone who is feeling a lot of respect and admiration for veteran Korean punk group No Brain, why not watch this and feel all those good feelings evaporate in about ten seconds.
I was hoping that this was the Opus song, just to see if he could do better than Laibach, but I guess not.
Speaking of which – so what makes a good cover version of a song? Let’s explore it with this week’s non-Korean pick. A great cover is not when you cover a classic, because there’s no point in that, you’re probably only going to do as good as the original at best, and probably a whole lot worse. The better thing to do is find a song that wasn’t that great originally but had some potential, and use your own unique take on music to unlock that potential and take it to the next level. Here, Laibach take the original “Life Is Life” which is lighthearted and cheesy and not that deep, and somehow turn it into an anthem for the entire planet. Okay the video is a bit silly and hasn’t aged well at all (“Borat filmed by Leni Riefenstahl” is pretty on the money in the comment section) but hey I think it’s still a nice eye-cleanse after all the AI slop this week.
This started off cool and I thought to myself “please let it not be hard Autotune slop please let it not be hard Autotune slop please let it not be hard Autotune slop” but of course, it’s hard Autotune slop because we can’t have nice things in this world. What a pity, I wanted to love frog back but I guess I’m going to have to leave it on read.
A weird-ass song, Youha only seems to be in it visually to provide the models standing around. However surprisingly there’s not much to see, or listen to, here.
This song’s not too bad actually so I’ll leave you with it because it’s been a shitty week.
A chorus doesn’t have to be a melody, it can be a riff, or anything really that’s a “hook”, so some of these aren’t exactly great examples. I think a good chorus is more a matter of expectations and what works with the song structure. Something like “It’s Me”, you’re not really expecting a melodic chorus, so what they do fits the already-established tone. Babymonster’s “Sheesh”, not so much, that one feels like a big disappointment. Not sure what IVE”s “Heya” is even doing in there at all as that’s quite a melodic chorus and is definitely the odd one out given the point the video-maker seems to be trying to make. It’s an interesting observation, but all melodic choruses is just as bad as no melodic choruses. Variety is good, and all musical trends come and go.
A video about why k-pop singer Ailee started doing the V-tuber thing (use auto-dub if you need the English). I’d do it myself and pick a pretty avatar just like this one and a voice-changer so all you straight men could goon to Kpopalypse… but I can’t stand talking to people for more than an hour at a time, I honestly don’t know how livestreamers even do it.
A song pretty much forgotten even by fans of these groups, “Woman Generation” isn’t particularly notable and is kind of ruined by a very vocal-heavy production which detracts from the best part of the song which is the instrumental. Still, there are far worse examples in k-pop of this particular production misstep.
That’s all for this week! Kpopalypse roundup returns next week! Oh, and don’t forget to do the survey! Cheers, caonimas!
