Asian Junkie Asian pop. Without discretion.
Actually a rather nice week in terms of songs that range from listenable to good even if they haven’t quite hooked me yet.
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ENHYPEN – “ParadoXXX Invasion”
I can’t be the only one that was taken out a bit by the faux tough guy act immediately transitioning into what sounded like a voice crack “woOoOooo~“, right? Lmfao.
Anyway, other than the pre-chorus it feels like one long percussion loop and then random effect-tainted yelling. Like it’s not bad as at least they’re actually singing and it’s rhymical, but I was bored of it halfway through.
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BLITZERS – “Hit The Bass”
It’s a weird thing to say about tracks that are supposed to be like hype songs, but they’ve actually become relatively boring to listen to, like a chore to get through them. There’s nothing wrong with them in theory but even the hit songs of this type in the past had memorable hooks.
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Xdinary Heroes – “Test Me”
It’ll be hard for me to see their name and not first think of a gacha game, but this is a solid average K-rock effort that has a lot of energy and is not especially compelling during the chorus. They aren’t alone this year, tho.
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P1Harmony – “Doom Du Doom”
Not trying to be a dick, but I think this would actually be better as an instrumental because they make some compelling choices here, especially the easing off the throttle in the chorus and letting the addictive guitar riff take over before going into emphatic drum hits.
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GreatGuys – “BLIND LOVE”
It took a while for me to decide how I felt about this because I couldn’t tell if the brutal washed-out effect was on purpose or if it was terrible mixing, but I suppose in the end it didn’t matter.
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YOUNITE – “AVIATOR”
The background sounds are distracting, the chorus builds to noise, and it results in something generally messy.
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Sunye – “Just A Dancer”
Quite a fun bassline and a solid overall return for Sunye, but it’s a shame about the chorus refrain which detracts from the song more than it adds, honestly.
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TAN – “Walking On The Moon”
An actually rather nice song that’s more good than great for me at the moment, but the groovy chorus was a pleasant surprise and if the whole thing was more like that it would be an easy year-end lister for me.
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Nicole (KARA) – “YOU.F.O”
I cannot recommend enough forgoing the music video and its fucked up audio and at least listening to it on YouTube Music, cause it’s a much different experience.
Anyway, some pitchy moments at the upper bounds of her range (especially towards the end), but a strong comeback with the foundational beat and especially the “take off” hook that concludes the choruses (uncoincidentally done in a lower register)
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CSR – “Pop? Pop!”
My initial thought about this was that it was good but sounded like a children’s song due to their vocals, and I immediately questioned whether I had perhaps simply aged out of it or something. But then GFRIEND‘s “Rough” bounded onto my timeline and no, it’s still amazing, so really my problem was that this is GFRIEND’s general vibe without the maturity of the vocals.
