Kpopalypse roundup – new k-pop releases 12/5/2025

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

You know you have a drinking problem when you can only do photo shoots while lying down.

I-dle – Girlfriend

No more “G” for us international fans (they were always just called “idle” in Korea) and despite the conspiracy theories, no return of Soojin either. Maybe they dumped the G from the name because it looked a bit too much like a 6 as in OT6 as in we need to bring Soojin back.

tripleS – Are You Alive?

Actually pretty catchy but I’m not sure if that actually means “good” in this instance, it might just be catchy because they repeat that same hook one time for each member of the group that they recruited. By the way no more copies of “Love Carousel” sold this week, thank fuck for that because this video sure isn’t helping the identification process with its shadowy noir-isms.

MEOVV – Drop Top

It’s an unspoken but undisputably true rule is that a song called “Drop Top” can never be any good, so this song being actually almost half-decent is therefore about as good as any song with that title is ever likely to get.

Chuu – Back in town

There’s two types of Chuu tracks, amazing kick-ass pop songs, and dull boring bullshit that panders to Korea’s taste in ballads, lounge music and other crap. This song is of the second type.

Ablume – Echo

They’re just trying to sound like Fifty Fifty but without Fifty Fifty’s production team, and they do a pretty damn good job… that is, until the shit post-first-chorus rap breakdown, then it all falls apart. Nice try I guess.

KISS OF LIFE – Live, Love, Laugh

Look a nostalgia video, to remind you about them and how much you loved them, before the recent controversy thing. I’m not sure what the awkward music change up at 1:29 is doing in there, I guess that’s the part where we “laugh”.

Seo Eve – ZampaTT

The “change up” idea works at lot better in Seo Eve’s song than most, because the entire thing is so wacky to begin with that it doesn’t feel like so much of a tonal shift when they suddenly drop to EDM madness for no reason.

Kylie Cantrall feat. Yunha & Minju – See U Tonight

Absolute poop that feels like it’s about 2% Illit and 98% this other woman I don’t care about.

P1Harmony – DUH!

K-pop boy groups doing the p-funk sound is always a mistake.

EPEX & Joan – So Nice

I wanted to hate it because of the general cheesiness and cringe factor plus it being yet another goddamn collab but I have to admit that the song isn’t too bad at all.

E’LAST – Crazy Train

Whoever was making all those 8-bit kpop videos has a lot to answer for because it seems now that look is creeping into k-pop itself… mind you I’m just glad that they’re not in the Paradise Diner for once.

DAY6 – Maybe Tomorrow

JYP Christian Ministries is at it again with their mid boy-rock. Just take their pamphlets to get rid of them quickly and make sure you’re out shopping next week when they come around to your front door again.

Young K – Do You Know Turkey?

I was expecting a cultural education about the country Turkey and not a weak ballad about putting slices of bird in a stale sandwich.

VVS – Purrfect

Someone asked me if this was an “in your area” song and it really isn’t, it’s far too uptempo for that. I’m not sure if it really works but I do kind of enjoy the janky silliness of it.

FTIsland – Theory of Happiness

You can always tell which ones the idols are and who is just the session musician in these so-called “rock groups”. There’s definitely an apartheid system operating here where the guitarist and drummer are not allowed to get screentime or look the bassist and vocalist in the eye.

Jackson Wang feat. Diljit Dosanjh – Buck

Patriotic Hong Kong resident Jackson teaming up with an Indian rapper to take on their arch nemesis China and free the student protestors, I’m pretty sure that’s what this video is about.

Chenle – Lucid

I can’t even keep track of all these NCT things. The day SM dump the whole NCT branding and just call their new boy group “Dave” or something, the world will cheer.

Samuel – Rockstar

I was wondering what the fuck was up with Samuel’s belly button and then I realised he’s got a tattoo above it, like permanent navel fluff he can’t remove. How aegyo!

Yook Sungjae – Lie

Four bars of guitar solo isn’t worth wading through this mushy ballad for.

Xion – Camelia

This song was boring and we’ve all had enough of lame boy group solo projects, so instead let’s have our weekly non-Korean LGBT feature here, yay! This week it’s Death, the somewehat-unimaginatively titled death metal group featuring the legendary late Chuck Schulinder on vocals (and not to be confused with the other also-excellent group called Death who were in my black music feature a couple years ago). In 1991 they recruited not one but two gay members into their lineup, Paul Masdival and Rob Reinert of the band Cynic, going double-gay in a scene where almost everyone else is still closeted as fuck. The result was the album “Human”, one of the best death metal records from the genre’s peak period.

DPR CREAM, DPR ARTIC – Drift

I suppose it’s not terrible but the most memorable thing about this is definitely the visuals.

Jannabi – Dream is Beautiful

I think they’re going for the Cherry Blossom Fuckwit audience with this one.

Bryn – Dry

Bryn did surprise me with a good song a while back actually, so I know she can do good again. This isn’t quite it, but it’s not as bad as some of her dreadful earlier stuff, so there’s hope for a banger in the future.

Effie – More Hyper

Effie is great because she just sounds insane. If you’re going to go all electronic stupid, go really electronic stupid. There’s no point going halfway with these things.

Punch – I Hope You’re Happy

Song not sucking? Punch actually IN her own video for once? Yes I’m happy.

Changmo – Hold Up

A pretty wild and weird video here wasted on a song which just sounds like everything else in this style.

Rockit Girl – Joker’s Wandering World

Rockit Girl back with the constant weekly releases of cheap-ass videos and somehwat underproduced but still cool songs, I don’t miss Dreamcatcher at all.

RANDOM BONUS VIDEOS OF THE WEEK

Kpopalypse Oppar – This is How K-Pop Labels ACTUALLY Make Money (the real method)

Since there’s so many wrong-headed videos out there about this issue, I thought it would help if there was at least one with real stuff in it, so I made one. Veteran readers will already be familiar with these observations, but it can’t help to reiterate things sometimes for the new folks. We shouldn’t assume that everyone already knows everything (like “too cool for school” k-pop reddits tend to), remember most k-pop fans these days are young and many don’t even know what Aileegate is and that the world’s most popular k-pop website once spread revenge porn freely and was never prosecuted for it or even had much of a dent in their web traffic for that matter.

Grace – Disturbing Images Surface in KG’s Legal Case Against JYP USA

Oh and while we’re at it, here’s just some stuff about KG from VCHA, just to remind you that the k-pop system in general is still a shit show.

Girl’s Day – Twinkle Twinkle

Looking at early Girl’s Day is a trip just to see them all looking so unrecognisably different, and reminds me of the days when a member leaving a group seemed like a relative rarity. These days it seems like every group is losing more members than that movie Teeth. Anyway this song was a bit nonsense but it did have a pretty cool chorus that was as catchy as any of their others.

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