Kpopalypse roundup – new k-pop releases 18/8/2025

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

I told you all that people would be coming out this year and now we have the first trans k-pop idol… well, ex-idol of a pretty obscure group but whatever, what’s even more impressive is that she can balance a miniature dog on her finger.

Lisa – Dream

The song stops halfway through and Lisa says that she would rather be a tree. It makes sense, I guess trees can’t be forced to sing mid ballads.

Jisoo – Your Love

Speaking of trees, Jisoo is singing here to save the trees apparently and by god someone had better start fuckin’ saving them soon because who knows how many more rubbish songs we’re going to get like this until we get our carbon footprint down.

Yuqi – Copdd

Yuqi of course isn’t helping, being the latest person to lend her career to an energy-sucking creativity-sucking art-destroying planet-destroying AI hellscape, but she redeems herself completely by having a reasonable song plus holding the goddamn microphone correctly. Perhaps she asked ChatGPT how to do it.

R.Tee feat. Soyeon – Damdadi

The combination of R.Tee’s big beat and Soyeon’s… well, whatever the fuck you call it that she’s doing, actually doesn’t work too badly at all. It’s because they’re working opposite ends of the frequency spectrum, it’s the same reason why in Led Zeppelin Robert Plant’s lemon-squeezing voice worked quite well over John Bonham’s drums. Still, I’m not quite into the song itself, which is definitely missing something.

R.Tee – Switch Out

R.Tee’s other song is just some generic dance thing, cool sounds but very boring.

Monsta X – Do What I Want

A pretty cool song from this group because it goes all-in on one particular sound quite well, but the real question is do any of these guys measure up to Wonho after all that gym time? Have your say on this important issue in the Kpopalypse 2025 Objectification Survey which is now open, so CLICK HERE to participate or don’t be mad when your faves don’t get called the most attractive k-poppers ever!

VINCE feat. G-Dragon – Cha Cha Cha

Barely scraping into roundup as either a song or a video, what a load of junk.

Joy – Love Splash!

Joy’s new song just… isn’t anything much really. I can’t even think of anything to say about it. I can’t even think of a decent innuendo about the title, that’s when you know the song really is unspectacular.

Yuju – Reply

Yuju’s new song sounds ironically like a Gfriend album track that got rejected for feature status due to having too much guitar in it for k-popper’s sensitive ears. It’s not the best song but it’s just good to see that Yuju is doing stuff..

YOUNG POSSE – Freestyle

I grew up on The Beastie Boys so I don’t mind the shoutiness here that’ll probably irritate others, but I would have preferred the cool double-bass in the quiet section over the beat in the loud section instead of during a break. This would have been obvious to a more savvy hip-hop producer, but oh well. It’s actually not bad, I’ll take a somewhat half-assed old school rap attempt over the lameness of current modern rap any day.

AtHeart – Plot Twist

Fantastic ethereal ambience and moody synths here set the tone, but the relatively typical songwriting style doesn’t complement the production style. This song needed a moodier, darker melodic touch to match the instruments.

BOYNEXTDOOR – Count To Love

Who can keep track of all HYBE’s generic boy groups. I guess they figure that if they have 57 of them maybe one of them will strike lucky and be the new BTS and get them back in the black after they pissed away half their savings scraping Min Hee Jin’s stickers off of the corner office with the nice view.

A20 MAY feat. A20 LTG – B.B.B. (Bigger Badder Better)

Some sectons here work and some don’t, and nobody can seem to work out what tonality they’re in, with the vocals rubbing up against the instruments in really weird, awful ways. At least AtHeart kept themselves in tune.

MADEIN S – Blue

A very Fifty-Fifty-ish song from these girls, which isn’t a bad thing at all. Gosh isn’t k-pop lovely isn’t it a great place where nothing bad ever happens and their old CEO even stepped down so I’m sure everything is just fine now and the girls get three meals a day and no more than eight hours of work per day and get to see their families every weekend and not sexually harassed at all and oh who am I kidding, stay strong girls

Izna – Sass

Less sass and more song next time, please.

NCT WISH – Surf

Some legitimately great bass playing is the only thing worth coming to this song for.

CORTIS – Go!

HYBE’s latest attempt at replacing BTS looks and sounds like a joke, but at least it’s also funny like a joke, I had a good time laughing at this thing’s existence. We should all laugh at it together, because if we don’t laugh, we’ll cry.

CORTIS – What You Want

The other song from Coitus sorry I mean Cortis is shit too but it’s shit in a different way which is maybe a little more tolerable to listen to but also isn’t quite as amusing. It’s a tough call to say which one is truly worse.

Nam Gyuri – Still, I Like You

For some reason Korean music videos have no cable discipline. They think throwing cables all over the floor makes things look “cool” and “rock” but to anyone qualified and active in live sound engineering really it just looks completely fucking amateur, because pro sound engineers keep cables neatly tucked away. I hope Nam Gyuri has some public liability insurance for when someone trips over on all that shit.

ZOONIZINI (ASTRO) – Some Things Never Change

Wait, who? Anyway, it’s not very good. I guess generic boy subunits making mid songs is one of those things we can rely on to never change.

AMPERS&ONE – That’s That

I really do wish “that was that” for roundup but we have plenty more average as fuck songs to go this week.

YOUNITE – Bomba

Any song called “Bomba” is probably going to be crap but this was better than expected because at least it had a beat, unfortunately they do all the usual generic boy-isms over the top so it’s still a skip.

LOVEONE – Love High

Weirdly pretty good, even if they’re sitting down in their bedrooms and don’t know how to set up a chessboard, two usual red flags for k-pop. Sometimes a song is okay despite all the odds.

DIVA-X – Diva

After School’s “Diva” is a song which was “okay but not great” and that probably could have used a remake to modernise it a bit, but this doesn’t quite hit the spot, not really improving on anything or even changing all that much.

Jaessbee – Shut That

Yay it’s another co-end group and… the song is really nothing special so that’s a shame. Less “we’re so independent, do what you want yay” cringe lyrics and better music would be just great, maybe next time.

Tornado – Hey! It’s a secret

Holy crap this sounds like ass, but hey I learned that Don Mills has his own name tattooed on his arm, I guess that’s so if he wakes up in the park after a big night out drunk he can go search himself online and remember who he is.

Junhee – Supernova

Shades of Gfriend’s “Mago” in this song from the ACE member and hey there’s no leg exposure but he does have his top undone, you could go and vote for him in the Kpopalypse 2025 Objectification Survey to reward his sacrifice if you wanted.

Mark Tuan – Hold Still

This song was poo and nobody cares about generic boy-solo trash so let’s have our weekly non-Korean LGBT feature here instead, yay! This week it’s Icelandic post-rockers Sigur Ros, and their debut song “Svefn G Englar” did kind of blow me away at the time with its ethereal swelling guitar sound with no attack whatsoever that sounds like waves crashing on the beach or something, genuinely so different at the time to everything else out there. The group have increasingly Coldplayed themselves with each new album after the first but the early stuff is still good and worth checking out if you like what you’re hearing here.

Do A – BFU

One of the girls from Elris/Alice who isn’t the one people care about releases a song and I don’t think too many people will care about this either.

Jinho – Luv 2 Much

The L hand signal I think is him indicating that he took the L with this song.

E.SO feat. Junha – Midnight Sunshine

Berry Good members continue to prove their total disregard for interesting music choices ever since that group broke up.

Bryn – Boyfriend Material

I’m not really into the song but this is worth a watch just for the video.

100KGOLD feat. Rosy Barbie – 2xCup

What’s with people recording while they have balls in their mouth, do they not know how it sounds.

Rockit Girl – Summer Wish (acoustic version)

Rockit Girl always now seem to reliably put out an acoustic version of any new song a week after release, isn’t that nice. It means we always get a fresh new video with lots of nice acoustic guitar and nothing else in particular. On a completely not related at all note, just remember that the Kpopalypse 2025 Objectification Survey is now open, so CLICK HERE to participate if you haven’t yet!

RANDOM BONUS VIDEOS OF THE WEEK

mytwelvehearts – Lesbian billionaires of South Korea – where are they now?

Just your semi-regular Chuuves update.

Jung Soomin feat. Adora – Telepathy (non-shit video version)

They heard my call and made Adora turn up in the actual video this time, tysm uwu ❤ if only AKMU Chanhyuk was this considerate…

Adam – A Love That’s Not in the World

I’ll hand this over to my song submitter: “Adam is considered the first K-pop cyber singer. His debut album was a commercial success, selling over 200,000 copies. However, the CGI technology used to create him was so costly that the software company behind the project eventually went bankrupt.” No wonder k-pop took over 20 years to try again. Let’s see if we can bankrupt Naevis somehow and hopefully it’ll be another 20 years before someone tries this nonsense again.

That’s all for this week! Kpopalypse roundup returns next week! In the meantime, don’t forget that the Kpopalypse 2025 Objectification Survey is still open for a limited time only, so CLICK HERE to participate and have your say in who are the most attractive men and women of k-pop!