It’s time for Kpopalypse roundup! Let’s take a look at some new releases!
LE SSERAFIM – Crazy
It’s not the greatest song because it suffers from being a bit too minimal, and that pre-chorus is a real lowlight, but this kind of vogue-ish nonsense otherwise actually suits Le Sserafim a lot more than what they’ve been doing lately because it least it packs some rhythmic punch, something that’s been desperately lacking in almost all the post-debut Le Sserafim stuff.
FIFTY FIFTY – Starry Night
Hey Fifty Fifty have a new song out called “Starry Night” and it’s not bad, it’s similar to their other stuff I guess, slightly above average and cruisy enough to listen to but not exactly mindblowing or anything. I wouldn’t actively listen to it but I guess I’d put it on as background noise the next time I had to sweep the floors. Hey did you know that people are putting pressure on bloggers to not review Fifty Fifty’s new song because there’s a boycott against the company because of how they treated the girls? Well now you know! Gosh it would be a shame if sites continued to review this song a lot, so hopefully people stop that sort of thing.
QWER – Fake Idol
Not their best song but I just like watching QWER do anything at all because they’re like AOA for real and honestly marketing genius. Someone had to pick up that particular baton which has been left discarded on the side of the relay track for about a decade now.
CHUNG HA – Algorithm
Chungha had a really good song recently and this isn’t it, but it’s still continuing the trend of Chungha having good songs overall. She’s definitely improved a lot in the last year or two.
FIFTY FIFTY – Starry Night
Oh and about that boycott – it’s a bit of a silly boycott really, because what happened to Fifty Fifty is pretty much happening to EVERY group, so if you’re going to boycott k-pop because it’s cruel to the performers why not just boycott the lot of it? I kind of tried to get the point across in my book series how cruelty to idol group members isn’t group-specific, it’s just the mode of operation of the idol system. By the way in case you missed the memo, I cut the price of some of my books, the first e-book in the series “Show Me Love” is now $2.99 USD worldwide, and if you’re in Brazil you’re in luck because all FOUR e-books are now only 10.00R each in Brazil, now that’s dirt cheap. For everyone else, be sure to compare Amazon and Kobo prices using the store links I’ve set up before buying, as some territories offer a better deal on one platform than the other, so you may as well get it as cheap as you can. Just thought you’d like to know this, although if you have no intention of buying the books because you can’t read (like TikTok users) or don’t care, you could ignore this advice and Fifty Fifty too if you wanted. Such is total freedom.
Loosemble – TTYL
That mega-Autotuned chorus is really unfortunate but I guess who is actually going to want to sing something like that for real. The song is pacy enough otherwise to be agreeable.
FIESTAR – You’re pitiful
Fiestar’s self-produced remake of one of their old songs is sadly a downgrade from the original, with the hard-hitting rhythms of the old version replaced with something much softer and weaker. What a shame that they didn’t put that energy into a new song instead.
FIFTY FIFTY – Starry Night
So anyway, sorry I got sidetracked before there, but my point is that it’s silly to boycott just one group for mistreatment, trust me they’re ALL being mistreated. But fans boycotting idols in general, that’s not going to happen because what would k-pop fans do with themselves without their biases to follow?
Yves – Tik Tok
Imagine getting someone as attractive as Yves and putting her in the wrong aspect ratio. What a crime. I’m the person who is always fixing up my friends’ TV aspect ratio when I go over to their house because the knuckleheads don’t know how to set it up right, or even worse, they do know but watch everything all squished together anyway as if nothing’s wrong because it “doesn’t bother them”. Crazy people, the gulag for them all. This video is unacceptable, justice for Yves, where’s that protest truck…
RESCENE – Love Attack
This song is nothing much until the chrous happens, and it’s a really good chorus (very IVE-ish actually) that basically saves the entire song on its own.
Genblue – Cococo
There’s very little that’s really awful this week, but “Cococo” comes close. The only thing really saving it is the bassline and the fast beat, everything else here is a miss.
FIFTY FIFTY – Starry Night
You might be interested to know that Fifty Fifty now has Hana aka Lim Haram in it, this was the girl who got on the Kpopalypse Favourites list for 2020 with the great song “Secret Crush” which is actually better than any Fifty Fifty song and probably better than most of the songs your bias produces too. Just thought you’d like to know that because a few people have been asking me about it lately. Anyway let’s carry on with roundup now.
BOYNEXTDOOR – Dangerous
I don’t know, it sounds pretty polite and dull to me. I bet their mothers are very proud.
NOWADAYS – Why Not?
Why not… well, I don’t know, maybe because it sucks?
DAY6 – Melt Down
You know, it’s okay. The chorus has got a nice, poppy feel to it with that ascending thing that they do rhythmically, and sorry I’m not going to get into the technical terms because it will alienate the readers, fuck knows people have a hard enough time understanding what I’m crapping on about as it is. Anyway it’s the best DAY6 song in quite a while, and achieves the feat of being poppy while still sounding like a proper rock song, something a lot of Korean “idol bands” don’t get right…
WEi – Love2You
…and this is what I mean. The song kind of surprises with the guitars in the chorus but it’s just a little too washed-out sounding to have an impact. You can tell that the producer doesn’t really love guitar rock but just threw some in there because G-Idle did it a couple of times and so it’s popular this year.
FIFTY FIFTY – Starry Night
Once thing I’ve really noticed about Fifty Fifty is that their songwriting is actually pretty consistent. They don’t have an absolute banger yet, but nothing of theirs is really bad either, and you can’t say that about a lot of groups. So their hit/miss ratio is actually reasonable overall. Just thought I’d mention that here.
ADYA – Rizz
A pretty neat backing track here and a snappy groove kind of ruined by some fairly lame melodic writing. Scotch snaps and bluesy warbles were not really what this song needed to shine, and it’s a real shame because a lot of the other elements here are decent.
AEONIT – Lumos
Look out Plave, there’s competition afoot! This is okay I guess but do people really want to see idol music without idols, I think not.
FIFTY FIFTY – Starry Night
Speaking of Fifty Fifty’s songs, I don’t know who does the songs for Fifty Fifty but they all have a similar kind of feel in the sense that it’s all very melody-focused. I actually think that the success of Fifty Fifty’s “Cupid” is largely responsible for breaking the “chant” trend in k-pop that so many people have been bitterly complaining about. So I thought that was interesting and worth mentioning.
K4 – Bye Bye Bye
When you see the girls swanning around in fishnets for no reason, you know exactly what type of song this is going to turn into after the acoustic guitar intro is over. As it happens it’s actually alright, which kind of makes it even worse in a way because I feel like a weirdo watching this (like, even more of a weirdo than I obviously am, yeah I know right?)
Younha – Sunfish
Younha is just good here and if you disagree you should probably be stabbed in the throat repeatedly and left to bleed to death in a ditch somewhere before some homeless person finds you but he’s too scared to tell the police because he doesn’t want to get involved so you just bleed out like the sack of shit you are… sorry just kidding, we can respectfully disagree. Sorry I was just chanelling “trendy TikTok bigotry” there for a moment. Seriously is that social network banned yet, what’s taking Biden so long, he must have lost his meds. Lula in Brazil got a social netowrk banned in about a day, come on gramps keep up!
Chanyeol – Black Out
Chanyeol’s song is actually a bit of a banger in the Jackson Wang “LMLY” kind of way, and it’s fitting because this video is shot in Hong Kong too (we all know how much Jackson Wang capes for Hong Kong independence). It’s not quite that good, but it’s tough measuring up against the Wang.
FIFTY FIFTY – Starry Night
Although I mentioned before that Fifty Fifty’s songs were all of similar reasonably-above-average quality, if I really had to pick a favourite these days it would probably be “Lovin’ Me“. I think the song has a really nice, anthemic quality to it and is just a little bit more powerful than their other songs, with those bold synth pads punctuating the groove while also enhancing the melody. I guess that opinion could change but that’s how I feel that the moment.
Jinho – Teddy Bear
One of my pet animation hates is when things that touch the ground, like wheels, or feet, are not properly animated to match the speed at which the person or vehicle is moving along the ground. This song is cancelled for that reason alone.
KIXO feat. 10CM, B.I – Love Dilemma
10cm are in this. Let’s just move on.
FISTBUMP – Our Story
QWER done by men isn’t as interesting because men are always rocking out and it’s kind of boring, the era of men rocking is over, let’s let the girls rock now thank you.
Penomeco – Asurabalbalta
Another thing that should not be done by men is Jvcki Wai Autotune reggaeton. Leave that shit to her, seriously.
SM Jazz Trio – Supernova (Jazz Ver.)
SM have a jazz trio, doing covers of aespa songs? What’s even worse, is that this version is actually not the fucking embarassment that I thought it would be, if nothing else at least these guys can play, and it doesn’t sound too bad despite being jazz, so I guess I have to give these fucking eggheads a pass. Fuck, just kill me now.
FIFTY FIFTY – Starry Night
We’ve already reviewed Fifty Fifty’s “Starry Night” in this roundup (I’m pretty sure, but just in case I forgot to – it’s not bad I guess), so let’s put our Asian but not-Korean not-pop not-world-music feature here instead, yay! This week it’s Fifty Fifty with “Starry Night” and you know, this song isn’t bad at all, you could listen to it if you wanted to, as long as you weren’t part of some boycott or something hey. Okay, I know this one’s Korean but it’s my website I’m allowed to break the rules after all I made them.
GIRLS FRONTIER SECTION
There’s this thing called Girls Frontier and I don’t even know what it is really even though I was told because I deleted the description that the person who submitted these helpfully provided but I can only assume that it’s not inspired by book 4 chapter 193 of the Shin Hana series, anyway I guess it’s probably the usual lame reality TV group formation thing, here’s some songs I guess.
Daydream – MFBF
This one’s not too bad, and yes it’s very j-inspired but k-pop when it’s j-inspired is often very good because they tend to take the best parts of j-pop (the melody and harmony writing) and leave aside the worst parts (the gobsmackingly shit production style, lightweight beats and gimmicky bullshit). I didn’t mind this although it’s hardly “Oppa Virus“.
Shiroyume – Love Blackhole
This one’s going the more Orange Caramelly route, and those are tough shoes to fill, but they do a reasonable job of ska-ing it up, which is a sound that definitely helped infuse some of the better Orange Caramel tracks with greatness. Again I’d say it’s nowhere near as good as “Lipstick” or Lizzy’s “Not An Easy Girl” but I support an overall move in this direction.
Midori Sour – Back Stage
This other unit go for that terrible 90s pop thing with the keyboard stabs, repeated flat-sounding snares and so forth, I believe they call it New Jack Shit. It’s definitely the weakest of the three songs here, and it doesn’t hurt that other groups have been exploring this territory to much better effect lately.
FIFTY FIFTY – Starry Night
Hey Fifty Fifty aren’t in Girls Frontier, but wouldn’t it be funny if they were? Maybe that’s why Fifty Fifty don’t have an absolute banger yet, their songwriters just need to tackle the right style. I think they could probably smash an Orange Caramel ska-lite out of the park, but they’ve never gone there. Let’s hope they do, and remember to feed the girls a few orange caramels on the way through.
RANDOM BONUS VIDEOS OF THE WEEK
Young Posse – Ate That (raw footage vs final VFX)
If you wondered how much of Young Posse’s “Ate That” video was CGI, well, the answer is pretty much all of it except the girls (and sometimes, even the girls). Ben Proulx is quickly becoming one of my favourite MV directors with his very imaginative scene-setting.
Yves coming out: a compilation
BADING
FIFTY FIFTY – Starry Night
This week’s retro review is “Starry Night” by this group called Fifty Fifty, I don’t know, maybe you’ve heard of them, anyway they’re not bad actually and this song came out a few days ago so it’s retro enough for this feature. This is a song that could be listened to at home, or in the supermarket, or on the train or anywhere really. You could listen to it right now, if you wanted. Or don’t, it really doesn’t matter. Do what you like. Such is total freedom.
That’s all for this week! Kpopalypse roundup returns next week!
0 Comments