Welcome to the first Kpopalypse Roundup of 2016! Let’s check out some new releases!
Oh My Girl
iKON – What’s Wrong?
Remember when YG had that stupid reality TV show and WINNER won but everyone said they liked the other group more? Well that group was iKON and YG did the dumbest thing ever – they actually listened to you whiners and released a bunch of iKON stuff. Now everyone’s complaining “where is WINNER”… wow, it must be like Kafka being a k-pop CEO. Not that it matters to me one bit which group gets to come back and which one doesn’t because either group would get allocated exactly the same BigBang-lite songs anyway.
Flashe – Lip Bomb
This song starts off promisingly but it’s so melodically repetitive that it’s a real chore to listen to after the first minute.
San E – Do It For Fun
Definitely one of Korea’s weirdest rap songs from a fairly mainstream artist, “Do It For Fun” has some nice dynamics unusual to the form and is obviously designed for live performance.
Pureboy-L – Balloons
Isn’t it a bit early for these guys to have a subunit, didn’t they only debut the other month? Anyway this is pretty good, just try to ignore the debut-era TVXQ fashions.
Suzy & Baekhyun – Dream
This video is hilarious because Suzy clearly doesn’t give one solitary fuck about putting in a convincing miming performance and just hams it up all the way through, it’s like watching Iron Maiden on that German TV show that one time when they just fucked around. The song isn’t too awful and the jazz direction is better than the usual ballad slop but it sure ain’t no “Love Of B“.
Dal Shabet – Someone Like U
Only k-pop would stick a late 80s breakbeat intro onto an early 80’s style pop song – talk about trying to mix oil and water. Once it gets going this song suffers from the same issue as Wonder Girls “I Feel You” which is a chorus that’s too busy with too much meandering melody going on that dilutes the catchiness. It’s still really good in every other aspect though.
Cheetah – Star Wars
To have such a fierce persona yet consistently work with lame yolo beats and soft R&B trash, what a shame. Cheetah is wasted here like she always is.
CocoSori – Dark Circle
Another group treading the Orange Caramel “zany” path but they sound a bit flat due to the trot-by-numbers songwriting and surprisingly dull production (treble – can we has?), coming off like a cruddy early demo version of “Magic Girl“. Oh well, it could be worse, at least it’s not Pungdeng-E.
Lucky J – No Love
Oh look it’s “Love The Way You Lie” part 2359218. I hope one day Korean songwriters get sick of the “man raps verse and girl sings chorus over mid-tempo drums and acoustic instruments moodily cycling four chords over and over” template because this shit is getting so boring. The erhu (or whatever it is) is the only good thing about this track (and it does sound nice though, pity about everything else).
BONUS SONG
Gary ft Gaeko – Lonely Night
The only way to make the above template worse would be to remove the woman and replace her with some awful male R&B crooner in the chorus instead, and replace the erhu’s role with some boring brass instrument. Like this song right here.
That’s it for another Kpopalypse roundup – more new songs next week!
Tagged: roundup
