Hi everyone, I’m busy preparing my end of year lists which are a massive huge undertaking of literary diarrhoea, so I haven’t had time to do any other posts, but here’s a very quick one that I put together to tide you over. Caonimas have been asking me my “thoughts” about a lot of songs, and the following post will cover some “thoughts” on a bunch of 2015 songs that people have asked me about a lot this year but that WON’T be in the top or bottom 30, just so you know what I think of them and so you don’t have to keep asking.
Some of these songs are already covered in the Kpopalypse roundup series, but hey that’s okay I don’t mind revisiting them just for you lovely readers. The list is in alphabetical order, is feature tracks only and was constructed as fast and thoughtlessly as possible in a couple of spare hours. Read on and be entertained (maybe).
WARNING: lots of videos! Read this post on a device that has some display-juice!
Anda – Touch
Formerly known as Andamiro, this is one of the most out-there commercial k-pop songs ever, both musically and visually. The very smart visuals are probably wasted on a k-pop audience, if they can’t even understand IU’s “Twenty-three” they’ve got no hope with this one.
Apink – Remember
Remember kids: just like k-pop singers don’t get a choice what to sing, k-pop composers don’t get a choice what to write (if they want their creations to be used, that is). Shinsadong Tiger is clearly commissioned specifically to write cutesy crap for Apink, and he struggles to make writing the same song over and over again interesting just as much as we struggle to listen to it.
April – Dream Candy
They did something really weird to the beat of this where a snare drum just sort of pops out in the totally wrong place in the chorus, like a dislocated knee during a k-pop dance. Now that I’ve pointed it out to you, you won’t be able to stop yourself from hearing it and getting irritated by it. Isn’t discovering new things on Kpopalypse blog fun!
The Ark – The Light
Super average. A lot of people liked the voices but those chorus vocal tracks are layered about ten fucking times, your mum would sound like a top singer too under those conditions.
Bambino – Oppa Oppa
I like Bambino’s “idgaf we’ll show our tits and ass if we want to” attitude but the song itself is a big let-down. They didn’t even bother with a proper MV for this but just went straight to the fancams and didn’t collect $200 or pass Bom, which was probably the right decision.
B.A.P – Young, Wild & Free
“Slightly older, tamed and back under our record label’s clutches” would be a more accurate title for this, but I guess that wouldn’t flow as well in the chorus. At least they’re back to the rock sound which I’m sure will only last until TS Entertainment makes them clone a One Direction song again.
Beat Win – Stalker
I dunno about that chorus but the rest is alright. Do girls really like suspenders and undone bow ties on men? Let me know, female readers!
BESTie – Excuse Me
BESTie is Hyeyeon, and everybody who is not Hyeyeon. How the fuck did she even get in a group, her look completely screams out “not k-pop girl group material”. That must be why I like her the most. I see what you did there, BESTie’s agency.
BoA – Lookbook
I’m not wild about it but it’s still the best song of BoA’s for a while, as good as “Only One” or “The Shadow“. Apparently BoA is quite the power-player behind the scenes at SM so I imagine she keeps the better features for herself, she’s probably partly responsible for handing SNSD the scraps they got this year.
B1A4 – Sweet Girl
Old-school 70s funk that sounds like it was lifted from the “Jackie Brown” soundtrack… except not as good. Oh well, nice try boys.
BTS – Dope
BTS consistently refuse to do another “War Of Hormone”, I guess now that they’re popular they don’t need decent songs anymore, they just need to maintain their position so they can get CF deals. Oh well, business is business.
ChoA – Flame
Generic k-pop ballad #589213. ChoA looks great in the video though, pity she’s in it for all of five seconds. Having a boring-looking stand-in in the video for a hot female’s solo song will forever be known as being “Eunjung’ed”, as ChoA’s video is a missed opportunity for male fanservice as harsh as Eunjung’s “I’m Good“.
CLC – Pepe
Sorn sure looks strange, is it because of her youth, her styling, an illusion because she’s a Thai in a video with a bunch of Korean girls, or is she in fact the little sister of the Pale Man from “Pan’s Labyrinth“? Whatever the case, she’s the only thing notable about CLC in general so far, or their songs.
DIA – Somehow
Flavor Flav’s k-pop debut sounds okay I guess but I expected harder beats, G.
EXID – Ah Yeah
Pretty much the same thing as “Up & Down” but with a better chorus and a worse everything else.
EXO – Call Me Baby
I guess they must be on good terms with their ex-members after all as none of the other members of EXO could afford cars like that on their incomes so they probably hit Kris and Luhan up for a rental.
Fiestar – You’re Pitiful
If you got every single k-pop girl group song over the last five years, stuck them all into a pot, mixed them all up and then created a fresh song from the results, it would sound a lot like this.
Girl’s Day – Hello Bubble
Girl’s Day continue their run of shitty songs, I miss the “Don’t Forget Me” days. At least Minah actually looks like Minah this time and not a wax dummy like in her solo song.
Girls’ Generation – Lion Heart
SNSD’s best song in three years has a great chorus but everything else around it is a total waste of time – except the girls themselves who look astonishing in the drama cuts where they have never been styled better, they even managed to make Yoona look non-boring, what sorcery is this. A rare instance where one of those “loop the chorus for 10 hours” YouTube videos could improve a song significantly.
GOT7 – Just Right
Don’t kid yourself about this group flopping, they are exactly where JYP want them, cleaning up endorsements everywhere which is exactly the point of debuting a k-pop group, not charts, awards or any of that other nonsense. That girl in the video is going to grow up and get super mad at her parents for letting her meet k-pop idols before she got to an age where she could appreciate it.
Hyuna – Roll Deep
Hyuna has come down with a case of the yolos. Let’s pray for her speedy recovery.
iKON – Rhythm Ta
YG promoted two boy bands, WINNER and iKON, on some stupid competition show of theirs and when WINNER won everyone complained that iKON were better. So YG are now promoting iKON to make it up to you all and of course everyone complains that they’re not promoting WINNER. K-pop fans – can’t keep ’em happy, can’t shove ’em face first into a meat grinder.
iKON – Airplane
Sure it’s average but if this was a BigBang song I bet you all would be loving it.
iKON – Dumb & Dumber
No really, you would. These songs pretty much ARE BigBang songs anyway in all but name so you might as well consume them as such.
Infinite – Bad
This song has cool synth strings at the start but the song doesn’t really stick with them, adding a lot of other detail which makes the overall structure suffer a bit, a shame as this could have been as good as some of their other better material. As it stands it’s close but no cigar.
IU – Twenty-three
I wanted to stan this just as much as anybody, but I didn’t like it musically at all. I would say “the lyrics are too ham-fisted and obvious” but I’ll retract that since so many dumb k-pop fans laughably misunderstood it as a pedophilia endorsement. Clearly IU didn’t make her intentions (critiquing her former image, and the uncle fans who fetishised it/her) obvious enough, even though I struggle to think how she could have made them any MORE obvious.
JYP – Who’s Your Mama?
Boram, but that’s besides the point. JYP is a pervert just as much as Jay Park is, those two should really kiss and make up seeing as they have so much in common.
KARA – Cupid
Apparently there’s rumours of this group disbanding, and while I don’t believe rumours I can see why such rumous would come up after a song of such averageness emerged. The “C-U-P-I-D” breakdown bit is the only unusual thing about this “2015 k-pop by numbers” tune.
KARA – Summergic
KARA have run out of steam to such an extent that their Japanese label couldn’t even be bothered removing their Japanese songs from YouTube every two minutes of every day like every other Japanese label ever. Still, this is easily the best Japan-only KARA song out there.
Lim Kim – Love Game
Holy shit a k-pop song with some actual fucking pace, I think I’m going to faint. There weren’t too many of these this year.
Mamamoo – Um Oh Ah Yeh
Yeh nah. Lame mid-paced vocal-showoff nonsense only redeemed by one of the girls being in a maid uniform, I probably would have forgotten this group even existed if not for that.
MAP6 – Storm
One of the better boy group songs this year. Actually has some dynamic contrast, a rare thing in k-pop.
miss A – Only You
Min’s boobs are the only reason to watch this, but they’re a good reason. Those boys with the binoculars have the right idea, they can see everything but they’re in the apartment across the street, far away enough for the dull music to not be audible to them.
Monsta X – Rush
That brassy duck-quacking synth line is a really big thing in k-pop right now. I keep watching that concrete X above their heads and being worried about it falling. We know how careless these companies are about their stage rigging, if I were this group I’d be concerned.
Nell – Lost In Perspective
Excited by life? Looking forward to the day? Look out, here comes a song by Korea’s Coldplay to help that depression and listlessness ease gently back into your life.
Seventeen – Mansae
Do you have any idea how much this group would have cost to debut? I’d like to be as “broke” as Pledis supposedly are.
SHINee – View
Not exactly amazing, but I’ll take “listenable” as a substitute, at least it’s not another dubstep song thank christ.
Sunny Days – Blah Blah
The cutting of this is at such T-ara-level speeds that at first I couldn’t even work out which girl has the huge boobs. After many freeze-frames I realised that she’s not in the group anymore. Such a shame as I was really looking forward to the visuals of this. Sure the music is just the usual Beyonce-clone rubbish but nobody cares about that – this is a Sunny Days video, we all know what we were hoping for. I think I’m going to cry.
Super Junior – Devil
Super Junior without Shindong, what even is the point? Look at the video closely, damn Siwon looks uncomfortable around all those girls at once. I hope for his sake they kept their hands to themselves.
Teen Top – ah-ah
Hey everyone, Teen Top still exist and even had a song in 2015, who knew? I guess there’s a pretty good reason why you haven’t heard of this one.
The Legend – Lost
The Legend are a nugu group that released 286 music videos this year, their agency must have money to burn. “Lost” is by far the best one of their songs and is actually (a little bit) rocking.
Twice – Like ‘Ooh Ahh’
What’s that whistling noise at the start of the song? It must be the MEH TRAIN pulling into the station. An average song ruined with too much random chanting crap and JYP seemingly throwing everything into the mix at once. Even the girls in the group look bland and nothingy, they all have that boring as fuck generic smoothed-over k-pop-star-101 look. Also, how many times is k-pop going to copy T-ara’s “Lovey Dovey” zombie video idea?
24k – Super Fly
The duck synth in this song actually sounds a bit like a real duck. That actually makes this song kinda cool.
2Eyes – Pippi
Another completely generic song with nothing notable about it, the chorus of this one sounds almost exactly like GLAM’s “I Like That” at half-speed.
2PM – My House
This dull acoustic-guitar-driven funk is a real letdown after some great songs from 2PM in 2014. I guess they’re supposed to be “maturing” now or whatever nonsense, in a few years I guess they’ll be as boring as g.o.d.
Unicorn – Huk
At first I thought they just misspelled “Hug” but apparently “Huk” legit means something else, although I’m not sure what. “Slightly above average but nothing special girly pop” perhaps.
VAV – Under The Moonlight
A lot of people complained about the voices because that’s all k-pop fans ever seem to care about, never mind if the actual song is any good, it’s all about technique to these fucking losers. Sssh, don’t tell them that ALL k-pop groups sound exactly like this once you take their pitch-correction away.
VIXX – Chained Up
I wish these guys would stop copying VAV.
Wonder Girls – I Feel You
Sorry but an 80s pop song without a big 80s pop song chorus may as well not exist. Also what a crime to kick Sohee out just before doing this concept, she’s the only person in the group who could actually pull off a look like this. Maybe she can’t play instruments or whatever but someone could throw her a tambourine or something surely.
Yezi – Crazy Dog
The beat here is certainly better than the original, it’s actually a decent song now. Pity 1theK won’t release an uncensored AND uninterrupted version.
ZPZG – AOAO
This song is pretty cool and I’m glad that k-pop groups are finally branching out and endorsing adult entertainment products, less sexual conservatism in k-pop is something that’s sorely needed.
That’s all for this post – the next two posts will be the favourites and worst songs of 2015! Until then here’s picture of Seunghee holding a horse for no reason.
Tagged: reviews
