Welcome to Kpopalypse’s honourable and dishonourable mentions for 2016!
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Here’s the collection of “honourable mentions” for 2016 – sixteen songs which I thought were good but not quite good enough to get in the Kpopalypse top 30 favourites list! Also below is an equal number of “dishonourable mentions” – songs that I disliked but which just evaded inclusion in the worst of 2016 list! Read on, and remember:
This list is feature tracks only
Songs are in alphabetical order by performer, NOT order of preference
Popularity of the songs is not a factor, just if I like them or not
My opinions only, you don’t have to agree, so chill before you write that 500 word essay on Reddit that nobody cares about
HONOURABLE MENTIONS
Amber & Luna ft. Ferry Corsten, Kago Pengchi – Heartbeat
This is some pretty generic bullshit but it’s very well-written generic bullshit that’s a lot of fun to listen to. Amber and Luna both seem to be having a good time with this song which is better than any f(x) track since “Red Light” as well as far better than anything Amber ever did as a duet with anyone apart from her iconic performance with T-ara’s Eunjung covering PSY on Show Champion which Amber did right at the height of the T-ara hate train because she’s not a cunt like you. Also Luna suddenly looks like Luna again, the best she’s looked in years, I guess her new chin has settled in or whatever.
AOA (Ace Of Angels) – Wow War Tonight
Just taken on its own, AOA have a cool, anthemic lighter-waving pop song here that would have stood just fine by itself, but then Jimin storms in like she always does and takes the song to a completely new level for about sixteen bars. It’s obvious that Jimin is the best thing musically to happen to AOA, truly the ace of the angels. Thanks to the songwriters writing specifically around her unique delivery, “Wow War Tonight” is notable as the only documented instance anywhere in k-pop where a dubstep drop is such a vast improvement in quality over the rest of the song that once you’ve heard it, it completely overshadows everything else.
BeatWin – Your Girl
There’s a reason why T-ara’s “Roly Poly” ripped off everything about The Bee Gees except the stupid male vocals, it’s because nobody wants to hear men screaming like their balls have been cut off. It seems that BeatWin’s producers didn’t get the memo on that, because this song is full of castrato action, however the backings and melodies are pretty cool and a good song will always rescue a shitty vocal delivery. That great chorus keyboard riff and the funky rhythms completely save this one. No matter how much awful “ooo-oooh-oooooh” the guys do over the top, they can’t wreck it (but boy, do they try!).
Blackpink – Playing With Fire
Blackpink is essentially 2NE1 with a complete line-up change – same songwriters and producers, same agency, same video concepts, same hype machine, same CEO being a dick etc. You can tell that this particular song was written after songwriter Teddy broke up with Han Ye Seul because it’s actually quite good and harking back to 2NE1’s glory days to some extent, here’s hoping Teddy stays single and tormented by relationship failure for a while so we get a few more good songs out of Blackpink before he starts dicking another actress or whatever.
Bloomy – Because Of You
A great, simple, melodic and upbeat k-pop song from these veterans of Kpopalypse Nugu Alert, Bloomy have definitely stepped up the song quality from their debut. They also get bonus nugu points for using Yongma Landand that brick building with the cross-section windows in the same video. Best of all, Rainook has never looked better and in fact there’s not a single piece of clothing on any of the four girls in this video that doesn’t look fantastic. Girls, if you want to dress for Kpopalypse fap, which I’m 100% sure is your sole life ambition as it rightly should be, just watch “Because Of You” and then go shopping for all of these outfits.
BOYS24 – E
I think Boys24 has got something to do with a reality TV show that’s a bit like Produce 101 but with boys in it instead of girls, but I’m really not sure because I don’t follow stupid Korean TV. I’m also not sure about why these kids are so fascinated by a fucking Rubik’s cube, that shit was old-hat in the 80s. I am however pretty sure that this song is good and it’s giving me Kraftwerk vibes.
Iron – Rock Bottom
Like western nu-metal but better than almost all of it – way better. If listening to this song doesn’t make you want to break stuff, you have no pulse.
Jung In – UUU
I do like k-pop ballads when they aren’t a complete pile of fucking dogshit for mental children with special needs and here’s a decent one. Yes the vocals are prominent but it’s in a sensible context that supports the song, rather than projecting nothing but “look everyone how well I can sing, please love me” like 99% of k-pop ballads do, so it’s okay. Trying to explain this point of distinction to k-pop vocalfaggots is often like talking to a brick wall, so maybe watching this will help them get it. Probably not though.
LaBoum – Imagine More
LaBoum have been getting pretty good lately, and the Makestar-funded “Imagine More” is one of their best songs so far. Some of the girls are starting to get noticed by avid k-pop fappers too so here’s hoping that this newfound attention sustains LaBoum for a little longer and they don’t all disband next year with house-deposit-sized debts each.
Oh My Girl – Liar Liar
Nauseatingly shrill and over-produced in the style of Twice, DIA, Red Velvet etc… but better than most of those group’s output. It’s a bit like bashing your head against a wall, but when you’re really happy.
Red Velvet – Russian Roulette
Easily Red Velvet’s best song, which isn’t hard because apart from “Ice Cream Cake” it’s all a bunch of fucking crap. For once it’s just Red Velvet doing a straight-up catchy 80s-style pop song with chunky Jean-Michel Jarre style synths and vocal treatments but without any weird chanting shrillness or hideously bland coffee-shop S.E.S-isms.
Sixbomb – Wait Ten Years, Baby
Some songs take a while to grow on me, but I knew from the very first note that this was going to be great. All of the outfits in this video are fugly beyond belief and the girls look absolutely fucking terrible thanks to some truly horrible styling and makeup, but none of it can dull the experience of a great song that has me jumping in my chair every time I listen.
Sixth Sense – Feel Me
Everything about this one is shit except the music. The girls have terrible clothes, hair, dancing, makeup, plus the locations are poo, the cinematography is fucked, the film isn’t colourised and post-edited correctly, the list goes on and on. The only reason this didn’t make it onto Kpopalypse Nugu Alert is that the video astonishingly isn’t actually nugu enough to meet the requirements, how 40,000 people all found out about this video to click on it I have no idea, but bless them because the song is good.
Snuper – It’s Raining
People complained about the chorus vocals sounding “strained” but the only thing that’s getting strained here is the intellectual capacity of moronic k-pop fans who care about vocals to the exclusion of what the actual fucking song sounds like. I wonder if these idiotic fans also need a “taste analysis site” to work out what their favourite foods are.
Tiffany – I Just Wanna Dance
I love the production on this, I can just listen to it for the synth keyboard sounds, but the whole package here is really good. Notice how Tiffany is in a coffee shop, but the song isn’t a boring coffee-shop ballad piece of shit, now isn’t that nice, maybe some people could learn from this.
Wonder Girls – Why So Lonely
Remember not that long ago when everyone thought the Wonder Girls were over due to JYP’s “mismanagement”, and that JYP Entertainment itself was in deep trouble? Remember that I told you it was going to be alright and JYP knows what’s up and to just fucking chill and you were like “nah man JYP has no idea, they’re going to go broke next week I can just tell”. Stare at that cleavage now and weep for your incorrectitude (totally a word btw).
BONUS SONG WHICH TECHNICALLY ISN’T ELIGIBLE FOR CONSIDERATION BECAUSE IT’S FROM AN OST BUT I’M PUTTING IT HERE ANYWAY BECAUSE FUCK IT, IT’S MY BLOG AND I CAN BREAK THE RULES IF I WANT TO
Gain & Minseo – Imi Oneun Sori (The Sound Of You Coming)
No shit, this song is a miracle, because:
It’s for an OST
I actually noticed its existence
It’s fucking amazing
I don’t usually bother to even check any OST stuff out at all, so I’m not sure how I even found out about this one, maybe I saw Gain’s name come up on the YouTube sidebar and was hoping for some classy-sexy material. I’m sure I was disappointed at the time, at least visually – the official MV for this only features half the song, and no Gain at all. What I did get instead however was a song similar to the better Forseti material, which is a sound that I haven’t heard in k-pop anywhere apart from Hong Jin Young, but Gain’s song gets closer to the mark due to more subtlety and less trot concessions. It’s certainly a shitload better than Gain’s messy rework of IU’s “The Red Shoes“, and in fact tons better than anything Gain has been involved with musically ever. It’s the sound of me coming alright.
ANOTHER BONUS SONG WHICH JUST MISSED OUT ON THE LIST OF SIXTEEN BUT IS INCLUDED HERE ANYWAY BECAUSE SHE’S PROBABLY NUGU AS FUCK AND COULD USE THE FREE PROMO
Lady Jane – Just 2 Days
This song starts off like your typical Fender Rhodes shitball but then it switches everything up with a really cool Europop style chorus. I have no idea who Lady Jane is and I give no fucks, because this is as close to ABBA as any k-popper has gotten since T-ara’s iconic “Why Are You Being Like This?“.
DISHONOURABLE MENTIONS
Brave Girls – Deepened
Bravesound’s “in-house” group makes a comeback and I surely thought that Bravesound would reserve only the very best tracks for their self-branded girl group. For some reason this doesn’t seem to be the case and this song is some completely underwhelming boring slow bullshit instead. Oh well.
BTOB – Remember That
Remember when BTOB came out with cool upbeat songs like “Wow“? Ah, those were the days.
Crush ft. Taeyeon – Don’t Forget
Don’t forget what – a good song? Oops – too late, I guess Crush left it on the tram and had to write this bullshit in a hurry when he got to the studio instead.
f(x) – All Mine
This song was pretty flat and boring just like “4 Walls” was, f(x) are seemingly a spent force as a four-piece group without chief caonima Sulli’s valuable limitations to guide their unseen creative hand. Oddly, many of f(x)’s fans fought me bitterly over my opinion of “4 walls” but actually seemed to mainly agree with me about “All Mine” being pretty dull even though both songs sound very similar, go figure.
Jero & Dok2 – Paradise
That painful “ooh, ahh” vocal line Jero sings doesn’t sound like he’s in paradise to me – or maybe it’s just a different kind of paradise to the one I’m used to. I think my idea of paradise now is a world where Jero and Dok2 don’t have music careers.
Jia – Drip
Jia is fucking hot as fuck, so how the hell JYP made the song so shit and made Jia not look any good I have no idea. He’s a smarter man than me. Wait… JYP didn’t write this? Ah.
LaBoum – Shooting Love
A truly painful combination of the negative elements of Red Velvet’s “Dumb Dumb” and Twice’s “Like Ooh Ahh” make this song screechy and unlistenable. At least it comes with an astonishingly good video.
Lee Hi – My Star
This song is a “Lion Heart“/”Sugar Sugar” type of retro jam, except that the songwriters forgot to write the actual interesting chord changes part and just said to Lee Hi “I don’t know, can you rescue this bullshit song with your voice somehow?” That type of situation never ends well.
Luhan – Adventure Time
Disneyland reflects the real life, and who more qualified to tell us this than an ex-EXO member. Unfortunately, Disneyland also reflects the music.
MC The Max – You You And You
I don’t know about you but when I hear the name “M.C. The Max” it conjures up visions of me getting my ass blasted by the most amazing motherfucking crazy rapper MC ever. Imagine my disappointment when I found out what MC The Max really sounds like.
NCT 127 – Fire Truck
Some people thought that my “Amy” roundup review post was some kind of way of dodging telling people how I felt about certain songs, but you didn’t need a crystal fucking ball to know that I think this song fucking sucks.
Taeyeon – 11:11
Horrible bland acoustic guitar balladeering of the kind that only SM can do. Actually I tell a lie – everyone does this, unfortunately.
Taeyeon – Why
Why indeed.
Twice – Cheer Up
Speaking of “why”, I’d really like to know why Twice keep trying to copy Shannon Williams’ great “Why Why” and failing. “Cheer Up” is an even more shamelessly drab copy of “Why Why” than “Like ‘Ooh-Ahh’” was. They even copied the reggae-lite parts as well as the verse and chorus this time. Proof that which k-pop songs get successful and which ones don’t is at least 90% in the name.
Urban Zakapa – I Don’t Love You
It’s all very good to be creative and creativity should be encouraged, but the rarely-discussed negative side of groups who write their own material is that if they’re shit songwriters like Urban Zakapa are, there’s basically no chance of them ever fluking a good song and you can pretty much write off their entire careers as musical trash. A group like this would be better off rolling the dice with an idol super-producer than releasing the same crap song over and over again.
Youngji – Sober
Jesus fuck, this girl sounds like she’s about to fucking pass out. How the hell do people enjoy this? I’m so concerned for her health I can’t even concentrate on the song.
WORST SONG THAT I REALLY WANTED TO LIKE BUT HAD TO EVENTUALLY ADMIT WAS KIND OF CRAP
AOA – Good Luck
Of course with everybody hypocritically boo-hooing about AOA because the girls couldn’t recognise Korean historical figures from a fucking portrait (a test that I’d fail for sure with Australian historical figures) I really wanted this song to be great but unfortunately it was all aboard the Beyonce-fail-train for a huge dose of very attractive gyrating bullshit. Also I was kind of traumatised by the Baywatch theme because you don’t fuck around in the Australian sun like that unless you want third-degree burns to 80% of your body after 5 minutes.
WORST SONG THAT I KNEW WOULD BE GARBAGE BEFORE I EVEN LISTENED TO IT
Kard – Oh NaNa
It’s really not good people. Combining that shitty yolo sound and that other shitty sound that everyone is doing now… no, just no. I don’t give a fuck who is in the group or that it’s a co-ed group, fuck off and come back with a decent song.
BONUS SONG THAT WAS KIND OF WEAK BUT COULD HAVE BEEN A LOT WORSE
Jessica ft. Fabolous – Fly
If you had told me at the start of this year that Tiffany would have the cool synth-based solo dance track and Jessica would have the god-bothering millennial-whoop cliche-fest, I would have said “no fucking way”, but here we are.
Honourable/dishonourable mentions from previous years:
Kpopalypse lists with return soon with a Christmas roundup, the 2016 favourites list and worst of 2016 lists, and more! Until then, stay safe, caonimas!
Christmas time is finally here, so merry Christmas from Kpopalypse! Please enjoy your Christmas gift, which is my reviews of all the shitty Christmas songs this year! Yay!
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I like Christmas, it’s cool. I get to eat roast meals all day, give and receive great presents and listen to smelly tree-humping pagans who don’t bathe complain about cultural appropriation. However I don’t like Korea’s Christmas k-pop songs. Why Korea has to release a whole bunch of Christmas shit every year I have no idea, but they haven’t learned from past year’s roundups and are insistent on continuing to pollute the world with this trash. Therefore, Kpopalypse’s Christmas roundup will continue until they learn!
Rules for selection:
Christmas k-pop concepts only, not just “winter” k-pop concepts
Songs must have some form of official MV, however pissweak
Original songs only, or covers so obscure or butchered that Kpopalypse can’t identify the originals anyway, unless I make an exception because I feel like it
I may miss a few songs but if I do, don’t link or mention them in the comments below because nobody cares. Here we go with all the Christmas songs, in chronological order!
November 8th – T-ara – Tiamo
There’s always that one artist per year that releases their Christmas shit way, way too fucking early, and in this case it’s T-ara, who put out “Tiamo” on the same day that Donald Trump was elected president of the USA. Some may think that this is coincidental, but I don’t believe so – in many ways this seems planned, as there are a quite a few similarities between T-ara’s comeback and a Trump victory:
Both Trump’s victory and T-ara’s pleasant-but-bland mid-paced ballad were not the result I wanted but at least they’re both trying to make their home countries great again
Lots of people are delighted beyond rationality and a whole bunch of other people are phenomenally upset beyond rationality with very little in-between
MBK ballads promise a lot but are conservative in their application of modern sounds, just like republicans are with their policies
There’s lots of red in the video, just like there is in Trump’s merchandise, and also Trump’s face when his sweat mixes with his spray-tan
The Chinese are probably going to start losing a lot more money to both T-ara and Trump very soon
People wondered whether “Tiamo” was really a Christmas concept or just a “winter” concept, but we know it’s a Christmas concept because some of the girls sing in front of a backdrop of unopened presents. Hopefully one of those presents is a repackage of T-ara’s”Remember” mini-album with a new upbeat feature track that isn’t some boring Christmas bullshit, now that’d be nice. In the meantime I’ll settle for the generous application of the Snowyeon effect, which has now been applied across the board to all six members. Did you know that T-ara is the only k-pop girl group that debuted in 2009 and is still together with their original lineup intact? Merry Christmas, Korean netizens, and for the rest of you I hope you like this song because this list only gets worse from here.
November 22nd – JeA – Winter, It’s You
When watching this boring ballad which is just like every other boring ballad ever, I had one thought instantly spring to mind – I bet all the girls from Brown Eyed Girls are completely boring in bed except Gain. JeA in particular looks like she’d be a complete starfish, one of those girls who turns the lights off and insists that you fuck in complete darkness even if under those conditions it’s impossible to put the condom on the right way first time or kiss a girl without accidentally headbutting her. Look at the boring shit that JeA does in this video with some guy and you know it has to be true, she’s old enough now to have “creative control” or whatever so we can definitely blame her for this shit. Who over the mental age of ten would even think that driving a caravan out into a field of nothing just to fuck around is even interesting. They go out there all that way just for the guy to jump up on a bit of wood that’s sticking up and go “look I can walk on this”. Then JeA decides to walk on the wood too, well I HOPE THAT WAS WORTH THE FUCKING DRIVE CUNTS. If this was a Gain video he’d be pushing her into the long reeds and you’d get lots of fanservicey angles of her cardigan straining against her chest as he pins her to the ground but no, JeA just wants to watch this dude play acoustic guitar and drink coffee, what a boring bitch. You might be wondering what this has got to do with Christmas but remember that in South Korea Christmas is considered more of a “young couples” holiday than a “family get-together” holiday, so this is very relevant. Korea is trying to increase its birthrate before the entire country vanishes with this “it’s Christmas-come-on-you-young-people-the-fucking-dick-goes-in-the-pussy now get on with it” business, but JeA’s poor example just makes me wish I didn’t even have genitals.
November 27th – Mamamoo – Memory
I made a sincere declaration to not review any Christmas songs in Kpopalypse roundup, and then being the caonima that I am I broke this declaration quicker than a YG comeback promise. Mamamoo’s song is so fucking dull that I was reduced to a goddamn coma about 15 seconds in and therefore completely failed to even notice that it was a Christmas song and just reviewed it in my roundup series by mistake. Thanks to the person on ask.fm who pointed it out to me that I had fucked up here because I had no idea – it just sounded like the kind of worthless crappy jazz ballad that would be Mamamoo’s bread and butter normally anyway so I just sort of tuned everything out including all the presents, tinsel and whatever the fuck else is in this video that I could only bring myself to half-watch each of the 26 times I watched it to help myself write this review. How people can like this fucking shit is beyond me, but at the time of writing, this video had a 99.4% like/dislike ratio on YouTube which means that for every 1000 people who listened to this song only six disliked it. As luck would have it, I happen to be one of those six, but at least I’m not alone, maybe I can find those other five people and we can start a k-pop group called Apunk and we can write songs about taking a shit in a box, then wrapping it in tinsel foil and mailing it to Mamamoo’s agency. Anyway, the song does have at least one purpose – the instructions on how to make a coffee in the music video might help out some of you kids trying to stay awake through this crap.
November 28th – HaHa and Oh My Girl ft. M.Tyson – White
If T-ara exhibit the Snowyeon effect with all their Christmas-themed songs, Oh My Girl have got a severe case of its much-feared opposite – the Noyeon effect. The main thing that stuck out when watching this song straight away is that Kpopalypse bias Yooa really looks like crap here. Yooa works really well with big frills and fairy dresses, she doesn’t pull off this “bumming around in a daggy jumper and cheap clammy-looking hooker make-up singing Christmas bullshit” look at all, although to be fair, neither do any of the others, proving that the Noyeon effect is strong here. For some reason there’s only four of the eight seven girls from Oh My Girl participating here (who can fucking keep track of k-pop line-up changes not me), I guess the other three decided that this song was just too much bullshit, or maybe they just didn’t want to succumb to wearing such absolutely shitty clothes and makeup. At least the video directors were smart enough to realise that nobody wants to look at a similarly adorned HaHa or M.Tyson, but they still make the track even more terrible than it would otherwise be with their worthless vocal contributions and some of the weakest, pissiest reggae-lite to ever come out of a Korean recording studio.
December 1st – LaBoum – Winter Story
“Winter Story” only barely scrapes over the line as a Christmas song for inclusion here, just due to the lights strung up inside the blue building – nobody does that shit when it’s not approaching Christmas time. In fact nobody does a lot of things in this video. Stagecoaches fucking suck dick, have you ever ridden in one of those? I certainly have, and they’re the most rickety-ass non-OH&S-compliant suspension-lacking vehicles you can imagine, if a wheel rolls over anything over one inch in diameter it pretty much throws you out of the vehicle. Polaroids are bullshit too, people only decided that they liked instant cameras after they found out that Polaroid discontinued them which suddenly made them “cool”, so now Polaroid are making them again to milk some cash from the fuckwit hipster demographic. The real cringe here however is the girls from LaBoum praying at the dinner table, presumably for their CEO to feed them something of sustenance, although why they pray like they’re having an orgasm I’m not sure, maybe they’re imagining their much better songs from last year.
Decemeber 1st – Starship Planet – Love Wishes
For some reason the annual Christmas agency collaboration from Starship this year is a complete sausage sizzle with no girls anywhere to be found. Probably just as well for Sistar who put out their first genuinely good song in about 4 years recently, they probably were happy to not get roped into this rubbish as they likely weren’t in a hurry to remind the public of the super-low-quality bullshit music that they usually do. So instead we get some assorted rappers and boy group singers from the Starship label which is fine because while there may not be any tits to look at at least I don’t have to listen to Hyolyn going “aahhh-oooho-hohohh-wooowooo-woooahhahah” all over the bridge so that’s something. I don’t really know who is who but you can kind of tell who the rappers are because they have less eyeliner and look awkward as fuck trying to look “festive” and generally failing (I suppose you can also tell by the actual rapping if you’re game to turn the sound up – proceed with caution). I feel sorry for them, their contract probably requires that they participate in the annual Christmas bullshit song and you can tell it’s right out of their comfort zone. Let’s be sure not to buy this song so the agency learns not to do this shit to them ever again.
December 2nd – Bubble Sisters – White Carpet
This song is fucking bullshit suckitude like every song on this list, but the video is cool because there’s a girl in it who is genuinely chubby and you see that in k-pop videos almost never, the dude she’s with even pinches her face at 1:00 like “wow your chubby face is so cute, I love you so much, I can’t wait to rub my balls into your chin later” and it’s a really sweet touching moment. However I freaked out when at 2:28 the guy put his coffee travel mug right up to her face to keep it warm and then gave her a kiss, way to burn her fucking face right off, you cunthole. Coffee that they serve in those fucking things is always way too hot, it’s a little known fact that the woman who famously sued McDonalds for millions of dollars and won because she spilled coffee in her lap wasn’t being a fucking frivolous bitch but actually had a really good reason – McDonalds were serving their drive-thru coffee at ridiculously unsafe temperatures that melt skin and muscle tissue with the line of reasoning “well, people won’t drink it straight away”. In non-OH&S-compliant Korea I doubt they do it much differently, so if I were her I’d slap that dude’s hand away from her face for the good of my own safety and then give him socks for Christmas.
December 8th – Laf – Together
How come k-pop only ever brings out the chubby girls at Christmas time? Maybe it’s some kind of fat acceptance movement to make fat sluts and whores feel better about going on Christmas dates, or perhaps it’s a way to make people feel better about overeating on Christmas pudding, but whatever the reason, it’s definitely the only notable thing about this boring song and video. Maybe it’s neither of those, perhaps they’ve heard about my chubby-chasing ways and have decided that adding fat girls to a Christmas video is the only way it could possibly get a good write-up here. No such luck for Laf unfortunately, who definitely blow a whole herd of farm animals with this incredibly boring song, it’s going to take a lot more than that chubby singer to make this acceptable Christmas entertainment. Even the dress the girl has on is boring, they could have gone for something clingier, or with horizontal black and white stripes, or maybe a French maid outfit and less of that horrid sugar-glaze makeup too. Just saying.
December 10th – Lyn – 20th Century Carol
I don’t even know if this is a Christmas song or not, I can’t even fucking tell anymore with the ambiguous Christmas-but-not-really-okay-kinda releases that Korea churns out each December. It’s got “carol” in the title however so I guess it qualifies, although maybe “19th century carol” would have been a better title for this noodly fucking soft jazz bollocks. I also don’t know why Lyn capitalises the Y in her name, maybe it stands for “why” as in “why am I writing this trash”, “why is every song I’ve ever done some super-boring ballad shit”, “why do I think anyone would want to listen to this” etc. The video is stupid too, no boy at that age smiles like that at a girl, when you’re 8 years old or whatever boys think that all girls are weird and smell funny. That’s also a real “gosh I’ve found my true love” kind of scene there that the video director is insinuating and he shouldn’t be getting people so fucking young to do that shit, so this video is therefore creepy as fuck and clearly he has no morals whatsoever, although I guess that goes without saying anyway as this is a k-pop ballad and you would really have to be morally sketchy to think that more of these are required on the planet at this point.
December 11th – Yang Da Il, Chancellor, MC Gree, As One, Kang Minhee – Already Christmas
Here’s Brand New Music’s obligatory yearly Christmas collaboration and it’s just as awful as Starship’s, but at least there are both girls and boys in it, giving everyone at least one reason to watch. Note that “As One” is the female duet group, not the multi-member idol group, and that’s good for me because the girl from As One with the dark hair is really hot, but bad for me because all that group ever does is shitty smooth jazz/R&B hybrids just like this song here. However the worst section of this song is actually the rap, and the guy rapping even seems to be fairly self-aware of how shit this is judging by the way he introduces himself with “Merry Christmas” and then a little “heh” that feels to me like “heh I hope my rap buddies don’t all find out that I was in this crappy collab”. The Christmas cringe is real and it’s impossible not to feel huge second-hand embarrassment for these poor musicians who no doubt would have their sweet potato and brown rice rations cut in half if they refused to participate in this poo.
December 12th – Poomgil – My Merry Christmas
What the fuck is a Poomgil is that some new kind of Pokemon. I could keep track of Pokemons in the old days when there was just 150 of the fucks but there are all these special ones now and I don’t even know anymore. In my old guitar teaching room about 15 years ago I even had a poster of all 150 of the Pokemon, which automatically made me cool with any students under 8 years old, unfortunately it was also really hard to get them to stop staring at the poster and actually learn some fucking guitar. Obviously I’m trying to delay talking about the music here to pad out this review because there’s literally fuck all to talk about other than “same old fucking shit Korea thanks a bunch cunts” but I guess what I’m trying to say is that it’s conceivable to me that a stray Pokemon may have defected to Korea and been involved creatively somehow in some bullshit Christmas song for fuckheads. Actually I’m being a bit harsh on this one, the chorus is actually okay as long as you can dig the fact that it sounds like a lighter-waving X-Japan ballad, but the rest of it really isn’t up to snuff and I think I should get a free reroll.
December 13th – Pungdeng-E – Jingle Bells
I normally don’t include straight covers of western carols in these Christmas lists, but sometimes one slips through anyway because I’m honestly not all that familiar with what all the western Christmas songs actually are. Mind you we all know “Jingle Bells” but I’ve included it here anyway, because in this case Pungdeng-E have kind of made the song their own. Don’t get too excited kids – that’s not a compliment. Whoever is writing music for Pungdeng-E doesn’t seem to actually understand how music works, and they’ve consistently released horrible crap for these three poor girls ever since they’ve debuted. I’m pretty sure Pungdeng-E only exist because some idiot CEO just thought “Orange Caramel and Crayon Pop are random and sometimes they shout a bit, so if I have a group that is even MORE random and shouty, they’ll do even better!” and forgot the little detail about writing actual songs someone might want to listen to. Anyway they’ve made a fucking mess of this song like they do with all their songs, and this one was already pretty shit to begin with so fucking it up even more I guess is an achievement of sorts.
December 14th – Apink – ‘Cause You’re My Star
Hey this song isn’t bad! It’s bright, fun and not very Christmas-like at all apart from the decorations in the video. Plus the girls all look fantastic, I can’t even tell who is who really, nor do I even give a fuck, because this is about as good as Apink have ever looked in a video, and even better Asian Junkie hates it so you know it’s definitely quality. Oh but then that little trap section happens and everything starts sucking a bit. Two of the girls even look at each other and giggle at the end of it as if to say “hahaha, people thought this was going to be a decent song all the way through but they didn’t see that coming! Eat our shit!” The problem is of course, that we definitely did see it coming, k-pop has been doing this bullshit to us constantly over the past year or two and we’ve all really had enough. It’s not even trolling anymore, it’s just par for the course. “Oh here’s the shit part of the song.” At least they keep it short and then get back to the bits that make the song good, well, unless you’re Asian Junkie, who hates it, what a weirdo. Did you know that even though I’m a “writer” for Asian Junkie, I don’t even have access to his site but he just copies my articles, edits and then pastes them to his site with my name on them? Hey, wouldn’t it be interesting if that worked the other way around and Asian Junkie also became a writer for Kpopalypse? That’d be cool, right? I think he should apply and I can repost the articles here from his site that I find interesting, making sure to add extra swear words so it meets my site’s writing criteria. Hi there IATFB, just checking that you actually read down this far.
December 14th – HeeJin, HyunJin, HaSeul – The Carol
I can sort of forgive the songwriters behind the three already-debuted Loona members for this piece of shit Christmas song because with such a ridiculous release schedule ahead of them they must be spreading their ideas a bit thin. Sometimes you’ve just gotta churn out the fucking songs like a production line to meet the fucking quota or the boss will crack the shits, it doesn’t really matter if it’s any good or not as long as the numbers stack up. Hey can you imagine the fucking fights this group are having? Can you imagine what “debut a girl a month” is doing to them in their dorms, psychologically? I bet they’re all pulling each other’s hair out by the roots, screaming about “you only got to debut first because you gave the producer a blowjob, I have to wait at least three months!” and backstabbing each other like fuck. Just wait, they’ll keep up the facade for a good while but when it all comes out down the track this group is going to erupt with After School levels of hatred and vitriol. The sort of thing Asian Junkie would call “a mess” and rub his hands together about like fucking Scrooge because he’s an unfeeling animal who lives for web traffic to his adverts. Sorry AJ I don’t mean to keep picking on you but these songs are fucking boring and there’s nothing else to really say about them so I have to fill up the space with rambling shit just so in the unlikely event that you want to repost this to your site, you’ve got some editing work to do. I know you like editing work.
December 15th – Baek Yerin – Love You On Christmas
The member of 15& that nobody cares about did a Christmas song and it’s boring so let’s ignore it completely. I actually finally caved in and signed up for Instagram the other day. My Instagram is “Kpopalypseoppar” if you feel like following it but there’s no actual point in following me really, there’s nothing to see. I don’t have any photos on there at all and I haven’t even put a profile picture up yet or anything. I only signed up so I could follow k-pop girls, and in particular so I can look at Park Jimin’s photos, the other girl in 15&. Park Jimin’s Instagram is private these days so I have to be a follower of hers to see any of it, which means I have to sign up, so I signed up and sent her a friend request. I’m sure she’ll be like “oh fuck it’s that Kpopalypse dickhead with the stupid blog again no thanks” and quietly just delete my application but hey it’s worth a shot. I probably should have named myself something else like “hi it’s your mom, why don’t you post more pictures of yourself, you’re beautiful really” but I’ve always been too honest for my own good to go around making false accounts and shit like that. Anyway Park Jimin if you’re reading, Kpopalypse thinks you’re really cool and thanks for not recording a shit Christmas song this year.
December 15th – Solbi & Real Smel – Handmade Gloves
The studio footage here is great, these two aren’t even pretending that they’re actually recording it, and are just dicking around like a bunch of cunts. It’s good because I get sick of all the obviously faked “studio footage” that groups put into their videos where it’s completely obvious at least to me that they don’t even have the microphones switched on. I’ve got nothing against miming in videos, I just think why bother to put up the pretense of making it look like you’re “really recording something”. You might as well do what Arch Enemy do and just get rid of the microphone completely, which looks awkward and silly but at least it’s honest. I wonder what the ratio is of Korean recording studios booked out to record a song vs recording studios booked out to pretend you’re recording a song, I wonder which one makes more money for them. Anyway, that’s really the most interesting thing about this video because everything else is the usual Christmas bullshit and I have to distract my brain with thoughts like this or my brain cells will break down from lack of use by the end of watching this anal licking.
December 16th – Yeonjung & Dawon (WSJN) – Fire & Ice
Not only is this a Christmas song but it’s also an OST song, so there’s no way it can possibly be good. Mathematically about 99% of Christmas songs suck, and about 99.9% of OST songs suck, so that makes the odds of this song not being shit about 0.001% or 1 in 100,000. Okay, my maths probably sucks a little, but not as much as this song. The video is largely CGI and the film it’s for seems to be the story of some humans who meet some creatures with really big noses and then some stuff happens. I guess a race of creatures that relies on its enhanced sense of smell doesn’t need the other four senses quite as much so those other senses atrophy somewhat, and that probably explains why the nose-creatures are generally smiling and happy throughout this video, their rudimentary ears can’t perceive the full depth of suckitude of the awful music that we’re hearing. However it pays to be careful, and at the end of the video the nose-creatures let the humans steal their boat and fuck off into the sunset so they can be free of this shitty song just it case it starts a trend on their small island and they have a Shit Music Disease epidemic.
December 18th – Seungyeon – Do You Remember?
Actually, I remember a lot of things. I remember when KARA was making cool songs like “Wanna“, “Step” and “Pandora“. I remember when Seungyeon actually used to rock. I remember when most k-pop acts had a majority of upbeat songs as feature releases. I remember when I hadn’t discovered the rapid-fire deluge of diarrhoea that k-pop throws out every Christmas and what a nice feeling it was to be blissfully ignorant of the annual red-and-white fecal explosion. I remember when Christmas songs wouldn’t try to sneakily hide their true identities by avoiding the topic of Christmas entirely except for a few photos of some drunk, passed-out Santa in the video. I remember when k-pop videos would actually use the entire video window worth of visual real-estate instead of ripping you off with shitty “artsy” borders. Most of all, I remember before I heard this song, it was a happier time.
December 20th – lalalsweet – Santa Baby
Is this really a cover because I’ve never even heard the original, although I must admit that I don’t exactly have comprehensive knowledge of every piece of Christmas turd that ever floated down the candy-cane river of shit every December. Anyway this sucks.
December 21st – SF9 – So Beautiful
Well at least this song’s got some tempo to it once it gets going, it’s still basically crap but hey it’s a Christmas song so any small upside or trace of quality seems like an oasis in a desert of dried shit I guess. By the way, this is the perfect video for my “healthy porn for women” post that I’ll get around to at some point early in 2017. People complained when I did the “healthy porn for men” post that I sort of touched very briefly on boy group videos at the start and then left the topic completely alone. I won’t go into it all now but please expect it fondly. I notice Googling “healthy porn for men” bring up Kpopalypse on the second page, not the first – guess I’ve got to whip my SEO elves a bit more like Asian Junkie does every night (how the fuck are you still reading, don’t you have scandals to busily ignore).
December 22nd – some whores – some shit song nobody cares about
It’s a good thing covers are ineligible or I’d have to tell you how much cancer this song is and then some of you poor dears might get offended.
December 23rd – some nugus with some other junk
Might as well put this bullshit up here too. Fuck me, they can’t even afford a colour camera. I’m dreaming of a black and white Christmas.
December 24th – and fuck this and everything else Mystic released in December
Wow a Christmas song from Mystic Entertainment with two warbly vocalists jerking off in our faces and Fender Rhodes, and nothing else. It’s a Christmas shitception. Oh dear.
December 24th – Vixx – Shooting Star
Last minute edit – I just had to leave this overacting express here. Do you think that any of these guys actually act like this when they’re listening to music away from the cameras? Somehow I doubt it. I like the guy top center though, the others are all pretending that they’re so into it and he really doesn’t give any fucks.
That’s all for Kpopalypse’s Christmas roundup for 2016, hopefully you were smart enough not to click on any of the videos! I hope you enjoyed your Christmas present, Kpopalypse will return with more posts soon!
Kpopalypse roundup returns in two parts – this first part is reviews of most of the new k-pop stuff that dropped over the last couple of weeks when I’ve been doing chart stuff on the radio show instead. This is just for the people who read my roundups to keep abreast of the new releases. Enjoy!
We don’t need any more singers who sound like Eddie Vedder thank you. That trend died 15 years ago in the west and needs to stay dead.
Skawakers – Peacetime
It would be good if this was actually ska, but it’s really boring, dull reggae instead. Maybe they should call themselves “Skasleepers”.
Jungheum Band – Beyond The Stars
I thought they were Christmas trees in the background but they’re just street lights. These two were lucky, they miss the Christmas list and dodged a bullet there.
NC.A & Yook Sung Jae – Playing With Fire
Kittens are cute. Slow boring k-pop songs are not cute.
WE’D – Difference
Right fromt he first note (of Rhodes, of course), you know exactly what you’re getting with this one. Ugh.
G2 – Young & Alive
People who live in the real world know that driving cars is actually really boring and not glamourous at all, don’t be fooled kids. Go without cars and your drivers’ license if you can, you’ll save tons of money and you’ll actually be able to afford the girl in the passenger seat.
HaSeul – Let Me In
Some weird quasi-tango thing, which isn’t amazing but at least has some different ideas in the instrumentation. Don’t be fooled by all the strings, this is not a ballad and at 116 BPM actually has a faster tempo than a lot of upbeat comebacks these days.
Jenny – Expiration
On the other hand this is a ballad and you have my permission to be bored by it.
Park Jimin, D.ear – Look Alike
No Park Jimin in the video? Sorry, not interested.
Risso – Baby Baby Baby
Yeah this is bad, the kitsch 70s look is cool but it’s kind of undone by that keyboard stand which is brand spanking new and just like one I bought the other week, pretty sure that was the exact same model…
SS301 – My Universe
A cool look at all of SS301’s OH&S compliant video shooting equipment, they’re getting it all ready for when Kim Hyun Joong returns to the group.
Nada – Seorae Village
A great beat on this one, pity when the chorus happens it kind of softens everything up too much. Get rid of all the sing-songy crap and this could have been one of the best songs this year.
SugarDonut – Song Of November
I guess Koreans make insipid boring ballads about protesting so there’s no violence at these rallies and everyone is sedated, which is probably smarter than what the Germans do but fuck it’s dull to watch.
EXID – Cream
Not sure what went on here but this is nothing special. No cream for you.
Sold Out – Erase
“Erase” sounds like a good idea. Maybe I should have erased this roundup, not much good is coming from it.
Uhm Jung Hwa – Watch Me Move
Don’t get too excited all you first-year gender studies students, the guys aren’t wearing high heels to “break gender stereotypes”, they’re wearing them to FIT gender stereotype of men being taller than women.
Uhm Jung Hwa – Dreamer
She’s 47 which is impressive but this also measn that she’s old enough to have better music taste than this.
Jin Won – So Beautiful
Hey here’s a song that goes between 4/4 and 12/8 time for all you time-signature trainspotters – enjoy that fact because that’s the only interesting thing about it.
G2 ft. Gray – 1999
Absolute garbage, but then anything with horrid R&B crooner Grey in it usually is. Imagine calling yourself “Grey”, and that actually being appropriate, because everything you touch musically is just one big grey mush of fucking blandness. The most accurately-named R&B singer in k-pop right now, at least until “Utter Fucking Shit” makes his debut.
The second part of this post is reader requests for all the songs that I missed from earlier in the year. It’s been separated from this post due to the sheer volume of video suggestions, and will appear shortly!
Welcome to the second part of the Kpopalypse roundup clearing house post! This is the post that has all the reader picks of songs that I missed earlier in the year! If your pick isn’t here, that means I’ve already covered it, or I left it out to annoy you.
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Note that there are a lot of videos here, if your browser struggles to cope with the volume of any of my lists I recommend switching to Google Chrome which gives me no problems.
Bolbbalgan Puberty – Tell Me You Like Me
So what actually is the name of this group, is it “Bolbbalgan Puberty”, or “Bolbbalgan4” or “Bolbbalgan Sachungi”… or are they all different subgroups or what?
Bolbbalgan Puberty – Fight Day
What the fuck is a Bolbbalgan anyway? Can I smack this bitch in the head with a Bolbbalgan to stop her from singing?
Bolbbalgan Puberty – Galaxy
She looks like Hwayoung with a cheap dye job and even less interesting rapping.
All of JY’s crappy songs
Sorry I can’t embed the videos but I didn’t like any of them, you’re missing out on about three words of negative snark per song.
Tao & Wiz Khalifa – Hello, Hello
I fucking hate this bullshit slow R&B/rap garbage but don’t worry Tao, Wiz knows that you should never accept rejection from Kpopalypse as a failure.
Cross Gene – Ying Yang
Oh my god they called it ying yang, they’re appropriating Chinese culture, let’s all crack a shit everyone… or not. The song sucks, who cares about the name of something nobody will ever listen to more than once.
BTS – Young Forever
Actually you guys won’t be young forever. Neither will your fans, who will all eventually grow up and wonder how their teenage hormones suckered them into liking this shit.
EXO-CBX – The One
This song borrows some of the popular synths from Drum & Bass style, but not the actual drums and bass, if that makes any sense at all. It’s also not very good.
Ravi – what is this even
Imagine a world where people actually thought this was good music. Oh wait, we’re already in that world. Oh dear.
B-Free – James Bond
It’s a bit hard for me to assess this fairly given the terrible live-bootleg-style sound quality, but I still get the feeling that I’m not missing much.
BRAY, DUCKBAE, GiantPink, Miryo, DJ Drev – All I Know
A really good beat here, excellent actually, although they put some strings in to soften it when Miryo raps because I guess idols aren’t used to rapping over decent beats so they’re probably trying to make her feel more comfortable, that’s very thoughtful.
Sixth Sense – Don’t Go
A terrible song, nowhere near as the song of theirs that got into the honourable mentions list. Guess that one was a one-off.
BeatWin – Broken
Boring R&B boy ballad, just like every other one.
Keith Ape & Ski Mask TheSlumpGod – Dr. Eggman
Generic trap garbage, absolute moronic trash but probably also the best thing Keith Ape has ever done.
Keith Ape ft. K$upreme & Okasian – Fendi
Seriously who listens to these morons? They sound retarded but they can’t be because they’re doing quite well for themselves so maybe they’re just really good at faking stupidity, like a hip-hop version of that Lars Von Trier film.
Uno the Activist ft. Yung Gleesh & Keith Ape – Both Ways
The joke must be pretty funny if you’re actually IN this crew, but to everyone else this is like watching retards play with their own shit instead of flushing it like normal people.
Dbo – Space
This guy is terrible too. Anything from the 88rising Youtube channel is terrible. For future reference so I don’t have to waste my time reviewing any of it. I skipped all this shit when it came out FOR A REASON.
Heechul & Jungmo – Ulsanbawi
I love how trot always has the over-the-top distorted electric guitar, the nutty twin guitar harmonies don’t fit the vibe of the song but the vibe of the song is “snoozy shit” so some relief is welcome.
Sunny Girls – Taxi
I usually leave non-feature tracks the fuck alone so this wouldn’t have gone in Roundup anyway, had I noticed or cared about this extreme averageness.
f(x) – Cowboy
What happened to f(x)? They are just shit now. They’re lucky this wasn’t a feature track or I’d be devoting a lot more words to it.
H.U.B – The Time We Spent Together
How many girls in k-pop groups play as #23 for the Bulls? Someone should do a compilation.
Mei Qi – Once Up A Time In The Northeast
I also don’t generally review OST stuff which is why this and a whole bunch of other stuff like it wasn’t included. This is better than about 99% of OST stuff but it’s still pretty bad.
Thornapple – Seoul
Then there are songs like this, which routinely get skipped over. I knew about this song when it came out but I didn’t put it in roundup at the time because I assumed nobody would give a shit about this pure boredom and I couldn’t even think of anything to write about it, I skip quite a few songs from roundups for this reason and it’s usually stuff that sounds exactly like this. Roundup is never supposed to be “complete”, it’s just stuff I think people would be most interested in. I’m amazed anyone even remembered this song existed.
Stellar – Sting (Hanbok version)
This is just a thank you to all the people who check the Kpopalypse roundup each week! Regular weekly roundup is still on hiatus will return in early 2017!
Welcome to the list you’ve been waiting for – Kpopalypse’s 30 worst k-pop songs of 2016!
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What sort of a year in k-pop was 2016? Well, it was certainly a mixed bag. Many shitty music fashions such as dubstep and hard Autotune have now almost completely vanished from k-pop, but they’ve been replaced by other shitty music fashions such as trap beats and irritating sax riffs. Several other things have stayed the same – there’s still far too many ballads, too much smooth crap and way too much R&B rubbish for my liking, however many of the absolute worst songs of all had none of these characteristics. Overall I don’t know if the worst songs were any worse than last year, but they certainly weren’t much better.
Eligibility criteria:
All tracks are feature tracks with MVs, and/or tracks promoted on music shows
All songs were released between January 1st and December 31st 2016, this list was published on December 31st 2016 but may appear earlier for some due to timezone differences
K-pop songs in languages other than Korean are still eligible – if the Korean pop industry is driving it, it’s still k-pop for the purposes of this list
Korean covers of western pop songs are not eligible unless they are significantly changed from the originals rather than a carbon copy
OST songs are not eligible, because otherwise this list would be completely dominated by OST songs, which would be accurate, but boring to read
Christmas songs are not eligible, they are their own unique brand of turd and have their own special list dedicated just to them
These are just my personal opinions on songs and have nothing to do with popularity, chart success, etc
I fully expect many people to be upset about this list, because this happens every year with regularity. However if you’re willing to upset yourself by reading my trash, that’s your choice. Don’t like strong language? That’s fine, there are plenty of other k-pop websites that cater to you – please note that Kpopalypse blog is not and will never be one of them. Like a song that I hate? Great, enjoy it! Maybe this list even helped you discover songs that you like that you didn’t even know about before, that’s totally awesome and cool. Think I’m being superior? I’ve mentioned time and time again in many articles that my opinion is my opinion only and doesn’t have any more or less value than anyone else’s, just because I express it strongly doesn’t mean that I expect (or want) you to agree. Think this article is clickbait? Bait to what? Unlike most k-pop websites I don’t even carry advertising and I actually even pay my web provider so you don’t have to see ads, believe it or not. Am I an “edgelord” or whatever? Doubtful – I actually have a big-time positive attitude to k-pop and k-pop writing in general, or I wouldn’t even bother to follow it. I’m not nihilistic in the least, and some of the things I say might be considered offensive but that’s just for laughs and because I’m an Australian and we’re all rude dickheads – “blunt” is the opposite of “edge”. So just chill, and also remember that I have a favourites list as well so feel free to head on over to it and embrace the positivity!
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That’s enough disclaimers for the crybabies – let’s get stuck into the list!
30. Hoody – Like You
In the interests of continuing the high OH&S compliance standards of Kpopalypse blog, let’s start off this list with an important public health warning. All Kpopalypse readers need to be aware of Shit Music Disease and the damage that it can cause. The above video demonstrates the symptoms of this frightening and potentially deadly condition. The video begins with a plea that patients with the disease should be isolated, and follows an escaped sufferer who has broken quarantine and goes on a Fender Rhodes-fuelled rampage of shit dancing in a nearby caravan park, endangering all those around her. The highly contagious disease begins to affect one of the caravan’s residents, who begins staring listlessly and gradually succumbs to deep depression, staring into space wishing that this awful song would be over. Then some four-eyed bitch turns up for no reason and steals her fucking caravan. Moral of the story – don’t listen to shit music like this, or you will become incapacitated by depression and too sad to defend yourself and your property. I can only hope that all Kpopalypse readers take the threat of Shit Music Disease seriously and we can control this epidemic. Thank you. (A lock on your caravan may also help.)
29. Blackpink – Stay
Blackpink are the new 2NE1 in every aspect, YG has basically admitted that his groups are just generic one-size-fits-all “YG sound” rather than a specific sound for each group which is why he doesn’t bother to run more than one of these girl groups simultaneously. As Blackpink therefore perform exactly the same function as 2NE1, 2NE1’s death bell was struck as soon as Blackpink debuted. On the positive side, that means that Blackpink get to absorb and build on everything that YG learned about promoting 2NE1 visually. “Stay” certainly as a result has a neat look to it, like it was filmed in the bombed-out hospital from my Tzuyu fanfic, that’s definitely a good thing. YG almost always get the visuals right these days, if only they had a similarly good track record with their actual songs. This one is some acoustic la-la handclap harmonica fucking trash that no person on earth under the age of 60 could possibly get hyped for if it wasn’t for the strength of YG’s marketing machine. “Stay” strongly recalls 2NE1’s dull “Lonely” but it removes the one good thing about that song which is that at least “Lonely” got to the point nice and quickly and didn’t faff around with shithouse harmonica solos. This song is an asspile and Bob Dylan would be turning in his grave, if he was a. dead and b. had standards.
28. Shin Yong Jae & Luna – It’s You
You may not be aware of this, but new consumer trade laws have just been passed in South Korea, where a music video for a shitty ballad that nobody wants to hear must not unfairly deceive its audience by giving a false impression of music quality. This ballad is a very recent release and one of the first that has been impacted since this new law came into effect. The original video for “It’s You” was just Shin Yong Jae and Luna together in a room singing, but this was considered by the court to be deceptive as:
There is a possibility that f(x) fans might see Luna and be deceived that this song could potentially be of the same quality of one of the better f(x) releases
Those bland sleepy-time melodies could be theoretically sung by anybody with the same effect, so highlighting the singers falsely suggests that they are actually putting their own personality and style into the performance
It was ruled that as the songwriting and delivery was so wooden, SM Entertainment were legally required to scrap their existing video and make a brand new MV out of at least 50% wood products so the visuals were not considered to be falsely misleading viewers. SM Entertainment advised in an official statement that they plan to swiftly appeal this decision, but were not willing to delay the release of “It’s You” and hold back the schedule of SM Station, so they have complied with the court’s request while preparing their case. The only concession that SM Entertainment managed to gain from the court was that the use of CGI wood is acceptable, on the grounds that since the vocal abilities of many of SM’s singers have been consistently heavily simulated by technology, it would therefore be acceptable and in keeping with existing standards of “authenticity” to simulate visual artifacts in their music videos. I hope this review clarifies those confused by the visual choices in this music video, you’re welcome.
27. EVE ft. Heechul – Melody
In a pure pop song, the chorus is your ace card. It often makes sense to play this card first, and this is what I call the “bookend chorus” style song structure, however if your chorus is pretty shit, it may not help to structure a song in this way. Most heavy rock songwriters have no idea how to write a good chorus – catchiness of the vocal line is less important in that style, so they tend to drag out the introduction of the chorus as much as possible, so by the time you hear it, the other elements of the song (like really good riffs, or whatever) have already “sold” the listener. That’s why a lot of 80s Metallica songs had all those long–assintros in their songs before you even got to hear any vocal material at all. EVE and Heechul’s “Melody” falls between the two stools, it’s trying to sell itself as some kind of heavy song but they’re straight in with the chorus immediately, which completely fucks the whole deal. It doesn’t help that the “heavy” chorus actually isn’t that heavy anyway, being largely awash with layered strings and the guitars buried so far back in the mix that they almost sound like extra components of the orchestra themselves (which technically I guess they are, but can we bring them out of the mush a bit please). Since the “heaviness” in this song is so pissweak it would have made more sense to build up to it by putting the pussy acoustic section at 0:51 at the start instead. Taken as a pure pop song “Melody” doesn’t work very well either, the meandering Visual Kei melodic style of the vocals just doesn’t cut the required amount of catchiness here to make this pop material. This song fails at being heavy while also failing at being pop, but at least the video doesn’t fail to be amusing, with all the musicians looking completely ridiculous in their Visual Kei-lite makeup and styling, trying to look cool but just coming off as ridiculously bored. However, the best thing of all in the music video are the guy and girl in the drama sections blocking their ears, screaming and smashing instruments, embodying the perfect reaction to this song and in fact this year’s list in general.
26. Moran Lee – I’m Not Okay
It could certainly be argued that South Korea is a pretty gender-unequal place in many respects, so a feminist k-pop song like this one may have some worthwhile context over there and quite a few people can probably empathise with the lyrical messages in “I’m Not Okay”. That’s all well and good, however I wish Korean feminist musicians would take a leaf out of the west’s book when it comes to what is considered acceptable musical content to accompany a song like this. No gender revolution is going to get started with this lame Nickelback-style ballad, Korea really needs some kind of Riot Grrl movement if they’re ever going to kick this type of thought process into high gear. You need something at least as extreme as Dead Gakkahs in order to wake people the fuck up, no social movement for change ever worked by boring everyone to fucking death (which is possibly one of the reasons why so few women identify as feminists these days). Mind you, casting the politics aside the song is still shit anyway so maybe we should be grateful for the patriarchy after all – if this is the type of music that feminists in Korea are making, perhaps the oppression of women in South Korea is a necessary evil. It might be all that’s preventing Korea from being flooded with boring soft rock Nickelback clone groups, now that really would be oppression.
25. NCT 127 ft. SR15B – Switch
I can’t keep track of SM Entertainment’s new male group and their various subunits. There’s that one subunit called CUN T, not sure what that’s about, my only guess is that perhaps it’s an attempt to branch out into the Australian market, but at least it has some kind of meaning. Then there’s pedo-subunit NCT Dream, which is a name that makes sense as I guess you’re supposed to dream about them turning legal age and marrying you in ten years. On the other hand what the fuck is NCT 127 even supposed to mean, especially when it’s coupled with SR15B? These sound like labels for model aircraft parts or Cube dungeon cell block numbers rather than a group of young boys that fans are supposed to emotionally connect with. I think SM have worked out (seemingly correctly) that nobody cares about group names anymore, and are now content with just fishing out random numbers and letters from a lucky dip. I’d actually be fine with this if the music here wasn’t also written using a similar “spin the wheel whatever it lands on fuck it that’ll do” procedure. “Switch” has that same bullshit pissweak beat that SM have been using in all their f(x) and SHINee songs lately, combined with ridiculously annoying childrens-TV style nursery rhyme vocal melodies that I’m surprised they didn’t give to the pedo-subunit, and all dusted off with a finishing coat of “tropical shithouse”, the latest bullshit trend in pop music where they insert a stupid twee melody played on a $50 keyboard over the top as if this song didn’t already have enough annoying melodies in it. The resulting music is so irritating that it’s enough to make me want to punch 127 CUN Ts, but that would be illegal… I guess I can dream.
24. Hyoyeon, Min, Jo Kwon, JYP – Born To Be Wild
Remember when SM Entertainment as part of their hype-train for Girls’ Generation’s “Mr. Mr.” comeback claimed that they had lost a bunch of data and that their original video files were corrupted and they had to film it again or some bullshit, and that was laughably then used as an excuse for the final video’s crusty appearance even though all that ‘crust’ was very obviously just filter effects added in during post-processing? Well it seems that SM Entertainment haven’t completely gotten rid of that “mysterious computer bug” that keeps attacking their data and degrading the quality of their images, because “Born To Be Wild” really looks like shit and has the same filters applied about five times as much. It’s actually really annoying because it’s getting severely in the way of my Min fap, her contours are hard enough to make out as-is with that big scarf-thing around her upper body let alone with all that image-distortion fuzz over the top, however on the plus side any filter effect applied over JYP is most certainly welcome, so perhaps it’s an attempt by SM at censorship for the collective good of all of us. The song itself is even more annoying than the visual filters though with the usual crappy beats everything has now plus all that boring meandering around with that phrygian-with-raised-3rd scale because it sounds so “exotic” or whatever, it’s a pity they couldn’t “filter” the audio some more instead of the images. One day music technology will advance the point where you can buy a stomp-box or rack-mounted unit called “Roly Poly” and it will run any audio that you put through it into a Roly Poly algorithmic filter to fix the result pop-quality-wise, but until scientists bring us this invention we’ll just have to keep being vigilant about telling people that this music is unacceptable.
23. Okasian & Brian Chase ft. Keith Ape – Underwater Bank
It’s so easy to criticise this, it’s like shooting fish in a barrel, and Okasian even looks like a fish in this video with that hanging jaw and vacant stare. Maybe that’s what the whole “underwater squad” thing is about with these guys, you all thought it was something meaningful but it’s just a reference to Okasian looking like a mud carp. Hey I guess if you’re always underwater, that means that you never need a shower, because you’re perpetually clean all the time, which just isn’t hip-hop at all. The whole “no showers = hip-hop” thing actually checks out in reality too – before I started the Kpopalypse radio show at the beginning of 2012, I used to do another show on my radio station late at night, and the hip-hop show was always on before mine, I’d usually be arriving at the station at around the time those guys were in the middle of their broadcast. As a result of this I’ve met almost every well-known rapper in Australia, because those guys would come into the station to do interviews quite frequently. When I say “met” I only mean in a “passing by them in a corridor” sense, I wouldn’t actually speak to them much or anything, because I really have nothing to say to Australian rappers – I generally prefer to have a nice comfortable expanse of a few thousand miles of ocean between myself and any rap guys. However when I did get close to them it was definitely true that these Australian underground rappers didn’t look after their hygiene all that well, what a bunch of stinky assholes. When I was out looking for property to buy a few years back I examined an apartment that was tenanted and the guy who lived there was some nerdy shut-in, my girlfriend at the time said that the place smelled like “semen and despair”. That’s a pretty accurate description of what many members of the Australian hip-hop community smell like. Sorry I know this is all tangenital and irrelevant to the song, but it seems like Cohort Crew didn’t spend any real effort in writing this lazy bullshit so I sure as fuck am not going to spend any of mine in reviewing it properly.
22. Loopy – Goyard
And then there are some songs where the music is actually pretty good, but any worth that the song could possibly have had is completely ruined by bad vocals. When I talk about “bad vocals” here I am NOT referring to bad singing technique that k-pop’s legions of vocal-obsessed nuts argue about but I personally couldn’t really give any fucks about, instead I’m talking about bad vocal choices – there’s a big difference between the two, let’s make that clear. You can be the best singer in the world but if you choose to sing something completely inappropriate for the backing track, it’s going to sound bad whether your delivery is technically perfect or not. Even though it’s still an awful trap beat instead of something resembling actual rap music, the ambience in “Goyard” is quite nice (especially before the beat begins) and the right type of melodies over the top could have turned those backings into a really good song. What it absolutely didn’t call for is some asshole jumping around singing “and I’m ballin’ and I’m ballin’ so haaaaaaaard” and various other stupid yoloshit that nobody wants to hear, which absolutely 100% kills any kind of mood that was generated by the instrumental. Also correct me if I’m wrong but is this entire song just about what brands of clothes the guy wears, and how this makes him “ballin'”? I realise that lyrical standards in rap music have sunk so low that talking about how your own clothes supposedly makes you cool for an entire song is actually a standard accepted kind of thing for hip-hop now (actually I blame RUN-DMC for starting that bullshit trend), but the fact that he raps about it at sloth lemur speed with the most flat delivery possible doesn’t really sell me on the idea. I don’t even know what the fuck a “goyard” is supposed to be but I wish Loopy would take this song and go fuck off to it.
21. Dean – Bonnie & Clyde
When I talk about the artists I like and dislike in k-pop, I talk more about hit/miss ratios than the actual group itself, and the reason why I highlight this is because it’s an acknowledgement that I’m interested primarily in the qualities of the music that I find satisfying (or not) to listen to. Yes, being able to have hot girls in a music video is definitely nice and can certainly make a video more watchable, and I certainly also appreciate some groups who struggle through adversity with various insignificant controversy amplified way beyond rationality by k-pop’s hive-minded gossip-believing social justice brigade (both in Korea and elsewhere), but at the end of the day, I like or dislike something because of the music and that’s it. As most k-pop performers don’t have anything to do with writing their own material but just get farmed out songs from various either in-house or freelance songwriters, most groups that I allegedly “stan” have therefore had at least one song get on a worst-of list like this one. It’s also entirely mathematically possible for the same reason that these same groups could again have songs on worst-of lists in the future. However sometimes I find an artist and think to myself “wow – there’s no way possible that they will ever come up with anything even remotely good”. Dean is one of those rare artists. You can tell that Dean is a self-made artist who writes his own songs, and it’s this reason that will always keep him far away from music quality, because all his songs are consistently absolutely terrible, always the same weak, generic, slow boring trap-infused R&B-infused junk. It’s a safe bet that nothing of worth will ever come from Dean, unless he breaks with tradition and suddenly consents to someone else actually writing a song for him. He’s unlikely to do that however as he probably wants to collect some royalties (fair enough too) so I guess we’ll just have to tolerate endless bullshit songs like these. And no I refuse to spell his name the stupid way with the symbols or whatever the fuck, that’s a privilege you have to earn on Kpopalypse blog by occasionally releasing music that isn’t completely redundant.
20. DIA – The Love
When I was a young person just getting into guitar playing, one of the film concepts that really interested me was the 1989 film “Roadhouse“, starring Patrick Swayze as a bouncer keeping the peace with his fists in a very rough nightclub. I never saw the film at the time as it was R18+ rated for whatever stupid reason and I didn’t meet age requirements, but I knew about the film’s existence because blues guitarist Jeff Healey played in the film quite a bit so I was exposed to it through his music videos. What fascinated me about the film’s concept was I heard that there was a cage in front of the stage to protect the performers in the club from the extremely dangerous audience, and I wondered if any venues existed like that in reality. Sure enough I did eventually find such a stage in a Ministry video a few years later, but I actually think DIA’s fans are more dangerous and the barrier is more justified in DIA’s case. Ministry’s crazy fans just sort of run riot and have a good time destroying shit, there’s something far more creepy about the hypnotised zombie horde that watches DIA singing and doing aegyo behind what looks like bullet-proof security glass in this absolutely terrifying video. The exclusively male audience don’t seem to be registering any coherent emotions at all and only seem to get into the hideous music through forced participation, they clearly hate the generic mid-paced ballad as much as any other sensible person would but are just so transfixed by the DIA girls themselves that all they can do is stand there and gape, dimly holding fansigns and staring blankly like those robot-people who line up outside Apple stores and gaze through the glass ten days in advance waiting to exchange their iShit5a for a iShit5b with 2 extra megapixels or whatever. At the end DIA and their fans do some group wave thing while the glass lifts up but you know that it’s just a distraction exercise to keep their hands where security can see them, and if any of them get out of line and make one step forward one of the girls will flex a pelvic muscle that triggers a duress alarm wired to her crotch and that glass barrier will slam straight back down again. The quick action of the barrier might possibly crush one or two of the fan horde to death in the process, but it’s more important to keep the girls safe, they’re an important investment you know, whereas anyone willing to standing in front of a pane of glass and tolerate this music for whatever reason is probably in a mentally vegetative state that scarcely qualifies as human life and might be best put out of their misery.
19. Ailee ft. Yoon Mirae – Home
This is some fucking painful bullshit song for sure but I love watching the video. Now that I’ve seen Ailee naked, when she puts her clothes back on again she looks even better because my imagination doesn’t have to work as hard to imagine what’s under them anymore, this definitely allows for some smooth, satisfying Ailee-fapping action. All the clothes here look fantastic too, except for that silly 80s denim Madonna thing, and that other black midriff-exposing thing, but Ailee has a nice chunky appealing midriff which really helps my fap along so I don’t mind. I’m not any kind of expert about dance, but it seems to me that Ailee can’t really dance very well, nevertheless I do get a lot of enjoyment out of watching her try so it’s fine by me. Also Yoon Mirae isn’t in the video at all so that’s another positive. So there’s lots of reasons for me to like this. Pity about the stupid song which combines a lazily-written trap beat (aren’t they all) and some clunky thudding piano of boredom, plus the usual 76 layers of Ailee’s annoying overdubbed vocals screeching in my ear. I guess I can deal with it though, after all at least Ailee consistently looks great while making bad music so I hope she has a long career with many more music videos whether she gets another song on my worst lists or not.
18. Yoona & 10cm – Deoksugung Stonewall Walkway
People always say I’m a “YG anti” (whatever that phrase even means in real terms for international listeners with no anti-cafe involvement) but SM have a strong showing on the shit-list this year, so maybe that general (incorrect) consensus will change to “SM anti” soon. The truth is I’ve got nothing against any of the big agencies themselves who I’m sure hire a lot of good honest folks, and I even applaud some of their ideas for expanding the scope of their musical product. To take one example, I believe firmly that SM Entertainment’s “SM Station”, their “one feature track per week for a whole year just because” project, is one of the best ideas that any k-pop label has ever had and I’m really happy that SM decided to go down this path. Not only did the project strengthen the brand of SM overall but it also forced the label to branch out and try projects that would normally be seen as beyond their domain, like Inlayer and… well, just Inlayer really. Unfortunately it also meant that we had to put up with this shitty song with Yoona the most boring member of Girls’ Generation and 10cm who are a bland coffee-shop snooze band that are so shit even Korean Indie got sick of them after three albums. Yoona makes sure she is photographed in the video in only the most boring locales possible so she doesn’t get overshadowed, with the camera mainly pointing upward just in case her features are accidentally upstaged by a particularly interesting paving tile or blade of grass, and the song keeps up the theme making sure never to excite or interest at any stage. The overall effect is basically musical rohypnol and ladies should be wary of leaving their MP3 players and mobile phones unattended in pubs and clubs lest guys with impure intentions attempt to slip this song into their playlist while they’re in the bathroom powdering their nose.
17. EXO – Lotto
This song will probably get hated on a lot for the use of hard Autotune which is actually quite an untrendy sound these days, but turning the vocal effects off wouldn’t have resulted in any great quality lift here. (In fact all k-pop fans everywhere should be grateful for the use of hard Autotune in songs like these, as the robotic voice is often preferable to what your biases actually sound like in reality.) Let’s not get distracted from the main point however – the real issue with “Lotto” isn’t how they’re singing but what they’re singing, as well as what they’re singing over. No amount of vocal effects could have hidden those corny melodies and horrible beats, both of which leap out at the listener right from the beginning. EXO doesn’t even sound like an SM group here, at least awful songs like “Wolf” and “Growl” had SM’s signature high production values going for them if little else, but “Lotto” just sounds like the kind of crap any shittyagency can churn out. At least the video is well-produced and entirely appropriate to the musical content – at the start of “Lotto” is a girl running away from something, and it quickly becomes evident when the song starts that she’s made the correct decision. Later on some dogs are also running, and that’s probably because dogs hear sound at 10 times the volume of humans, in fact the EXO boys seem to love animal cruelty as there’s also some ugly birds in cages being forced to listen to this crappy song. The girl then gets tied up and forced to listen to “Lotto” over and over, because why would anyone listen to it otherwise except to write a review like this one, but then Korea’s music quality special forces enforcement unit come and save the day, beating the living shit out of EXO and rescuing the girl from this trash. It’s good that she’s free now but I’m sure she’ll have PTSD for the rest of her days.
16. Blackpink – Whistle
“Whistle” is a really hard song to review because certain parts of it are actually quite acceptable. There’s a bit with acoustic guitar which is nice, and the rap parts are… well, they’re not exactly Rakim but certainly they’re better than CL’s rap parts, so as far as I’m concerned that’s a step up for YG. Let’s just get the rest of this review over with because we all know how it’s going to end – that “whistle hook” is fucking shit. “Whistle like a missile”? “Every time I show up, blow up”? Did YG run out of English speakers at their HQ with a free day to go over lyrics and proofread to make sure the rhymes met some kind of appropriate standard, or does someone over there actually think that this is acceptable? Next they’ll be rhyming “Saturday night” with “feelin’ alright” and “sitting alone” with “waiting by the phone” like the worst of 80s glam rock. Also the actual whistling itself sounds like ass. The weird phrasing in the verse isn’t very nice to listen to either, it seems to be designed so asthmatics can squeeze out a few syllables in between using their ventolin puffer or getting intra-muscular injections, if they’re writing verse lines like that it means there’s probably some health problems in the Blackpink camp that we don’t know about yet, so when you hear about them later just remember that Kpopalypse called it first. Anyway all the poo sections add up to a fair chunk of the song and are enough to kill any momentum generated by the decent parts, leaving us with a tune which carries on the consistent post-2012 2NE1 tradition of being generally pissweak trendy bullshit.
15. Hello Venus – Glow
You don’t even need to turn up the sound on this one to know that the song sucks, the completely bored expressions on the faces of the girls say it all. You don’t have to take my word for it, just fucking look at them:
Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view.
Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view.
It’s hard to imagine the video director saying “okay girls, this song is really boring so try to strike some poses that match how we feel about it, are you ready? Okay, lights, camera… 1 2 3…okay, look bored, go, action! Yep that’s great, keep working it, you’re really nailing that ‘fuck I’m bored of this shit song’ look, keep it up! Turn the head a bit, that’s it… don’t forget to barely keep your eyes open…”, because why would a company undersell their own song like that. All I can guess is that maybe it’s some kind of protest. Perhaps the video director and the group manager were having a fight about which song to record a video for, and the director wanted something upbeat but the manager insisted on “Glow” against the wishes of everyone else, so the director was like “fine, I’ll give you a fucking video if you want one, just don’t expect me or the girls to put in any effort whatsoever for your shit song”. I wish Hello Venus and their crew all the best in their industrial action, I hope it turns out okay for them and their rights to a fair wage and better songs than this crap are respected.
14. Red Velvet – One Of These Nights
Just after the one-minute mark the image of one of the girls disappears into a coffee cup which seems appropriate as a slow descent into coffee-shop bullshit is a pretty accurate metaphor for this entire side of Red Velvet’s musical output. I can never remember if this sort of stuff is supposed to be the “velvet” side because it’s so smooth and featureless or the “red” side because it’s the sort of music a prostitute working a red-light district might put on to relax herself while preparing a pre-anal sex enema so the client doesn’t get shit stuck on his dick when he pulls out, but it’s certainly the side that SM always get wrong. “One Of These Nights” is even worse than the usual for this type of song though, at least the horrid “Automatic” had some sort of pulse even if it was necromanced from a shitty S.E.S song, and listening to “One Of These Nights” makes me think that in retrospect I was a little too harsh on “Automatic”. Fans of Red Velvet will no doubt think I’m hating on these girls but no – I’m the REAL fan because I’m sticking up for them, I want them to have better music and better treatment. It’s not their fault that their label sees fit to give them garbage like this for 50% of their comebacks. If anything it’s the rabid Red Velvet fans who are actually hurting the group by lying to themselves and everybody else that this kind of music constitutes an acceptable comeback. Girls’ Generation didn’t become the #1 female k-pop group in Korea by featuring bullshit music like this, and Red Velvet won’t either.
13. Girls’ Generation – Sailing
Speaking of which. I always thought that “Girls’ Generation” was an interesting name for a group, and in fact one of the best group names in k-pop, because “the generation of girls” as a phrase could suggest a female youth movement of empowerment and fun, or it could also imply an assembly line of lookalike robotic unfeeling female factory creations being constructed from chemical reactions and nanotechnology. The better songs from Girls’ Generation probably embody both of these characteristics to some extent, and that’s why every single Girls’ Generation ballad ever is a complete fucking waste of time, the mere act of ballad-creation completely rubs against their entire concept and reason for existence as SM’s perfect upbeat fun-dispensing pleasure-droids. Speaking of rubbing, there’s only one true use that any Girls’ Generation ballad has, and that’s staring at Sunny’s tits in the video, which tend to move less during ballad material allowing for easier boob volume and contour perception. Unfortunately the video for “Sailing” doesn’t even have any of the girls in it, thus robbing this song of its only function. Instead we get some sort of bizarre message-in-a-bottle crap which would make a far better backdrop for a side-scrolling shoot-em-up computer game than a music video, and the final boss isn’t even Sunny’s left nipple but just a stupid silhouette of the girls so I think it’s time to no_clip out of here.
12. Flashe – Lip Bomb
Flashe’s “Lip Bomb” is easily one of the most painful and monotonous k-pop listens going in 2016. The harmony of the backings to “Lip Bomb” reminds me of “Rum Pum Pum Pum” by f(x) as it’s just one solitary chord that doesn’t change throughout the entire piece. However that f(x) song actually had some interesting and quite complex melodies and rhythm going on to balance out the lack of harmonic content, whereas “Lip Bomb” has leaden plodding drums and pretty much sticks to four melodic notes in a pentatonic scale for 90% of its running length, meaning that for the entire duration of the song nothing really happens at all. Maybe all those horns are supposed to help but they just crowd out the mix even more, fighting for space with the vocals and making everything even more irritating. The best word I can use to sum up this song is “broken” – just one chord change or different note somewhere would have been enough – it might not have saved this song completely but at least would have extracted it from this list, but that was evidently deemed not a good idea by whoever conceptualised this aural waterboarding. Proof that nugus can have a song just as bad as anyone, and that contrary to popular belief, nuguness does not guarantee Kpopalypse stanning!
11. CLC – No Oh Oh
While we’re on the topic of nugus, poor CLC are never going to catch a break in the k-pop business with donkey turds like “No Oh Oh”. The entire song seems to have been written by someone with a fairly thin grasp of tonality, because it’s hard to imagine someone writing a song that sounds like this deliberately. It actually starts off great with that DJ Premier style beat but then at the ten second mark the vocals and guitar samples come in and the whole song takes a swift turn into Wrongtown and never comes out. The chords on the guitar don’t really seem to have a proper relationship to the vocal line, it’s like they’re built from completely different scale modes (and they may or may not be but don’t ask me to pick it apart because I’ve listened to this song enough times in my lifetime), so when the chords change the melody doesn’t seem to match over the top of it. Then whoever wrote this shit of course had to throw in that hideous Beyonce-style fourth-interval thing that they’ve ripped out of “Crazy In Love” just like every k-pop girl group songwriter ever, and then comes the chorus with way too much annoying brass and nausea-inducing sub-bass. The silver lining is that 2017 sidebar girl Sorn will be unaffected by any shit music karma from “No Oh Oh” given that she gets about 0.75 seconds screen time total in the music video, let’s hope the other members of CLC were fairly compensated, I reckon they’re owed a three bedroom house each for appearing in this junk.
10. CocoSori – Exquisite
This song both looks and sounds like the result of a corporate committee meeting where a bunch of people sat down and cynically thought up the most soulless, dumbed-down ways possible to make a shit pop song go viral on the Internet:
“Don’t forget to add cats! The Internet loves cats!”
“Just cats on their own aren’t enough, they need to be special – like superhero cats or something.”
“Maybe they can shoot laser beams from their eyes?”
“Yes, that’s it! So random! The internet loves random things!”
“Now what about a bit where the girls float around in space? The rest of the time they can be in the kitchen because randomness AND contrast!”
“We should definitely get them to do something phallic in that kitchen. Think how much money PSY made from that guy waving his crotch in a lift.”
“Hey, what about the song? Should we write one of those?”
“Nah we’ll worry about that once we’ve done the really important stuff. If we can’t write a good one we’ll just speed whatever shit we’ve got up really fast so people will compare it to anime theme tunes and then nobody will care what it sounds like anyway. K-pop fans are dumb enough, they’ll swallow it.”
“If we fuck it up really bad we can just add a random metal section that goes for 5 seconds as a distraction, MORE randomness and contrast together!”
“It might also be a good time to trigger some more cat images. If we want virality, more cats is always better than less.”
“Yeah good point. Hey have we thought about latex aprons?”
9. S.E.S – Love [story]
I first found out about k-pop in 2000, in my ethnomusicology course that formed part of my music composition degree at university. Ethnomusicology is the study of music within culture, and as part of the course work everyone in the class had to do an audio-visual presentation and lecture on some aspect of music from a different culture. I can’t remember what I did at the time, probably some boring bullshit, but one of the girls in my class was from South Korea and she did her presentation on k-pop. This was all new to us – in 2000 k-pop was decidedly un-hip globally so finding out about it was a real revelation. Her lecture was for me easily the best and most interesting of anybody’s in the entire class even though I wasn’t into k-pop at the time, but I remember thinking to myself “hmm… I wonder why she’s focusing only on boy groups – surely there are also girls in this style?”. At one point in the lecture she briefly skirted around the concept – “oh and there’s girl groups too, like S.E.S, but there really isn’t enough time to cover them” and that was all the mention that girls got in what was roughly a 20-minute presentation. I never found out that answer to why she gave the female groups the cold shoulder and had just assumed that she was a thirsty fangirl, until about 12 years later when I heard S.E.S for the first time. Then it all made sense – what feeling, thinking human adult could possibly foist these appallingly corny Z-grade TLC ripoffs onto a group of k-pop virgins? How could anyone listen to their dull, smooth, poorly-produced, weedy-sounding dance-lite and feel anything other than utter revulsion? Clearly, the Korean girl in my class was acutely aware that the other students would have watched S.E.S and concluded that k-pop was a musical style which had nothing to offer the world. I’m sure that a Korean girl in an ethnomusicology class in 2011 would have covered the boys but also made a beeline straight for Girls’ Generation, Wonder Girls, 2NE1, T-ara, miss A, 4minute etc as well, and why not? Those groups were all flying high at the time and actually had songs people wanted to listen to, unlike S.E.S who never made a single worthwhile musical note at any stage in their careers and remained forever in the shadow of their (also rubbishy but at least semi-interesting) male contemporaries. Even SM Entertainment don’t seem that convinced on S.E.S’s merits, releasing this song with one of those lazy cobbled-together “here’s bits from all their other videos where we’ve tried to sync up the movements to the music a little bit because we couldn’t be fucked spending any more money than absolutely necessary on this shit” style music videos. It’s just as well for SM that all S.E.S’s songs are so generic that they were easily able to fit the music over unmatched visuals and still make it work visually, but it’s a pity for the rest of us. I’m not even sure if this is a genuine new song or just a crusty old one dusted off and rereleased to promote the scary up-and-coming shitbirds that S.E.S no doubt have prepared for us in 2017, but if SM are actually going to dare to foist this off onto us via SM Station in late 2016 as an actual release, implying that this is music worthy of being held against new material quality-wise, then they will continue to appear on these lists until they learn.
8. Eunji ft. Hareem – Hopefully Sky
There’s some ballad songs that make a great impression immediately from the very first few notes – as soon as you hear the opening acoustic guitar plucking and sweet melodies, your day is just immediately brightened and suddenly you feel better about yourself and the world. Then there’s also “Hopefully Sky” which is some bullshit song that nobody would care about if Eunji wasn’t in it doing Eunji things like singing insipidly about bullshit and smiling at nothing for no reason like she’s on the special needs spectrum. It’s hard to even write about this song at all given its near-total blandness, but the harmonica deserves a special mention. Harmonica is a squeaky-gate instrument at the best of times that is capable of reducing the quality of nearly any song, but devastatingly cancerous when applied to such a low-hanging bar as the standard k-pop ballad formula. I assume it’s Hareem who is responsible for the harmonica part, so I’m going to blame him for all of this this fucking shit and that way my perfect Apink angels can get back to making the good music that they… oh wait, sorry I forgot Apink are shit 90% of the time just like every other k-pop group ever, oh well it was a nice thought.
7. Minje – Do
2015’s #1 piece of shit “It G Ma” truly was an awful song, a disgusting blot on humanity, a tune created by fuckheads, about fuckheads and with fuckheaded listeners squarely in mind as the target audience, hence why I made sure to take a big, fat, highly-deserved shit on it last year. However if Cohort Crew kidnapped me and held a gun to my head and I had to desperately scrape to find a stray compliment for that terrifying absolute bullshit song in order to stay alive and fap another day, I would say that the electronic sounds in and of themselves weren’t too unacceptable (even if they were used to create a truly worthless song) and that at least the total lack of singing meant that there wasn’t any R&B in it. However if the kidnapper was Minje I would have no such way out, as “Do” is like “It G Ma” if it was made with “real” instruments and was a complete R&B borefest instead of a bunch of lame shouty yolosloth. The guitar backings are truly woeful with the guitarist seemingly just noodling around on any old shit to fill up space in the mix, the rhythm is about as monotonous and uninteresting as rhythms in pop songs get, and then there’s that falsetto vocal which is usually a bad idea in any k-pop song but especially here as “Do” didn’t need to sound any more like being kicked in the nuts than it already did. I have no idea who Minje even is, but if he approaches you on the street asking you if you “Do” I would suggest that you politely tell him that you “do not”.
6. I.O.I – Whatta Man (Good Man)
I will say that Salt N Pepa were a cool pop/rap group, but with one important caveat – their musical worth was much more short-lived than the group itself. Their song “Push It” will remain one of the iconic 80s dancefloor hits and contains a keyboard riff that is instantly recognisable and iconic, and they also broke new ground with “Let’s Talk About Sex” which was one of the first ultra-commercial rap songs by a female group to have a frank (if cringeworthy) discussion about sex that wasn’t just about locating dick or pussy. Then something happened to the group, the 90s ticked over some more and Salt N Pepa grew up and started softening their sound, making pissweak boring R&B infused rap instead of the cool jams they were known for. Worst of all their 90s output was the awful “Whatta Man“, which also featured horrible R&B group En Vogue doing the vocal harmony chorus because Salt N Pepa weren’t really singers so they weren’t going to sing the hook themselves. So of course what does I.O.I do but copy the shit part of Salt N Pepa after they had stopped being interesting in any way, they should have followed Tren-D’s example and ripped off the awesome “Push It” instead. At least I.O.I have changed up the verses completely into something else because Salt N Pepa’s sure were crap, and the production on the I.O.I track is definitely better, so it’s definitely a slightly better song overall, but it still has that chorus in it which means that it is always going to be a complete stinker which can’t be saved. Some songs are just disgusting and should just be discarded like a used tissue, which I’m sure plenty of this group’s fans have in abundance. Let’s hope that anyone who bought this song respects the musical environment of those around them and disposes of it thoughtfully.
5. Jessica – Love Me The Same
One day in a parallel universe where the world is awesome enough for me to actually want to procreate and leave children behind to put up with my shit, I’ll come home from work, give my wife a hug and a kiss, and greet my two children. There’s a little while before dinner time so I’ll retreat into my study where I have the most amazing home studio setup known to man. I’ll load up into my digital workstation an acapella track of a young woman’s voice that I recorded that day at work, someone called Jessica Jung. In this parallel universe nobody knows who she is, but I plan to change all of that and make her a megastar by creating the most awesome backing track I possibly can behind her vocals. However I’ve also had to listen to awful trap music at work that day and it’s really loosened my bowels, so while the vocal track is loading in I quickly run off to take a shit. A few minutes later I emerge about a kilo lighter and much more relaxed, to discover in horror that my two children have invaded my recording studio – they’ve started the recording process without me and are fucking around with my musical equipment, recording extra tracks over the top of Jessica’s voice.
“Sorn, get off my keyboard – I’m trying to record a serious hit song here! Umji, stop messing with my drum machine, it’s not a toy!”
“But it sounds great!” says Sorn, hitting the keyboard keys randomly, making nonsensical cascading piano fills and basslines with no coherent melody or harmonic structure.
“Drums are fun!” screams Umji as she bounces up and down while smashing the drum machine pads with her fists, in a simplistic beat punctuated by the odd occasional extremely basic drum fill at the most non-appropriate times possible.
“OUT, you two!” I yell as I quickly usher them out the door and slam it behind them.
I play back the piece of music – Jessica’s vocal has been ruined by their jumbled, completely random backing track. I try to undo the changes but it’s no use, the original unmodified track is gone. “This sounds like ass, but I made a promise to Jessica to make her a megastar”, I say to myself. I think about how standards are really high in k-pop right now, and how nobody will want to release this garbage, so I blast it off into a parallel universe where maybe things are shittier in 2016 and this piece of garbage will fit right in.
4. Keith Ape ft. Bryan Chase – Let Us Prey
Yes, it’s Cohort Crew again. Everything Cohort crew do, and have ever done (and probably will ever do) is complete and utter trash to the point where it’s just comical. Keith Ape is really trying hard here to repeat his performance on last year’s worst list, shambling around like a sedated mental patient mumbling idiotic thoughtless raps to himself and generally doing his part to help destroy the global hip-hop movement and culture in general as per usual, but I couldn’t give him the number one this time. The reason is that “bitch I’m from the undeerrrrwaaaaattterrrrrr” line which is just so laugh-out-loud incompetent and stupid that I have to admit that it did provide me with a small amount of “I can’t believe they actually recorded this godawful shit” amusement before I started crying for the general direction that rap music and humanity in general is going in. However all his talk about being “underwater” seems like a very odd thing for a rapper to brag about to me because under the water is where criminals dispose of people who they have removed from society for interfering with their business – usually rappers are bragging about being the gangsters, not about being the victims. Keith Ape had better hope that k-pop’s organised-crime-connected big players don’t get any ideas from this video, if they catch wind of his terrible music, flashy sports cars and large easily-led fanbase with low standards, they might just decide that under the water is in fact where he belongs and take it upon themselves to redistribute him to the fishes. Of course Kpopalypse does not condone or wish to see extreme actions such as this, so I hope that for his own safety as well as our own sanity Keith Ape starts making better music soon.
3. Swings – Your Soul
My mother had a saying when I was growing up which is that “you can’t accept the communication if you can’t accept the communicator”. While most people would regard such a saying as a challenge to oneself to become more open-minded and look past the individual when assessing their statements, the context in which my mother often used this expression implied more that it was actually not possible to look past the individual, so there’s no point trying because your perception of them will always change how you receive the content of their message, and to just acknowledge that the bias will always exist. It’s certainly an adage that I had at the forefront of my mind when listening to this song. Sure, you could try to put aside for a brief moment the fact that Swings is generally regarded to be a completedickheadbyeverybodyeverywhereatalltimes, but the fact remains that listening to some rap guy who wouldn’t know shit about shit telling me to look after my soul is like listening to Donald Trump telling me to look after my scalp. Rappers who spend about 80% of their time convincing you that they are bad-ass gangsters who would kill you in a second and the other 20% in “I love you girl and I also really care about other people and the world” soft-ass R&B land are the worst, if you’re going to be a douchebag that’s fine but let’s at least keep the particular strain of douchebag consistent. Of course as my mother says, it’s impossible to completely disregard that it’s arch-dickhead Swings who wrote this track, and for him to say that people look after their mind and body but should look after their soul equally is pretty fucking rich when it’s coming from a person who obviously routinely disregards all three. Don’t get me wrong – it’s fine for people to be dickheads, I’ve got nothing against assholes making the music I enjoy, but they should embrace their path as caonimas and leave the high-horse lyrics and soft weak pussy music at home. I haven’t discussed the shitty plodding R&B music here at all, but I’m taking my mother’s advice and disregarding the communication because of the source. Boram knows best.
2. Hwang Minwoo (aka Little PSY) – Okey Dokey
In 2013 Little PSY scooped the #1 spot on the Kpopalypse worst list with the dreadful “Show Time“, without a doubt still to this day the worst modern k-pop song ever made. As a wise person once said, “those who do not learn from the past are doomed to repeat it”, and thus as the k-pop industry has not learned anything from this musical atrocity, history has indeed repeated with Little PSY once again returning to the k-pop scene to terrorise us all. We had of course all hoped that he would have moved onto other things by now but unfortunately no such luck. Of course Little PSY is not quite so little any more, three years of growth has made him slightly more mature, and… well not really mature, his balls clearly still haven’t dropped yet… but he’s certainly less annoying… wait, that’s wrong too, he’s still fucking irritating… fuck I dunno. Anyway, the song is terrible as you will no doubt hear if you click on it which I certainly do not recommend by the way. It isn’t quite as bad as “Show Time” overall mainly because there is slightly less direct copying of PSY plus some vague attempt at a catchy chorus, but of course it all comes undone by the persistent sound of Hwang Minwoo’s wailing who still enunciates words like his baby teeth are falling out and he’s got a mouth full of fluoride paste. The video is the usual terrifying experience with creepy sexualisation that at first glance appears to be toned down a notch compared to last time, but then is weirdly replaced by Little PSY wandering around hitting people in the balls with a hammer which surely has to qualify as some kind of sexual assault. At least with PSY himself fading from the international spotlight somewhat, and Little PSY rapidly becoming less little, we probably don’t have to worry about another Hwang Minwoo comeback being quite this bad. Let’s just hope he doesn’t join NCT Dream.
So – what was the worst k-pop song of 2016, according to Kpopalypse?
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1. CL – Lifted
Congratulations CL! Finally, after several years of trying, CL has scooped the coveted #1 position for… oh wait, this is the worst songs list, not the favourites list. Well anyway. Moving on.
In 1993, hip-hop was in trouble. Dr Dre’s “The Chronic” had been released a few years prior and had proven to be hugely influential. While “The Chronic” was a good album, the softer P-Funk style sound of many of the beats (a reaction to the emergence of the first laws around sampling which forbade the popular wall-of-samples approach which defined late 80’s rap) started a trend of hip-hop gradually softening, a trend which continues to this day. It looked like for a while every rapper in the US of any worth was going to go down the soft P-Funk route, but then something cool happened, a rap crew called Wu-Tang Clan emerged and started a similar trend in the opposite direction of harder beats. (This was actually the most meaningful aspect of the 1990s “East/West coast” fued in hip-hop – musical content. Californian rap mostly embraced P-funk whereas the East coast scene generally avoided the “smooth Cali sound”.) Wu-Tang Clan were the Guns ‘N’ Roses of hip-hop, a ragtag group of rappers that couldn’t keep their lineup stable and their various personal issues in check for more than one solitary decent album, with each album after their debut getting progressively worse than the one before due to the group’s gradual disintegration diluting their core sound. However what an album it was, “Enter The 36 Chambers” is full of great early 90s hip-hop songs like “Protect Ya Neck“, “Da Mystery Of Chessboxin’“, “Bring Da Ruckus” and many others. Oh and there was a kinda bullshit novelty self-titled solo song by one of the members “Method Man” on the album as well, which wasn’t that great mainly due to the nonsense lyrics about getting wasted and laid but if anything in the context of the album it was really just a segue between two far superior tracks featuring the full group so it was easy enough to ignore. As a song that’s actually named after the rapper who is rapping it, surely anyone releasing an official cover version of it would make no sense, as the whole point of “Method Man” is that it’s a song by, about, and featuring Method Man.
However that didn’t stop CL, who gravitated to this song anyway, probably because as the lyrics don’t make that much sense in their original form they can be chopped and changed to suit what CL wanted to say, also giving her the freedom to remove all the explicit references that might disturb easily-triggered k-pop fans. That’s what “Lifted” is, at least lyrically. Of course CL doesn’t get the references quite right, “shorty” in the context of the song and the time period unambiguously means “female that you’re fucking” and you can watch Method Man make this very clear in an incredibly awkward moment here (my god look at the embarrassed look on her face – remember this was recorded before they were known so she’s probably his cousin or some shit doing this for free). CL’s chorus which is a condensed form of two different sections of Method Man’s lyrics basically translates to “I’m going to get drunk on super-cheap booze that only winos drink and smoke marijuana with my lesbian girlfriend”, and that’s the part of the song that makes the most amount of sense. All of this is with Method Man’s blessing who actually appears in “Lifted” at 1:35 and it’s clear by the way he’s acting that 1. he was paid a lot for this, 2. he’s acutely aware that CL doesn’t “get it” and 3. he’s way out of his comfort zone doing all that dancing and shit but couldn’t give a fuck because of point 1. It’s not all about lyrics however, but if you can get past them there’s not a lot musically to be had here either, the beat is repetitive, flat and nothing really happens apart from one brief reggae section that breaks the monotonous bass drone and stupid “whoop” noises and is the song’s only redeeming feature. CL has proven once again that she really is the baddest (meaning baddest) female in k-pop, but who knows – maybe her sixth American debut in 2017 will fare better? Kpopalypse isn’t a CL hater, so I’m wishing CL all the best on her forthcoming American advancement!
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Thanks for reading! Happy new year and don’t forget to check out the favourites list for 2016 as well to hopefully restore some of your faith in k-pop!
Welcome to the Kpopalypse favourites list for 2016!
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2016 wasn’t a great year on average for k-pop, but the good songs were really, really good. As good as k-pop’s Golden Age? Definitely not, but good enough for me to maintain my interest in k-pop and make me feel like I’m not wasting my time following the genre, and that’s the important thing!
Eligibility criteria:
Only feature tracks with MVs, and/or tracks promoted on music shows (because I can’t listen to everything)
All songs were released between January 1st and December 31st 2016, this list was released on December 31st 2016 but may appear earlier for some due to timezones
K-pop songs in languages other than Korean are still eligible – if the Korean pop industry is driving it, it’s still k-pop for the purposes of this list
Korean covers of western pop songs are not eligible unless they are significantly changed from the originals rather than a carbon copy
These are just my personal opinions on songs and have nothing to do with popularity, chart success, etc
No I’m not saying my opinion is better than yours, you dipshit – don’t read what isn’t here
Let’s get this list started!
30. A-Daily – Chu
Once again the Kpopalypse favourites list starts off with a nugu, and that’s probably going to piss some people off because I know a few of you readers hate it when I have nugus in this list, but hey it’s not my fault if they sometimes have better songs than your trendy bullshit corporate high-flying dick-sucking groups. A-Daily were previously featured on Nugu Alert so it’s good to see these girls getting somewhere at least in terms of music quality, if not their actual careers, but hey this song has about 40,000 hits and their best music video yet so they’re officially out of the Kpopalypse nugu zone now, I guess that’s progress of a sort. “Chu” is just a straight-ahead four-to-the-floor 80s style pop song that actually sounds vastly similar to another western 80s style pop song that I can’t remember the name of, but who gives a shit because all these k-pop groups are copying something, somewhere, and always have. In the meantime you could copy Kpopalypse and listen to this great song, if you wanted.
29. DIA – Mr. Potter
DIA’s “My Friend’s Boyfriend“. Red Velvet’s “Dumb Dumb” and “Ice Cream Cake“. Oh My Girl’s “Liar Liar“. LaBoum’s “Shooting Love“. EverythingbyTwice. What do all of these songs have in common? The answer is they’re all grating listens to a greater or lesser extent due to the predominance of irritatingly present vocals and general rampant studio overcooking where everything in the mix is turned up to eleven and fighting for equal space, all the time. DIA’s “Mr. Potter” is another one of these songs, which is a shame – but it’s also the best one yet, and probably about as good as this particular style of k-pop (haven’t thought of a name yet but let’s go with “screechy bullshit” for now) is going to get. What makes “Mr. Potter” a better song is that there’s some nice descending harmony throughout and cool ambience in the chorus that actually gives you a reason to dive in between the 56 layers of ultra-compressed sonic mush, although I can forgive you if you didn’t notice because they were doing the Girl’s Day style ass swinging move during that part. Anyway if Twice or Red Velvet did this song it would be huge, which just goes to show that in the business world of k-pop it’s all about the name and the music is a secondary consideration for most. That’s a pity for DIA’s careers I guess at least until one of the girls can solidify themselves as 2017’s “most fapped over” but none of it affects me as I don’t give a fuck as long as I like the song. Shout-out to all the DIA fans I hope you’re both doing well, stay safe this new year.
28. K-Tigers – Hero
Speaking of MBK, do you miss their old group Co-ed School, the one that was split off into boy group SPEED and girl group F-ve Dolls because MBK (then CCM) were smart enough to realise that nobody actually gives any fucks about co-ed (mixed gender) groups? Do you like DSP’s new group, K.A.R.D, if not for their song, but just because it’s great to finally have an idol co-ed group in k-pop again after all this time? Well if so, wakey wakey hands off snakey because you’ve probably been sleeping on K-Tigers all this time. Fuck K.A.R.D and their trendy fucking joyless bullshit music because it sucks, whereas K-Tigers’ song “Hero” is rocking, upbeat and cool with chunky guitars, lots of vocal variety and lots of fun. Also fuck Jackie Chan – why the hell he didn’t see the obvious-as-day opportunity to train his own k-pop group JJCC in the direction that K-Tigers are going in I have no idea, perhaps he was scared that some young kids would upstage his own martial arts skills, but now that K-Tigers exist, that’s his problem not ours. Sure, the boys and girls of K-Tigers may not be the stunning lookers that you’re used to watching from k-pop idol groups, but that’s because they’re trained in kicking your weak soft K.A.R.D-liking ass first and giving a fuck about what you think of their appearance second. Oh and here’s a bonus video of them doing this song live so you know it’s not CGI:
The best thing about this is that the girls get a dance routine that’s equal to the guys in terms of physical movement. Of course the girls can’t do those crazy flips like the guys can because they know creepy fans reaching to try and find something in nothing will freeze frame it right when their underwear gets flashed and make them look like someone harassed them, but this is still way more than what girl groups usually get to do in k-pop songs. Anyway you’d better be nice in the comments even if you don’t like this song because K-Tigers can smash you like Bruce fucking Lee.
27. Berry Good – Don’t Believe
The latest fucking bullshit trendy fucking pop style for fuckwits is apparently that twee melody that always comes up as part of the choruses now, and is something that I’m reliably informed by caonimas is called “tropical house”. The “tropical” part is I suppose referring to the high synth melody always sounding like it’s being played on a synthesised pan flute or similar backward-ass instrument, and the “house” part is presumably because people who like this bullshit music don’t ever leave the fucking house. Although the result usually sounds like ass, there’s one huge redeeming feature of this style of pop song, which is that while the synth melody is playing the vocalists often shut the fuck up for a while, which is fantastic. Most k-pop in general is far too crowded with needless vocals over every single second of the song and doesn’t let the instrumental track breathe at all, so I’m actually not completely against this new development if it spaces out the vocal parts a bit. Berry Good definitely have the best configuration of this style out of anybody this year in k-pop with “Don’t Believe” which also has a great chorus proper and generally sounds like a classic 80s pop song whether you take away the “tropical” part or not, which just shows how good the rest of it is. Anyway, you’d better to learn to start liking this fucking shit sound in general because everyone and their cat is going to be jumping on the “tropical shithouse” bandwagon in 2017, and you can bet most of them won’t get it as right as Berry Good do here.
26. Oh My Girl – Windy Day
British rock group Queen had an odd progressive rock sound consistently for their first few albums, which I know quite well because I was a big Queen fan when growing up and collected them all avidly. Everyone knows “Bohemian Rhapsody” of course, but Queen actually had a shitloadofsongslikethat which aren’t quite as well known. After about the fourth or fifth album Queen veered more in a traditional pop/rock direction which probably suited them a little better and created most of the songs people now know and love about the group, but they still returned to their early semi-progressive sound occasionally at variouspoints in their careers. Whoever wrote Oh My Girl’s “Windy Day” was probably a fan of that sound too, and I’m certainly not suggesting that “Windy Day” is structurally similar to those early Queen songs, but the strong piano focus, modal guitar riffs, and especially the close-written vocal harmonies all do quite strongly echo the early Queen style. As an extra bonus, all eight of the girls in this video are more attractive than Freddy Mercury was in 1975, and probably have less diseases than he did in 1985, so what’s not to like?
25. Stellar – Crying
Bravesound do something in k-pop that most other songwriters don’t dare – they keep their songs relatively simple. Your average k-pop song is actually reasonably musically complex (just check how involved my tabs posts get if you want proof of that), whereas Bravesound tends to adhere more to the school of “four chords, a melody, a beat – fuck it, it’ll do”. That might seem like a criticism but in pop music it’s often the simple things that work best, and Stellar’s “Crying” works better than anything else they did in 2016, and most of the rest of k-pop too for that matter. It’s still musically multi-layered up the ass but the dreamy rotating chord progression and synth counter-melody underpinning the vocal lends “Crying” a similar quality to what I liked about last year’s “Sleepless Night” from Nine Muses. It’s also worth noting that Stellar have gone for another “innocent concept” this time which for Stellar basically means “more skin exposure than usual, but with more smiling and brighter clothing colours”. Those fucking trolls, I love them.
24. Nine Muses A- Lip 2 Lip
I feel sad for Australia, we can’t get this type of ska-lite pop music right ever, and it’s not like we haven’t had several awfulattempts at it. Australian ska-pop music is routinely afraid of brisk tempo and decent production and at current progression rates it’ll probably be about 2050 AD at the earliest before we finally create something as good as “Lip 2 Lip”. However even Korea’s pop producers could learn something from this song – Sojin’s whispered rap part is fantastic, showing an important production lesson which is that dynamic subtlety works. Most k-pop songs are “everything equally loud, all the time” so listening to them gets very wearying, taking the vocal volume back a notch occasionally can really make something stand out to great effect. That doesn’t mean that the song has to turn into bland coffee-shop mush either, as “Lip 2 Lip” demonstrates by backing off on the volume but keeping the pace going. Of course the rest of the song is great too, but honestly half of the time when I click on this one I just sit there and loop Sojin’s part over and over again.
23. Very Very Good Life – Dance
Do you know why so-called “indie” music (whatever that term actually means to anyone over the mental age of six) coming out of Korea is usually fucking crap? It’s because these guitar-pop bands don’t ever bother to write songs with any fucking melodies, they think “hey everyone we play real instruments, look, we really do, we’re not an evil corporate k-pop idol group, so you have to like us” is all it takes to get them over the line. Of course they’re mistaken – just like it wasn’t good enough for Hillary Clinton to say “vote for me because I’m not Donald Trump, otherwise you’re a racist sexist scumbag”, it’s not good enough for Korea’s shoegaze bands to say “we’re not part of the evil soul-sucking corporate criminal pop machine, so therefore you have to fucking like us or you’re a bad person”. What a good band needs to realise is that if they’re writing three minute songs with verses and choruses and pop-style hooks, they’re competing on the same playing field as the most ultra-commercial k-pop stuff whether they like it or not, at least as far as a pure music fan is concerned. I don’t give any fucks whether the songs I like come from the dungeons of SM and YG or the green fields of altruistic free-range DIY-band goodness, I only give fucks if the end result is good, because I’m basically a cunt so moral questions about how my favourite music is generated don’t concern me. Very Very Good Life have produced a result that is indeed good, and I don’t care if they crushed the skulls of newborn babies and drank the blood and brains to come up with the creative inspiration for the melody and harmony, it fucking worked so whatever. As an added bonus, the lyric video is really useful for practicing your Korean pronunciation if you’re a Korean language noob like I am.
22. 100% – Better Day
One thing that k-pop is really good at doing is ripping off the visual style of Wong Kar Wai’s iconic film “2046“, and for some reason each time they do so, the music is really good too. There’s no logical reason for this quality synchronicity than I can think of, yet it seems to be the case regardless. What makes this even more improbable is that the “2046” colour scheme and the “It G Ma” colour scheme are almost identical, however everybody knows that “It G Ma” is worthless trash music for life’s fuckheads, whereas “Better Day” is some fucking cool shit. Anyway I’ve given up trying to understand the logic behind it, but what I do understand is that 100% have given us another great song with some cool vocal lines, nice chord progressions, punchy rhythm that never “traps out” and no bullshit trendy concessions to whatever the latest dick-sucking fad is in western music right now. I don’t even mind that the chorus has that balls-cut-off quality and the vocal improvisations near the end are a bit cringe, because the song is fast-paced and energetic enough that these sections actually suit the song instead of coming off as show-off wank, a point we’ll return to later in this list.
21. Iron – System
So here’s how to do a slow rap track properly, pay attention class:
Occasional parts where there is no vocals of any kind for some space
Nice ambience but not afraid to also throw in harsh sounds
A nice little musical twist
un-PC lyrics, no fucks given
Animal cruelty
Of course when I talk about animal cruelty I’m not talking about the birds. Most vegans have never even met a chicken close up because if they did they’d quickly realise that chickens are objectively gross squaky creatures that are good for nothing but easily digestible protein and target practice. Therefore nothing cruel happens to any birds in this video. I’m talking about Iron being cruel to the real animals – insane YG fans, the same fans who repeatedly accuse me of being a YG hater even though 2NE1 has had more best-of entries in Kpopalypse list history than Crayon Pop, and who had to go and downvote Iron’s video a ton of times just because he’s calling out GD&TOP at the end of the song for… well I’m not even sure what actually, but who cares? It pissed a lot of people off who probably deserved it, so I’m cool with it.
20. Hyomin – Sketch
When I was growing up I used to play computer games on the Commodore 64 a lot, because I was a fucking lonely nerdy loser and computer games didn’t bully me or say “I really like you – as a friend” and then never speak to me again. Most of the games were shitty back then of course just like most computer games are these days, but one of my favourites was International Karate, a one-on-one beat-em-up tournament type game where you would slowly progress through the karate gradings as you won fights. The game had a lengthy synthesiser tune that accompanied all the action, written by Rob Hubbard, arguably the reigning master of Commodore 64 SID-chip computer music. The tune started off slowly, and then after about four minutes of play, the song would kick into a higher gear. I never got really great at the game, the reflexes of the higher levels were a little bit beyond my gaming skill level, and because the tune started again from the start with each new game, plus there was no way to save your game, I very rarely got to hear the second, faster section of music, but became very familiar with the slower first part. Maybe that’s why I like faster songs more these days, because I was deprived of listening to the higher-level music of that game, but regardless, Hyomin’s “Sketch” has a similar ambience to the game’s first slower section, which are both really cool pieces of music with some uncharacteristically well-written pentatonic harmony, which is just as impressive for a computer with only three simultaneous sound channels as it is for a video I can only last about three minutes of fapping over and which by all rights they could have slotted any old bullshit music over the top of if they had wanted.
19. LiVii – Luna
LiVii is an ultra-nugu yolo-lite k-pop artist who has been consistently shithouse throughout her entire career and I had pretty much consigned her to the yolo bin forever, but I think she’s pretty attractive so I’ve been following her career very closely anyway despite expecting nothing musically from it. What I certainly didn’t expect was “Luna” which is actually new territory for LiVii in that it’s a really good song. Sure, the song starts like it’s forming into a jumbled fucking amateurish mess like everything else she’s ever been involved with, but then at precisely the one-minute mark it segues into astonishing coherence with a fantastic chorus that redeems everything. For once LiVii is exploring actual melody instead of just intoning disjointed English over some crappy 2000s-era excuse for a hip-hop beat, and the result is for some reason way better than it should be. Even the sonic choices actually match for once – the toy keyboard sounds are great and finally LiVii’s “Fisher-Price yolo” aesthetic fits with the song in a way that makes actual musical sense. Now that she’s making good music finally, we just have to convince her to stop wearing that baggy hippie tent fucking thing and stick to the lolita dress… actually the lolita dress doesn’t work that well on her either. Fuck, can this woman even dress herself? Maybe she’s one of those people who has fantasies of being a baby and gets other people to dress her and change her underwear every time she has a shit, I wouldn’t put it past her, it wouldn’t be the weirdest thing I’d heard about k-pop this year. Not that I give a fuck, if she keeps making songs this good I would clean up her poop.
18. Luna & Jambinai – From The Place That Is To Be Erased
Jambinai are a great, unique-sounding band, but they’re also a complete one-trick pony, they constantly do the same shit all the time – the sort of group who like French doom band Monarch could play any one of their songs at any of their shows for any length of time and the net musical result while undeniably great would be basically the same each time. In a way they’re a lot more formulaic than an idol pop act, because k-pop idol groups will mix up styles with each comeback (due to often working with different songwriters each time), whereas Jambinai pretty much just change the length of their drone, which weird rhythm they’re using and where they put the spazzed-out erhu sections. This is why adding a k-pop singer works so well for them, having f(x)’s Luna dropped into the mix means that now they have to work within a more tightly defined structure, because k-pop girls are used to things being melodic and also have schedules to go to and can’t sit around for 20 minutes while some guys in a band smoke weed and jam out the same drop-tuned chord into the ground and scream angsty bullshit about how they hate the government or whatever. So now we get all the things that make Jambinai great like heaviness, spazzy erhu, that other fucking weird long Koto-style instrument etc but in a tight time format that you don’t have to be completely fucking munted to appreciate – but we also get Luna channeling Ozzy Osborne over some serious stoner-rock riffage, and generally making things way more interesting than they would otherwise be all throughout the song. Luna even cries a bit at the end as she sheds a tear for the pussified Korean music scene after fuckblasting our asses with the type of heaviness that Korea’s so-called rockers wouldn’t dare explore. Hail Luna, hail Satan.
17. Fiestar – Apple Pie
Fiestar had a great year in 2016 and “Apple Pie” is one of their best ever efforts. The song is a very disciplined pop tune with not a moment of running time wasted, and the style as well as the musical textures strongly echo what was good about mid-period Girls’ Generation. Try listening to “Apple Pie” and Girls’ Generation’s “Run Devil Run” back to back and you’ll probably get the picture as both songs have cool synths and a great swinging rock feel, but I actually prefer Fiestar’s updated version of the same idea which carries a bit more of an emphasis on rhythm and less focus on super-crowded vocal layers in the chorus. The look of the video is also astonishingly good with all the girls looking freakishly outstanding, espcially Yezi who is ultra-careful not to blow her newfound “fierce” image by smiling too much and instead just sort of smirks a bit while posing in very shape-defining ways that meet Kpopalypse approval. Whoever is the brains behind Fiestar right now knows exactly what they’re doing with their music and image, and while I’m sure Fiestar won’t ever be appreciated in Korea as much as I feel that they should be because most Koreans would rather sip lattes and listen to bullshit, at this rate Fiestar are still making a nine-dash line straight for my heart.
16. April – Tinker Bell
When Chris Hansen gets home from a hard day of making pedophiles use furniture I’m pretty sure he turns up his home stereo and listens to April’s “Tinker Bell”. I can just see him now, saying to himself “it’s a shame that I can’t be open with people about my love for this great group because they will all think I’m a hypocrite, but damn this song is good, it’s their best one by far” as he hums along to the catchy chorus and mimics the girls’ arms-waving dance in the privacy of his lounge room.
“What’s going on?” his wife will yell from upstairs, hearing the thumping of his feet through the floorboards reverberating up the walls.
“Nothing, honey” Chris replies, cursing himself under his breath that he was so desperate for his April fix that he forgot to remove his shoes.
Chris’s wife comes down the stairs and eyes the TV screen before Chris can change the channel. “Oh. April again. You know that one of those girls is only 14, don’t you?” she says.
“It’s just research, dear… for a new book I’m writing… ‘How To Catch A K-pop Predator'”, Chris stammers, still humming along to the song.
His wife rolls her eyes. “Uh-huh. Your foot’s still tapping!”
Chris looks down and stops his involuntary foot motion. “Honey, it’s not how it looks…”
“You promised me you wouldn’t be like this, Chris!”. She storms off into the bedroom and slams the door behind her.
Chris can hear his wife sobbing through the wall. He considers going in there to console her – no, it’s the wrong time, that would just make her even more upset, maybe later. Chris takes off his shoes, puts them neatly by the doorway, plugs a pair of headphones into his stereo’s audio output and then turns up the volume once again. “I’ve got to get that arms-waving thing in the chorus just right so I can be a true Fineapple”, he mutters to himself, moving his arms in time to the music as nervous sweat forms on his brow.
15. Dorothy – Purple Lips
“Purple Lips” might sound from the song title alone like it’s describing a night out with Kim Hyun Joong but actually the song sits somewhere in between miss A’s “Touch” and Sistar’s “Alone” in terms of both sonic and visual presentation, which is definitely a positive thing all round. Of course the sound production isn’t as polished and clear as either of those two songs, and on the visual front we get projections and relatively simple sets instead of elaborately constructed A-list creations because Dorothy and their agency are both nugu as fuck and don’t have tons of money to throw around on this shit. Not that any of this is super-cheap mind you, there’s still a large chunk being spent here compared to the sort of video a western non-commercial group might put out, and I’m sure all these girls are still accumulating house-deposit sized debts to their company. It’s all worth it for me though, and this song brought me back to the days of only a few short years ago where plenty of other k-pop girl groups were doing songs like this. Hopefully the world of k-pop can work out how to get back to this quality level, or music fans might need to find a way to give purple lips to a few songwriters and CEOs, maybe they can hit up Kim Hyun Joong for tips on how to accomplish that in a fangirl-friendly manner.
14. History – Queen
This could have easily been worthless trap garbage like 99.9% of boy group comebacks this year, but instead it shocked the hell out of me and probably quite a lot of other people too by having an actual beat. Yes it does go a bit trappy in the pre-chorus but that’s just an interlude to break up the sections of the song that you actually want to hear. Unlike say, Big Bang’s “Bang Bang Bang“, the trap elements in “Queen” know their place – NOT the main event. Even more astonishingly, “Queen” also subscribes to 2016’s other main trendy bullshit newsletter – the sax riff hook, and gets that right as well. The riff could have easily been some annoying crap, but instead has been utilised unusually well, sitting back in the mix a little and only really sticking out during that electronic pitch-bend part upon where it doesn’t really sound like a saxophone anymore anyway. The end result is great and rappers all over Korea should be embarrassed that this idol-group song goes way harder than 90% of their soft weak pussy beats.
13. Girls Girls – Girls Girls
This song fucking sucks and does nearly everything wrong. The girls in Girls Girls’ “Girls Girls” all are way over-styled to the point where they ironically look like tragic ladyboysboys except not as attractive (ask anyone who’s been to Thailand and if they’re being honest they’ll tell you that the majority of ladyboys do actually “pass” astonishingly well), the song is packed full of insipid yolo bullshit and the backings are just irritating and stupid, with the usual crap beats everything has now plus dumb tinkly-bells shit and some weird xylophone/woodblock crap that really just sounds like ass. However what this song does right, it does very right – at 1:00 “Girls Girls” from the girls called Girls Girls completely flips on its head and comes together with an astonishingly great minor-key chorus that is one of the best that k-pop has ever produced, just like LiVii’s song earlier in this list but even more so. Then in the breakdown at 2:25 things get even better again where the same chorus melody is shunted over a completely different harmony that breathes new life into the same already-awesome melodic line. If only the song had proper verses and didn’t spend the other half of its running time in absolute suckland, there’s no telling how high the Girls Girls girls would have climbed on this list with “Girls Girls”.
12. Cross Gene – Noona, You
A lot of people didn’t like “Noona, You” because they felt that the song was a bit all over the place structurally, and I certainly get why it threw some people for a bit of a loop however the perception of the song as “messy” isn’t as accurate as it seems. “Noona, You” actually follows something fairly close to a rondo form, which is pretty unusual for k-pop, but it’s also actually quite a disciplined structure. Even better, the “A” part of that rondo form (essentially the chorus) is actually a tune straight out of the Roly Poly school of pop hooks with the same i-VI-III-VII progression, and is fucking awesome, and it’s used a lot. As soon as the song starts sound a little bit like it could go off the rails into some weird bullshit-ass fucking bitch territory for cockheads BAM that main theme comes straight back in and everything is saved – which is exactly how a rondo form is supposed to work in classical music, too. Just as Roly Poly demonstrated, you can have awful segues and shitty raps if you want but if they’re brief and you’ve got a fantastic hook hanging it all together a song can still work really well. “Noona, You” doesn’t waste any time, keeping the tempo fast and any excursions off the beaten track short and to the point, and most impressively of all still clocking in at a brisk three minutes total. If Girls’ Generation’s “I Got A Boy” or T-ara N4’s “Jeon Won Diary” had this type of songwriting discipline in effect I probably would have liked those songs as well, and Cross Gene now have the honour of k-pop’s first genuine “expanded song structure” that actually works well enough to get on my favourites list.
11. 4ten – Severely
When “Severely” came out, a lot of people compared it to some Japanese anime theme tune or whatever, even though it sounds nothing like that fucking shit, just because whenever k-pop fans don’t recognise a sound in a Korean pop song immediately as something k-pop has done before, they always revert to their default fallback position which is “oh that sounds Japanese” because the alternative (that it might actually resemble something western – oh no!) is just too fucking terrifying for these Asian-fetishising fucks to even contemplate. However, they have short memories – if you cast your mind back to the dying days of k-pop’s first Golden Age in 2012, you may remember Kara’s “Pandora” and if you do you’ll probably remember what a great kick-ass song it was, and for me 4ten’s “Severely” comes off a bit like what “Pandora” would have sounded like if producers Sweetune tried to make it with about 50% of the money. All of their usual Kara-tested elements are there from the keyboard riffs to the fast beat and the distorted guitar squeals here and there, just in a less polished, rawer package. Having said that, 50% of Sweetune’s money is still far from low-budget – details that confused k-pop fans like the distorted voice in the intro are obviously aesthetic choices rather than production errors, which I thought was pretty fuckin’ obvious (they even telegraph it by using that shitty Shure Super 55 microphone in the video) but for some really odd reason everyone gave 4ten stick about it when boy bands do the same shit in their intros and nobody cares. Anyway I like “Severely” at least as much as “Pandora” because getting the same results with less money is kind of cool, like hiring the “budget” hooker from the escort agency because you’re poor and she turns up to your doorstep and she’s some really cute fat chick who actually is sexier and better in bed better than the “premium” girl they sent last time who wouldn’t even let you come on her face because she had other clients later and didn’t want to have to do her makeup twice that night.
10. Wanna.B – Why?
Wanna.B have been around for a while now but haven’t made any dents in any Kpopalypse charts up until this point due to making incredibly average tunes despite at least always looking great. “Why?” changes all this however, the light electro feel and syncopated handclapping beat make this song the spiritual successor to Wonder Girls’ “So Hot“, but bolstered with spicy 2016 production values. If there’s one flaw that JYP’s 2008 material had for Wonder Girls it’s that the sonics were just a little too thin and reedy, but whoever made this track for Wanna.B has the mix calibrated correctly so those bass drums hit you in the nutsack as they should, but not to the point where it weighs down the mix with too much glugginess. The video is equally spicy with some Saturday Night Live-grade sneaky crotch-grabbing action and it’s good to see Wanna.B reliably continue their tradition of looking incredibly good in music videos. I guess it’s to be expected for such a fancam–friendly “pin-up concept group” (think Bambino, Pocket Girls, PPL, etc), but it’s also nice to get some decent music on top of that, which unfortunately doesn’t always happen. The air-hostess outfits and general hotness this time are just icing on the cake rather than the cake itself, and we should all be grateful.
9. Lovelyz – Destiny
When I dropped a dog-whistle post earlier this year which explained the hidden messages behind some popular k-pop songs, a few people asked me to post some more about it or maybe even turn detecting dog-whistle concepts into a regular series. I’m probably not going to do that because most of my educational posts are in the spirit of “teach a man to fish” so my idea is that you should be able to detect these things for yourself now (and people call me condescending? I credit my readers with a lot more intelligence than any other k-pop site by refusing to pander to simply spoon-feeding information), but Lovelyz have a fairly advanced example of dog-whistle with “Destiny” so it’s probably worth bringing up here. When “Destiny” was released many people compared it musically to j-pop, which seems to be a catch-all type of position that k-pop fans revert to whenever they hear pop music sounds that are unfamiliar to them. However the strings, circle of fifths progression and hook here are all straight out of commercial 1970s disco-pop, with the only real link to modern pop music of any sort being the brisk keyboard stabs which really help lift the song out of the turgid mess that it could otherwise have easily been. Many fans also called the concept “innocent” but that’s even more incorrect, anyone who has seen 1970s softcore Playboy/Penthouse bedroom photography will instantly recognise the clothes and hair styling here as well as the prying extreme close-up camera, plus notice how almost every single shot is either in or just outside a bedroom. The visuals reinforce the retro concept of the song with the constantly spinning camera and use of circular objects and motifs, suggesting that it’s “destiny” that everything that goes around comes back around, including music fashion, clothes fashion, hair fashion, interior design fashion, fap fashion and Lovelyz charting on a Kpopalypse favourites list once again.
8. Sugardonut – Imagine, Close Your Eyes
Somewhere in “Worship Raina You Fucking Whores”, the book of Rainaism, it is written that in the beginning, there was an industrial dance couple called Tank & Mary. Tank & Mary released several greatdancevideos where they would go to various locations and dance to industrial songs and due to their uncanny style and “idgaf if you’re watching me and you think I’m a dick, here’s my cool moves” vibe they became a small Internet viral sensation. Many people no doubt clicked on their videos just to laugh at their odd fashion and the audacious randomness of them dancing in odd locations while bemused bystanders looked on in confusion, but they also had several admirers, including myself. As someone who finds both their caonima-style attitiude as well as industrial dance music in general appealing, I enjoyed watching their videos, so I was a bit saddened a few years ago when Tank & Mary decided to stop uploading dance videos and instead focus more on cosplay interviews. Since then there has been somewhat of a void in my existence which has caused me great sadness and anguish, however I’m happy to announce that Sugardonut has now filled this gaping chasm in my life with “Imagine, Close Your Eyes”, a song which also features a random male and female dancing in various locations in a style which definitely isn’t exactly the same as Tank & Mary but isn’t too far removed either. Not only that, but the music while being about as far removed from industrial dance as it’s possible to get, is really really cool. I’m not so much into the fairly dull Coldplay/Mumford & Sons-ish verses, but they’re just a build up to an incredibly kick-ass chorus and keyboard riff which on their own make the song more than worthwhile. It’s a pity that nugus Sugardonut haven’t made anything even remotely this good since, but then to be fair, hardly anyone else has either.
7. Sistar – I Like That
Well, I didn’t see this one coming. I always like to think that my predictions are pretty on-point, at least relative to the laughable bullshit predictions that some of the more mainstream k-pop sites make. However even my super Boram ESP powers have limitations, and I certainly couldn’t have guessed Sistar getting a song into my top 10 for this year. Sistar are one of those groups that for the last few years has just routinely lazily shat out exactly the same feature track with minor variations every Korean summer, so it’s a real shock to the system to see them once again investigating actual decent music. “I Like That” is certainly moody and dark, but not in a limp, soft, boring way like so many Korean songs this year, it’s a fast number that punches you in the face straight away with no-nonsense rhythm and chilling sampled vocals, and only ups the ante from there. At 0:24 when Dasom smiles at the camera it’s like she’s saying “it’s okay, you’re not about to die, this is just a k-pop song, you can calm down” and some reassurance like that is definitely needed as if there’s one commercial k-pop song in 2016 that comes off as the soundtrack to riding a motorcycle off a cliff late at night with the lights off then this is it (that’s a compliment, by the way). On top of this, the girls even look great – all of them, even the ones that I wouldn’t routinely fap to (which is all of them). The breakdown is a bit ill-advised but that’s really the only thing wrong with it, and the high quality of “I Like That” is proof that anything can definitely happen in the world of k-pop. I’m sure Sistar will return to their usual boring summer bullshit songs in 6 months, but until then this is great, and all is forgiven.
6. Gfriend – Rough
Gfriend are to k-pop what AC/DC is to hard rock, and what Cannibal Corpse is to death metal – they know exactly what their audience wants and so they just keep churning out the same thing every time they come out with a new feature track, with only the most minor of variations required to technically class the new song as new. Everything that was present in 2015’s “Me Gustas Tu” is in this song too, right down to the circle-of-fifths progressions and guitar solos with oddly saturated distortion, but “Rough” adds a layer of melancholy into the mix which lifts it above the fairy-floss vibe of their previous songs. Fans got all excited about the song’s “story” showing the girls growing up, and tracing a path from “Glass Bead” to “Me Gustas Tu” to “Rough” but that was all bullshit wishful thinking, nobody in k-pop actually gives a crap about unifying video concepts and for their next song it was fairy-music back at the school gym again. A shame really because if they kept going in this direction maybe they would have had to heavy up their sound a bit more for their next comeback, and Umji could have fulfilled her dsetiny as k-pop’s Bruce Dickinson. Sadly Umji had a temporary break from the group on the day that she finished her stint as the “no reason” girl on the Kpopalypse sidebar earlier in 2016 so perhaps she doesn’t have the mental fortitude to realise her true calling, but in my dreams, it’s always there, the evil plays then twists my mind and brings me to despair.
5. Fiestar – Mirror
Holy swinging nutsack, after several years of trying Fiestar finally sure got it right in 2016. “Mirror” is held together by that constantly repeating three-note keyboard riff, around which everything else revolves. The dreamy keyboard riffs combined with the TR-808 drum machine sounds and minimal arrangement (by k-pop standards, anyway) position the song somewhere between miss A’s “Touch” and Rainbow’s “Black Swan” in terms of both sonic architecture and overall mood, which for k-pop is a great place to be and one that is sadly under-explored. Of course Korea didn’t give a shit because they hate this kind of sound these days, preferring to wank themselves into a coma over endless trap and boring coffee-shop bullshit music, which is why we get only a couple songs that sound like this per year (if we’re lucky). If the great music wasn’t enough, everyone in the video looks amazing again, especially Jei, and I don’t even like Jei. The failure of Fiestar to really get anywhere commercially after all these years is proof that Korea only cares about superficial junk like names, scandals and appearances, whereas true virtuous values of righteousness and justice like good songs and hot girls take a back seat. Koreans should thank their lucky stars that they even have a Hallyu wave at all with their shitty attitude, because they certainly don’t deserve one.
4. Hyosung ft. D.Action – Find Me
Okay, so let’s address the elephant in the room immediately – Hyosung has some very nice boobs. There, now that’s over with, let’s completely not mention boobs or anything else that could possibly be construed as sexual in this write-up and instead talk only about the song. I honestly never thought I’d see Hyosung bouncing up anywhere near a Kpopalypse favourites list ever again after everyone in Secret ditched the sound of the brilliant “Shy Boy” in favour of endless flopping Beyonce clones and saggy ballads (and Hyosung didn’t really stick out for me even back then) but hey here she is. Like most songs on this list I’m pretty sure that “Find Me” died pretty hard on the Korean charts, but I’ve never cared about chart success or failure, only if I like the song, and so it remains a firm Kpopalypse favourite for 2016. When “Find Me” busted out onto the k-pop scene, the song mainly stuck out to me because of its pleasingly firm tempo – 124 beats per minute was pretty much average pop song speed in 2011 but five years later the standard for pop songs is funeral slow and for someone always keeping abreast of the latest trends in k-pop I found the relatively fast pace to be really noticeable. The bouncy beat, perky instrumentation and voluptuous tremolo guitar are extremely welcome and in a better universe this would be a gay club anthem instead of Danni Minogue or whatever it is that people listen to in gay clubs. I’m not sure how they got this song so right when the rest of Hyosung’s solo stuff is all junk, all I can think of is that maybe it was the extra contribution of some D.Action behind the scenes. Anyway don’t make a tit of yourself by ignoring this great song..
3. Snuper – Platonic Love
Even though my favourites list tends to come out a little bit after everyone else’s, I write most of the text for the song reviews beforehand, including the entry for this song which I write at the end of November where it became clear that “Platonic Love” was definitely going to end up in my 30 favourites regardless of what came out in December (which usually isn’t much). So given that it’s still November 2016 at the time of writing, I confidently predict that this song will be #1 on almost everyone else’s favourite songs list – or if not it certainly should be, because it’s fucking cool, and the only reason why my list will differ to most people’s on this point is that Snuper is about as nugu a group as your average k-pop fan is probably willing to stan. “Platonic Love” lifts the keyboard textures and general progression from a-ha’s “Take On Me” in much the same way that IU and Fiestar’s “Sea Of Moonlight” did back in 2012, and also manages to produce a similar quality song from the results, i.e one that is better than what a-ha came up with, due to better production and a much tidier arrangement. “Take On Me” had a great chorus and keyboard riff but it also had a lot of pointless wank sections in it that really didn’t add anything to the song at all, wank that you probably won’t even remember existed yourself without clicking my link and giving “Take On Me” another listen. “Platonic Love” turfs all of that random junk out onto the curb and replaces it with extra melodic parts and some short raps which is definitely the right choice, keeping the momentum of the song flowing. This song is almost complete k-pop perfection and the only thing going against it is how derivative it is, but that’s hardly an issue as since when is k-pop not 99% derivative anyway. This song is fantastic and makes me hungry for the days when 80’s pop was at its peak, it’s enough to make me want to visit the snank bar.
2. Berry Good – Angel
“Angel” was co-written by Joo Tae Young, a k-pop composer and producer who sadly died of leukemia last year, he was the same person who wrote Click-B’s excellent “Love Letter” which he then also rewrote for Berry Good. However there’s no sense in liking the song for a sentimental bullshit reason like this – people who hover over a recently-deceased musician’s still-fresh corpse like shit-munching flies to buy all their music always come off as virtue-signalling creeps to me, the time to appreciate and support people making good music that you like is when they’re alive to be thankful for it, not after they die and it doesn’t benefit them. It’s far better to like “Angel” because it’s just a fucking great song instead. Sure, that ascending pentatonic vocal run in the breakdown is a little bit painfully unnecessary (okay, so you can sing, we get it, now stop showing off and get back to the actual song thanks) but it’s not enough to wreck it and most of the other vocal histrionics actually fit quite well because the song has a fair bit of pace to it that makes a more intense vocal climax actually appropriate for once. The video also beautifully matches the theme of death and rebirth, and the entire song is clearly co-written as a tribute to Joo Tae Young. Hopefully this song can prove to Ladies Code’s songwriters that songs written after a tragedy don’t have to be boring, lame, turgid funeral marches and then we’ll have Berry Good and Ladies Code kicking ass in 2017, here’s hoping.
So what’s Kpopalypse’s #1 favourite k-pop song for 2016? Well it certainly was one that nobody guessed, but maybe that was just because nobody realised it existed, however observant readers would have noticed that it featured in Kpopalypse roundup, just like every other song on this list. Without further ado…
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1. To-day – Secret
No, this is not a song by Secret, calm the FUCK down. The artist name comes first in these lists and the song name comes second, after 29 entries you should have figured that out by now. Great, glad that’s sorted, now let’s get to the real issues: what the fuck is this song anyway, how come you’ve probably never heard of To-day before, and how did she beat everything else this year?
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Well, To-day is certainly a nugu, but not as nugu as you might think – she actually already debuted a couple years ago. To-day sure sounds like a fucking awkward as shit name until you realise that this girl used to go by the even more awkward as shit name of Oh!nle and debuted a couple years ago with a song called “Graduation“. Not many people noticed this however, as “Graduation” was a pretty unremarkable song, and thus Oh!nle was quickly forgotten by most and relegated to the dusty cupboards of k-pop archival lore along with Juniel’s early songs and all the other crappy IU clones of the day. Now Oh!nle has bounced back with a rebranding, calling herself To-day and coming out on SS301’s label CI Entertaiment (CI presumably stands for “court injunction”) with the coolest song this year. So what’s so great about To-day’s “Secret”?
When I first heard the light, breezy delayed-guitar intro to this song I thought “oh no, this intro is really nice but I can just tell it’s going to turn into some boring Coldplayish soft-rock mess like the last 26 solo tracks by Taeyeon, this is how all those songs start”. However I was soon happy to be wrong as the song quickly remained awesome and steadfastly refused to suck with bouncy light electro backings and melody after melody after melody – there’s so many cool melodic lines in this song that if it wasn’t for the “secret world” bit matching the song title you might not even know which part was supposed to be the hook. In this way it’s like a lighter, less synth-heavy sounding version of 2NE1’s excellent “Hate You“, although “Secret” is actually better than “Hate You” because it has more variety. Of course the real hook is that aforementioned delayed-guitar riff which comes rolling back in at all the important times, and the backings to this song are pure perfection, where nothing is over or under-done. The nugu-friendly Yongma Land video with Digipedi-esque props (I have no idea if it’s actually Digipedi’s creation) is also easily the best music video that anyone has ever created at that location, cleverly positing the amusement park as a benevolent yellow-smothered alternate-reality dreamworld where the laws of matter and physics don’t apply. I have no idea what level of the nugu dungeon To-day resides in today, and I doubt she’ll ever chance upon a song this good ever again, but that doesn’t make “Secret” any less awesome. If only web-searching up this girl’s SNS wasn’t such a complete fuckhole of a task, I’d thank her personally for helping save k-pop this year.
That’s all for Kpopalypse’s favourites list for 2016! I hope you enjoyed this list, but if it contained too many positive sunny vibes for you, remember that there’s always my worst of 2016 list that you can read instead! A very special thanks to all readers of Kpopalypse blog for supporting my writing in 2016, and Kpopalypse will return in 2017 with more postings!
It’s time for another episode of QRIMOLE! Let’s look at questions for Kpopalypse, and also the results of the end of year list survey!
Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view.
Let’s start off with the usual QRIMOLE selection of random ask.fm questions from Kpopalypse readers!
Survey results pl0x kthxbai
The survey to guess my end-of-year picks was easier this year, as 2016 was the first year where I had a full year of roundup posts for Kpopalypse readers to do their detective work on. This is what Kpopalypse’s 30 favourite songs of the year would have been, according to counting the votes of all readers’ #1 picks:
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The colours indicate the actual chart positions in the real Kpopalypse 2016 favourites list. Green is top 30, blue is honourable mention, light orange is dishonourable mention, dark orange is worst 30 (none above, but some below) and red is the #1 worst song. There’s no colour for the #1 best song as nobody who completed the survey guessed it correctly. White means the song didn’t appear in any best/worst list for 2016. Well-picked, caonimas!
Very accurate results from caonimas given the absolute wealth of shitty songs in 2016 to choose from that could have been included – I’m impressed!
The question where I asked you to guess the bonus OST track in the 2016 honourable mentions list, quite a lot of you correctly guessed Gain and Minseo’s “Imi Oneun Sori“. With so few OST songs anywhere of any worth, I guess it wasn’t that hard to pick! The other questions, where I asked “what song that I hate will you love” and vice versa, the results were so all over the place that they’re not even worth including – but Twice, BTS, IOI and Blackpink were all common selections!
Thoughts on Rotta’s photography? Apparently two Chaeyeon photographers have quit because of her Rotta calendar. Massive risk to my Chaeyeon fapping.
I understand that Rotta got into some controversy because he photographed some kids (in quite benign settings, with parental permission) and that was a problem for some people because he also works on k-pop shoots and adult model shoots. That’s a really dumb objection for people to have and it really shows how much the k-pop world is run by nonsense values and extreme naivety. For those who don’t know much about how the photographic industry works, here’s a heads-up because I work with photographers frequently and am quite aware of their struggles. The truth is that the photographic industry has been in serious decline ever since every man and his dog started owning Photoshop plus an iShit with 23587 megapixels in it. A (good) professional photographer will probably always be able to produce better results than an amateur, but these days a lot of media outlets don’t see the value in paying extra for a professional and are learning to make do with snaps from journalist’s phones, so it’s becoming harder and harder for specialised photographers to acquire regular work. On top of this, the equipment technology within reach of the average consumer is getting so good now that amateurs and hobbyists can create decent results and someone who “weekends” as a photographer for a bit of extra cash on the side of their main job can do the same job for less than a dedicated professional. Of course work in photography is still out there, but it’s more difficult to come by. Because of these factors, most photographers don’t get the luxury of specialisation. Very very few photographers will say “I only take wedding photos” or “I only shoot rock bands” if they’re professionals who are making a full-time living from photography. It’s essential for these people to stay in the game to diversify their portfolio and pick up whatever work they can get. That might mean shooting wedding photos on Sunday afternoon, shooting models in a strip club on Friday night, and shooting children for school yearbooks the following Thursday at lunchtime. Rotta is no different to any other photographer in this regard, he’s just really good at shooting the adult stuff so it’s grabbed people’s attention. He’s essentially being persecuted for being very good at his job, no doubt much to the secret delight of his competition, which is why you don’t hear too many people speaking in his defense!
While on ESPs website, I found a new extreme metal band Chthonic. Oddly enuff, singer is a congressmen in Taiwan and the singer looks like a pop singer/model, but all this metal led me right back to Kpop, Hyuna wore their shirt https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CuF9zOzUkAAvhSP.jpg Think she likes metal? Why do i ask? Many metal bands have tweeted in the past if Kanye and Kardashians are a fan of metal or just starting some weird trend. (Kanye wearing Testament, Slayonce merchandise in Slayers font, Slayer /Metallica shirts on Kardashians. Or is this some marketing insider campaign?
It’s true that metal fashion is fairly mainstream these days, but then we have to remember that so is metal itself. Many of the metal kids who grew up in my generation and previous now have families, mortgages and high-paying jobs. Some of them even have high-profile positions of notoriety, such as the singer from Chthonic, another example would be the current Indonesian president. When I was young, metal was something that kids got into partly to rebel against their parents, but these days they’re just as likely to get into metal because their parents were metalheads who turned them onto it by playing it around the house when they were children. I have no idea about the Kardashians and couldn’t really give a shit, and I wouldn’t be surprised if it was just fashion and they just thought the shirts looked cool, but I also wouldn’t be surprised if they had a legitimate interest in heavy metal.
I have a question: why do so many people, who used to watch porn, say that porn has ruined their relationships? Did they just take it too seriously or is there something else going on?
They’re deflecting responsibility – the fact is that they ruined their own relationships! They just want something to blame outside of themselves. Yes, porn can be damaging if you let it rule your life, but then so can anything. There’s a difference between the person who expects their entire romantic life to play out like a porn film and the person who accepts that porn is just fantasy fap material. Just like there’s a difference between the pot smoker who smokes it socially once a week or two with friends and the pot smoker who packs their cone the night before at their bedside so they can have a puff before their feet hit the floor the next morning.
Watching the above video certainly enhanced my appreciation of lemons.
Is there a noticeable difference between sound quality for headphones? I’ve read reviews saying one brand is amazing, other brands are garbage etc and just wondering if there’s any truth to it
The short answer is that it depends what you want them for, and that different headphones suit different functions. However QRIMOLE isn’t really about short answers so here’s a longer answer.
There’s three basic types of headphones:
Passive listening headphones
Active listening headphones
Studio reference headphones
Passive listening headphones are the type that you would buy in any supermarket or hi-fi store, they are for listening to music. They range from the shitty earbud things that come with your mobile device, to blinged-out fancy looking headphones that cover your entire ears (“closed” headphones) and cost a lot of money. They all have the same function which is for music listening. These headphones (if they’re any good) have a frequency response curve that makes music nicer to listen to. Usually the bass and treble are boosted a little and the midrange is cut a little because most humans who listen to music in western countries prefer these characteristics from modern music.
Active listening headphones are also for music listening but they are a little different in that they have active circuitry in them that actually changes the audio beyond just a differing frequency response. You’ll know if you have these type of headphones because they need to be powered by something, some need to be used with batteries while others take power from whatever device they are plugged into. The most common type of active circuitry in headphones is noise cancellation that blocks external sounds electronically using a process which I’ve described before here. Other active headphones provide “aural excitation” which is a specific type of frequency boosting that is used to make music sound more “present”, Beats By Dre are a classic example of this type of headphone. Whether they sound better or worse than passive headphones is much a matter of opinion, but my belief is that if the music is good and hasn’t been produced poorly then extra-special headphones shouldn’t be needed to listen to it.
Studio reference headphones differ completely from the other type of headphones listed here. The goal of studio reference headphones is not to provide the best listening experience, but rather to recreate the sound of the recording as accurately as possible. Studio reference headphones therefore aim for a completely “flat” frequency response, where no frequencies are boosted or cut when listening. These types of headphones always are expensive (if they do the job they are supposed to), because getting a near-perfect flat frequency field out of a set of headphones is actually a very difficult engineering task. Because the sound that comes out of them is “flat”, studio reference headphones aren’t much fun to listen to music with – the average listener used to regular headphones would find in particular that they sound “boxy” and don’t have enough bass for their liking. The reason why these headphones are flat in response is because by presenting an unchanged audio field, an engineer can make better mixing decisions. If headphones are unnaturally bassy for example, the engineer might think “there’s too much bass – I need to cut the bass on the recording to compensate”, and the result will be that when listening to the finished product, there is almost no bass at all because the engineer removed it all because they were listening while working using headphones that amplified the bass that was there to a large extent. However if an engineer knows the are getting a “flat” signal and they hear too much bass, they can say with confidence that yes, the bass on the recording is too loud, because these headphones shouldn’t be boosting the bass frequency at all. So they’re very useful for studio work, but if you’re not interested in a career in audio mixing, don’t waste your money on studio reference headphones because they really do sound like dogshit for general listening purposes.
Can u copyright “drum patterns.” Like could u just rip an entire drum pattern from a song and just make your own melodies n riffs over it maybe changing a couple things?
You can’t copyright a drum pattern, otherwise it would be basically illegal to play the drums, because everything on the drums is pattern-based and there aren’t that many patterns per style of music. However you can copyright the recording of a drum pattern. Creative copyright isn’t enforceable on drum patterns, however mechanical copyright is enforceable on the recordings. So you can’t just rip off someone else’s drum pattern by sampling their recording, because that’s violating the copyright present in the original recording. However if you were to play that exact same drum pattern yourself on a drum kit and record that, then sample it and loop it or whatever else, then this would be completely legal even if it wasn’t one beat different because you’re sampling from your own recording, and that’s actually how a lot of people get around sampling laws these days.
Currently taking an intellectual property class (in the US btw) and we discussed an interesting case: Bridgepost Music v. Dimension films. Unsure how much you know about it, but I think it may be another reason hip hop is so shitty now. The case essentially made ANY use of a sample (regardless of length) to be infringement. A lot of the golden age of hip-hop extensively involved sampling and if you tried recreating that in the US today it would be very expensive specifically because of this case. I’m sure there are other reasons why hip-hop is shitty today (like your Dr. Dre theory), but where do you think this fits into hip-hop’s deterioration?
I think this just fits into the existing framework of sampling law which came into effect in the 80s and 90s, I don’t consider it to be a new development at all. Sampling law from my understanding says that you must not take a “reasonable portion” without permission, which is defined as being something that is traceable back to the original material. So in other words, if nobody can tell, it’s legal, but if nobody can tell then you’re not going to get sued anyway, because… nobody can tell. So when you think about it, the “reasonable portion” law is just a fancy way of saying “don’t get caught”. Bridgepost vs Dimension doesn’t really change this!
Of course, beats like the ones created in the 80s and 90s rap music are still possible to make using the process I described in response to the previous question – create the noise yourself and then sample that and as long as you’re not making a “copyrightable noise” (such as singing someone else’s iconic vocal melody) then it’s okay. However this makes the process a lot more difficult and puts it a bit out of reach of people who aren’t musicians. To counter this, there’s a market for royalty-free sample collections, where musicians play common bits and pieces and waive their own mechanical rights (for a fee, of course).
I read your post about being a songwriter, and I got reminded of your other article about plagiarism. So, if for example you were to send a song, and the company decided to release it without your permission after changing a few notes, what would happen?
Well you could take them to court over it, if you wanted, and try to get some royalty out of it. This may or may not be worth it – if the song flops anyway you’ve wasted your money on court fees that you won’t get back even if they agree to start paying you, because a song that nobody listens to doesn’t generate royalties. That’s why you only ever hear about these disputes when it concerns a hit song. If someone steals your song and it flops, you weren’t in line to receive much in the way of money anyway.
Can you go through a good amount of the reasons why a lot of bands (usually Dance and Metal) debut in Europe and Japan? Usually these are artists originally from America. Well besides the reasons on how hard it is to debut in USA
I’m not so sure about Japan and dance music (that question will have to be one for Jpopalypse), but Europe has a really big market for heavy metal. The population density of Europe as a continent is also far greater than the USA, with more large cities condensed into a smaller land mass, and visa restrictions are also lighter, which makes it a great place to go touring. I know some friends in bands who do nothing but tour Europe constantly and return to Australia just to see their family every few years.
About that QRIMOLE question earlier about putting trainees in MV’s, could it be that the powers that be do that so when they debut and get a strong fan base, the fans obsessed with reading their profiles can go back to oppa’s cameo? Like if you check the comments for OC’s My Copycat, they’re mostly about trying to find Seventeen and Produce 101 members.
Maybe, who knows? Sounds like a plan but I understand that it’s not hugely common at least as far as backing dancers go. Mind you if you’ve got a cast of dozens of young boys and girls at your disposal and you’re trying to do a big ensemble production like “My Copycat” where the individual parts aren’t really all that demanding (and thus require not much special instruction) then there’s probably no good reason not to use them!
Oppar, I made the mistake of engaging with a crazy Taeyeon stan in the comments of that Asian Junkie article. I tried to reason with them, but they were beyond reason. Why do people identify so strongly with idols who will never meet them or give a shit about them?
K-pop is all about trying to get that “special connection” going between the listener and the artist. Of course this connection doesn’t exist in reality, but k-pop has become very good at simulating it to the point where people often feel like it’s reality. That’s why when scandals happen people get so suckered in by them. If you don’t put your faves on a crazy unrealistic pedestal, it will be less devastating when it’s revealed that they’re only human and make the same fucking dumb mistakes your high school friends did. More info here.
What is experimental music? People say fx, shinee and red velvet do experimental music. The last two doesnt really bring a new sound imo
I guess if all your listening diet consists of is Drake, Beyonce and k-pop I can see how something like f(x) might come off as “experimental”. The truth is that there isn’t really a set-in-stone definition of what experimental music is, but whatever it is, I feel that it certainly doesn’t emcompass anything within the pop music realm. I personally would liken experimental music with:
If artists are constantly in debt to their company does that mean the company managers, stylists, coaches, etc make more money than the artists themselves?
In a lot of cases, yes! The artist may have more income than all of them put together, but a lot of that income (often all of it) goes into paying back debt, so their “income less expenses” is zero. Whereas a stylist or a coach may earn very little but doesn’t have a debt so they get to keep all of that money. Of course they probably also don’t live in a dorm and have their food and expenses paid for by the company either… so it’s hard to say who is better off without getting a close look at the numbers and exactly what’s involved, but rest assured that the artists generally get stiffed in most cases.
The following are all responses to the “Hi! How are you?” question in the survey.
Oppar, I want to confess something to you. I think I might be bi, but I don’t have the guts to come out. I was sure I’m 100% straight but then I met someone at school who I’m attracted to. Of course I won’t confess to her or anything like that (she’s into guys for sure) but this has never happened to me before. Now I only think about her and how it would if we were a couple but the thing is other than her, I don’t have any feelings for a girl…I honestly don’t know what to do about it. I don’t want to disappoint my family or become a number-one-target of bullies at my school. Please give me some advice TT TT
Well first things first, does she feel the same way, or doesn’t she? It doesn’t seem like it, so if there’s no chance of anything actually happening between you two, why bother to come out? Now that you know you’re probably bisexual, there’s no harm in keeping that information to yourself for now. After all if you won’t confess to her, there’s no point confessing that you like her to anyone else, it’ll achieve nothing except maybe start gossip. The time when coming out is going to matter is when you meet another girl and they do have feelings for you, then coming out actually has some implications for your life beyond the theoretical. I’d ride out the current situation slowly and just see what happens. There’s no rush for this shit, there’s a good possibility that by the time you’ve figured yourself out, you won’t be in school anymore and will have some independence and therefore bullies and parental approval won’t be such an issue.
Do you have any tips that you can provide on beating a serious writer’s block?
All writing starts from an idea, even my crappy writing. When I can’t write it’s because I don’t have ideas, so I try and do things that are conducive to idea-generation. I’d suggest try and change the patterns of behaviour in your life somehow, something that isn’t related to actual writing. I don’t think it’s the same answer for everyone. It also would help if I knew what you were trying to write about, as the answder may change, depending!
Good despite of apparently suffering from global warming and the fear of the apocalypse led which is the real one not the kpopalypse one
I’m not sold on the idea of there being some kind of massive global apocalypse anytime soon. When I was growing up the biggest fear was a nuclear war between the USA and USSR and that didn’t end up happening. Of course I worried about it a lot but this didn’t change the outcome. About ten years ago people were saying that there’s only a few years worth of oil left and once it ran out humans would be headed to disaster, that didn’t happen either and I worried about it at the time but it didn’t make any difference. Fears of the end of the world for various reasons are classic “boy who cried wolf” territory. I’m not saying global warming isn’t real, I’m just saying it’s pointless to worry about things that you can’t control. If the planet gets hotter your life won’t change much except you’ll perhaps wear one less layer of clothes more often, and so will your favourite k-pop stars so look forward to that. Humanity isn’t going to just suddenly stop existing because of a temperature change… and even if it does, what are you going to do about it? Probably nothing, so just accept life as it comes, and try to enjoy the ride as best you can, because you’ll feel stupid when you look back on your life later if things turn out basically okay and you spent all that time worrying instead of having fun.
annoyed by your insistence in including this question in every survey i’ve seen on the site. seriously, fuck off
lol sucks to be you
To be honest lately I’ve been feeling scared as fuck. I started attending university two months ago and my first three big exams are coming up. I’ve got this fear that I will fail at all three of them. Meanwhile, I know that I shouldn’t be scared because I’ve got four attempts to take the exams if I fail. Yep, four. And still, I can’t get rid of this stupid anxiety.
Hopefully my university guide can help you. Four attempts! Holy shit you’ll be fine, come back to me and ask me this again after you’ve fucked up the first three, but I doubt you will. I bet right now you’ve already passed all three exams and you’re on a tropical island somewhere reading this while sipping a cocktail.
Met a childhood friend of mine yesterday and we talked about our old personalities. I’ve realized that I was such an asshole when I was younger as I used to pick on people’s physical appearances and be violent just for fun. I was totally like an iljin and I don’t even know how should I reflect about it.
Just like worry is pointless concern about the future, guilt is pointless concern about the past. You can change neither! Just worry about focusing on the things that you can change. You can’t change the person you were but you can be a better person today. If you’re still feeling weird, proceed to your nearest church of Rainaism and do ten Hail Rainas.
Ohmigosh, hi. It’s me, your lovely caonima. I have posters of your cat all over my room and I fantasize about you in bed at night.
As you rightly should.
Need encouragement…
I’m not well, I’m seriously contemplating suicide
Don’t do it! You spelled “contemplating” terribly and I fixed it for you. See, somebody cares. Also you’ll die eventually anyway so you might as well stick around to see what happens. There’s no rush to get to the same destination we’re all going to. Also perhaps seek medical advice (as opposed to the advice of some dickhead blogger who will probably just make you feel worse).
Hey! I’m great! Only 16 but already under pressure for university apps, plus IB is fucking me up. Any advice, oppar?
I’m feeling a little bit down these days. It’s my last year in high school but my grades are constantly getting lower which makes it impossible for me to get into a good university. I know I have to study harder, but I feel like I’m wasting my time for nothing.
Don’t stress. Remember the university guide – there are several ways for a crafty caonima to enter university.
I’m managing!! I’m nearing finals (two this week!) and it’s my first semester in uni and it’s weird af
I had a Japanese oral test today and I basically went blind during it while trying to answer questions so I probably got a solid 60%
Remind me to go back and reread your uni tips post
I’ll need that, I’ll probably donate another 5-ish dollars to you just for that if it works lmao
Anyway, how are you? Answer however you want (with pics of Raina), I don’t care, man.
Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view.
The last time I answered this survey I was on the brink of death from uni. Now I’ve graduated! I’m working up my portfolio and hoping to make $$$ from art commissions. I continue to drop by your blog/AKF occasionally, I’m glad your content never loses quality. Cheers!
I have no response to this other than “Great!” but I just wanted to put this here to show caonimas that success is possible!
I’m feeling pretty shitty. I’m a skinny caonima (think recent Lizzy, but slightly less concerning) and I just can’t seem to gain weight. I’m not sure if you can help me out on this, but I’m desperate at this point. Could you please help me oppar?
Don’t worry too much about it. I was the same, people thought I was anorexic when I was in high school but I actually just couldn’t gain weight. Eventually I decided that I didn’t give any fucks and just enjoyed life. Better to be a bit too skinny than too fat and having mobility issues. Later in life your metabolism will change and you’ll have the opposite problem so enjoy being skinny with no effort while it lasts.
After joining the kpop world last year, I was lucky to find your blog a few months afterward. If I never did, I’d be thinking mr removed videos are all real, vocal pedagogy matters, and many more things for perhaps a lot longer. Glad I found your blog earlier rather than later in the game. You do you man.
Cheers!
Hello. Today, I am very happy! Together with my housemates, we decorated the common room with tinsel, lights, snowflakes and hearts to celebrate Christmas. In the morning, I also had received several notes from my friends and I could feel the love emanate from them, which put me in a good mood the whole day! Lastly, I got to spend lots of time with the girl I like untangling Christmas lights and talking about various topics. In the end, she looked very happy that the common room looked so pretty and subsequently gave me a hug – and that’s all I wanted, really!
So, yeah, that’s my mood at the moment, and the reasons behind it. You probably think I’m a stupid cunt, but I don’t really care anyway, so, have yourself a nice day, and a merry little Christmas!
Actually this is awesome!
Hey. I’m doing pretty good, although I feel obliged to bitch about college or finals or something like everyone else does around here, despite having graduated in 2012. Oh well. I feel old.
Not as old as me when I get my survey answers back and there’s 100 of them that are all Uni stuff!
I’m good! I’m not sure if you care but just a follow up: I asked you for advice once about a guy I liked and it worked out! We are dating now and very happy. Thanks for your advice!
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Depressed and jobless. K-pop is my alcohol to run of my problems.
It’s a better alcohol than actual alcohol. Being unemployed kinda sucks but at least you have lots of free time, you’ll miss that when you get a job again, so try to find work but also enjoy being a bum while you can!
Pretty good thanks, as I’m about to enter a new chapter in my life where it seems very likely that I’ll get laid more often. I’m just wondering though, were you serious about rubbing your dick between a girl’s stomach fat rolls? If you were, what’s the best way to ask someone to do it without coming across as rude? I feel like suddenly doing it with no explanation would weird her out.
A lot of girls are embarrassed about their stomachs, which is a real shame, because a lot of guys (like me) find them attractive. Given that this shame women feel is unfortunately largely trufax, penis-on-stomach-roll action is therefore a fairly advanced bedtime maneuver which I wouldn’t attempt until a few months have passed and you know the girl fairly well. By that stage you’ll probably have a pretty good idea of how she’d react to such a move and therefore if doing it is a good idea or not.
As an aside this has to get some kind of award as one of the best questions I’ve ever gotten from a survey.
Feeling kinda shitty. I’m finding myself with fewer friends and I don’t know how to increase my social circle anymore. It was so much easier at uni. Even my coworkers don’t bother inviting me to their outings.Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view.
Then don’t socialise with co-workers. Find something that you’re interested in outside of work and explore that, and try to meet some people who are involved in that kind of thing that have nothing to do with your work environment.
And here’s some questions that were generated from my “free text at the end of the survey, write what you want” area.
Why is everybody’s opinion on Reddit shit? Do any of them bother thinking before they speak? The discussion posts have one decent reply at best. Also why are they so afraid of talking about ranking fapability? They act like they don’t do it, such cunts.
I assume we’re talking about Reddit/kpop here rather than general Reddit which seems a bit more mature. Reddit/kpop is prone to all sorts of strange behaviour that I don’t quite understand but I’m putting it down to a general lack of maturity perhaps? (This is backed up by their occasional demographic polls.) Other Reddit communities don’t seem to have the same issue.
Can you update us about your relationship with 15&Jimin?
She didn’t accept my Instagram request. I calmly accept her non-acceptance.
So I finally read your account of seeing 4Minute and have been thinking about it ever since — specifically Jihyun and Sohyun being all, “Hi, Kpopalypse! Great to see you!” and you reacting with understandable distrust. When I saw Infinite in 2013 one of the things that struck me was their seemingly real desire to connect with the audience — not just the fanservice gestures, but the way they (some members more than others) talked to the audience or kept looking out at the audience, despite their being likely exhausted (this was the New York stop, their fourth in the US, on their first tour) and nervous (this was also the show with so much pushing fans had to be rescued from the pit before they suffocated; I was well back of that and didn’t realize the danger at the time). I thought at the time, and subsequently, that it would have been understandable and fair for them to perform as robotically as possible and shut the audience out, and they didn’t. (It would also have been understandable and fair of them to go get blind drunk after the show, which, I’ve heard, is exactly what they did.) Reading your account led me to question my own memory — was I overromanticizing their behavior, because I’ve got so much tied up in affection for Infinite? Was their seeming desire for connection as staged as their dancing? And then I thought, is the more distrustful response necessarily the true one? To look at Sohyun’s gestures on stage from another possible perspective — Sohyun is in a country she doesn’t know and isn’t allowed to see, tired, bored, doing dances she ceased to find interesting two thousand rehearsals ago, and then she sees a random fan and smiles, and the random fan responds with joy: might not Sohyun find that rewarding? Maybe less so as she does it more and more often, the law of diminishing returns being what it is, but still, K-pop performers are asked to spend good percentages of their waking hours developing a skillset of very limited use, over which they usually have little or no creative control: doesn’t it make sense that they’d take some comfort onstage where they could find it? I’m not sure I’m right; this may be just a case of me performing confirmation bias. But I thought it would amuse you to hear how you made a reader re-evaluate. Anyway, thanks for your continued interesting writing! I hope you and your cat(s) and your loved one(s) have a happy New Year and a 2017 full of blessings!
Those semi-planned interactions with the audience are indeed part of the “performance” itself, and I’m sure it feels good for the performers to do that and get a little something back from the crowd with a “wow, he/she noticed me” look or whatever. Just like it feels good onstage for any part of a performance to go well and be appreciated. Just because the gestures aren’t spontaneous and the connection they’re building with the audience is illusory doesn’t mean that the performers still don’t have gratitude and appreciate the fans who come to the show and are part of that semi-interactive experience (well, some more than others perhaps!).
my suitemate I’m living with in residence is wonderful, but she also likes kpop, and yikes. i’ll mention something off-hand about how like, singing doesn’t really matter in kpop (it really doesn’t) because everything can get touched up on stage or in the studio anyway, so who cares, but she always jumps in with “but not (her fav group)!!!!” and damn. she also only likes boy groups. all the girl groups she kind of likes have shit music. sometimes i want to try and help her realize some things, but most of the time i just avoid talking about kpop with her. is there an easy way to get her to stop inserting how perfect-100%-pure-talent-no-extra-tricks-necessary her favourite group is into every (music) conversation? or do i just persevere and ignore that side of her? damn
There is no solution for you. Welcome to hell, enjoy your stay. Maybe try to get her to read my blog a bit? That’s all I can suggest.
Let this be a lesson to all readers – you’re better off like me with a boyfriend/girlfriend/housemate who isn’t into k-pop! Don’t rush to “convert” every person you meet!
Hey theres this guy i used to like so i flirted with him now he thinks i like him but his new hair cut looks like shit. How do i break it off without hurting his feelings?
Hair grows back. You might break it off and then he starts looking good again so be careful what you wish for. You’re going to hurt his feelings anyway by the sound of things so tell it to him straight that his haircut sucks ass and that if he wants any play he has to do his hair exactly as you say. Most guys are remarkably non-petty about such things so there’s about an 80% chance he’ll be really grateful for the information and do exactly as you suggest. You’re welcome.
What do you think about my fat dick?
Needs work. Daily Gain videos for you until you develop some muscle tone.
I don’t know what to do with my life
I would quickly like to ask for more advice, this time concerning by best friend. We’ve been besties since college, and she had always wanted to be an idol. She’s Korean-American, and recently got the opportunity to go to Korea and train in a really well known academy there that has a lot of connections. It’s a name everyone would know but it’s not a company, it’s a facility training people to be able to pass those auditions. She’s been at it for a few months now, and of course being a kpopalypse reader I know a lot about the difficulty of being in this industry, and also because she tells me a lot of her struggles. I am currently on the other side of the world, and I can’t be there for her the way I want to. I don’t want us to grow apart but I also want to help her succeed because she is an amazing singer and this is her dream! But I also don’t know how to keep her positive spirit from being broken by a cynical industry. Any advice on how to support my friend? Thanks.
There’s not a lot you can do except keep the line of communication open. Realistically she may not have a lot of time for you – or anyone, while she’s in the thick of that stuff. Also don’t forget to tell her that if she gets burned out on the biz and wants to give it up there’s always Kpopalypse interview!
Keep up the good work, pal. 3 years ago I knew nothing about kpop, then one day I randomly *cough* found one of your boobs posts. Now i’m à dedicated follower and à kpop fan. Thank you❤
❤
That’s all for this episode of QRIMOLE! Kpopalypse will return soon with more postings!
The Kpopalypse Awards is back! Are you tired of all the blah blah of regular Korean awards ceremonies? Then read on to see who was given accolades by Kpopalypse for their outstanding work in 2016!
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THE KPOPALYPSE “I LIKEY LIKEY DIS TEAR” KOREAN NETIZEN TEAR EXTRACTION AND PRESERVATION AWARD 2016
Sulli (ex-f(x)) – for a near-endless stream of selca joy
Yoochun (JYJ) – for absolutely nothing at all, move along everyone it’s not like anything happened, man
and the winner is:
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SULLI
Jimin, Tiffany and Yoochun all had scandals that were quite severe, that followed the usual scandal pattern, of which we all know the drill by now:
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However chief caonima Sulli went one better than this basic template, because she found a way to reset it into an endless loop. “What if I could do something where this cycle repeats and never reaches a conclusion that pleases anybody? Would that not fuck with the maximum amount of people? Would this not be entirely appropriate given that netizens are human garbage only fit for conversion into garden mulch?” she must have thought to herself. So when netizens started reacting to her selcas with insipid fake concern about her supposedly being mentally ill despite her obviously being quite healthy and the selcas resembling every other stupid photo that everyone in the world posts on SNS every day, Sulli made sure to keep posting more and more of them. She even candidly admitted that she’s riling people up for her own amusement. Look at that gorgeous smile, she’s having a great time.
THE KPOPALYPSE “I LIKEY LIKEY DAT TEAR” GLOBAL K-POP NETIZEN TEAR EXTRACTION AND PRESERVATION AWARD 2016
Lots of people in k-pop had scandals in 2016 that upset international netizens, but how many managed to piss off stupid people so much that the Taiwanese president started stanning her in defence? Let’s hope that Tzuyu has a bright future ahead of her and a long career in giving international netizens the shits.
THE KPOPALYPSE “I LIKE DIS LIKE DAT YEAH” K-RAP CREDIBILITY AWARD 2016
Take a good, long look and behold the new face of hardcore hip-hop. Right now nothing anywhere globally goes harder than I.O.I – sure, their cover of Salt N Pepa’s “Whatta Man” was unmitigated garbage, but in a near-impossible feat of musical magic and genius it was still slightly better than the ultra-shitty original. If I.O.I have the ability to actually improve on one of the worst rap songs of all time, surely they are the hip-hop legends that the world needs.
THE KPOPALYPSE “SHUBIDUBI SHALALALA URIDURI YAYAYAYA” CROSS-CULTURAL K-POP SENSITIVITY AWARD 2016
All the other naughty people in the list said “nigger” like the bunch of dirty racists they are, I bet they also prance around in KKK gear in the practice room and refuse to download interracial porn in their dorms while thinking up ways to rid the planet of black people. Shannon being far more culturally sensitive than those other knuckle-scraping philistines used the academically correct “negro” in public instead, because she’s very smart and educated. In a double-whammy of political correctness, she even used the current academically correct term when describing spasticated retarded fucking fruitloops, “special needs“. This makes her a better, more sensitive person than you, now we’ve just got to stop her from singing along to Beyonce completely and she’ll be perfect.
THE KPOPALYPSE “BO PEEP BO PEEP” AWARD FOR HIGHLIGHTING LACK OF K-POP FANGIRL CRITICAL THINKING 2016
K-pop fans everywhere all got upset about Jimin’s skillset not including such random things as “famous Korean person whack-a-mole” or “pin the tail on the independence leader”. Sorry but Jimin is a music industry professional and is too busy being hot, fresh and fly to participate in your games. As an Australian, I know who dickhead historical figures like Captain Cook and Matthew Flinders are, but don’t ask me to recognise the pieces of shit in a photograph or drawing. I probably couldn’t tell you what Malcolm Turnbull looks like either, most of these people in politics have a face as interesting as a Fly To The Sky song. The only reason why I recognised Tony Abbott is because of his striking resemblance to Gollum.
THE KPOPALYPSE “C’MON C’MON MAKE IT, C’MON C’MON TAKE IT” AWARD FOR STUNNING ACHIEVEMENT IN THE FIELD OF K-POP GENDER RELATIONS 2016
Gain broke incredible new ground for her personal career in 2016 by releasing a music video where not only is she not raped, there is not even any suggestion of rape at any stage. Sure, her overused blush makes it look like she’s been dating Kim Hyun Joong, but I’m pretty sure that’s consensual and she’s just into that.
THE KPOPALYPSE “T-ARA LOVE” AWARD FOR THE 2016 K-POP GIRL GROUP DEBUT ABLE TO GENERATE THE MOST HATE FOR NO PARTICULAR REASON OTHER THAN BEING ATTRACTIVE FEMALES THAT OTHER LESS ATTRACTIVE FEMALES ARE JEALOUS OF
Nominees:
I.O.I – supposedly hated for some scandals no-one cares about, but really hated because they dared to debut and show their faces
Gugudan – supposedly hated for some scandals no-one cares about, but really hated because they dared to debut and show their faces
I.B.I – supposedly hated for some scandals no-one cares about, but really hated because they dared to debut and show their faces
Momoland – supposedly hated for some scandals no-one cares about, but really hated because they dared to debut and show their faces
and the winner is:
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GUGUDAN
All the other debut controversies in 2016, although all complete bullshit nobody cares about, still actually had a very slim basis in something tangible, but Gugudan’s controversy purely boiled down to them “copying other groups“. When k-pop groups are becoming controversial for following their own tried-and-tested format and taking no particular chances, you know that k-pop fan stupidity has reached a nadir. This is the equivalent of a heavy metal band being considered controversial because some of the members have long hair.
THE KPOPALYPSE “BLING BLING JEWELRY CHAIN” 2016 AWARD FOR THE K-POP PERFORMER MOST WILLING TO GO THE EXTRA MILE TO PAY OFF THEIR TRAINEE DEBTS
Nominees:
Tao (ex-EXO) – fighting with SM for cash, and winning
Prostitution is a handy go-to occupation for many people who want to make a lot of money in as short a time as possible, such as people deeply embedded in organised crime who need to pay off debts fast, and k-pop stars… oh wait, that’s the same thing. Anyway, in recognition of this achievement Kpopalypse supports G.na and so should you!
THE KPOPALYPSE “IN MY EYES, EVERYTHING IS SEXY” MOST BUTTHURT-INDUCING “SEXY” VIDEO OF 2016
People got variously upset about all the performers in this list and their raunchy videos, but only Stellar had a video concept that had their response prepared in advance, specifically incriminating nosey, scandal-obsessed hypocritically virtue-signalling viewers as the catalyst for their antics.
That’s all for this post! Kpopalypse will return soon with the first roundup of 2016 and the top 10 most fappable MVs!
It’s time for the first Kpopalypse roundup of 2017! Let’s check out some new releases!
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Scan-dol of the week – Sulli (ex-f(x))
AOA – Excuse Me
The song is great but impeccably-styled BinocuChoa is the real show-stealer here.
Seventeen – Highlight
Some people expected me to take a huge dump on Seventeen in my end-of-year lists but they didn’t end up making any of them at all. That’s because they’re yet to do anything that makes me want to type out paragraphs of text.
Sonamoo – I Think I Love U
Sonamoo finally dump the yolo act and come up with their best song yet.
April – April Story
Well that hairstyle probably killed every uncle fan boner around the world.
NCT 127 – Limitless
Despite some silly vocals and even sillier visuals this is the best song from NCT 127 yet thanks to actually having more than one chord.
Mixx – Love Is Sudden
Why so slow and boring. Girl groups shouldn’t be legally allowed to debut with something this sedate.
TopSecret – She
This is more like it speed-wise, pity about the song itself being nothing much.
Varsity – U R My Only One
See that fucking backflip at the start? K-Tigers’ influence. Are losers actually still listening to K.A.R.D instead of the one co-ed group in k-pop that matters, K-Tigers?
BONUS SONGS
Cosmic Girls (WJSN) – I Wish
The usual pretty video and super-average song from this group.
Jun.k – Your Wedding
It’s jun.k.
Ravi ft. San E – Bomb
In the meantime there’s no chance of Ravi dumping the yolo act, unless it’s some coffee shop shit.
S.E.S – Remember
Garbage, but then it’s S.E.S so we all knew this before listening.
S.E.S – Paradise
This one isn’t any better. A few extra little keyboard stabs have been added just to hide the fact that it’s the same bullshit they were doing 17 years ago.
Take One – Nothing To Hide
Well he’s certainly not hiding any songwriting skills because he doesn’t have any.
Percent – Weekend
This video shows exactly how time behaves when I listen to this type of nonsense coffee shop bullshit music.
Ina – Rainbow
This could have been good but who the fuck thought that synth noise in the chorus was a good idea?
Akdong Musician – Last Goodbye
Only four months until Suhyun is 18. Just saying.
Jia – Who’s That Girl
Okay, maybe I was a little harsh on “Drip” because this song is fucking boring, at least “Drip” had a beat of some description if nothing else.
Seo In Guk – BeBe
Some songs you know will be rubbish just from the first two seconds.
BP Rania – Start a Fire
Funny how it hasn’t occurred to all the racist whiners that everything isn’t all about them. Maybe Alex isn’t in the dance routines because she doesn’t want to be in the dance routines. Now there’s a thought.
Bonusbaby – Urikiri
A rare example of poor mixing in k-pop with the chorus vocals pumped up way too loud compared to everything else. A bit of easing back on the vocal volume and this song would have improved.
AOA – Bing Bing
The magic tricks in the video are cool but the biggest one is the vanishing chorus hook. Where it went, nobody knows!
That’s all for this week’s Kpopalypse roundup – more next week!
Show me someone downvoting my lists and comments because of “offensive material” or “objectification” and I’ll show you someone with their own private k-idol fap folder who jacks it to their faves in private while virtue-signalling and concern-trolling in public. My website data collection always proves this beyond a doubt, and so do my anonymous questioneers:
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I know what you want. Here it is. Let’s get to it.
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10. Laysha ft. Nassun – Chocolate Cream
“Chocolate Cream” probably has some of the most memorable ass-jiggling in all of k-pop music video-making, and I’m pretty sure that Nassun only agreed to guest on this crappy song on the condition that he was able to be directly involved in the derriere flesh viscosity experiment that occurs at 0:22. Importantly, the girl keeps her ass fairly still while the guy slaps it – this is a valuable fap enhancer. When girls twerk it’s confusing to the eye, and slapping a butt in this context makes no sense as there’s so much movement anyway. A nice slap on a relatively stationary ass is better because there’s a greater difference between “ass before slap” and “ass during/after slap”, there’s a more solid impression of where the vibration begins and ends. Art is beautiful because it exists within a selective confined space – if the whole world looked like Van Gogh, Van Gogh would cease to be notable. Not that this is completely visually pleasing – the clothes in particular all look fucking stupid but the girls are popping out of them to the extent where the clothes don’t really make difference anyway. It’s enough to make you want to toss a zebra.
9. Wanna.B – Why?
A while back I was talking to a guy I know in the punk scene about what was sexier – fake boobs or natural boobs. I explained that I liked natural boobs more just to look at, and probably to feel as well, although I was unsure of this as I didn’t have any experience in touching fake boob. The guy replied that he liked fake boobs, because although even though they sometimes didn’t look or feel as good, he appreciated the effort of girls modifying their bodies to increase their sexiness, and that this indicated a better personality. “It’s like they’re willing to do that for people like ME, and I like that willingness to cater to my desires”, he said. I didn’t really fully appreciate this perspective until I got into k-pop, but now when I see a girl who looks like she has been through 25 applications of Luhan’s bone-enhancement cream like the girl in this video with the red hair and the cute chubby face that barely moves when she winks at 1:04, I can appreciate it more. All hail Bom 2.0.
8. Hyomin – Sketch
Forget about this video and what I think of it, let’s instead talk about the real question – why does the “normal” version of Hyomin’s “Sketch” has way more views than the One True Version (the “Sexy” version above)? What are the Hyomin fans not watching the correct version of this video doing with their lives? I think we need some kind of intervention to help these poor people. Maybe I can inspire them with this poster of Sailor Hyomin:
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Or failing that, there’s always Sideboob Hyomin:
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Let’s all hope together for a better world where the “sexy” version of “Sketch” has the most views, and where there is uncannily firm sideboob for all.
7. Puer Kim – Pearls
There’s a unnerving moment in “Pearls” from about 1:30 where I’m fairly sure Puer Kim’s hands come directly into contact with her boobs at some point. It’s a tense moment, because if Puer Kim ever does a “Dr Pepper move” it will surely be the greatest moment in k-pop history, as well as one of the most terrifying. First there will be the wave of heart attacks across Korea from fappers caught by surprise who pulled that one muscle too many. Then there’ll be the collective mass of several megalitres of sexual fluids from fappers being flushed into the sewerage system at approximately the same time, flooding infrastructure of major cities. After that will come the wave motion disturbance from Puer Kim’s rack shifting air particles of hitherto unexperienced volumes, leading to a butterfly effect of molecular disturbance that could result in chaotic events such as seismic ruptures, magnetic polar shift, and changes in the Earth’s rotation. People laughed at Puer Kim’s comically trussed-up tits in this video, but they should have been grateful – those boulders are constrained for your safety.
6. Stellar – Sting
It’s 100% Stellar’s haters’ fault that Stellar are still active, popular, and as sexy as ever, and Stellar themselves won’t let anyone forget it. Stellar’s video director has characterised their critics as either a bunch of hypocritically prying, prurient, rapey mouse pointers clicking where they’re not wanted, or annoying bugs aching for the ladies’ flesh until they get inevitably squished. The leering portrait of Clark Gable (a notorious cheater) underlines their true intent, and the rapid fire uncomfortable questions of the lyrics finish off the deal, making this conceptually as close to Whitehouse as any k-pop group has ever dared to come:
Judge as you wish, I am too tired
Your excuse and cheap lie
Your hesitating face
pretending not to know
Judas Kiss or What?
You say bullshit every time you open your mouth
Nobody hold you, soul-ri (i’m sorry)
You are beating around the bush
I don’t want to hear
It’s cold.
Time goes strangely too slow
It troubles my mind
Does my word make you feel something?
Do you have a guilty conscience?
Are you tired of our relationship?
You can’t hide. You show always
Does my word make you feel something?
Do you have a guilty conscience?
Are you trying to break my heart?
Your awkward smile
This is a song designed for self-hating Internet critics to secretly flagellate themselves to. The people who get on their high horse about Sulli and Rotta as if their moral questions have any currency in the real world, while simultaneously consuming product from an entire industry based on exploitation of teenagers with deep roots in organised crime and prostitution, pretending that their interest is virtuous and “innocent”. Stellar are chipping away at k-pop’s biggest, most insidious lie, but importantly, without compromising on the fap value that allowed them this inertia in the first place.
5. Ailee ft. Yoonmirae – Home
I discussed the virtues of fapping to Ailee in my worst of 2016 list where this horrible Luhan-solo B-side style song also appears, however I probably should discuss it some more, seeing as how Ailee fap is a fairly rare topic with k-poppers. Some of Ailee’s clothing choices here are suboptimal but she does have the courtesy of trying out many different outfits so on average she does quite well here with plenty of curve on display. Also Ailee is definitely a bit thicker than the average k-pop star, she’s certainly gained some weight so this makes me feel compelled to fap even more to show my appreciation before she inevitably diets and loses it again. K-pop stars are always on such a weight yo-yo because of the incredible pressure of the industry to want them to be skinny, combined with the incredible pressure of fans who want them to thicken up – many of these poor starlets who are susceptible to these pressures don’t know what to do with themselves. Let’s all send Ailee high-carb fan presents to help her make the right decisions for her life.
4. Hong Jin Young – The Moon Represents My Heart
If there’s anything hotter than Hong Jin Young, it’s Hong Jin Young in a cardigan singing Chinese restaurant ballads. I also really like the fake-ass parts in the studio where she’s talking to the audio engineer, I feel like these parts of the video are very exploitable.
3. GAPP – Do You Know Hip-Hop?
People will naturally whine about sexism in response to this post (like they comically did last year) so here’s one for the ladies. As a heterosexual man with very little self-awareness and fucks to give in general, I don’t really have much insight into what women are attracted to, but I’d like to think that if I were a female who was into guys, I’d be into GAPP. He seems to have everything – the hot denim look, the cool moves, and even a gun which is probably very sexy and important for you American readers. The great dancing starts at a high level and just keeps getting better as this video progresses, culminating in an amazing pelvic thrust move which I am unable to describe fully with mere words, you will just have to watch it yourself. Just rest assured that any blurring on the screen isn’t a visual effect – it’s you, about to pass out from all this sexiness.
2. Hong Jin Young – Thumb Up
If there’s anything hotter than Hong Jin Young in a cardigan singing Chinese restaurant ballads, it’s Hong Jin Young in a tight sweater and pencil skirt bouncing around to some shitty trot song. I also really like the fake-ass bits in the classrooms or whatever, I feel like these parts of the video are very exploitable.
1. Apink – Cause You’re My Star
Fucking hell the Apink girls all look amazing here. Finally a Christmas comeback that actually has a (later) use. Can anyone beat Apink in the Kpopalypse most fappable list? Probably not until Apink disband, such is their monopoly over k-pop fapping. However our #2 entrant got very close. To explain how, let’s take a look at the following dramatisation:
KPOPALYPSE WHITE-COATER COMICS PRESENTS
THE SUPER-TRUE TRUFAXUAL STORY OF HONG JIN YOUNG VS APINK
THE STORY BEGINS IN HONG JIN YOUNG’S STUDIO…
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LATER, IN A SCHOOL CLASSROOM NOT FAR AWAY…
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THE STUDENTS OF FAP GET TO WORK. LATER THAT DAY…
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THE NEXT DAY, ON THE SET OF HONG JIN YOUNG’S MUSIC VIDEO…
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A FEW WEEKS LATER HONG JIN YOUNG LOOKS AT KPOPALYPSE’S LIST DRAFTS…
It’s time again for Kpopalypse roundup! Let’s take a look at some new releases!
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Scan-dol of the week – Horan (Clazziquai Project)
Rain – The Best Present
Careful, Michael Jackson gave himself a heart attack by doing moves like that after he was well past the age where he could pull them off. Psy’s production credit means nothing, all he’s done is proven that he can make boring R&B shit just like every other producer in Korea if he wants to.
Hello Venus – Mysterious
Hello Venus still mostly struggle to get good songs but damn the video is pretty.
Dreamcatcher – Chase Me
The reconfigured Minx is back with one of the most rocking and uptempo songs k-pop has ever had. Most k-rock doesn’t go anywhere near this hard.
Day6 – I Wait
And here’s an example of just one of thousands of Korean rock songs that Dreamcatcher’s song is better than. “I Wait” is much lighter on the guitars, has clumsier dynamics and is about half the speed.
Yeojin – Kiss Later
If you’re wondering how Loona’s agency can afford all these constant high-budget videos it’s because they are well plugged into Korea’s military-industrial complex, apparently. For each aegyo move you see here about 157 people probably died, so make sure you enjoy it so their lives weren’t wasted.
BONUS SONGS
Jun.k – No Shadow
Yeah this one’s jun.k too.
Squared – Sweater
Not the most exciting video ever, but then it’s not the most exciting song either so I guess at least they go together nicely.
Wings Of The Isang – Dark Sea
Luna’s having an odd year so now that she’s done with Jambinai perhaps she can collaborate with these guys next and help them discipline their craft a bit.
Choi Ye Guen Band – Adult
Terrible. So you’re a band of girls, so what. Come back when you’ve learned how to write a song.
Yoon Do Hyun – Sparks Fly
No danger of any sparks here with this dreary acoustic ballad.
Shinhwa – Touch
A rare example of a song which actually needs less cowbell.
Trax – Road
And while we’re bringing back the singers who are nearly as old as me, here’s a Trax comeback. Pretty sad that these supposed k-rockers have been out-heavied by a bunch of teenage girls this week.
Kang Hyun Min ft. Kym Ye Ji – Memory
Wow, this video looks amazing. Of course they forgot to write a song or any worth, but it looks so good that I almost don’t even care.
Eyedi – Type K
There’s something uncanny about this one. Look at how at about 3:05 she stops singing the note but it carries on for about another two more seconds anyway. She just doesn’t seem like she’s all there. I’m tipping her agency is feeding her nothing but beans and whipping her in some seedy dungeon, watch for a Bace Camp controversy soon.
Year 7 Class 1 – Remember Me
The typical hideous sickening “here’s all our memories, we love you guys really” montage ballad bullshit that all groups do eventually, although usually not ones as nugu as Year 7 Class 1.
Mass Avenue – Confused
Not sure what’s more unusual in k-pop – a singing drummer, or someone using the Shure Super 55 correctly.
Zeebomb – Walking Last Night
This song is not zee bomb.
Aggie – Sullen
Now they have the Fender Rhodes doing fucking solos. Someone save us.
EXTRA SPECIAL BONUS SONGS WITHOUT PROPER MUSIC VIDEOS, BECAUSE YOU ALL REALLY WANTED ME TO SHIT ON THESE SONGS FOR SOME UNKNOWN REASON
BCHC – You’re The Moon And Earth
You always have to worry when an agency just cbf making a music video, its a tacit acknowledgement that they wasted their money just recording this.
L.U.B – 13 Months 23 Days
The other DIA subunit song is much the same. It seems MBK have swapped out songwriters recently because they’ve recently lost the touch of writing the mid-paced ballads that they used to get oh-so-right.
A.leean (Ailee) – Fall Back
Okay so here’s why this exists: it’s basically a no-risk stab at the US market for Ailee. The different sound, different name and lack of Ailee in the video all means that her existing Korean brand suffers not a bit if this fails, and it’s always been Ailee’s dream to give this a shot (remember that she was a US artist before she was a Korean one) so good on her for trying. I’m all for US market attempts, it’s just good business sense to try it if you are in a position to, Wonder Girls did the right thing at the time, so did SNSD, so did CL and so is Ailee. Song is shit of course but hey whatever, I’m actually more upset by the fact that she’s almost guaranteed to barely be in the music video, if at all. She’ll be a cartoon alien or some shit, wait and see – it’s because stupid skinny-obsessed Koreans think Ailee is now too fat to debut with her actual face and figure in western markets, not realising that it’s this very weight gain which makes her hotter than ever by global standards. What a wasted opportunity for more Ailee fap material. I guess I’ll have to settle for her recent absolutely outstanding (visually, not sonically) appearance on Immortal Song 2, which I will now present to you below. If an ambitious caonima wants a project, please chop all of the cringey “reaction shots” out of this video and reupload it so it’s Ailee and only Ailee. It’s so distracting when the footage cuts away to some dickhead pretending like he or she is really getting into the vocals (or actually getting into the vocals, which is even worse), it really just fucks up my rhythm completely, so thanks in advance. (EDIT: thank you caonimas!)
That’s all for this week – more new songs next week!
It’s the return for the first Kpopalypse Nugu Alert of 2017! Let’s check out some more Korean nugus!
Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view.
I’ve been saying for ages now that while k-pop has well and truly outshone its western equivalent in terms of song quality, willingness to experiment with styles, visual presentation and marketing flair (not that that’s difficult with the overall quality of western pop productions lately), Korean rock is still lagging far, far behind in all of these aspects. The main quality difference between Korean and western rock, at least to my ear, is that Korean rock just doesn’t rock very much. This was highlighted to me strongly last week when Dreamcatcher’s new song out-heavied everything else in the spectrum of my roundup, as well as just about every high-profile rock song from a Korean rock band that was released over the last few months, eclipsing many Korean rock bands both old and new. The entire history of k-rock just got its ass well and truly kicked by a bunch of girls in dresses who don’t even play instruments, and these limp Korean rockers should feel appropriately ashamed to call themselves rock bands at all.
Clearly, Korea needs a lesson in how to get heavy if they’re ever going to rescue their rock bands from the twin threats of Coldplayesque melodrama and coffee-shop warble that are holding the genre back. Therefore, this episode of Kpopalypse Nugu Alert is dedicated to extreme metal styles. Here’s hoping that a few more people see these bands and they achieve enough marginal success that a trend starts forming in the direction of metal. Probably not, but we can dream.
Method – Warrior’s Way
One thing that anyone observant will notice from watching a few heavy metal videos is this – heavy metal guys just don’t have that much money compared to pop stars. Your average guy or girl in an extreme metal band will tend to blow so much of their cash on their instrument collection that there often isn’t a lot left over for things like making music videos look all that spectacular. The solution tends to be lots of grimy colours, dark filters and general murky film-noir style effects. Method have got the metal 101 look correct, and have shot their video in what seems like the basement carpark under the FNC Entertainment building (we can tell it’s theirs because of the jellystains on the walls and floor) plus they’re sporting the traditional “if it’s not dark grey it’s dark brownish-grey” sepia-tone lighting effects, which you’ll also see repeated here with the other poverty-stricken videos on offer. However the singer seems a bit non-committal when he’s miming the song and the overall vibe as a result is more like Lucifer-era Taemin picked up a guitar and started noodling around rather than a legit metal band on their fourth album or whatever. I’m not sure how well the result works, but at least this song has Flying V’s correct and present plus some seriously legit guitar solos.
YouTube views at the time of writing: 198
Notable attribute: the singer hasn’t trimmed the string ends on his guitar’s headstock – careful, you could poke someone’s eye out with that!
Nugu Alert rating: extreme
Silent Eye – Dirty World Of Angels
One of the great things about being a metalhead in the late 80s is that before the different schools of metal vocal were formalised, there was actually more than one style of traditional guttural extreme metal singing. There were groups like Metallica and Slayer who had a rudimetary singing style of vocal, but more extreme groups had all sorts of different styles. Sure, there was the Cannibal Corpse/Napalm Death style growl that we all know and the black metal high-pitched style pioneered by Bathory which also became widely popular, but there were also plenty of outliers. Kreator‘s hate-filled screeching and Celtic Frost‘s “death grunts” sounded like nothing else, but perhaps the most bizarre of them all was Mercyful Fate‘s singer King Diamond, who combined a semi-operatic falsetto approach with more traditional guttural metal sounds, achieving the near-impossible and successfully dividing extreme metal’s unusual-vocal-tolerant audience. Silent Eye reminds me a little of metal’s glory days before too many rules about what was or was not a permissible vocal style were slapped on the genre, and the singer sounds in places like he’s trying to do King Diamond’s “growl” and “falsetto opera” vocal at the same time. I’m not sure how well the result works, but at least this song has Flying V’s correct and present plus some seriously legit guitar solos.
YouTube views at the time of writing: 5134
Notable attribute: this song made me write more about metal vocal in one paragraph than I’ve ever written about k-pop vocal in 4 years of blogging
Nugu Alert rating: extreme
Manixive – Catharsis
Of course, it’s 2017 and guttural metal vocals aren’t just a boys club any more. The flag-bearer of females exploring the joys of extreme metal grunting is probably Arch Enemy, but there are actually shitloadsofwomeninmetalgroupsdoingstuffexactlylikethatnow. Naturally Korea’s musicians have also gotten in on the act, and Manixive’s vocalist explores a variety of styles of vocal delivery, running the gamut from “arrrgh” to “uuuurgh”. The music here is more of a nu-school approach that the previous songs, but still remains just as heavy and uncompromising, containing qualities unlike those which most people reading this would normally ascribe to Korean music generally. Of course this is a good thing because exploring the diversity in Korea’s penny-pinching nugus is precisely what Kpopoalypse Nugu Alert is all about, and Maxinive’s pennies do indeed look pinched – the band seem to be unable to afford a good enough looking room to rock in so they’ve just thrown black fabric over the top of anything that doesn’t look like it should, which means just about everything in what was probably the bass payer’s mother’s sister’s lounge room. I’m not sure how well the result works, but at least this song has Flying V’s correct and present plus some seriously legit guitar solos… oh wait there are no guitar solo in this. Tsk tsk.
YouTube views at the time of writing: 4128
Notable attribute: even extreme metal in Korea is not willing to do away with pleated schoolgirl skirts
Nugu Alert rating: extreme
Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view.
That’s all for this episode of Kpopalypse Nugu Alert! Nugu Alert will return in the future with more nugus for you to enjoy!
Frustrated that you can’t get an accurate translation of trashy gossip articles that you shouldn’t even care about but you do anyway because you’re one of life’s losers? Annoyed because the information within your favourite stupid articles about the private lives of people whose lifestyles shouldn’t concern you in any way whatsoever conflicts with the narratives that certain k-pop sites want to portray, and therefore those sites won’t translate any of it? Irritated by the biased and subtle editorial spin that some translation sites add to their translations? Time for Kpopalypse to help redress the balance of trufax, with the Kpopalypse Language Interpretation Team Of Ridiculously Important Scandals!
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In this post, the Kpopalypse Language Interpretation Team Of Ridiculously Important Scandals will take a look at an Instiz article which dropped a load of hot super-true trufaxual trueness which nobody else is translating because nobody dares mess with their own narratives. The original article is here, and following is the super-accurate translation!
연예부 기자가 언급한 최신 연예 소식들 (트와이스, 마마무, 방탄, 무한도전)
THE LATEST ENTERTAINMENT NEWS, FROM AN ENTERTAINMENT REPORTER WHO WILL REMAIN ANONYMOUS AND STIR SOME SHIT (Twice, Mamamoo, BTS, Infinite Challenge)
스포츠조선 야구부-연예부
CJ E&M enews 방송팀
경력 8년 차 연예부 기자
아프리카 방송도 가끔 하심
This journalist who is leaking this amazingly important information that your life can’t do without has been working for Sports Chosun for 8 years which is like having a fucking degree from Stanford so you’d better believe all this shit is true you little cuntholes.
하면서 연예계 썰같은거 많이 풀어주시는데
한 네티즌이 보고 요약한 내용
I’ve been a journalist for longer than you’ve been alive, if you’re under 8 years old. Now listen to my word, the dick goes in…
마마무2명 방탄1명 애인있음
…two of the girls in Mamamoo, who are fucking… someone. They may or may not be fucking each other, but if they ARE fucking each other one of them is probably Moonbyul because just look at her new haircut, there’s no way that chick isn’t a lesbian. Also one member of BTS is fucking someone, dunno who but definitely not YOU so do immediately burn all your BTS merch and swear off your crazy “army” fandom of psychos. Notice how I put Mamamoo first and added the BTS part second almost as an afterthought because nobody really cares about BTS.
정채연 착하고 귀엽다고 트와이스 걸그룹중 최단정산 아직까진 편가르기없이 착함
I would actually bang DIA’s Chaeyeon, I like it when she does the Girl’s Day move in “Mr Potter“, that always gives me a fucking boner. Also, Twice have surprised everyone by basically becoming the next huge girl group, everyone thought SM would do it but JYP has taken over, we didn’t see that shit coming, although we did see JYP coming because his pants are transparent.
인성좋고 호감인 연옌: 방탄,전효성,정채연,고아라,부산행정유미,강동원,유주엄지, 서강준,ㄱㅅㄹ제외 아역배우들,푼수현,이해인 등
These celebrities didn’t piss me off or send me hate tweets during my 8 years of writing shit articles about them to milk their celebrity status for quick cash, so they’re okay by me: Hyosung from BTS, Chaeyeon from DIA (have I mentioned that I would bang her yet, because I so would do that), Yuju and Umji Dickinson from Gfriend, Lee Haein and Soohyun from Produce 101 and some actors and actresses that Kpopalypse doesn’t care about so I’m sure he won’t translate that part when he does his stupid article about this.
노홍철 무도 합류함 까칠하다고 함
Noh Hong Chul will return to some shit TV show he used to be in that nobody watches.
원더걸스 재계약 안 함
Wonder Girls don’t give a FUCK about JYP anymore. Wonder Girls actually had to do almost everything on “Why So Lonely” on their own because JYP kept jacking it to Twice under the studio desk, he was so turned on that he forgot he was wearing plastic pants and Wonder Girls could see everything, it was so gross watching the jizz running down the inside of his pants leg. The Wonder Girls realised that JYP is all about those Twice bitches now that they’re his new cash cow so they’re flying the coop hoping to end up with a label that actually gives a crap.
aoa 불화설 살짝 있음
AOA are starting to get the shits with each other a bit because Choa and Seolhyun have the hot bodies and are collecting all the attention and endorsements, Jimin gets all the “hey” lines and raps, and the rest of the members are out in the cold. Their agency did that crappy “AOA Cream” project to shut up the ungrateful ones who are being carried, but they still whine as if they’re capable of making any real contribution.
티아라 왕따아님 류화영이 나쁜년
T-ara didn’t bully Hwayoung. The fact is that Hwayoung is a cuntfaced fucking supermole of the highest order, and although Hwayoung didn’t get bullied, she certainly deserved to be. I would bully that bitch myself if I could, but she’s not relevant enough for me to write hate-articles about without my boss wondering what the fuck I’m doing with the time he’s paying me for.
개그맨들 실제론 좀 까칠함
Comedians aren’t that much fun to be around, they’re kinda cunts when they’re not onstage, which makes sense really because you would be a cunt too if you had to pretend to be “funny” all the time.
공유 김고은 까칠함
Gong Yoo and Kim Goeun are kinda fuckheads too. “Who?” you may ask, and rightly so.
전지현 한예슬 별로
Actresses Jun Jihyun and Han Ye Seul fucking hate each other. Not that anyone cares, but just saying.
남주혁 이성경도 좀 그렇다캄
More cuntfaced fucking cunts in the acting world who can’t stand the sight of each other, or anyone else for that matter – Nam Joo Hyuk and Lee Sung Kyung. The way these actors and actresses bitch around, you’d think that they actually earned money or something. Ha!
여자친구는 신인같지가않다캄 한명이 물흐리고 유주랑 엄지는착함
Yuju and Umji Dickinson are the only girls in Gfriend who are still reasonable human beings. The rest of them act like they have broomsticks up their asses just because they’ve got a little bit of fame and had a massive hit song. Fucking fame goes straight to these young bitches’ heads, I swear. Soon they’ll be like Mariah Carey requesting that people release 100 white doves at every show or some shit. Why do I work in this shitty industry, I hate my life.
I.O.I, DIA, Cosmic Girls and Gugudan all have issues with one or two cuntfaced moles on their team fucking it up for everyone else. Always the way with these sluts. No, it’s not DIA’s Chaeyeon, I said that she was alright and that I would shoot my hot load over her, do you really have that much of a goldfish memory that you don’t remember me writing this you dumb cunt? No more clues though.
ioi에선 센터급으로 잘해주는데 자기그룹가면 쩌리라고 투정대는 찡찡이 1명있다고 함
One of the most important members in I.O.I is never given any importance in her own group. The girl is kinda shitty about this and always whines but nobody really listens because fuck her, it’s not up to her, right? Bitch needs to know her place and just shut up and smile and do the dances like everybody else. Once again, it’s not DIA’s Chaeyeon, she pretty much carries DIA’s ass these days, pay attention kids. Also, I would bang her. No more clues though.
시크릿 송지은,징거vs한선화 결국 적자라고 함
Secret have finally stopped being a bunch of cunts to each other and have called a truce. I guess their menstrual cycles have finally synchronised.
전효성은 열심
Gosh, Hyosung has some great tits. Oh and she works really hard and is very keen to do well with everything she does.
아이린은 소극적이라함 방송보이는 그대론듯
Irene from Red Velvet is very introverted and much the same on-screen as off, I have no idea what the fuck she’s even doing in this industry.
예리는 정반대 활발
Yeri from Red Velvet on the other hand is a very bright, energetic person. Guess she hasn’t been in k-pop that long and isn’t savvy to how things really work. Give her a few years for SM to drain the life and soul out of her.
이병헌 여자많음 지창욱 작품마다 여배우랑 사귄다고 함80%는
Actors Lee Byung Hun and Ji Chang Wook are fucking sluts. They probably have AIDS. Ji Chang Wook banged 80% of his costars. Given that about 50% of his co-stars are male, he mathematically is therefore surely bisexual.
이휘재 별로 유아인도 별로
Lee Hwi Jae and Yoo Ah In are two people that you don’t care about, and neither do I, and they don’t care about you either. They are cunts, mark my word.
양현석이 sm에 열등감이 있다고 함 이수만이 회장님이라 불리니 자기 별명인 양싸를 못 부르게 함
YG has an inferiority complex, so you can’t use his nickname around him, because Lee Soo-Man’s nickname is cooler. Just in case you needed more reasons to think that YG is a dickhead.
sm팸콘때 yg팸콘을 급하게 같은날에 잡았는데 sm은 꽉터졌고 yg가 덜 차서 언론에 보내지 말라고 함
While we’re on the topic of YG being a shithead, SM and YG had big concerts on the same day. SM’s concert sold out but YG’s did not, so YG tried to get the media not to report on SM’s concert at all, probably by paying for hookers or something. Fucking dodgy, yeah? What a cunt. Ugly, too.
jyp가 수지를 매우아껴서 재계약할거고 민이는 안할거같대
JYP is going to keep Suzy but get rid of Min, because Suzy makes money whereas Min just makes Kpopalypse fap, and Kpopalypse fap doesn’t pay the bills.
Gain never fucked Jo Kwon. Knowing her, she probably tried to get him to rape her and he reacted like Louis CK. Also I’m not even sure if Gain is still fucking Jo Jihoon, he might have gotten tired of re-enacting The Human Centipede with her, or maybe he just decided to bang someone normal on the side, I’m not sure.
일급비밀 경하는 너무 빼박이라 함
You’re a cunt.
NETIZEN COMMENTS ON THIS ARTICLE:
Nobody cares.
That’s all for this post! Do you have any articles that nobody else in k-pop dares to cover, that could use the eagle eye of the Kpopalypse Language Interpretation Team Of Ridiculously Important Scandals? If so, get in touch!
It’s time for Kpopalypse roundup – let’s check out some new releases!
Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view.
Scan-dol of the week: Suzy (miss A)
2NE1 – Goodbye
This song might be shit like their last dozen or so but at least YG finally gave me the Bom Realdoll boob presentation that I knew she was capable of all along. I can’t be mad at him anymore.
Kris Wu – Juice
Spamming yolo-lite for crappy American film soundtracks might pay the bills for now but how is Kris going to get a job long-term with “Heaven” tattooed on his forehead. Better grow that fringe.
Luna, Hani, Solar – Honey Bee
Beyonce-cloning and sax riffs combine into a shitception.
Seohyun – Don’t Say No
This song has some of the best and worst styling Seohyun has ever had. She looks great at the start as the flourescent librarian of +10 boners but all the other clothes and makeup just looks like garbage.
CLC – Hobgoblin
Kpopalypse sidebar girls always have a great year. 2017 will be Sorn’s year, I have forseen it.
Laysha – Party Tonight
White shirts and bear sex MRS
Haseul, Yeojin – My Melody / Hyunjin, Heejin – My Sunday
Loona’s company release two fairly unexciting songs that are really not a bit different apart from some very minor lyric and phrasing changes in the chorus. I flipped a coin and played “My Sunday” on the show because it really didn’t fucking matter.
San E ft. Hwasa – I Am Me
“I am me” isn’t a very profound observation but it’s about as insightful as rap gets these days I guess.
Gain, Jeff Bernat – Pray
Waste of fap potential #1: I prayed for Gain to actually be in the video of this song but my prayers were not answered.
Kasper – Lean On Me
Lean on her all you want but don’t bother asking for an interview!
BONUS SONGS
Suzy – Pretending To Be Happy
More like “pretending to be really singing live”.
I.O.I – Downpour
Well, it’s certainly a downpour of something.
Yesung & Seulgi – Darling U
One of those songs that you know exactly how it’s going to sound just from the title and who is involved.
Park Kyung ft. Brother Su – When I’m With You
Meh.
Jessi – Don’t Make Me Cry
Watch at 1:58 as that guy makes an unauthorised grab for Jessi’s fake boobies. She should be careful not to void the warranty on those things.
Puer Kim – How Are You, The Love Of My Life
Waste of fap potential #2: I’m great, but I’d be better if this video had some footage of Puer Kim in it.
Palgou – Bed Trip
At least Primary’s alter-ego visage at least has a face on it or whatever, this guy is literally a triangle.
Dasom, 40 – You And I
Wow, Dasom looks 40 alright, what happened to her? I guess anal sex isn’t that good for you after all.
That’s all for this week’s roundup – more next week!
Hi everyone, it’s Kpopalypse back again with another fun quiz activity post! This quiz is all about lolita in k-pop, please enjoy!
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It seems that many k-pop fans are confused about lolita. What is a lolita scandal, exactly? When is a picture a lolita picture? How do I identify lolita concepts? How concerned should I be about lolita in k-pop? Where can I find good confidential hard-rubbish-disposal to throw away my k-pop albums now that I realise they are leading me into a life of sin? All these questions and more have been asked by caonimas. To assist, I’ve prepared the following quiz!
The Kpopalypse k-pop lolita-detection quiz of +10 k-pop lolitaness
Question 1: observe the following images and text. Which is more lolita? Click the correct answer.
Click here to select: Kpopalypse’s cat – a lolita concept
Question 3: observe the following images and text. Which is more lolita? Click the correct answer, it IS there! Important: don’t forget to leave a comment if you got this one right on the first try!
That’s all for this post! Hopefully you got all the questions right and learned something about lolita and shota concepts! But if not, don’t worry – you can do the quiz as many times as you want until you get it all correct! Kpopalypse will return with more posts soon!
It’s true that blog writing standards across k-pop blogging are not very high. Hopefully the latest writer for Kpopalypse blog can lift the quality bar.
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What follows is a year of my cat typing things on my computer while I was away from my desk. Enjoy!
hhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzI always tell women I’m an asshole who will treat them like shit instead, they dig the honesty. Keep their expectations low, then you’ll never let them down.
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78u712:24 AM 20-Jun-16712:24 AM 20-Jun-16712:24 AM 20-Jun-16712:24 AM 20-Jun-16712:24 AM 20-Jun-16712:24 AM 20-Jun-16712:24 AM 20-Jun-16712:24 AM 20-Jun-16712:24 AM 20-Jun-16712:24 AM 20-Jun-16712:24 AM 20-Jun-16712:24 AM 20-Jun-16712:24 AM 20-Jun-16712:24 AM 20-Jun-16712:24 AM 20-Jun-16712:24 AM 20-Jun-16712:24 AM 20-Jun-16712:24 AM 20-Jun-16712:24 AM 20-Jun-16712:24 AM 20-Jun-16712:24 AM 20-Jun-16712:24 AM 20-Jun-16712:24 AM 20-Jun-16712:24 AM 20-Jun-16712:24 AM 20-Jun-16712:24 AM 20-Jun-16712:24 AM 20-Jun-16712:24 AM 20-Jun-16712:24 AM 20-Jun-16712:24 AM 20-Jun-16712:24 AM 20-Jun-16712:24 AM 20-Jun-16712:24 AM 20-Jun-16712:24 AM 20-Jun-16712:24 AM 20-Jun-16712:24 AM 20-Jun-16712:24 AM 20-Jun-16712:24 AM 20-Jun-16712:24 AM 20-Jun-16712:24 AM 20-Jun-16712:24 AM 20-Jun-16712:24 AM 20-Jun-16712:24 AM 20-Jun-16712:24 AM 20-Jun-16712:24 AM 20-Jun-16712:24 AM 20-Jun-16712:24 AM 20-Jun-16712:24 AM 20-Jun-16712:24 AM 20-Jun-16712:24 AM 20-Jun-16712:24 AM 20-Jun-16712:24 AM 20-Jun-16712:24 AM 20-Jun-16712:24 AM 20-Jun-16712:24 AM 20-Jun-16712:24 AM 20-Jun-16712:24 AM 20-Jun-16712:24 AM 20-Jun-16712:24 AM 20-Jun-16712:24 AM 20-Jun-16712:24 AM 20-Jun-16712:24 AM 20-Jun-16712:24 AM 20-Jun-16712:24 AM 20-Jun-16712:24 AM 20-Jun-16712:24 AM 20-Jun-16712:24 AM 20-Jun-16712:24 AM 20-Jun-16712:24 AM 20-Jun-16712:24 AM 20-Jun-16712:24 AM 20-Jun-16712:24 AM 20-Jun-16712:24 AM 20-Jun-16712:24 AM 20-Jun-16712:24 AM 20-Jun-16712:24 AM 20-Jun-16712:24 AM 20-Jun-16712:24 AM 20-Jun-16712:24 AM 20-Jun-16712:24 AM 20-Jun-16712:24 AM 20-Jun-16712:24 AM 20-Jun-16712:24 AM 20-Jun-16712:24 AM 20-Jun-16712:24 AM 20-Jun-16712:24 AM 20-Jun-16712:24 AM 20-Jun-16712:24 AM 20-Jun-16712:24 AM 20-Jun-16712:24 AM 20-Jun-16712:24 AM 20-Jun-16712:24 AM 20-Jun-16712:24 AM 20-Jun-16712:24 AM 20-Jun-16712:24 AM 20-Jun-16712:24 AM 20-Jun-16712:24 AM 20-Jun-16712:24 AM 20-Jun-16712:24 AM 20-Jun-16712:24 AM 20-Jun-16712:24 AM 20-Jun-16712:24 AM 20-Jun-16712:24 AM 20-Jun-16712:24 AM 20-Jun-16712:24 AM 20-Jun-16712:24 AM 20-Jun-16712:24 AM 20-Jun-16712:24 AM 20-Jun-16712:24 AM 20-Jun-16712:24 AM 20-Jun-16712:24 AM 20-Jun-16712:24 AM 20-Jun-16712:24 AM 20-Jun-16712:24 AM 20-Jun-16712:24 AM 20-Jun-16712:24 AM 20-Jun-16712:24 AM 20-Jun-16712:24 AM 20-Jun-16712:24 AM 20-Jun-16712:24 AM 20-Jun-16712:24 AM 20-Jun-16712:24 AM 20-Jun-16712:24 AM 20-Jun-16712:24 AM 20-Jun-16712:24 AM 20-Jun-16712:24 AM 20-Jun-16712:24 AM 20-Jun-16712:24 AM 20-Jun-16712:24 AM 20-Jun-16712:24 AM 20-Jun-16712:24 AM 20-Jun-16712:24 AM 20-Jun-16712:24 AM 20-Jun-16712:24 AM 20-Jun-16712:24 AM 20-Jun-16712:24 AM 20-Jun-16712:24 AM 20-Jun-16712:24 AM 20-Jun-16712:24 AM 20-Jun-16712:24 AM 20-Jun-16712:24 AM 20-Jun-16712:24 AM 20-Jun-16712:24 AM 20-Jun-16712:24 AM 20-Jun-16712:24 AM 20-Jun-16712:24 AM 20-Jun-16712:24 AM 20-Jun-16712:24 AM 20-Jun-16712:24 AM 20-Jun-16712:24 AM 20-Jun-16712:24 AM 20-Jun-16712:24 AM 20-Jun-16712:24 AM 20-Jun-16712:24 AM 20-Jun-16712:24 AM 20-Jun-16712:24 AM 20-Jun-16712:24 AM 20-Jun-16712:24 AM 20-Jun-16712:24 AM 20-Jun-16712:24 AM 20-Jun-16712:24 AM 20-Jun-16712:24 AM 20-Jun-16712:24 AM 20-Jun-16712:24 AM 20-Jun-16712:24 AM 20-Jun-16712:24 AM 20-Jun-16712:24 AM 20-Jun-16712:24 AM 20-Jun-16712:24 AM 20-Jun-16712:24 AM 20-Jun-16712:24 AM 20-Jun-16712:24 AM 20-Jun-16712:24 AM 20-Jun-16712:24 AM 20-Jun-16712:24 AM 20-Jun-16712:24 AM 20-Jun-16712:24 AM 20-Jun-16712:24 AM 20-Jun-16712:25 AM 20-Jun-16712:25 AM 20-Jun-16712:25 AM 20-Jun-16712:25 AM 20-Jun-16712:25 AM 20-Jun-16712:25 AM 20-Jun-16712:25 AM 20-Jun-16712:25 AM 20-Jun-166deswaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaattttttrgfrgfrgfrgfrgfrgfrgfrgfrgfrgfrgfrgfrgfrgfrgfrgfrgfrgfrgfrgfrgfrgfrgfrgfrgfrgfrgfrgfrgfrgfrgfrgfrgfrgfrgfrgfrgfrgfrgfrgfrgfrgfrgfrgfrgfrgfrgfrgfrgfrgfrgfrgfrgfrgfrgfrgfrgfrgfrgfrgfrgfrgfrgfrgfrgfrgfrgfrgfrgfrgfrgfrgfrgfrgfrgfrgfrgfrgfrgfrgfrgfrgfrgfrgfrgfrgfrgfrgfrgfrgfrgfrgfrgfrgfrgfrgfrgfrgfrgfrgfrgfrgfrgfrgfrgfrgfrgfrgfrgfrgfrgfrgfrgfrgfrgfrgfrgfrgfrgfrgfrgfrgfrgfrgfrgfrgfrgfrgfrgfrgfrgfrgfrgfrgfrgfrgfrgfrgfrgfrgfrgfrgfrgfrgfrgfrgfrgfrgfrgfrgfrgfrgfrgfrgfrgfrgfrgfrgfrgfrgfrgfrgf2
56 ,rtgfrtgf2:19 AM 26-Jun-16rtgfrtgfrtgfrtgfrtgfrtgfrtgfrtgfrtgfrtgfrtgfrtgfrtgfrtgfrtgfrtgfrtgfrtgfrtgfrtgfrtgfrtgfrtgfrtgfrtgfrtgfrtgfrtgfrtgfrtgf2:19 AM 26-Jun-162:19 AM 26-Jun-162:19 AM 26-Jun-162:19 AM 26-Jun-162:19 AM 26-Jun-162:19 AM 26-Jun-162:19 AM 26-Jun-162:19 AM 26-Jun-162:19 AM 26-Jun-162:19 AM 26-Jun-162:19 AM 26-Jun-162:19 AM 26-Jun-162:19 AM 26-Jun-162:19 AM 26-Jun-162:19 AM 26-Jun-162:19 AM 26-Jun-162:19 AM 26-Jun-162:19 AM 26-Jun-162:19 AM 26-Jun-162:19 AM 26-Jun-162:19 AM 26-Jun-162:19 AM 26-Jun-162:19 AM 26-Jun-162:19 AM 26-Jun-162:19 AM 26-Jun-162:19 AM 26-Jun-162:19 AM 26-Jun-162:19 AM 26-Jun-162:19 AM 26-Jun-162:19 AM 26-Jun-162:19 AM 26-Jun-162:19 AM 26-Jun-162:19 AM 26-Jun-162:19 AM 26-Jun-162:19 AM 26-Jun-162:19 AM 26-Jun-162:19 AM 26-Jun-162:19 AM 26-Jun-162:19 AM 26-Jun-162:19 AM 26-Jun-162:19 AM 26-Jun-162:19 AM 26-Jun-162:19 AM 26-Jun-162:19 AM 26-Jun-16p;p;p;p;p;p;p;p;p;p;p;p;p;p;p;p;p;p;p;p;p;p;p;p;p;p;p;p;p;p;p;p;p;p;p;p;p;p;p;p;p;p;p;p;p;p;p;p;p;p;p;p;p;p;p;p;p;p;p;p;p;p;p;p;p;p;p;p;p;p;p;p;p;p;p;p;p;p;p;p;p;p;p;p;p;p;p;p;p;p;p;p;p;p;p;p;p;p;p;p;p;p;p;p;p;p;p;p;p;p;p;p;p;p;p;p;p;p;p;p;p;p;p;p;p;p;p;p;p;p;p;p;p;p;p;p;p;p;p;p;p;p;p;p;p;p;p;p;p;p;p;p;p;p;p;p;p;p;p;p;p;p;p;p;p;p;p;p;p;p;p;p;p;p;p;p;p;p;p;p;p;p;p;p;p;p;p;p;p;p;p;p;p;p;p;p;p;p;p;p;p;[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[rtgfrtgfrtgfrtgfrtgfrtgfrtgfrtgfrtgfrtgfrtgfrtgfrtgfrtgfrtgfrtgfrtgfrtgfrtgfrtgfrtgfrtgfrtgfrtgfrtgfrtgfrtgfrtgfrtgfrtgfrtgfrtgfrtgfrtgfrtgfrtgfrtgfrtgfrtgfrtgfrtgfrtgfrtgfrtgfrtgfrtgfrtgfrtgfrtgfrtgfrtgfrtgfrtgfrtgfrtgfrtgfrtgfrtgfrtgfrtgfrtgfrtgfrtgfrtgfrtgfrtgfrtgfrtgfrtgfrtgfrtgfrtgfrtgfrtgfrtgfrtgfrtgfrtgfrtgfrtgfrtgfrtgfrtgfrtgfrtgfrtgfrtgfrtgfrtgfrtgfrtgfrtgfrtgfrtgfrtgfrtgfrtgfrtgfrtgfrtgfrtgfrtgfrtgfrtgfrtgfrtgfrtgfrtgfrtgfrtgfrtgfrtgfrtgfrtgfrtgfrtgfrtgfrtgfrtgfrtgfrtgfrtgfrtgfrtgfrtgfrtgfrtgfrtgfrtgfrtgfrtgfrtgfrtgfrtgfrtgfrtgfrtgfrtgfrtgfrtgfrtgfrtgfrtgfrtgfrtgfrtgfrtgfrtgfrtgfrtgfrtgfrtgfrtgfrtgfrtgfrtgfrtgfrtgfrtgfrtgfrtgfrtgfrtgfrtgfrtgfrtgfrtgfrtgfrtgfrtgfrtgfrtgfrtgfrtgfrtgfrtgfrtgfrtgfrtgfrtgfrtgfrtgfrtgfrtgfrtgfrtgfrtgfrtgfrtgfrtgfrtgfrtgfrtgfrtgfrtgfrtgfrtgfrtgfrtgfrtgfrtgfrtgfrtgfrtgfrtgfrtgfrtgfrtgfrtgfrtgfrtgfrtgfrtgfrtgfrtgfrtgfrtgfrtgfrtgfrtgfrtgfrtgfrtgfrtgfrtgfrtgfrtgfrtgfrtgfrtgfrtgfrtgfrtgfrtgfrtgfrtgfrtgfrtgfrtgfrtgfrtgfrtgfrtgfrtgfrtgfrtgfrtgfrtgfrtgfrtgfrtgfrtgfrtgfrtgfrtgfrtgfrtgfrtgfrtgfrtgfrtgfrtgfrtgfrtgfrtgfrtgfrtgfrtgfrtgfrtgfrtgfrtgf565656565656565656565656565656565656565656565656565656565656565656565656565656565656565656565656rtgfrtgfrtgfrtgfrtgfrtgfrtgfrtgfrtgfrtgf565656565656565656565656565656565656565656565656565656565656565656565656565656565656565656565656565656565656565656565656565656565656rtgf565656565656565656565656565656565656565656565656565656565656565656565656565656565656565656565656565656565656565656565656565656565656rtgf
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This post ends in December 2016 when I swapped over to a fancy new computer desk where the keyboard slides under the desktop, so my cat’s blogging career is over for the time being. Hopefully you enjoyed this post and learned some important life lessons!
This seems like it got hyped to high heaven but perhaps that’s because nothing else came out this week (as you’ll see below). Anyway it’s pretty average but watching Suzy try to be “sexy” sure is funny.
4x – Secret Night
This video came out last year but the actual song release was only recently. The perils of nugudom is that it’s hard to synchronise that sort of shit. Anyway this is very T-ara-ish and that’s never a bad thing.
Masta Wu – ft. Dok2 – Shit
You know it’s been a bad week in k-pop when some yoloshit song with Dok2 on it is actually one of the best tracks.
Jc Jieun, Tae Hae Young, Dasona – Non Chuck (ft. Oh Yumi)
One of these girls is or was in Miss $ just in case you care. Didn’t think so.
I ft. Tiger JK – I Wish
Everyone complained that I missed this song last week but it has never been the aim of roundup – and never will be – to catch everything in a week. Also her name is a bit fucking unsearchable so that kinda makes it hard.
SHINee – Get The Treasure
That woman holding the gun moved her arm at 1:02, tsk tsk RUIN IT WHY DON’T YOU
BONUS SHIT BALLAD SEGMENT
When I say that a dozen fucking boring smooth disgusting ballad/R&B shit songs come out every week in k-pop, I’m not even fucking joking or exaggerating. Here, let me prove it to you.
Melody Day ft. Jung Ill Hoon – You Seem Busy
This is #1. Too busy to listen to this crap, that’s for sure, but I do it anyway as a free no-strings-attached community service to my readers.
#3, I expected something at least a little upbeat here. I guess it must be a lawn bowls club.
Kebee ft. Brother Su – My Foreigner
#4, more pure garbage
Sam Kim, Loco – Think About Chu
#5. Years ago I was at someone’s house party and all these hipsters were actually jamming to Spearhead. It was fucking sad. Michael Franti is a fucking twit. Go dance off a bridge you cunt.
Cheetah ft. Hanhae – Blurred Lines
#6. Cheetah is always wasted, without fail. Maybe she can rap but it’s not worth a damn if she keeps choosing weak, nothingy beats. Imagine her going over Jimin’s “Puss” beat. Cheetah needs to stop fucking with R&B and do an underground hip-hop mixtape. Mind you even then she’d probably pick only the worst trap garbage to rap over. Everything by Cheetah is like listening to Kerry King play jazz.
Dynamic Duo, Chen – Nosedive
#7. Dynamic Duo have G-Dragon’s problem. They’re great when they want to be great but their music taste is so shit these days that they never achieve more than 10% of what they’re capable of.
Punch – When My Loneliness Calls You
#8. Okay this is for a shit OST and I usually leave those out but it’s also one of the last SM station releases before that project finally winds up so I thought it might be of interest…. who am I kidding, you don’t care and neither do I.
Only You – I’d Rather Break Up
#9. I’d rather break up too. Let’s just be friends. In fact, don’t call me, I’ll call you.
Gallant, Tablo & Eric Nam – Cave Me In
#10. Where’s Tajinyo when you really need them.
Ryan ft. Addy – Don’t Tell Me Why
#11. This k-pop furry romance isn’t as terrifying as TVXQ’s “Balloons” but it’s still some shit you don’t want to watch.
Hertz Analog – It’s Been A Long Time
And here’s #12. Told you so. A dozen boring shits like this each and every week from Korea, without fail.
That’s all for this week – more new songs next week!
It’s the return of QRIMOLE! Read on as Kpopalypse answers more tricky questions from readers!
Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view.
Lots of musical caonimas have been using the opportunity to ask Kpopalypse about all facets of music. Keep it up, QRIMOLE is here for you!
I need advice: I wanted to make a K-pop dance cover team at my campus where the goal would be to learn and film routines. I invited people who I KNEW are good dancers as a core, because our uni requires a min. of 5 to start a club. However, some of these people invited their friends into the group who I feel have a bigger interest in the fan culture than the dancing aspect. It really impacted our first rehearsal due to them not trying to put in the same effort as the others, and it’s also awkward that I don’t know these people. I want to have fun filming covers and teaching dances, not teach people how to stay engaged. I want to voice that I want a reliable team and not a group that people can come into whenever and just screw around without trying to improve. I want a group with consistent makeup so that I can know people. I feel like I want to do a try-out, but I think I’d feel kind of slimy kicking people who already feel like they’re in the group out. I never said whether I’d like it to be an open or closed club, but do you think I’d be wrong to say I want people to be at a certain level/cap how many ppl there are?
Keep your existing club, as a way for like-minded people to muck-around and have fun with dance and k-pop culture. Use this existing club as a way to gauge people’s abilities. Recruit people from this club who have aptitude and willingness into a more “hardcore” side club with closed membership where there are strict rules. Now you get the best of both worlds without pissing anyone off.
Are 9-42 strings on 25.5 guitars ok for E down to occasional D std tuning? I may not be advanced strength enough to use 10s and don’t know how long it would take to reach there. EVH i read uses 9s on Eb. And what are u using ? thanks. I still want to retain ability to learn Scorpions “No One Like You” bending.
I usually use 10-46 but that’s mainly because they’re easiest/cheapest to get and it’s what guitars are usually strung with on a shop floor, so I can change strings on a new guitar without necessarily needing a set-up straight away (although I often end up needing one anyway). Also I’ve just gotten used to that particular string gauge. Sometimes I string 9-42 but not very often, and I have one electric guitar where I sometimes use 11-52 or 11-56 (the one in this video). It’s fine to use 9-42 in D tuning, but having said that, being able to execute string bending is less about raw strength and more about correct muscle co-ordination. Also keep in mind tuning down to D standard tuning will make your strings slacker so they’ll be a lot easier to bend anyway, you probably won’t even need the lighter strings.
Does it really matter what political views a taxi service agrees with? I don’t agree w/what Trump says but ..People are boycotting Uber because the co. supports Trump. I’m like “who cares”? The driver isn’t gonna try to convert you (IF he’s a Trump supporter). Same goes for Chick Fil A. They are a fast food joint. Later people found out that the owner doesn’t care for abortions. He doesn’t advertise or deny any customers. Is there a reason to stop eating there? I don’t understand SJWs. I’m thinking, I probably won’t agree with 90% of political views or religious from most companies products I use. If i were to boycott every one of them, I’d be naked in a unclaimed forest living off the land. I guess in these days you shouldn’t make known your beliefs.
This is why I always find the obsession k-pop fans have with their idols being virtuous good people to be weird. If I went through my music collection (k-pop and other – and the “other” far outweighs the k-pop even after years of collecting it) and stopped listening to all the artists I found to have political or moral disagreements with, I literally wouldn’t have anything left. Once I reached a certain age I realised that it was a waste of time to try and get others to conform to how I think, or to try and select friends, persons of interest etc by trying to align political beliefs. I think people get so heated because they’re trying to influence others’ opinions, but by shutting out everyone who you might disagree with, the opposite effect actually happens – the people who you’d like to influence just get pushed further away and stop listening to you completely. This effect is covered in more detail in my Tzuyu fanfic.
Been practicing a few hrs a day on music comp/theory and piano. So my Mom comes in my room to yell at me to stop learning music and learn Viet (native language). I actually do, but whenever I speak it wrong she just scolds me and calls me a dipshit and good for trash in front of everyone. Don’t you think if she was nice and patient and I did things on my own free will I’d be good at it? Maybe i only associate viet with her yelling at me in public. How would u reason with her?
Not everybody is lucky enough to have Boram for a mother, unfortunately. I don’t think your mother is suddenly going to change her whole personality and methodology of raising her offspring overnight. Depending on your age, I wouldn’t bother reasoning with her, instead I’d just learn how to follow my own path in life without caring about parental disapproval. Obviously while you’re under the same roof she still has some say in your life but I’d work towards changing that situation when you can, as you get older and so does she her grip on your life won’t be as strong, you’ll have more independence. Why not set a precedent now by sticking to your own study schedule instead of your mother’s? It might cause some friction but the payoff is that she learns she can’t just bully you and get what she wants every time.
U said u have Pro Tools. Does the pitch software work in real time? I want to play a guitar downshifted to B without having to retune. Floyd rose here.
Yes but don’t do it that way, it won’t sound as good. Retune your guitar you lazy ass.
I didn’t ask this question but just curious as to why is it that it won’t sound as good? I’m surprised that there isn’t a way to make this possible?
Pitch-shifted instruments tend to sound pitch-shifted. If the shift is subtle (a tone or less) it’s not so noticeable but standard guitar tuning down to B is an interval of a fourth, which is a significant jump, and pitch-shifting electronically will leave artifacts. The reasons why the artifacts appear depends on the type of pitch-shifting used but you can read a super up-the-ass technical explanation of all this here.
Damn, this is the 5th time in recent memory that a live recording on your roundup is actually playback. [referring to Suzy’s “Pretend”] It’s not always as obvious as whatshisface singing into his microphone backwards. I’m glad you point them out, so I can teach myself to spot them better. Thanks for that. I know I’m following K-pop so I should really have no expectations, but it still upsets me when singers lipsynch in a live setting. I mean, I understand that certain variety sets don’t have the necessary equipment for live performance, and that music shows are used as a platform to display choreographies, but why are even radio shows and special song showcases also playback? Why even bother to lie and stamp on the word Live on it? It’s like those counterfeit perfumes or brand clothes. The label is the only ‘real’ thing. I would rather hear a singer squeal like a dying banshee live than lie to me to my face and implicitly dupe me out of my money (if I had paid to attend the ‘live’ experience). Why become a singer if you don’t want to and/or cannot sing? Sorry for the rant,I just thought some idols were different. Guess I should stop being naive and just enjoy the visuals like everyone else.
K-pop is a dream factory, and is quite brazen about its escapism – to me this is a positive quality. Rather than pretending that everyone is a “talented artist”, k-pop has designations like “visual” which really just means “I’m here to look pretty and attract modelling contracts”. K-pop tries out different concepts for fun rather than trying to pass it off as some kind of “creative artistic exploration”. K-pop also mimes frequently, often making it really obvious, or having singers singing over their own music with the vocals on the backing track rather than instrumentals as standard practice, which is pretty much as good as miming. I wish western pop was so honest. I don’t really care that much as a consumer because I know how much “cheating” goes on even with so-called “live” western groups, I figure at least k-pop is being upfront about all the things western pop tries to hide. I care about the songs themselves, I don’t really care that much about the “integrity” of the performances, it doesn’t change the actual music. The song is still “real”, even if there’s fakery involved in the presentation. A song I like that is mimed might not be really live but it’s still really a song I like, and I’m still really seeing the performers. More here.
So I just attended my first Kpop club meeting and after going through 30mins of BTS variety stuff, I showed them Sugar Free. Turns out they hate T-ara because of the bullying scandal articles they read. Any advice on how to get them to form their own opinion of the group? (and they served Koolaid lmao)
Reading my blog would help. They’d probably turn their nose up at it though! Getting k-pop fans to think for themselves about what the consume is a tricky task and it’s a large part of why Kpopalypse exists. I’ve always been tempted to write the ultimate T-ara-rumour-debunking article but haven’t bothered because writing such an article kind of defeats one of the missions of the entire blog which is to allow people to reach logical conclusions about scenarios like that on their own rather than just say “look what I found on some site, it’s on a website it must be true”.
Why would a Japanese person ever become an idol in Korea when seemingly there’s potentially more money to be made sticking in the j-idol business?
The same reason that people from the USA want to do k-pop when the American music industry is such an obviously better place to work in, on every level. People get sucked in by the “glamour” of it and the idea of being a star, and because there’s such a focus on k-pop it becomes a lot of people’s dream. Sure it’s a great career and glamourous but only for the 0.1% at the very top of the tree, everyone else is eating sweet potato and doing 10 hours of gym. Perhaps we need someone to translate this article into Japanese.
When idols are credited for songwriting/producing/idk on an album do they get royalties or does the money still go straight to the label?
Depends on whatever agreement was signed between them and the company, as well as whoever else might have been involved in the song. Someone could be the sole songwriter and producer but if there’s an agreement somewhere that they don’t get paid for whatever reason (say, until x amount of money is made from the sale of the song, or until an idol’s debt is paid off), then they could get nothing. On the other hand someone could be listed on there as a songwriter even though they didn’t actually write any of it at all but someone just thought it was a good idea to stick their name on it, and the song becomes a hit and they get some money. It honestly can vary that much, there’s no “standard” to the amount of money received or who gets credited for how much. I’ve been in a group where only one person was doing the songwriting but we all agreed that we’d credit every member of the group equally just because. I’ve been in a group where the songs were co-written and the actual songwriting percentage each member received was a bitterly-fought battle!
BP & Twice have gotten huge w/out the trendy cute concept. Is it because of their concept or their company? Is forgoing the cute concept a risk worth taking for all rookies or just those from big companies? Wouldn’t the Big 3 rep set the group apart anyway? Why do med-small companies insist on cute?
In Blackpink’s case all YG wanted to do with replace 2NE1 with a new younger 2NE1-like group as a vehicle for the songs that 2NE1 would have gotten allocated to them had they continued. 2NE1 was a formula that worked well for YG for quite a few years so it makes good business sense for them to continue with what they know works rather than take chances. However for a new agency debuting a new group, such a move would be riskier. The “cutesy concept at debut stage, then gradual maturing of the image as the fanbase also gradually matures” is a known formula that has worked in the west and also k-pop for quite some time, and that’s why it gets used. (“Here’s some titties” is also a formula that is popular for new groups for the same reason – it’s proven to work.) Keep in mind that Blackpink’s (and 2NE1’s) image isn’t all that far removed from the cute concept anyway. It’s still pretty light and fluffy stuff.
Remember that “cute concept” isn’t just baby-doll dresses and shit. Twice is a “trendy cute concept” too, it’s still brightly-coloured, all smiles and youthful cheesiness with no real risque element, it’s not something like Stellar’s “Vibrato” straight out of the gate.
What is the benefit of spending up the ass with LOONA? Like I get that each MV is essentially a showcase of the idol for other companies to use (e.g. how the newest MV had the innisfree product placement), but will the million dollars of money being spent each MV translate to even better profits later on? Am I just underestimating the amount of money a CF deal can bring in for a company?
You might just be underestimating how much money Loona’s agency has. A few million dollars to create a buzz is like pocket change for them obviously. Loona’s company is an offshoot of Polaris Entertainment (also see: Ladies Code) and their parent company is Ilkwang Group, a private arms comapny. Here’s an article about some of Ilkwang’s dealings which shows just how much money they have to burn. They’re doing k-pop not because they need to, but because they can. Will it be profitable in the end? Who knows, but if it isn’t, it doesn’t really matter much. I’m hoping for some sexy “Sexy Loona girls with sexy guns” videos out of it though.
Is this how 12/8 time works? U accent every downbeat in groups of 3 forming triplets. Lets say for example u only want to use 1 upbeat instead of 2 here, how does that suppose to sound?
It depends which upbeat you’re removing.
Here’s our twelve beats grouped into threes:
V^^V^^V^^V^^
If you remove the first of the two upbeats, what you end up with is a “swing feel”, the type that is used in blues etc.
V ^V ^V ^V ^
If you remove the second of the two upbeats instead, you end up with a pretty different type of feel.
V^ V^ V^ V^
Looking back, I was the dumbest 15yr old when learning guitar. I literally came 2 the teacher & told him 2 learn this metal song & he’d spend the entire time figuring it out, then I’d only get a 5 min lesson. I had the worst posture & hand positioning but he didn’t tell me that. So this would continue every week. I then stopped after 5 weeks. I saw James Hetfield playing gtr down to his knees &this gtr teacher is telling me that’s totally bad 4 most of us. I really wish my teacher would just have told me to shut up and learn fundamentals 1st. So do you correct ur students even if theyre ignorant and dont ask u know to ask u for basics?
I tend to use the songs that people want to learn as a vehicle for teaching correct technique. So for instance if a song has sweep-picking in it, I’ll show the student how to sweep pick with efficient technique etc. If you’re not doing things you enjoy, you won’t practice so you won’t improve, but if you’re not being shown how to do things correctly, it’s harder to get better quickly anyway. It’s not an either/or choice to make. A good teacher should be able to combine what you want to know and what he knows you need to learn into the same framework. Oh and James Hetfield plays his guitar down to his knees because he thinks it looks cooler, plus he’s not playing that many complex parts, Kirk Hammett does the guitar heavy-lifting in Metallica, James is the chug-chug downstrokes-as-fast-as-possible guy.
While some people may indeed be hypocrites and use false concern to fap with a clear conscience, these “deep roots in organized crime and prostitution” you speak of are difficult to imagine and process. Because the main thinking is ‘These are people who are good at singing or dancing. That’s what what they can do, so they seek out a profession where they can earn a living singing and dancing.’ – they’re normal people who have grown up in the same environment as you, had the same habits and familial obligations, suffered through the same public school system etc. It’s just their choice of choice of job that’s different. Why would someone who wants to perform on stage for a living (and thus becomes an idol -what other option as a job is there) have to get involved with a mafia or a prostitution ring? Do they choose to, are they forced to? Can they decline or avoid the association?
Well, it’s not like anyone’s there pressuring you to “oh please get involved in this” but rather that just things are happening all around you that might not be above board. A lot of it happens in the ether to some extent from the point of view of a star, for instance Ladies Code probably wouldn’t know about their company’s arms trading extortion racket or harassing Clara or whatever, but they would be more aware of things that directly come into their orbit, whatever they may be. A lot of it one could choose to turn a blind eye to. When it starts to hit home is when people want to leave labels or want better contract terms etc, when they’re forced to engage with it. I’m planning to do a post soonish about the culture of the music business, which nobody will believe anything in so there’s probably no point in writing it but I’ll do it anyway just to annoy people.
In an interview w/Chris Broderick, he mentioned in Megadeth that anything he had no creative input due 2 Dave(s) wanted to keep their “sound.” Later in the yr, he left on a day notice. Gary Holt (Slayer) gtr replacement still in band is saying the same thing as well as Jeff Loomis, who also replaced a guitarists in Arch Enemy. Is this really good 2 be this close minded? is it good 4 the bands and fans? I thought if ur in the band, then ur creative input is the band. I see both of them leaving later Slayer and Arch Enemy in the near future.
There are some bands where everything is very democratic and songwriting is a collaborative process. There are other bands which are essentially a solo project where one person is the leader and decides the complete creative and artistic direction, and everyone else is essentially a glorified session musician. This frequently happens in cases where original members leave and are replaced by new members who don’t assume the same authority levels of those who they replaced, the self-designated band “leader” (usually, the person with the biggest ego) may use this as an opportunity to reclaim control from that band position. Megadeth is a very good example of this type of group.
I’m doing a piano lesson program atm and After the basic playstyle, you can go through either Blues, Ballad, Jazz or Classical in any order you choose to learn. Which traditional styles are most important for Kpop?
Do blues first because blues is the foundation of all other popular music and is essential to know regardless of what style of music you prefer. Do jazz last because nobody cares about jazz. Not sure what you should do in between as I’m unsure what is meant by “ballad”.
So, I read your favourites and in your 9 Muses A – Lip 2 Lip comment, you did mention dynamic subtlety, which piqued my interest. So, what do you think about bringing back dynamic range into modern music and quitting the loudness war? Also, is loudness war a thing in Kpop music?
The reason why the loudness war exists is because of radio and TV. Nobody wants to hear their own song come on the radio and have it be noticeably quieter than everything else around it, therefore producers generally aim for maximum volume without going over digital zero – as close to the zero line as they can get. Of course sometimes they fuck up and go over that zero line by mistake, but usually they don’t. Some dynamic range in the middle of a song or in an intro is okay but even with the Nine Muses A song, the dynamic range we’re talking about in the rap section is only in the order of a few dB, it’s not a really large shift or anything. Pop music dynamic range isn’t large, and it doesn’t have to be large to have the desired effect. It’s only in styles like classical music or post-rock and experimental music styles where a really wide dynamic range is exploited. The average pop music song these days has about 2dB dynamic range.
The loudness war isn’t specific to k-pop or the west, but k-pop took a while to latch onto it. If you compare SM Entertainment productions of the same song from over a decade to today, you’ll notice the main difference is that the new versions are louder and everything is brighter and more “present”. Early SM recordings sound very dull in comparison to SM’s output these days, songs from groups like H.O.T are not up to western production standard whatsoever, which is one of the reasons why we didn’t have a Hallyu wave of any note in the late 90s or early 2000s. The production simply didn’t cut it.
So I’ve gotten accepted to one cashiering job, and I’ve already done some training. But another one has come up that has higher pay so I want that one. Do I just straight up tell them I’m not interested anymore? Im not sure if theres any consequences..? Like is it possible this would affect the other job?
It’s only a fucking cashier job, I’d bail for the higher-paying offer in an instant. Just make sure that you definitely DO have that second job 100% locked down before you ditch the first. Unless of course you can somehow work both. I’d actually even consider working both for a short period if you can because the boss at job #2 might be a cunt and you might start wishing for job #1 back. You might not have a choice though depending on hours given but something to consider.
This may be a stupid question, but how can you compose a song without simultaneously arranging it? Don’t they kind of go hand in hand?
You can’t compose a song without arranging it, but you can definitely arrange a song without composing it. In a band I was in, we had an outside producer work with us for a particular song and as part of his production he rearranged the song sections slightly. We had already written those sections, they were fully written before he came on board, plus we had already arranged them a certain way, but his input did change the result of that arrangement, so he was credited as a producer/arranger but not a composer.
Is it a fundamental rule to keep an album as uniform in sound as possible? From metal to Kpop, i notice they don’t deviate from a few synths even if there’s multiple composers or one guitar sound. Is it okay to break that and make each song have different timbre (yet still coherent and uniform styles)?
Generally speaking it’s just easier to keep a uniform sound on an album, it’s a hassle to change up instrument settings and constantly do things differently, it means extra preparation time which usually translates to more expense. Plus a consistent sound is a way to unify the collection, it’s easier to get one sound that works and just go with that. Some adventurous groups do make an effort to change styles radically between songs but market research shows that most listeners prefer it if there’s more consistency overall. K-pop is a little different, because different songs are often recorded by different producers in different circumstances, meaning that the result is often a bit more random and there’s less of a consistent thread running through everything, so k-pop albums are often a hodge-podge of feature songs written by top-gun producers, filler ballads written by in-house producers and some other tracks that the agency bought but decided weren’t good enough to make a feature out of. Further reading here.
If I already know how to play the piano well, is picking up the guitar easy? (In terms of things I need to learn specifically for guitar, not reading sheet music etc.)
Piano is a great first instrument, because with it you get the coordination skills that transfer well to guitar/bass and drums. So if you’re good or at least reasonable at piano you can eventually be good at every major instrument in a rock band, plus you’ll have some music theory too (as piano teachers tend to drill theory into you, whereas guitar teachers not so much). I wouldn’t say that it’s incredibly easy to transition between them but it certainly does help a lot with many of the general concepts plus the dexterity required.
Hey Kpopalypse, I wanted your advice-I want to buy my first electric guitar but I’m broke as hell. I’ve been taking lessons with a classical guitar for a year now, but I really love rock music and really want to try it, do you have any affordable recommendations? (like $200 or less)
Obviously you don’t mean $200 in Australian dollars, because that would get you nothing of worth here in terms of an electric guitar. Guitars are really expensive in Australia for some reason, probably to do with import tax and our government basically being criminal.
Out of all the “budget” electric guitars I’ve played (and I’ve played almost all of them) I’d go with the Squier Affinity Strat. It looks decent, is comfortable for most people, plays and sounds much the same as its more expensive Fender cousin, you can get a variety of sounds, you can buy it in a guitar-and-amp package with a small practice amplifier included without blowing the budget, and no matter what style of modern music you prefer, you can at the very least get by with it until you decide that you want something better. A fairly accurate review of the different common Squier guitars is here, all I’ll add to it is absolutely do not consider buying the “Bullet”, it really is a piece of shit, the extra money for the Affinity Strat is absolutely worth it. Epiphone do some okay budget guitars too but unless you’re absolutely sold on the Gibson style of guitar I’d go for the Squier instead as it’s a bit more sonically versatile.
That’s all for this episode of QRIMOLE! Kpopalypse will return with the answers to more questions at a later date!
Not that I’ve even read anyone else’s opinions, but I like this song for the same reason I reckon everyone else probably hates it – I think it needed to go even more in the “Lookie Lookie” pseudo-rap direction than it already is – when the girls stop talking and start singing those hideous blues-style vocals, that’s when the song starts getting seriously boring. Still pretty cool though overall and I’m glad Red Velvet is mixing it up a little instead of doing the boring S.E.S cloning and stupid yelpy crap we’ve had to put up with from them until recently.
SF9 – Roar
A little too much fun with tone generators has been had on this track but it gets somewhat better as it goes along.
Block B – Yesterday
More odd production choices here, not sure why they tried to make this sound like Steve Albini recorded it in a tin shed but if nothing else it’s a nice change.
Day6 – You Were Beautiful
Hey everyone, The Wonder Girls broke up but it’s okay everyone, because we have kick-ass rock band Day6 and their new song and… oh hey, wait a second…
Madclown ft Bolbbalgan4 – Lost Without You
Still nobody is answering my question about this group. Is it “Bolbbalgan4”? Is it “Bolbbalgan Sachungi?” Is it “Bolbbalgan Puberty”? I understand that “sachungi” means “puberty” but then what is the “4” all about and why do they get called Bolbbalgan4 sometimes? I won’t reveal my true feelings about this group or song until someone clears this linguistic mess up for me, because how can I write about them if I don’t even know how to write them.
Pentagon – Pretty Pretty
It really is the week of boy group comebacks with odd production that are okay-alright-I-guess. Although this actually came out a few weeks ago and it just took me a while to find it.
From The Airport – The Jump
This is alright although I find the use of correct English grammar and pronunciation in a k-rock song deeply unsettling and I wish they’d stop that. Where are those ex-Kara members when you need them.
BONUS SONGS
Suho & Youngjoo Song – Curtain
I guess it’s “curtains” for SM Station and thank fuck, while the concept was good we only got like three good songs out of it for a whole year and a bunch of boring crap like this.
Zion T. – The Song
Is it called “The Song” because Zion T. hasn’t really ever done one until now?
Black Tear ft Michelle Lee – Maniac
Absolute garbage. Michelle Lee will probably never be given a good song. Imagine being trapped in Korean R&B hell.
Klang – The Wanted
Sounds like one of those horrible nu-school female singers that are big in America with the nasally midrange voices and annoying obsession with “soul” or whatever.
My Golden Age – Fly Away
Sounds like an Australian 90s rock song, the sort of thing You Am I at their most rocking would do. God, I hate You Am I. I listen to k-pop to get away from this fucking bullshit.
Pia – Storm Is Coming
I saw that church in shadow at the start and expected Immortal to suddenly appear with torches and burn it down, unfortunately this is some bleep-bloop tropical dubstep shitpile or whatever instead, but I didn’t mind it once I contained my disappointment.
Burningsoda – Cutie Puppet
Rock and funk together needs to stop. It’s not funky and it’s not very rocking either. Thanks Red Hot Chilli Peppers for fucking up rock music for everyone else.
Luvan – oi
The raw sounds are great, it’s like someone tried to make the worst music in the world with the best instruments. It starts off mumbly and shit like a Cohort Crew production, but then actually gets worse when the singing starts. Be warned.
Dumfounddead ft. Too Short – Cochino
Sorry all you old-school hip-hop heads, Too Short was always shit even back in the day, always with limp production and so-so lyrics, that’s why he never really blew up despite being one of the original rap guys who consistently released a fuckload of albums. So this song being trendy boring crap is no surprise.
Masc – Tina
On the other hand nobody has heard of this but it also sucks.
Dinosoul ft Bray – White
More crap.
Choi Jungyoon – Foolish Heart
Snoozy acoustic waste-of-time songs for idiots aren’t just for SM Entertainment. With a little effort you too can suck just as much as the biggest label in k-pop.
Street Guns – You Girl
Some rockabilly-lite thing, not very interesting, like the Stray Cats at their weakest.
Ji Hoon Shin – You Are A Star Already
Ugh.
HuhGak – Miss You
I often miss HuhGak too, but hopefully my aim will improve.
That’s all for this week – more new stuff next week!
Having difficulty coping emotionally with your favourite k-pop group’s disbandment? Then this post is for you!
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Times are tough for k-poppers in 2017. Here’s a list of groups that have disbanded recently, listed with the groups people care about the most at the top, and groups people care about the least at the bottom:
Wonder Girls
2NE1
Kara
2AM
4Minute
miss A*
After School*
Rainbow
SPEED
Tiny-G
Bob Girls
EvoL
ZPZG
Wings*
Global Icon
Delight*
The Ark
Vividiva
Spica
CSJH The Grace*
Could your favourite idol group be among them? Probably, or you wouldn’t be reading this post. However never fear, because it’s now time for:
Kpopalypse’s 12 steps for coping with k-pop idol group disbandment
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Step 1 – admit powerlessness
No matter how much you stan your faves with lengthy rambling social networking activity, you can’t control their inevitable disbandment. Popularity is no guarantee of staying power – 2NE1 broke up despite having the most rabid, mouth-breathing, one-eyed fandom in existence outside of EXO and BTS, yet they still succumbed to the tides of change in the fast-paced world of k-pop. After School’s constantly rotating membership structure, seemingly an iron-clad insurance policy against ever having to retire the group as theoretically they could be rejuvenated endlessly with new members, still wasn’t enough to prevent them for imploding in a barely-contained frenzy of Kahiesque bitterness. Improbable as it may seem right at this moment, even T-ara will one day disband, probably after collecting their 25th consecutive Billboard fan army win and buying their fifth Chinese palace each. It makes sense to take off your rose-coloured glasses and psychologically prepare yourself for the inevitable.
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Step 2 – find a power greater than yourself
Other 12-step programs suggest a religious deity or similar non-denominational higher power, but such drastic brainwashing measures are not required in this case. When you’re a k-pop fan sniveling pathetically over the fate of some guys or girls in some group that broke up whom you don’t even know personally, just about anything qualifies as “a power greater than yourself”. An ant crawling around in your back garden will probably do, or maybe a particularly attractive pebble or plank of wood – all probably have more resilience and practical use than your lowly self at this point. Just don’t make the higher power you select a k-pop idol of any sort or they will just quit k-pop next week and then the cycle begins again.
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Step 3 – learn to depend on your higher power
Since you clearly can’t depend on yourself to think rationally, and your idols are no good because the dirty whores keep disbanding and breaking your heart, why not become co-dependent on your newfound higher power instead? Co-dependency is like love but with more creepiness and less objectivity, so it should be only a small adjustment for any k-pop fan. Once you learn to transfer your co-dependence from your now-defunct idol group onto something else slightly more reliable, you’re 25% of the way toward recovery!
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Step 4 – make a moral inventory
Look deep inside your soul. Think about all the times that you felt embarrassed, guilty, angry or regretful. Perhaps you were embarrassed by saying that 2NE1 would last another ten years just the other month and then you were proven wrong the very next day. Perhaps you are angry that YG broke them up because he only cares about Blackpink now. Maybe you feel guilty because you stanned your bias too much. Maybe you feel regretful because you didn’t stan them enough. Whatever the case, know that them breaking up is probably at least 0.0001% your fault and that this makes you a terrible person.
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Step 5 – be honest about your mistakes
Let’s be honest – you fucked up. Getting into k-pop was just the beginning, but you had to become a fan of a group doomed to failure, didn’t you. T-ara was right there ready and waiting for your support, but you chose another group incorrectly. In a genre with such disposable music, where idols are thrown away once they reach their 30s and often before, what did you expect? Did you really think your bias group would outlast T-ara? As ridiculous a notion as David Bowie, Michael Jackson or Lemmy living longer than Keith Richards. It’s time to reflect and admit your failings.
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Step 6 – become ready to remove your flaws
Now that it is certain that you have behaved with poor judgement and are generally a terrible person, you are ready for a higher power to intervene and remove your laziness and lack of determination. If you’re finding it difficult to achieve a state of readiness, then it may help to watch the music videos of k-pop groups with high determination levels and righteous longevity.
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Step 7 – ask a higher power to remove your faults
As mentioned previously, the higher power that you select doesn’t really matter much. People brainwashed by organised religion may wish to select their chosen deity but such drastic measures are hardly necessary. As a k-pop fan of a disbanded group you are the lowest form of life and perhaps even more worthless that most of the universe’s inanimate objects, so a “higher power” won’t be difficult to find. Just choose anything, it’s okay. Maybe not Johnny Noh though, he has too many faults of his own to be able to remove yours.
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Step 8 – make a list of people you’ve hurt
Think about all your delusional stanning. How much have you hurt the people around you in your daily life, as well as strangers on the Interweb, by peddling lies and misinformation about the potential longevity of your favourite group? How many gullible people have you hoodwinked and swindled? These are not rhetorical questions. Make a fucking list, cunt.
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Step 9 – apologise to people you’ve harmed
Now that you have your list, you can apologise to each and every one of the people that you have turned into crazy delusional fans as nutty as you were before you woke up to yourself using steps 1 to 8. This may be time consuming to do on an individual basis, so to save yourself typing maybe make a shitty Tumblr post about how fandoms are dumb and just link everyone to it, or make a post on the k-pop Reddit, OneHallyu or any other high-traffic, mature, well-balanced Internet community.
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Step 10 – monitor yourself and admit mistakes
Are you starting to realise by now that you’re a complete piece of shit? Fantastic, this means that the steps are working! Now you can keep tabs on yourself and self-flagellate as often as possible whenever you catch yourself slipping. Give yourself strict limits to your k-pop-following behaviour and be sure to…
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Step 11 – commit to a spiritual practice
It’s important to stay spiritually grounded. As Swings says, people look after the mind and the body, but not the soul, and we all know that Swings is a trusted authority on moral character. If you’re struggling to find a religion with sufficient credibility to invest yourself in spiritually (as well you might), Kpopalypse suggests Rainaism, the religion of k-pop peace. Remember that sending a regular tithe to Kpopalypse via Patreon is highly encouraged, it won’t actually achieve anything for your life but at least Rainaism is honest about the fact that your money is basically wasted on the creator’s Internet shopping unlike other religions who take your cash and actually promise something in return.
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Step 12 – help others
Why not use the power of the Intertube to spread the word that following and becoming emotionally attached to k-pop groups in general is a crazy delusional practice which is bound to leave participants emotionally shattered while wasting their time, money and sanity. If nobody will listen (which is likely) you can always start a snarky sarcastic, condescending blog that becomes wildly popular and hugely successful and routinely offend people just by being yourself and having an opinion about it.
That’s all for this post! Good luck on your road to recovery from emotional anguish and torment!
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*these groups haven’t officially disbanded yet, so there’s probably still some hope… nah just kidding. lol
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