Kpopalypse roundup – new k-pop releases 2/6/2025

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

I mean, if making a fuss about alleged political dogwhistling gets attractive k-pop women to stop wearing ugly red and black jackets, I’m all for it.

IU – Never Ending Story

Everything on IU’s new album is apparently a cover song (not that the word “cover” even has much meaning in the Korean idol scene where performers almost never sings songs they fully wrote themselves), and this is some remake of some terrible ballad. It’s actually a little better than this type of thing usually is, but that could just be me biasing IU in her authoritarian regime cosplay. I would let her dictatorship suppress my human rights.

IU feat. Balming Tiger – A Beautiful Person

This other song is just pure ass.

UAU – 2 Months

It’s easy to be negative about this trop-slop debut from Dreamcatcher’s new subunit as it squirts over all our faces with that horrid saxowhatsit riff, but let’s be real: Dreamcatcher were never going to beat their early songs anyway, because their company was too scared to let them. Perhaps we’re better off with this attractive but timid Vivizification, at least we won’t get our hopes up anymore.

TEN – Silence

Silence? If only.

NEXZ – Want More? One More

I didn’t really want any more but you do you, I guess.

HITGS – Gross

Funnily enough, taking Red Velvet-inspired dirges and removing half of the overcooked random-ass melodic nonsense and stupid noise actually makes them somewhat better. Whou would have thought.

N.Flying – Everlasting

It seems like N.Flying’s run of mid songs is what’s everlasting, because I can’t remember the last time they actually did anything good.

Hi-Fi Unicorn! – Fever

It’s okay but just too soft. Where’s the rock? Come on, Dreamcatcher has folded, there’s an opening here people.

KIIRAS – Kill Ma Boss

One of the most terrifying concepts in k-pop, the “country music crossover”. We haven’t had one of these in about a decade and hopefully we won’t have one again for at least another decade.

withus – Indigo

Not much of a song, the dance track is doing all the heavy lifting here. Perhaps just as well.

VANNER – Goodbye & Hello

You don’t want to listen to this “for the fans” trash and neither does anybody else so let’s put our weekly non-Korean LGBT feature here instead, yay! This week it’s Cakes Da Killer and it’s really about time we had more rap guys being openly gay plus having raps tracks and flows this good. Of course just like with metal half of them are in the closet and will never come out, but isn’t rap supposed to be about “keeping it real” or some bullshit… guess that was just a lie, oh well. Anyway Cakes is doing great, let’s have a few more with this amount of balls.

Hwanyoong – Radar

Remember when groups used to have box videos? Now they just send them down to the basement car park for the dance shoot. EXO’s “Growl” sure paved the way to the underground parking garage. In twenty years there’s going to be a bunch of ex-idols suing for carbon monoxide poisoning.

Fairy Mai – Light Please

Cringe major scale melodies that don’t match the riffing in the backing track is the only thing wrong with what is otherwise a pretty damn good song. I’m really over the video concept though, why does everyone have to be a building-crushing giant these days, get back in your box video damn.

Ji Suyeon – A Fish Gone to the Forest

Something on the better side of ballads thanks so some different instrumentation and decent writing. Yes it is possible to write a good ballad, you just have to not suck at music. It can be done.

Mark Tuan – High As You

I think I’m going to need to be a little bit higher to listen to this one.

Doyoung – Be My Light

Such a boring song that they fade it out halfway through to do some stupid to-camera narration bullshit. Stuff like this isn’t really eligible for roundup at all (because if they can’t be bothered to give us the whole song, why should I be bothered) but I’m just putting this here as a PSA for those who submit songs.

Seok Matthew – Say Yes

Sorry but no means no especially where super-average boy-pop is concerned.

Bang Yongguk – Motion

Sounds like mainly just the motion of my bowels.

Yuto Adachi – Blue Spring

And the shit solo songs from boy idol group members continue. Always the most boring part of these roundups, let’s skip all the other ones I had lined up for your sanity.

Heya – SouLott

Remember that shit group called Ariaz who tried to do a knockoff debut Loona thing about half a decade ago? Well I’d forgotten about them also, but here’s one of the girls from that group doing some coffee shop thing that’s so boring grass would refuse to grow for it.

Coda Bridge – Blue Runway

This song was really not worth dragging a piano outdoors for, espcially given that there’s isn’t even any piano in the fucking song anyway.

MC Comeon feat. Lee Chang Sung – 13579

Don’t be fooled by the “MC”, this is just novelty trot at it’s most dull and basic.

Jung Dakyung – I’m coming to meet my love

T-ara style ballads didn’t need to be even slower than they are.

Kim Eui Young – Do Whatever You Want

Do whatever I want? Cool, I’ll finish roundup here and get back to playing adult gacha games.

Rockit Girl – Through The Pain (acoustic version)

But wait, Rockit Girl have a new song and I originally only clicked on this because of the thumbnail because honestly how different to the original could it be, but they surpised me by having a kick-ass acoustic version that goes harder than most so-called “k-rock” and might even be better than the original.

RANDOM BONUS VIDEOS OF THE WEEK

dearyoongi – South Korea’s election has kpop idols fearing for their careers, but why?

All the idols are right now racing to be as apolitical and bland as possible in the wake of a controversial election so they don’t lose any fans, meanwhile the actual fans themselves are overanalysing everything and reading everything into everything else, whether it’s there or not, fucking up all their favourite idols’ careers in the process. Oops.

Fifty Fifty – Day & Night : UNPLUGGED – Perfect Crime Live

I guess this is the closest thing we’re going to get to a video for “Perfect Crime” so I’ll just have to deal with it I guess. Hey isn’t that rag on that girl’s head a durag, isn’t that supposed to be a bad thing or something when Koreans wear it? I know I’m an ignorant wasian fuckwit but I really don’t get when the durag thing is okay and when it isn’t, I need someone to explain this shit to me. I only learned what a durag was a few months ago because k-pop fans kept yapping about the things, I’d seen them before but I just thought it was a bandana or a bit of cloth or something? I mean, personally when someone tries to look like me I’m just flattered (hi Cocona) but people who wear the durag thing on their head don’t like imitation that much it seems… mind you nobody seems to have made much of a fuss this time around. Why isn’t she getting cancelled? Is it because she’s not smiling but is looking kind of miserable and shitty about life so therefore she’s not “mocking”? Or are Fifty Fifty too nugu, I wouldn’t think so, I mean they’ve had bigger hits in Gunsandbigotryland so far than Kiss Of Life have? Or does it not count because Fifty Fifty are already cancelled? Do two cancels negate each other? And what happens if she then adds a third problematic thing, if she wears a durag and continues to be in Fifty Fifty while also doing aegyo at the Holocaust museum, does she go back to being cancelled again? Or does something else happen? Maybe it opens a new dimension and Martin Luther King rises from the grave and ends all racism… but if that actually happened, k-pop fans wouldn’t like it because they wouldn’t have anything left to weaponise against people they dislike… anyway Lil Taco Belle and friends come back on June 9th so warm up your typing fingers I guess, uwu

EXO – Love Me Right

I never covered this EXO song when it came out because it was just some generic boy-funk, neither good nor bad, it was just kind of “there”, just a big ball of nothing in particular. The only thing about this package that draws any emotion out of me at all is the horrible gridiron uniforms, a style that looks good on absolutely nobody. Who invented that shit anyway. Weird how a country that insists on no gun control whatsoever rugs their sportball players up in twenty kilos of protective gear.

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