Kpopalypse roundup – new k-pop releases 16/6/2025

It’s time for Kpopalypse roundup! Let’s take a look at some new releases!

We can tell Jungkook isn’t dating anyone seriously right now because a good woman would never let him go out with such an unstylish hat – and don’t get me started on that unadjusted collar…

j-hope feat. GloRilla – Killin’ It Girl

Who’s looking forward to BTS reuniting as a full group? Nobody with any taste, if rubbish like this is anything to go by.

ILLIT – Do the Dance

As for the female side of HYBE, they’ve already killed the golden goose and their global momentum is now dead as a doornail, it isn’t coming back at least as far as girl groups are concerned. Their fortunes are now forever tied to BTS and whatever they can squeeze out of that flatulent gravy train before it collapses under its own weight. Having said that, Illit still have some great songs, and I like their catchy “doot-doot” choruses, so if they did pop off globally in a “NewJeans in 2023” kind of way (which they absolutely won’t), I’d be into it.

ARTMS – Icarus

I’m using the “club” video version for this review because the “cinematic” version had about ten minutes of artsy wank featuring music that’s actually way better than the song they’re promoting, which was just depressing. It sucks when they don’t get it right, but it sucks even more when they show that they know how to get it right but just decided not to.

ATEEZ – Lemon Drop

They should have put a big lemon stumbling into the camera frame right at the start of the video just so people don’t think that this song is about anything other than… lemons dropping. Oh wait they fucking did. Labels are smart now, they have the plausible deniablity all prepped and ready to go just in case there’s an issue. Mind you they needn’t have bothered – this is a boy group, nobody wants to be making a fuss about objectification when it means potentially cutting their own fap supply off.

Kiss Of Life – K Bye

After endless rounds of incredible ass-reaming suckitude Kiss Of Life get it right for the first time in ages with a punchy song that really should have been an A-side instead of whatever garbage they went with instead. Also the lyrics are great especially in the context of the group’s recent history. Just like T-ara in 2013, there’s no point in Kiss Of Life endlessly bowing and begging forgiveness from people who have completely made up their mind about them and will never change it. For those “fans” it’s more about power-tripping at this point. It’s the same reason why I never apologise for any of my old posts. Once you’re “cancelled” you have nothing left to lose, so you might as well just shrug it off and get on with business.

SEVENTEEN – Bad Influence

Stray Kids – Hollow

Accurate song title of the week.

IU – Square’s dream

A fairly throwaway cover song from IU’s new throwaway cover songs collection, complete with a crap video where IU looks great but is only shot from two rubbish camera angles while she gets stalked by a bunch of CGI squares in typical k-pop street harassment video style.

Yoyomi – Dart

Yoyomi is clearly upset about being left out of the Kpopalypse most fappable music video list for 2024 so she’s launched an all-out assault to get back in the placings. Full marks for effort, the competition is stiff this year but I reckon she just might do it. The song being kinda mid only adds to her chances because there’s no realistic possibility here of the music quality distracting me from her visuals.

PRIMROSE – Cinema

Actually surprisingly great, easily their best song, plus better than a great deal of A-list stuff lately. Yes it’s shouty, but it’s not randomly shouty, there’s a big difference. Everything here actually fits together… for fucking once. Good job, keep it up.

XLOVE – 1&Only

Too many Dutch angles, not enough of pretty much everything else, it’s Battlefield Earth if it were a k-pop boy group.

Baby Don’t Cry – Bet You’ll Regret It

P Nation has a song that… doesn’t suck? Amazing! Okay it’s not the greatest thing ever, coming off like mid-tempo YG lite, but it’s a pretty good take on mid-tempo YG lite so I’ll take it.

n.SSign – Itty Bitty

Just more average stuff. I can’t even think up a good “Itty Bitty” joke to make.

Double One – On The Rocks with Kiss

Noting much going on here either. It’s not horrible but I just don’t need this soft shit in my life.

BOYS II PLANET – Hola Solar

Look, they’re still doing survival shows or whatever. By the time my next book about a fictional survival show comes out, actual survival shows will be so old-hat that the book will read like a period drama.

Solar with 9m88 – Floating Free

Solar goes to Taiwan to do some song with some girl before the Chinese invade and ruin millions of lives and the entire system of global trade and industry as we know it just to please Winnie’s fat ego and the musical results are not very good. Don’t play this to him, it might give him an extra reason.

Min – Shimmy

I always thought Min was best girl in miss A but that hasn’t carried over to the songs unfortunately.

Aoen – The Blue Sun

Never mind the moody space intro, when the song kicks in it’s as generic as can be. We’re really having a shit few weeks in k-pop aren’t we.

KickFlip – Before the sun explodes

Kickflip do their token “we are just relatable boys, look at our tidy school uniforms” thing, and it’s pretty pathetic. Even the group themselves seem to realise it, stopping halfway through in silent disgust before resigning themselves to the fact that they’re contractually obliged to continue.

X:IN – Sabaha

Noisy, rambing, and not very interesting. There’s no hook here worth caring about. Watching the girl almost run into the concrete pillar at 3:10 was far more interesting than the song itself.

Baekhyun – Chocolate

Some of the text on this video says “adjust your expecations accordingly”, which seems like a good idea – if they were in any way high you might want to tone them down a bit before watching this.

Doyoung – Memory

Just too overcrowded with sound and not very good, like they put all the Lovelyz chord progressions into a hat and picked them out one by one in the wrong order, then added a rock beat to it to try and save it.

Kim Wansun – Hi Rosa

It’s nice to see first-gen vet Kim Wan Sun still doing stuff but honestly this song is kinda poop, you won’t remember it in two weeks.

The Deep – Killing Me Slowly

Ironically faster and better than just about anything else this week. The Deep is still great and she’s even breaking new ground for independent artists because her fans are as toxic as those of any A-list idol group.

MEMI – Get da Faka

Fantastic riffs help carry a song that’s otherwise pretty empty. I guess if it gets a few people into rock it’s not a bad thing.

Insun – Insomnia

Another actually really good song. The small indies are killing it this week, meanwhile the A-list continually shits the bed. I might have to turn into Korean Indie 2 at this point.

Cooing – Psycho

Even this girl who I normally don’t like at all has something pretty decent this week. It’s a good time to not stan popular groups.

Sujo – Run on Love!

This is okay too, I guess. It feels to me like what Doyoung was going for this week.

Hanhee – Bbi

Not too bad, of course k-pop fans are all losing their shit over her because she’s got the image VERY right and k-pop fans only really know how to consume images, they don’t really listen to music. Having said that the music’s not bad either, but it does feel like the better Loona or Illit songs with a little too much lead in their shoes.

Ayaka – Pinky Biy

I wanted to like this, and I didn’t, but it’s still better than whatever trash your friends are probably streaming.

Nossam – Move your body

Okay this was kinda poop so let’s have our non-Korean LGBT feature here instead, yay! I’m going to hand this feature over to readers for a while because I’m getting a LOT of great suggestions, and one of them is Riotnine. They are new to me and I don’t know much about them other than that they’ve broken up now (don’t you hate it when you find out about groups just as they vanish), and that they once got a copyright strike on some platform because one of their song’s rain samples sounded too much like a different song’s rain sample, even though they apparently recorded the rain themselves. AI is a disaster, folks… but Riotnine are good.

Kim Nayul – Two Plus One

Speaking of LGBT, the cyber-furry instrumentalists are getting into trot now. Just so you know.

KARDI – Not But Disco

I’ll leave you with this song, which isn’t bad actually.  Not sure how much the gayageum really fits in with everything else, unlike Jambinai where it’s integrated very well, here it feels like the odd instrument out, that rubber-bandy noise not really adding much that couldn’t have been done better on another instrument. Still a good song anyway, I like it. Just to be clear.

RANDOM BONUS VIDEOS OF THE WEEK

CHUU-ing – Harper’s BAZAAR ‘Juicy Couture’ Photoshoot Behind-the-Scenes

Chuu does her best to not grin like an idiot for the cameras for stretches of up to five seconds at a time, with varying degrees of success.

QWER Chodan Boxing Compilation

This is what a feminist looks like.

N.O.M – A Guys

N.O.M’s early strategy to get their music over the line with Korean heteronormative media was clever – just say the word “girls” a lot to confirm your heterosexuality. Of course, it was about as convincing as ADOR claiming “Cookie” was aimed at baking enthusiasts, but they make it fit… and they could mean ladyboys, I guess. The song is a bit silly mind you, but still pretty fun, and they got a lot better at what they did later on. N.O.M will be missed until a bona-fide replacement appears!

That’s all for this week! Kpopalypse roundup returns next week!