QRIMOLE – September 2026

It’s time for QRIMOLE, the series where readers ask Kpopalypse questions! Let’s take a look at the mailbag for the last month! do you like this girl’s video essay on h2h’s sudden success? (from @7.25 for the main points. the rest is mainly lead on their reception up until that point, like it being pretty tepid compared to other SM GGs like Aespa and f(X).) It’s fine. A lot of this is just marketing 101 and we’ve seen this pattern before, it’s nothing new. aespa also had a slow start and I remember very strongly at the time that the k-pop fan narrative was all about “this new SM group isn’t doing that well” and it took quite a few songs for them to really build. Even Girls Generation didn’t really rise to iconic status until “Gee” came out, which was a couple years after debut, a slower progression than Hearts2Hearts. And “American voices appeal to American audiences”, well, yes they do, and that’s why companies do it. You never reviewed this song. Could you please review it for me here? Yes, I did, here. I don’t generally do separate reviews for different-language versions of songs that are otherwise musically identical to their original form, because the language something is sung...