It’s time for QRIMOLE, the series where readers ask Kpopalypse questions! Let’s take a look at the mailbag for the last month!
Do you feel trapped with regards to balancing your coverage of kpop with discovering new music?
Like, it seems like you’ve explored a lot of genres fairly deeply, but once you started doing roundups that doesn’t leave a ton of time to get super knowledgable about other genres. Do you ever feel “married to kpop” in a bad way? Or does kpop legitimately still carry more interest than every other genre?
It certainly does take up a lot of time. It’s still interesting for all sorts of reasons. Yes it does take time away from discovering other stuff, but then other genres follow Sturgeon’s Law just as much as k-pop does. As long as I can continue to find good stuff wherever it may be, I’m okay with that. Also it’s been my k-pop readers who have in some cases turned me onto other non k-pop music that I’ve really liked, and I probably wouldn’t have discovered those things if it were not for my k-pop interest. So there’s that. Overall, no regrets.
Looking through the archives for a lark, and I was surprised at how edgy this page used to be. Do you think you’ve softened over the last 10 years? (P.S. For the love of Eunjung don’t stop posting, this page is my last connection to kpop since I developed a prefrontal cortex)
I honestly don’t think the writing here has ever been edgy. Australian humour is just blunt, and bluntness is the opposite of sharp edges! But I do agree that the writing style has changed and matured, as I have also changed and matured… or arguably not, as some might attest hahaha… but it’s certainly changed! It would honestly be a worry if I wrote now the same way that I wrote when I started, because it means that I wasn’t getting any better at writing after doing it for over a decade, which would be weird.
Don’t worry, no intention to stop posting!
My friends decided to make a music and upload it on spotify for fun, none of us know shit about music in general. Like, if you showed any of us a musical symbol, we probably wouldn’t even know what it meant. Speaking for myself, the only things I know about music are things that I’ve learned on Internet, so y’know my musical knowledge is basically 0. But I like to write songs for fun, and one of my friends said “oh, it would be cool if we made a kpop group and released songs on Spotify” (none of us is Korean btw), so we decided to do so. We have the lyrics and the “composition” (or the closest we can get to it) and a friend that knows how to play violin and knows music theory and said that he could do all the production, but he’s charging too much for us to paid, and even if we had the money we wouldn’t pay for a song that probably 5 people will listen. So what’s the basic of music theory and music in general that I have to know so I can produce for free instead of losing $205?
(Sorry, English isn’t my first language! Also, the genre we’re going for is R&B.)
You should find that this series covers you pretty well. Don’t worry about not having talent, you’re making R&B which is pretty much a talent-free zone in 2026.
Best bald artist?
Kpopalypse of course. He’s a great writer and author and very sexy and talented and especially modest.
I don’t think you talk about your girlfried alot, but i am pretty curious about her music taste, a metalhead? a punk? an industrial clubber? noisenik? jazzist? I know u said she didnt care for kpop but whar else?
She likes a lot of things but she was involved in the goth scene back in the day and her favourite music is old school goth music. Bauhaus, Christian Death, Sisters Of Mercy, The Cure, etc.
I don’t talk about her a great deal because I signed up for this k-pop writing ultra-low-level fame thing whereas she didn’t. She gives no fucks about your k-pop faves.
Hey it’s the kisshuhua blog dude again. Is my tumblr blogsite glitchy bullshit. I feel like it is. Also by now I’ve put out a list of music videos I think are strange and wanna know what you think of my opinions
I could not find the list that you are referring to. I saw lots of “music review delivery” but I don’t think that’s what you mean? It was a little weird to navigate (I used desktop, never my phone) but not too bad. I quite like the look of it actually.
Wanna know what’s worse than finding out the seemingly normal bottle of coke is sugar free? The song you have to perform being sugar free. What do you think of that t-ara song presently in 2026 assuming this lives to make it to nov qrimole and any opinions from before that I couldn’t find somehow have changed enough to warrant a reply
Sugar Free is a great song. I’m addict.
I personally think a good song genuinely needs brass to make my musical boner stick up at all. What’s your opinion on brass heavy songs line ah yeah by exid or so good so bad by mxfruit or like literally anything form K-pop’s early-mid 2010s because most of those years hits were Christian horse girl or sax-jerkoff tournaments
A lot of the time it doesn’t work for me because they lean into it too much because it was a trending sound rather than using it to enhance the song. Occasionally they get it right. Orange Caramel’s “My Copycat” is a great example of a song leaning into the trendy sax riffs of the time successfully.
But if you want my opinion of early 2010s music in general, just use the site search bar to search “favourite” (with the u) and you’ll find my favourite song lists for each year.
Pick any of your favorite girl groups and make a JAV code out of the letter than starts the group name then pick a debut date and make a number out of that for the code and let me know if it works and if it does send send pls lypse
This question had too much math for me to handle. I feel like Eunice from Girls909 trying to do her forgotten algebra assignment.
this observation about girl group fans being fairweather/hype beasts/frontrunners true? idk, but you’re way more “in the weeds” than me so maybe you know?
It’s absolutely true that “pre-debut stans” exist. If there ever was anything that proves that many people who are into k-pop don’t give a single shit about music, it’s the existence of the “pre-debut stan”, the person who pledges allegiance to a group before they know what any of the songs sound like. If music was a consideration, the “pre-debut stan” would simply be an impossibility. (The videomaker knows this too, and gives a nod to this at 0:53). Following k-pop groups for a lot of people is more about social connection, feeling included, feeling like they’re part of something bigger… that’s why “flops” is such an insult for people, because if a group isn’t doing well, it stops satisfying those criteria. It’s also why so many people are secretly bothered by my reviews. If I don’t support “the club”, what if they get less popular? For me personally, the only thing on the line is music quality. For many k-pop fans, it’s their whole social world.
your thoughts on my observation?
i think i figured out aegyo. to be able to do it, you have to have no sense of shame. it’s usually involves adult women acting like small children.
I found this instruction manual article, clearly written by adult women for other adult women. it is very well done with good art work to illustrate as examples!
it’s very much like the “debauchery arms race” of online sex workers, like in 2024 when lily phillips and bonnie blue were trying “out ho” each other with the amount of men they could have involved in a photographed train pull.
everything goes back to women commodifying themselves as a business transaction. why do women do aegyo? to convince men to open their wallets.
Was with you until the last paragraph. Not everything is as simple and binary as horrible manosphere online content makes it seem. Maybe the aegyo isn’t about getting men to spend, maybe some women want to do it because other men who they’re already with just like it and they like pleasing their man? Or perhaps other women like it and they like pleasing other women? Or they themselves like it and they couldn’t give a shit about pleasing anyone and just want to feel “cute” or something?
In fact I don’t even think the Lily Phillips/Bonnie Blue clit-measuring contest was about money either, I feel like that one’s just about the same sort of status bullshit stuff that anybody trying to break a world record in anything feels. But I can’t throw stones as I’m not immune to it. I’d like to think that I can break the world record for the most bullshit post on a k-pop website one day.
Does a hit still count as a conservative hit if it comes out 15 years before the artist comes out as conservative? Do you think art is more separated from the artist in Kpop where most of the performers aren’t writing the songs? Is Sorry Sorry a conservative hit? Inspired by this {some video of some j-pop that I don’t care about because I’m not jpopalypse, shown as an example of “incorrect” to the statement “republicans can’t make a hit song“}
I don’t really care about “conservative hits” or whatever. Good songs can come from anywhere and that includes any political persuasion.
In k-pop there’s still an artist, it’s just usually not the person who you’re looking at who’s performing the song on the video. The idol is more of a “crafter” bringing to life the art that someone else imagined.
Siwon is only one person in Super Junior. In The Ramones, Joey was left-wing and Johnny was right-wing, so does that make The Ramones “centrist”? Or more left-wing because Joey is the singer? Or more right-wing because The Ramones probably wouldn’t have even toured without Johnny whipping Joey into line? These ideas fall apart when you start thinking about them too hard.
“Yunjin reflected on her adjusting to Korean culture after first moving to Korea when she responded with “okay” to her dance teacher, which isn’t the correct way to acknowledge that you understand to your elders:
“So, like in Korea, responding and acknowledging that you understood what the other person said is very important and it shows respect, but when I first moved here, I was not as aware of that.
I remember our dance teacher at the time had said something, and I responded “Okay.” She goes, “What did you say to me?” and I was like, “What? What do you mean?” She’s like, “You do not say okay to your teacher. Am I American?” and I was like, “Oh my god, I am so sorry.”
From then on it was just like, okay was super, super casual and not formal at all whatsoever. I learned that the hard way, never use “okay” to your elders.””
What do you think? I feel this east Asian culture respect hierarchy thing being baked into the language prob gets abused by ppl who like to power trip? Eg reminds me of Middle Manager Syndrome, Reddit moderators or Karens abusing retail/hospo staff.
It’s an interesting question, but you couldn’t have picked a worse person to ask. As someone who is both Australian where we pretty much have a “reverse respect” culture, plus neurodivergent up the ass, plus not living in Korea, I would struggle to even detect the sort of obstacle Yunjin is talking about let alone react appropriately. But yes it does make sense to me at least on paper that such systems would get abused a lot, however I really don’t know how far that plays out in reality. Just people using these systems in exactly the way they’re intended to be used would be egregious enough on its own from my perspective.
What’s better and do you think so, the original or the sort of remake (really just the chorus)?
OG (Siddharta – B Mashina)
sort of remake (Laibach’s version)
Laibach are very good at cover versions and twisting them to suit the kind of thing that they do. However I don’t think this is their strongest cover. I also don’t think much of the song anyway, but I’d rather hear it Laibachified than the fairly generic nu-metal type sound of the original.
What do you think that my subconscious is trying to tell me?
In a dream I watched a social media video where some gay man influencer was complaining about a make up thing. I copied the link to on ask oppar, saying “why are they using a made up name for the colour? Why can’t they just be normal and say it was a shade of white?”
In same dream, outdoor restaurant patrons tried to break into my flat to escape the rain.
Stan Chuu.
hiii oppar i know you like Pinkpantheress and i was wondering whether you have any opinions on this song she produced for Say Now?
I am not Westernpopalypse, but this is a miss for me. Like most singers who are also producers, she saves her best songs for herself!
