Honourable and dishonourable mentions for 2024

It’s nearly the end of the year, and the best and worst songs of 2024 will be released soon!  In the meantime, welcome to the “honourable and dishonourable mentions” post – all the songs that weren’t quite good or bad enough to get into the Kpopalypse end of year lists for 2024!

The following are all songs that were very good, but not quite good enough to get into my 30 favourites list for 2024 (which will be published on 31st December).  There is also, below this, an equal amount of “dishonourable mentions”, songs that were really quite bad, yet not bad enough to hit my worst 30 songs of the year.  Please note:

• Songs are sorted alphabetically by artist, not by order of preference
• This list is feature tracks only, either with an MV, or that were promoted on music shows or released as a single
  
• OST songs, songs for sporting events, obvious lazy AI bullshit created from just a single prompt and Christmas songs are not eligible
• This list is pure personal preference only, it does not factor in chart success, popularity, cultural relevance etc
• Your opinions may (and probably will) differ, and that’s okay – my opinion is not important
• If this post makes you mad, it’s working as intended, don’t forget to write about it somewhere so we can all pretend to care

HONOURABLE MENTIONS

015B feat. Yireh – Memory Washer

015B suck about 90% of the time because they do so much easy listening bullshit, but when they finally kick the yacht-rock to the curb the results are occasionally outstanding. “Memory Washer” is bright, breezy and just nice.

1CHU – Punk Hot

It’s been a very good year for rock influences in k-pop, and 1CHU, a duo formed out of the ashes of the now defunct HeyGirls (who?) picked up that particular ball and ran with it hard here.

ARTMS – Virtual Angel

ARTMS have by far the best post-Loona splinter group song with “Virtual Angel” even though its popularity wasn’t huge, and it’s not quite up there with the best of this kind of semi-synthwave style but it’s still high quality enough to be acknowledged here. I guess the reason for the low views compared to Loona group material is that this song also comes with a T-araesque video so unwatchable that it’ll peel the outer layers of membrane right off your eyeballs, and for once a seizure warning at the start of a music video isn’t just for shock value or paranoid legal ass-covering but is actually 100% accurate, ignore it at your peril. After receiving an overwhelmingly negative outcry thanks to this unwatchable visual mess, their company thoughtfully made a new “human eye” version that was actually possible for sentient beings to look at, but by then it was too late and thousands of Loona fans now suffering from ARTMS-induced semi-blindness have PTSD triggered merely from hearing the intro.

DPR IAN – Limbo

We’ve sure had a lot of shitty “change-up” music over the last few years, so it’s good to hear someone finally do a suprising, sudden type of change the right way. It’s not impossible, you just need to have some kind of connection there that makes sense so the result doesn’t sound like three completely different songs. DPR IAN’s changes have common musical elements that persist through them, in a really cool and unique moody style, which is really all it takes to make them sound like they make sense together. It’s not rocket science, JYP you fuckin’ dumbass.

ICHILLIN’ – Official

Basically, aespa’s “Whiplash” on a tighter budget. It works because it adheres to exactly the same type of songwriting conventions that made “Whiplash” work – tight rhythm, restrained vocals and cool sounds.

IVE – Accendio

A pretty left-field sonic excursion for a k-pop song, but still very much up my alley, “Accendio” threw a lot of people’s brains out but they ended up forcing themselves to like it because their bias was in it, or something. Just as well.

IVE – Crush

There’s two types of IVE songs, the type where they do some weird off the wall shit, and the type that sound like “I Am” with only very slight differences in the melodies and chords. If I had to choose only one type of IVE song to take onto a desert island, I’d pick the “I Am” clones like “Crush”, because if you’ve got a winning formula you might as well stick to it. No Iron Maiden fan is ever disappointed when their new album doesn’t have DJ scratching and breakbeats in it, likewise we shouldn’t be sad when IVE just continues to keep doing the same thing, very very well.

Kim A Reum – Aliens

Apparently the producers from Lovelyz’ debut era had a hand in making this cruisy old-school k-pop song, and it shows, with a lot of the same textures being employed to great effect. All up it’s a much better song than the flat and disappointing reunion comeback we got from Lovelyz themselves.

Lee Chae Yeon – Don’t

Actually the first few seconds of this song made me want to throw my computer in the bin, quit writing and become a monk, because of those fucking phone noises. I hate it when phone noises appear in any songs, music videos, TV shows, movies etc because I always think it’s my own phone going off, and I’ve always hated my phone and this modern culture of always being contactable. Of course I didn’t quit writing or become a monk, because that would have pleased a whole bunch of dumb people on social networking way too fucking much, and I didn’t quit listening to this song either which is just as well because it gets really good really quickly after the abortion that is the first ten seconds of sound. But just know that the unfortunate opening is the sole reason why this song got only an honourable mention this year and not a top 30 placing. If we don’t kick them, they won’t learn!

NewJeans – Supernatural

NewJeans have avoided the heat other young idol groups have gotten for poor vocals, not by being the best singers ever, but by fielding songs that allow them to sing within their capabilities. “Poor vocals” is an attack angle I’m surprised the HYBE-funded TAG PR agency (also known for organising social media maniplation witch-hunts against Blake Lively and Amber Heard) hasn’t attempted yet, given that they’re trying just about everything else right now to take NewJeans down (“illegal immigrants”, “arrogant”, just wait for “animal torturer” or “buttplug inserter”, surely coming soon), but if they did try it they’d only be inadvertently highlighting NewJeans’ good vocal writing. In a scene where everyone is always trying to do too much vocally, “Supernatural” smartly underplays the vocal to give the music more space to maintain interest. This has been the songwriting strategy for NewJeans generally, and the results have been mixed, because you need a killer backing track to make it work which they don’t always have, but when the track is indeed great like it is here, the results pay off.

Rolling Quartz – Stand Up

As a rock music fan, I find Rolling Quartz to be a frustrating listen, because I really want to like them a lot more than I do. They always get the image 100% perfect (which let’s face it, is important), and they have a great sound too, that’s a lot rawer than what Korean rock is usually comfortable with, hence why they sound oddly dry and under-affected to typical k-pop fan ears saturated with commercial idol music. However the songs have always been a bit lacking, which is why they shine so well with covers (like their fantastic versions of “Azalea” and “Good Night“), but often lack impact on their self-penned material. “Stand Up” doesn’t completely fix that problem, but it’s definitely the best attempt yet at redressing the balance, because of the fun swinging beat and the singer using something different to the tired blues melodies that fill most of Rolling Quartz’ other original songs. Here’s hoping we can get some more of this and less of the glam-rock-by-numbers they tend to do.

Seo Eve – KungKungDda

A brainless doof-doof sequel to Seo Eve’s international mega-hit “Malatanghulu” was exactly what the doctor ordererd. Nobdy will care about it in a year, but right now it’s great and the perfect antidote to k-pop’s oh-so-serious girl-crush “all eyes on me” “I don’t give a what” cringe posing that all the other 13 year old girls are being foced to learn in agency dungeons right now as you read this. The video is a lot of stupid fun and comes complete with Yunho from ATEEZ goofily playing along, it’s the best thing he’s ever done.

STAYC – 1 Thing

It’s that fucking camera flash noise. Sure, the hooks are catchy and the beat is there, but that piercing whine every couple of bars is what seals the deal and elevates this track to greatness. I grew up in the era where Public Enemy were as big as Taylor Swift is now, where sirens and kettles on the boil were considered acceptable percussion, so it might annoy all the anti-black people on TikTok (which is all of them) but this is very nostalgic to me, and I usually hate nostalgia, so you know they’ve done it right. 

SUNMI – Balloon in Love

This just in – Sunmi still knows what a good song is. I mean, I guess we already knew that since last year’s botched “Stranger” was not one but three good songs that just didn’t fit together, but this time she’s keeping the delivery relatively straightforward. It’s amazing how consistently good she is when she sticks to writing and performing one good song at a time.

The Wind – Hello, My First Love

There aren’t too many boy groups coming out of late with good track records of material, but one of them is The Wind. The only reason I can think of why they’re not already huge with k-pop fans is they’re a boy group plumbing some fairly traditional girl group musical territory. If HYBE’s new girl group sounded like this, everyone would be hailing it as the second coming of Gfriend, but I don’t think too many people want to see boys doing this style. It’s a shame because they do it well.

Yurisa – Nya?

Directly inspired by the “Needy Streamer Overload” theme, this is obviously the kind of thing that’s very relevant to Yurisa’s personal weebcore interests, so she attacks it with full force. The result is definitely more engaging than all those limp acoustic-strumming ballads and power metal video game tunes she did. It’s amazing how well you can do something when you really believe in what you’re doing.

BONUS SONGS THAT COULD, BUT DIDN’T

Gesundheit!

BABYMONSTER – Sheesh

BabyMonster have been a letdown ever since debut, but “Sheesh” starts off like it’s going to change all that and restore YG’s songwriting track record back to their billion-YouTube-viewcount-having “actually taking songwriting for Blackpink seriously” era glory days. The moody piano-driven verse leads into a great dynamic pre-chorus which gets hopes up high, and then the chorus starts and it’s… basically a wet sneeze. I’m not completely convinced that one of the girls didn’t sneeze for real into the microphone and the producer on deck that day suddenly had a fucking brainwave and said “hey actually, that’s a great idea for a hook”. It all adds up to one of the worst casualties of the “melody-less chorus” trend in recent memory. If there’s a silver lining to all this, the sheer embarassment of this song’s existence and the resulting reputational failure of BabyMonster as a result might single-handedly be enough to bring the trend of having actual melodies in choruses back into full force in 2025. We can hope.

The trinity of wasted potential in k-pop outros is complete

IVE – Heya

What do IVE’s “Heya”, f(x)’s “Dracula” and Loona’s “Why Not” all have in common? The answer is, they’re all absolutely fantastic songs, for the last twenty-five seconds of their running length only. Before then each song annoyingly cockblocks the listener, never really playing its full hand and keeping the entire chrous harmony under wraps for basically no reason. I understand why they do it, but it just doesn’t work for stuff that’s this short. I’m all for a piece that shows “development” as it progresses, but if you’re writing a song like this that has only three minutes to impress, you want to make sure that there’s enough space left in the song to enjoy what’s fully developed before the entire thing just fucking ends completely. Writing k-pop songs like prog-rock is great and all but you need a prog-rock song length to work with… and maybe a prog-rock drug supply. In this case, IVE (probably) have neither.

It’s a revolution… at the wrong RPM

LISA feat. Rosalía – New Woman

“New Woman” reminds me of something very specific and that’s Helmet and House Of Pain collaborating on the “Judgment Night” soundtrack in 1993. Yes, I know, random tangent, but this is kpopalypse.com so what do you expect, a normal review? Get the fuck out of here loser, there are other sites for that, fuck off to one of those shit “k-pop news” sites, bye bye now. So now the idiots are gone, let me explain. “Judgment Night” (incorrect American spelling of “Judgement” tsk tsk no wonder it flopped) was some probably-shit movie that I haven’t even seen and is long since forgotten, but the soundtrack was notable because every single song on it was a collaboration between a heavy metal artist and a rap artist. This was something relatively new at that time, as 1993 was a fair few years before the explosion of nu-metal made rap and metal seem like a more natural fit. Most of the artists on the soundtrack worked together in a truly collaborative style, building songs that had elements of both metal and hip-hop, except Helmet and House Of Pain, who did something really weird on their song “Just Another Victim“. They basically divided their song into two halves, with the first half sounding exactly like Helmet usually does being pure heavy rock, and the second half being House Of Pain taking over, sampling Helmet’s riff and just going in a completely hip-hop direction with it. It made me think, why even do a collaboration at all if you’re not even going to collaborate, but essentially just write two completely different songs in separate rooms related by the tiniest of threads? However there was a plus side, which was that at least both Helmet and House Of Pain’s parts actually sounded pretty good in isolation, which is more than I can say for “New Woman”. I don’t even need to tell you which part of this song is good and which part sucks ten miles of smegma-encrusted moose cock because it’s completely obvious, but let’s just say that whoever idiot thought slamming the brakes on this electro-banger for some completely unrelated slow-as-shit warbling dreary fucking bullshit for fuckwits needs to apologise to Lisa profusely for possibly ruining her entire post-Blackpink career. There’s no telling how many more chances at a big high-profile global comeback Lisa is going to get, but in the pop music world most people don’t get many. Say what you want about Bruno Mars getting the ettiquete wrong with Rose, he was respectful where it mattered and didn’t do her dirty like that.

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DISHONOURABLE MENTIONS

BM feat. Jay Park – Nectar

BM is always fucking shit so there’s no need to really even go over how much he sucks because it’s been well documented on this website in the past and I just feel like I’m picking on him now, so instead I just want to talk about that “Nectar”. Jay, may I ask, where’s the fucking nectar? I asked you nicely on OnlyFans to send some soju to my girlfriend as compensation for your shit music career still existing after you promised you’d quit to focus on your alcohol brand, and you didn’t even have the goddamn common courtesy to shoot me a reply. Each day I check my OnlyFans and trawl through the endless DMs from DIY camgirls talking about their wet pussies or whatever (I don’t care because I have a wet pussy at home, my cat loves to lie in the drinking bowl for some reason) just for one measly sentence from you, Jay. There’s nothing, not even a “despite your impressive application we have decided to proceed with other candidates at this time, however we will keep your name on file if future suitable offers come up” type response. This lack of attention to your fans is just tardiness, honestly, no wonder Hyuna thought you wouldn’t be a good father.

Dbo feat. Dok2, Okasian – Pop It Up

Everyone really missed the point of the hook in Kreayshawn’s “Gucci Gucci“, didn’t they.

G-DRAGON – Power

My partner reads about serial killers a lot (because that’s the kind of girls I like), and she tells me that many of them are sociopaths. She says that sociopaths are the way that they are because there’s certain parts of their brain that just literally don’t work, like a switch that doesn’t fire or something – the capacity to feel empathy just isn’t physically present in the brain structure. Likewise, I think that people who are unable to sense that their music is incredibly annoying also may have a physical part of their brain missing. Maybe there’s certain frequencies that they can’t sense, like the frequencies of G-Dragon’s nasal rapping, or the frequency of that horn sound that runs all the way throughout this annoying track. It’s the only way I can rationalise music like this existing. I think it maps, because when CL’s “The Baddest Female” dropped and was resoundingly criticised by absolutely everybody on the planet who heard it, G-Dragon was literally the only person in the public eye who was openly confused by the reaction. Clearly, he just can’t compute the reasoning. We shouldn’t hate on him though, it’s not his fault that he’s different. Everyone let’s respect his disability and put him somewhere where he can’t be creatively involved in music. Safety first.

IZNA – Izna

We’re all by now very familiar with the typical Teddy song structure and sound style thanks to it being repeated over and over again ad nauseum in Blackpink comebacks… but now that his new group are here, I don’t know if any of it was even his choice in the first place. I think that someone in YG was just telling him to write songs that way to give people like me something to write in reviews. He’s sometimes been great, sometimes annoying, often predictable, but I don’t think he’s ever been this thuddingly bland before.

Jimin feat. Loco – Smeraldo Garden Marching Band

Jimin reaches for a “Sgt Petter Lonely Hearts Club Band” aesthetic because he can I guess, which kind of works because The Beatles were also incredibly overrated during the latter part of their career plus hated their own insane fandom. How much musical similarity there is I don’t know and don’t care because it’s been about 97 years since I listened to anything on that accursed Beatles album, but I do know that whatever Jimin is doing here sure does suck.

JO1 – Icy

I’ve never met anyone with a hole in their throat from lung cancer surgery who has to talk with one of those robot things, but if I did, this chorus is what I think their entry into k-pop would sound like, if they ever decided to go down that path.

Lee Youngji – My Cat

Why the fuck Lee Youngji thinks it’s a good idea to occasionally ditch her fantastic rapping to occasionally do the same boring as fuck warbling R&B bullshit for fuckheads that every single other person in the Korean hip-hop scene also does is beyond me. I can go anywhere for this sound, I don’t need someone with rap talent, anyone over the age of eight who can use Garage Band can produce something exactly like this in about half an hour. Also, calling your own cat a “drop top” in your lyrics has to be some kind of horrendous new frontier in animal abuse, I’m pretty sure there are laws against this, or if not, they’ll be written soon.

MADEIN – Dadarida

Everyone thought it was Cignature’s Jeewon getting harassed behind the scenes but no, that was just a bunch of wishful thinking by misogynist k-pop fans who had their insecurities triggered and decided to punish Jeewon by making some malicious video edits where they edited in a bad reaction to make her look like she was being bothered when she wasn’t. K-pop fans always fall for that type of shit, it seems T-ara taught them nothing. Turns out it was Madein all along who needed the “PROTECT” in all-caps campaign and the ineffective petitions to the label to be reasonable human beings. Of course it should have been obvious just from the sound of this atrocious song (plus those awful garments – ouch) that nobody had any concern whatsoever for these girls.

MISAMO – Identity

Nobody ever tries too hard with the music for Misamo because the people behind it are probably acutely aware that 99% of the audience for these three is the incel men who gravitated to Twice in their earlier days and still can’t get dates now, so they’ve basically just given up and their parasocial fantasies with these girls is now all they’ve got going. To be clear there’s no judgement here, I realise that not every person can or even wants to hold down a relationship, and perhaps your dreams of Mina, Momo and whatever the other one is called are all that’s keeping you from a walk along the Han River bridge, but I’m just saying… you’re kidding yourself if you think anyone on any side of the fence here actually gave a fuck about the music. I’m fairly certain that most of the people now upset about this write-up aren’t even listening to the music as they read this, probably can’t even remember what the fucking thing sounds like, and the only reason why they’re clicking play on the video right now is just so they can write a comment somewhere saying I’m wrong, but we all know the truth. Be real, you probably forgot this even existed until I linked it just now.

NEXZ – Hard

There’s a bit at the start of this video where random generic k-pop boy #2536 takes a piece of paper out of his pocket that has the definition of “hard” on it. It seems a bit silly I guess, but then I suppose they might want to keep that sort of thing handy as reference material so they don’t forget what ‘hard’ actually means given the ballads they’ll be forced to do by the time you read this. Anway that’s about as musical and logical as this “song” gets. It’s all downhill from there. I mean I’m all for groups that both sound and look like rejects from an Einsturzende Neubauten art film project, but Blixa Bargeld at least knew better than to just suddenly switch up to R&B halfway through bashing sheet metal and totally fuck the mood. How Rain’s “Gang” got criticised so heavily for this little arrangement fuckup yet everyone else in k-pop gets a free pass for exactly the same thing, I have no idea.

PINKVERSE – Call Devil

There’s a reasonable buildup here, but one of the worst choruses you’ve ever heard ensures “Call Devil” a place on this list. If that’s not enough, this accursed thing has a jazz breakdown. Given Asian Junkie’s love affair with Plave, I’m amazed he hasn’t leaped all over this virtual girl group with all jizz-cannons firing, but I guess even sportball writers have taste sometimes.

SUPER JUNIOR-D&E with Siwon, Zhoumi, Ryeowook, Kyuhyun – Yueding

SM are so embarrassed by this dreary nonsense that they have to pretend that it’s a D&E comeback just to save face, even though so many Super Junior members are also on it that it’s really just a Super Junior comeback with a few people on hiatus. At least this video is helpful for picking apart the facial difference between Siwon and Zhoumi, something that both I and quite a few Super Junior fans have struggled with in the past, now that’s a useful skill to have when at the gay club.

Teo Yoo – Texas Summer

It seems kind of mean to even put this song here because country musicians are at a natural disadvantage in any music taste list. I mean, what can you even do about it when your entire genre sucks. It’s better to just not get started at all. Friends don’t let friends make country music.

TVXQ! with Toho Band – It’s True It’s Here

Originally a five-member boy band which also consisted of members Hero Jaejoong, Micky Yoochun, and Xiah Junsu, TVXQ were immediately launched to mainstream recognition following the release of their first single “Hug” (2004). Their first four albums as a quintet, Tri-Angle (2004), Rising Sun (2005), “O”-Jung.Ban.Hap. (2006), and Mirotic (2008), received chart-topping commercial success in South Korea, with the latter winning the Golden Disk Award for Album of the Year. Mirotic contained the hit single “Mirotic” (2008), touted by international music critics as a staple song of K-pop. TVXQ were one of the first Korean artists to lead the Korean Wave in Japan, where they were propelled to mainstream stardom following the release of their fourth Japanese album The Secret Code (2009).

However, despite their commercial success, the band were plunged into legal turmoil and internal conflict when members Jaejoong, Yoochun, and Junsu attempted to split from their Korean agency SM Entertainment. Prior to the trio’s departure in 2010, TVXQ released their last Japanese album as a quintet, Best Selection 2010, which became the band’s first album to top the Oricon Albums Chart. The album spawned two platinum-selling singles, including the One Piece theme song, “Share the World” (2009).

XG – IYKYK

I consider XG functionally a k-pop group because they’re based in South Korea and working actively in that system doing things like getting on Korean idol TV shows so they’re “k-pop adjacent” enough for k-pop fans to actually give a shit. They’re also really good at rapping… or whoever’s writing their raps is, anyway. However “IYKYK” doesn’t have any of those excellent raps in it, just a bunch of aimless warbling accompanied by a bunch of confused-looking AI-generated slop (a weird misstep given how XGALX are one of the only agencies getting AI use right on some of their other videos which look phenomenal), so basically fuck this song.

Yoonie – Yellow Light

Yoonie is Jiyoon, ex-Weeekly and once Kpopalypse “no reason” sidebar girl, which means of course that I’m heavily biased towards her, so the fact that she’s included here means that someone somewhere really fucked up. Her performance here both looks and sounds stunningly awkward. When looking at it I get the feeling that Jiyoon herself doesn’t quite know what’s going on. and I don’t think I’ve seen a more awkward non-live “performance” video. There has to be a story about this song that we don’t know. Look at the way she runs off at the end, I just want to run after her and ask “are you okay?” I hope someone checked up on her after this and she’s doing alright. Yoonie if you’re reading this, stay strong, Kpopalypse believes in you.

BONUS AWARD-WORTHY SONGS

CRINGE OF THE YEAR

X:IN – My Idol

The “aspirational” theme is generally one that works pretty well in k-pop especially for new groups and there are several effective examples of it, because most groups have at least one song with that “we’re trying to hard to make it, yeah man, we’re doing it tough but we believe in ourselves” type of thing happening. Everyone likes to cheer for the underdog (espcially in Australia where that’s definitely culturally the thing to do) so if you ask me it’s pretty hard to fuck this kind of thing up, at least conceptually. What will certainly screw the whole pooch though is including a chorus shout-out where the performers mention all the other groups that are way more successful than they are like one of those fandom meme group list circle-jerk things. I know it’s supposed to come off as idolatry because that’s after all the name of the song, but positioning yourselves as “the fangirls” in the lyrical narrative is just kind of weird, like maybe these girls are only here at all because they through debuting in a D-list k-pop group might inch them a little closer to seeing their bias one day and they plan to mug him in the backstage hallway or something. Of course in reality I know they didn’t even write this crap and they are in fact cringing even harder than we are… or at least I hope so, otherwise your bias really is in trouble. It’s not all bad though – on the plus side, I have to admit that the cringe here is so extreme that it’s hugely entertaining. It would make a great drinking game, get the party started by watching this video and every time someone can’t maintain a stony poker face and emotionally reacts to the sheer awkward daftness of it all, they take a shot. Should be a good time, just remember to have emergency services on speed dial for the alcohol poisoning.

KPOPALYPSE APPROVED MALE CAONIMA OF THE YEAR

Eric Reprid – Suki

People often ask me if I ever want to go to Korea to live, or to visit, and my answer is always “fuck no” because I don’t like the culture and I can’t ever see myself tolerating it. I know that sounds really weird for someone who has devoted a large chunk of his life to writing about k-pop but I’m in it because the music is sometimes good, I don’t care a bit about the other stuff and especially not the travelogue “isn’t Korea a great place, isn’t everything about our culture so rich and historical and fantastic” soft power bullcrap that they’re always trying to shove down our throats. Australia has a cultural foundation of disrespect to authority and rules (due to its colonial prison colony past) so the idea of respectfulness of rules is just fucking bullshit to me. So I just love how Eric Reprid looks like such a cunt here. Yeah he has an official video for this too that he did a few months later, but fuck that, this 100% mimed “live performance” is better. Watching this dude with bad skin who looks like an absolute loser of the highest order pour whiskey into his noodles like a fuckwit and then rap while throwing them all over the place is just the best thing I’ve ever seen. I’m pretty sure there’s some type of rule over there where if you throw takeaway noodles within the same temple as one of those carved dragon things, when you die you get to go to hell and get fucked in the “badussy” by the ancient gods of your ancestors. He nearly gets the noodles on the damn dragon head, holy shit, he’s getting fisted by one of those things in the afterlife badussy rape dungeon for sure. Then there’s the great moody track which wasn’t talked about enough when this came out because k-pop fans talking about music is impossible because they barely even know what music even is beyond “blah blah stability blah blah resonance blah blah support blah blah vocal fry blah blah head voice”, like anyone gives a shit. Plus there’s the outstanding lyrics which get into the LGBT action (complete with hand gestures!) just for a bit of fuck-you shock value and no other reason, and again demostrate that Eric Reprid might actually be someone who doesn’t give any fucks whatsoever, and not a weak polite cunt like all your k-pop faves who are all bowing and respectful and formal speech and “I’m so badass as long as my CEO says it’s okay and I can remember my dance moves”. It’s like if Han Seo Hee was male and ugly and had acne breakouts and actual music and hadn’t been caught yet. He manages to make the usual Autotune warble tolerable, that’s how good this is, and that Autotune is really the only thing stopping this song from getting on the favourites list instead, but at least it shows that he doesn’t care about singing talent either so somehow even that’s a positive because it just adds even more to the whole idgafitude of the thing. A true caonima.

KPOPALYPSE APPROVED FEMALE CAONIMA OF THE YEAR

Heena – Watermelon Tits

Heena has the right idea too and I think we’re on the same page. She couldn’t stand being nice to a bunch of fucking assholes who were all trying to fuck her on the sly or otherwise just being assholes to her or others around her so she ditched that shit-fight, fucked off to the USA and made this incredible diss track where she shits on about 50% of the entire Korean hip-hop scene (mainly the male half, but a few women cop it too). All the Koreans in the YouTube comments are criticising this song because it’s plainly evident that she’s using barely any actual rap skill, but that actually makes it a better song conceptually in my opinion – it makes her sound so fucking pissed off that she couldn’t even be bothered thinking up rhyming words, because she just HAD to get her message off her chest, which totally fits the entire concept. She’s so rage-filled that she’s way beyond “being an MC” whatever the fuck that even means in 2024, she’s just here to air your dirty laundry to the world and tell you that you’re a piece of shit. Fuck rhyming, fuck what a rap is supposed to be, and fuck you, and fuck everyone, you know? I totally get it. I have no receipts when it comes to how true or otherwise what she’s saying is, but I dig the energy and there should be more of it in hip-hop, I think she needs her own TV show, or at least a podcast on a yacht or something. I hope some good diss rap responses come out of this too, the Korean rap scene doesn’t have enough hate in it, cheers to Heena for paving the way and firing the first shot.

VISUAL EFFECTS OF THE YEAR

XG – Howling

Actually a really good song just because of the quality of the raps, even if the choruses are relatively weak and that lets it down a little, but the real star of the show is how the whole package looks. Everyone here is rocking such a different, imaginative look that I can’t even think of anything else to compare it to, at least nothing within the k-pop space that’s for sure. It’s a shame that it’s obviously AI assisted but it speaks volumes to the creative direction here that it comes across looking so great anyway. Fans will deny it of course because they’re dumb and even bring “receipts” that don’t actually prove anything but anyone with two eyes can tell that AI was absolutely definitely used, just in a more subtle way than usual, to augment the existing physical/hand-drawn CGI props rather than create them lazily from scratch. It’s actually pointing a way forward for this type of shit to not suck, and I mean, it’s not like we can put the genie back in the bottle with this AI shit now, is it. Since corporations are insistent that we absolutely must destroy the planet with this crap, we might as well get a decent looking k-pop (or j-pop, or xgpop, or BTSpop, or caonimapop whatever, who cares dickhead) video to watch while the last drinking water and fresh air is sucked away by these machines and the entire world turns to an uninhabitable barren desert where roving bands of k-pop fandoms rule, fighting each other for the last scraps of sustenance in the name of their bias. But that probably won’t happen, because Chuu and Dreamcatcher will fix the warming problem at some point I’m sure, so for now just relax, enjoy the spectacle and try not to think too much. As a k-pop fan, that should be well within your wheelhouse, right?

VIDEO OF THE YEAR

Girl Crush – Drive

A tricky video to find because Girl Crush changed their YouTube presence recently, which means that this video slipped by my net so thanks to the caonima who caught this gem in the clearing house survey and alerted me to it!  It’s really not much of a song at all but that scarcrely matters here, the concept is what I’m here for, and it’s pure brilliance. If you’re a k-pop girl and you’re being mistreated by your management, you can either put up with it, make a YouTube video and gently complain about it, or get proactive about it in the most hands-on way possible. Looks like I wasn’t the only one with that particular thought, I won’t say too much else about this video, just watch it if you haven’t, but if you wished that Show Me Love was a feature film, this is about as close as you’re going to get for now.

Please now enjoy this video of the Honourable mentions!

That’s all for this post! Kpopalypse will return soon with his favourite songs of 2024 and the worst songs of 2024, too! Expect them fondly!