Asian Junkie Asian pop. Without discretion.
While I had thought doing a proper year-end list would give me a two-week vacation, really what it means is that I have like two weeks of content that I’m behind on.
For now, here’s some notable stuff from the start of the year.
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H1-KEY – “Athletic Girl”
A decent name for a rookie, but this was … high-key bad. Some cringe stuff is part of being into K-pop, but the “I’m athletic girl” shit is a non-starter.
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Hyunjun Hur – “Let Me Drown”
I’d rather not, but if the distorted vocals with an instrumental that goes nowhere continues, maybe I can be convinced.
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Eric Nam – “Lost On Me”
Compared to the excellent “Any Other Way“, this is more of his typical output, which I find generally pleasant but rather unnoteworthy.
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Hijvc Kid (Feat. PPARISKKOMA) – “Mississippi”
This is one of those things where I know rappers in America (mostly) aren’t out there killing people either, but at least with the gun and gang culture here it’s like … plausible. This is just cringe.
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JK Kim Dong Uk – “FIGHT”
Don’t know if I love this or not yet, but it’s worth your time to listen.
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UP10TION – “Crazy About You”
It exists and it is completely forgettable.
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P1Harmony – “Do It Like This”
A good central rhythm for dancing and stuff, but not so much for like … it as a song.
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GOT The Beat – “Step Back”
Other than the mess with the lyrics, this has actually aged like milk for me sonically as well. It’s not noisy like some detractors claim, rather it’s actually kinda monotonous and goes nowhere. Waste of talent.
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BLITZERS – “BOBBIN”
The thing about people who want groups like Dreamcatcher to basically be a hard rock or metal group is that then there would just be a multitude of hard rock and metal bands who do the sound better, and sticking in their own lane has helped them carve out a unique place in the K-pop world. Could they bring back heavier elements? Sure, that’s fine, but wanting them to ditch the pop hybrid stuff to compete against like Messgram and Synsnake or whatever is just stupid as fuck, IMO.
Anyway, I mention this because BLITZERS seem to go a step further than Dreamcatcher by removing a lot of melodic elements for more noise and thus end up serving as a sort of useful warning because most of their sound is just done better by Korean rock bands and there’s minimal incentive to listen to idols trying to do similar instead.
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No Sleep Club – “SAMMY”
Hey, KASPER is fronting a band now!
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WOOZI (SEVENTEEN) – “Ruby”
It sounds lively and fun, but I came away from it feeling like it was missing something. I think it lacked signature hooks to really get me attached.
