It’s time for Kpopalypse roundup! Let’s take a look at some new releases!
EXO – Let Me In
Are you a stupid little bitch? Well, SM sure think so. Remember when Super Junior’s Siwon had a dog and it bit some lady and fucking killed her, so SM rush-released a video for a (pre-existing) sentimental ballad to give the boys a chance to cry on screen a bit and try to manipulate fans into sticking by the group? And it worked? You might remember that I called this out at the time, but of course everyone made excuses for SM and took a shit on big, bad old Kpopalypse for daring to point out the obvious and go against the fandom party line. Well now SM are doing it again, quickly throwing out a ballad video with emotional scenes now that there’s contractual disputes with EXO-CBX, to try and tug the heartstrings of fans back into “we are one” compliance. You have to give credit to Loona fans actually, for at least sticking to their guns in terms of boycotts, not falling for Blockberry’s bullshit, and making it crystal clear that they’re not happy with the company. I fully expect EXO’s fans to not follow this good example set by Loona fans and instead roll over like weak little bitches for this shit ballad and get straight back to sucking that flaccid, wrinkly SM corporate cock, guess we’ll see. I’d love to be proven wrong for once.
Halsey, SUGA – Lilith
That humming sixteenth-note rhythm sounds like it’s really going somewhere cool but it never actually gets there and literally the entire song is spent in ‘buildup mode’ with no payoff at all. Speaking of which why does Halsey wear the Xena Warrior Princess fetish armour outfit while token BTS boy wears a cloak covering 99.9% of his skin? Sexism, I tell you.
Jimin – Letter
Oli London doesn’t really look like himself lately, does he.
SHINee – The Feeling
My feeling is that I’ll skip this. How come everyone goes on and on (and on and on and on and on) about the “seven year curse” for girl groups, like them disbanding is some kind of pr-ordained expectation, yet boy groups are allowed to exist for eternity. Sexism, I tell you.
P1Harmony – Jump
Starts off pretty generic with that horrible slow beat that all the boy groups use now, but they fix that just after the one minute mark and from there on it’s not too bad I guess.
LAYSHA – Red Flower
Hilariously bombastic, full of cinematic flourishes and dramatic musical tweaks all over the place, it’s exactly the sort of comeback that a group like this should have. I wonder if they’ll catch any extra votes in the Objectification Survey this year due to their efforts here… who am I kidding, it’ll just be Wonho and A-list girl groups again…
Queendom Puzzle – Rise Up
Watching this just reminds me of the recruitment scene in Starship Troopers. You know most of these terrified-looking kids aren’t going to make it out unscathed.
ENHYPEN – Sacrifice (Eat Me Up)
Pretty good as far as k-pop reggae-lite goes, taking the sound in some different moody directions not usually applied.
XODIAC – Special Love
This one’s really good, actually the best boy group song I’ve heard in quite a while. All it’s missing is a bit more muscle in the instrumentation, but even without that, it’s still great.
THE NEW SIX (TNX) – Kick It 4 Now
It’s that ‘new jack swing’ sound again, and we all hate it. I suppose kiddies who weren’t around when the original songs appeared might dig this, but I hate it for the same reason that I quit Facebook. No, I don’t want to see what I was doing on this day five years ago, fuck off with that nostalgia shit thank you very much. Unlike most people my age, I don’t listen to the same music I listened to in my teens and twenties, I’m always looking for the next thing. Nostalgia is death. There’s time on your deathbed to reminisce about your life – until then just keep moving forward and looking forward.
VAV – Designer
I’m pretty sure this is filmed on the same set as Nine Muses’ “Gun” so why not go and listen to that much better song instead?
Q6IX – C.C
It’s almost great, but these girls really need a proper producer to work with their songwriter, and not these bargain-basement productions.
PURPLE KISS – Love is Dead
Eh, dance practice snore snore. If you really think your track is that good, throw your money down on a proper video.
OMEGA X – Dream
Millennial-whooping disaster ahoy. That shirt might be smiling, but I’m not.
Gwangil Jo – Acrobat2
Gwangil Jo clearly has figured out what side his bread is buttered on. I have no idea what he’s saying but the beat he’s saying it over sounds like Wu-Tang’s second album and that’s a much better place to be in rap music than where most of it is at these days.
Love X Stereo vs DA1SY DØØM – Lucid / Dreams
The way to save shoegazey pop is to drown that fucking music in deep electronica textures, Love X Stereo have the right idea.
Sia Jiwoo – Yummy
This confused me a bit because at first I thought it was Jooe from Momoland as they looked kind of similar at first glance. Then I saw the large amounts of underboob on display and thought “no, that seems a little bit off brand, this is probably some v-logger or streamer turned k-pop” and I was right. Anyway the song (just like the visuals) is that Hyuna kind of thing and I don’t really have a lot to say about it, which is why I’m not saying a lot about it. Next.
YongYong – Diary
You know when they start making a coffee in the video that it’s not going to be very interesting.
J.Fla – Invisible Me
I suppose ripping bits out of Moonlight Sonata is one way to make a k-pop song, but it’s not enough to perk up these bland Kate Bushisms by the beach. A bit more of a punch somewhere could have saved this one.
CrackShot – INFP
I don’t know anything about them, but I get the feeling when looking at this dull montage video, that this is some kind of veteran Korean rock band who has been around for decades and made songs way better than this one.
Kelly – Good Bye
She’s really getting into it, but the poor backing band look like they were drafted in at the last minute and are just trying to get the damn notes right.
Shin Euijin – You’re my star
I’m all for the nugu Dreamcatcher ripoffs, and this is a particularly good one that stands up pretty well on its own due to having the rock a bit more front-and-center than even Dreamcatcher have been doing lately.
Crying Nut – Night Overtime
Don’t care much about the song but damn the food looks good.
Kassy – Crush On You
I actually liked this one, probably because the backings don’t drag like fuck. So many “sweet” songs are let down by lazy instrumentation that just plods, but here we’ve got a track which is actually pretty perky so I can dig it.
Kimmuse – Strange Box
If you’re confused, this song kind of shows what I mean. Notice how the vocalist is doing 90% of the actual work here and everything else just grinds along. That’s not how it should be.
Younghood – Dream Girl
Another Autotuned disaster. My dream girl doesn’t listen to this crap. I know this, because I played some to her just now and she ran out of the room screaming “this is shit!” – you people who think I’m harsh, be grateful I don’t get her to write the reviews, you’ll be begging for me to come back.
B.O. – Can I Love You
Those out of tune noises at the start are supposed to represent some kind of intro dream sequence or whatever but actually they’re the only good bit.
Flatfish feat. C.Swag – Wave
Retro rap, but the wrong kind. The reason why gangster rap got so big in the 90s was that the alternative was this happy-crap that nobody liked.
Jonghyeon feat. Songmar – Casio
Rap with a barely-audible beat drowned out by keyboards is not it.
Dok2, DirtyDiggs – Go Now
DFok2 has been not-unacceptable lately which is certainly an improvement, but this track doesn’t really do anything and then just kind of ends when I think a punchline is coming.
Bira – 0
There’s no other songs worth a damn this week, so here’s your weekly lesson in black music. I first found out about Ursula Rucker because I was a big fan of The Roots ever since their 1994 album “Do You Want More” which is excellent and well worth checking out, it stood tall above most of the forgettable “gangster rap” music of the day despite being relatively commercially unsuccessful. On top of that album being just generally good (and nailing the “jazz-style rap” sound way better than anyone else from that era due to actually having consistently non-sampled instruments yet still sounding like hip-hop) it featured this amazing track featuring vocalist Ursula Rucker, who gives the highlight performance of the entire album. Subsequent albums of The Roots also featured Ursula Rucker tracks and they’re all great too, she’s always fantastic and never pulls any punches in terms of explicitness of subject matter, so don’t say you weren’t warned.
BONUS RANDOM VIDEOS OF THE WEEK
Tiffany – Over My Skin – unreleased video
It doesn’t make the song any better but I thought this unreleased video was pretty good actually. Not that there’s anything wrong with the visuals she eventually went with, but what’s good about the unreleased one is that there’s no pretense of a “backing band” that doesn’t exist in reality.
forcing torpledook to play night mare k pop games in rpg maker
If you want a laugh you could listen to a couple of streamers work their way through the first two Try Not To Have Gay Sex With Yves games. Well, they don’t actually make it all the way through the first one, but I forgive them because they admit Wesley Willis is more entertaining – can’t argue. Don’t forget that the fifth game in this series is out now so check it out by clicking HERE if you haven’t!
Sunmi – Full Moon
This never got a review back in the day due to being by far the least special of a very good crop of Sunmi songs. The image is great and there’s lots of very arresting visual atmosphere but the music (once it gets going) is just a slowed-down version of the exact same kind of thing Bravesound was doing for AOA, T-ara, Stellar etc at the time. It’s aged reasonably well, because what was a stale, incredibly played-out sound in 2014 sounds relatively fresh these days, but this definitely was far from Sunmi’s best, while it definitely shines in terms of style, pretty much everything else she’s ever done over the last decade has eclipsed this musically.