It’s time for Kpopalypse roundup! Let’s take a look at some new releases!
Jisoo – Earthquake
The “other girl” in Blackpink gets a new solo song and it’s actually pretty good, certainly a hell of a lot better than “Flower“, especially if you can ignore the unfortunate half-time drops.
Chungha – Stress
It’s not the banger that “I’m Ready” was, but it’s still safe to say that Chunga has well and truly entered her “not complete shit” era.
ILLIT – Almond Chocolate
Illit lean into an early Lovelyz/April sound quite successfully and continue to be musically far better than anything on their label has any right to be.
KiiiKiii – I Do Me
There’s nothing wrong with this debut song but I really miss the days when you’d get excited for a debut because you knew that a new group was always going to have a balls-to-the-wall killer track to try and impress. Nowadays it just feels like everyone wants to come out of the gate as mid as possible so they don’t offend extra-precious fans of existing groups.
MADEIN – Love, Afraid
You know k-pop had a good week when even the queens of shit AI and getting their manager’s sexual assault allegations swept under the rug have a song way better than their average.
SMTOWN – Thank You
If you ever want to know who SM Entertainment still have the shits with, just look at whose faces don’t appear in retrospective videos like these. At this point SM would win such huge brownie points by burying the hatchet and inserting 0.5 seconds of Jessica or five-member TVXQ that it’s a wonder why they don’t do it.
SEVENTEEN – Encircled
Someone encircled Seventeen’s songwriters and demanded that they make this boring “for the fans” nonsense.
ONE PACT – 100!
The one boy in the shopping trolley, I can only assume he’s headed straight for the returns desk. Perhaps they can get a refund on the song while they’re there.
Boyfriend – Time Limit
I’m not sure what the time limit they’re referring to here is, but this song definitely exceeded it.
I:MOND – Wonderland
What a weird song. Those atonal synth organ chords take the cake, maybe that’d work with some kind of rap song where there’s also no melody for it to rub up against, but they expected the girls to sing over this? Madness.
IRISÉ – Wings
Just some anime poop, the sort of song that really needs a QWER to breathe some life into it.
Jackson Wang – High Alone
Some art-wank shit about how he’s drowning or something and his fans are leaving him, oh no. It was hard to work out where the song started and the masturbatory film school shit stopped… or maybe that transition just didn’t even happen, who knows.
Eunhyuk – Like This
Eunhyuk is really leaning into the “I’m so badass” rap thing, but Eunhyuk, we all remember back when you were feeling ill, and you needed IU to come over to your bedside to tuck you in and make sure you were being looked after. You can’t just switch up and be a hip-hop now that you’re nearly as old as Kpopalypse, the time for that was back when IU was changing your sheets and making you a honey and lemon tea.
Suzy – Come Back
It’s the k-pop idols who can’t sing that well, who tend to make the best ballads. The extra space in the melody that they need so they can keep up, and the subdued instrumentation that they need so it doesn’t swallow their piddling voice right up and spit it out, are the elements that make their songs work.
Lee Chang Sub – Feel The Groove
Nobody could be bothered making a proper video for this thoughtless New Jack Shit, so they just new-jacked some live performance footage and (badly) synced it up to the studio audio.
Kim Chaewon – Dear My Wave
This song is so boring that at 1:49 you can hear someone knocking on the studio door just to check that the audio engineer didn’t fall asleep.
Punch – I Hope the Painful Memories Weren’t Love
There’s two types of Punch songs, the songs she does for OSTs that are actually decent, and the boring as fuck ballads that she does the rest of the time. This song is firmly in the second category.
Olivia Marsh – Strategy
I like the retro game style presentation. I’m pretty sure that Olivia has played all six of the TNTHGSWY games, she looks like someone who would actually understand the unique Australian humour style.
Izykite – Not That Girl
Izykite is not that girl… that I want to listen to.
Bang Yedam – We Good
We really weren’t that good, so instead here’s this week’s random non-Korean LGBT feature! This week it’s Death In June, a group borne out of the ashes of 1970s UK punk group Crisis (who are also relevant so I’ll probably feature them in a future roundup’s LGBT feature). Death In June has been for almost all of its existence a one-man group, that one man being Douglas P. His musical output is generally labelled as “neofolk” but is in practice a lot more varied (and good) than that label implies, however it’s his lyrical and thematic output which really seems to get people hot and bothered. While many people have written extensively (and probably incorrectly) about exactly what his deal is, one thing that can be said for absolute certain is that he is incredibly unapologetically gay. In fact it’s surprising how often awareness of his gayness is missing from discussions about him, but the Kpopalypse 2025 LGBT roundup feature isn’t going to make that mistake!
Meenoi – Hair Loss
“Hair loss”? Like XG’s Cocona, Meenoi is the hero we need.
SuperMarket – Fat Cat
mrcs
RANDOM BONUS VIDEOS OF THE WEEK
Yoyomi – “So Pretty” (fewer pretty version)
A caonima edited out the annoying parts of the new Yoyomi song, improving it greatly, you’re welcome.
Ex-Kpop Idol Spills The Truth About The Industry: U-Kiss: Xander Lee | Ask ZULA
Xander from U-Kiss talks about his experience as an idol. I’ve never spoken to any ex-boy group members (it’s only the ex-female idols who want to talk to Kpopalypse for some reason, must be all those fashion posts I do) but what he says certainly checks out with my sources. Worth a look.
EXID – Every Night
“Every Night” was a pretty good song from EXID back in the day, but of course it was a total flop that was completely ignored at the time because it was released two years pre-Hani fancam virality, so nobody gave a single shit until they retrospectively discovered it after all the fuss. People keep telling me in these reviews to talk about the music, but if history has taught me anything, with k-pop fans it’s never, ever about the music.
That’s all for this week! Kpopalypse roundup returns next week!
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