Guardian Wokes (2025)

01/12/2025

It’s time for the last Kpopalypse roundup of 2025! Let’s take a look at some new releases and also have your say in the 2025 end of year survey!

mrcs

Taeyeon – Panorama

The song is only average but this video will definitely please certain le***an Kpopalypse readers who want to vicariously live out their “being in a band with Taeyeon” fantasies.

Yena feat. Hatsune Miku – Star!

I know that some of you readers will be bummed about roundup finishing, but let’s face it – when some fu***ng Hatsune Miku s**t gets nearly top-billing in a Kpopalypse roundup, that’s when you know that roundup has done its dash for the year and we should just put it to bed until 2026.

Stray Kids – Divine

Actually there’s a really good old-school hip hop beat here, it’s just a pity about all the other nonsense that they throw in.

Heize feat. I.M – Love Virus

More like boredom virus.

ITZY – DYT

Oh god, it’s awful. JYPE have been all over the place this year. I guess I can’t complain too much – I’d rather have the risk-taking that generates occasional bangers plus slop like this, than just mediocrity all the time. Song still sucks though lol

NiziU Riku, Ayaka & Miihi – Fairy Magic

Niziu have some subunits for us this week and the first one isn’t quite as bad as the j-trash it’s imitating, but it’s close enough to still be unlistenable.

NiziU Mako, Makuya & Rima – Villain

A little off-brand for Niziu here and that’s definitely a good thing, I wouldn’t say this is great as it lacks catchiness for sure but there’s at least a vaguely okay backing track.

NiziU Rio Maya Nina – Too Much

And this is similar. Looks like they couldn’t even be bothered finishing making the box video for this one.

RESCENE – Bloom

A rule of k-pop is that the shorter the grass, the better the song. In this video there’s a few different grass lengths at play and it definitely reflects that the song is about average or maybe slightly above.

NOWZ – HomeRUN

The group name “Now Z” sounds like something they’d tell viewers to do on Play School. It fits because writing about this group is making me sleepy. To be fair the backing track is decent here but they sure wrote some forgettable stuff to go over it.

NOWZ – Run With Me

All these songs with “run” in the title and they’re performing it while sitting down? Quality control definitely wasn’t here making sure that the visuals aligned with the lyrical concept.

Handong ft. Dami – Peekaboo

Dreamcatcher girls continue their Vivizification, with this being basically a crappier version of those recent Viviz solo stages.

NEXZ – Legacy

NOWZ, NEXTZ… we’re really running out of ideas folks. I can’t wait for roundup to F**koffZ for the year so I don’t have to worry about looking at stuff like this for a while.

DEUX – Rise

Now that NewJeans have ensured that their sound is trending again, original 90s k-poppers Deux are back to remind you about why you all forgot them for 30 years.

VERIVERY – Red (Beggin’)

I’m beggin’ for the boring songs to stop this week.

THE SSYNDROME – Alive

If “Dreamcatcher company” think this type of music is what we want, I can see why they had so many issues with trying to break Dreamcatcher themselves.

OAH! – Take It Back

Even these nugus heavy it up just a little bit more than the latest group from the company that was going to bring metal into k-pop for about two seconds before someone decided that was a little too risky.

UX1 – Halo

I take back that thing I said about the short grass before, this group just fu**ed it up for me by having neat trim lawn and also being s**t. Thanks, c***s.

SEVENUS – Airplane Mode

I’d say ‘mrds’ but it’s probably AI or some s**t. It’s a sad time in human history when we can no longer trust dogs in music videos to be real.

BE BOYS – Earth and Moon

I couldn’t be fu**ed with another k-pop boy song so let’s have our last weekly non-Korean LGBT feature here instead, yay! “It’s A Sin” was recorded before Neil Tennant of Pet Shop Boys came out as gay in 1994 but it was pretty obvious to basically everyone by this point anyway, and this song’s lyrics need no explaining. Worth noting that this video invented the colour brown in music videos.

DKB – Weekend

I really should have put the Pet Shop Boys song over this garbage DKB song instead, so f**k it, I will. Although “It’s A Sin” obviously hits the BADING theme the hardest I still think “Suburbia” is their best song, at least out of the ones I’ve heard, which is a lot of them. I saw Pet Shop Boys live a while back and was shocked at just how many of their songs I actually knew, despite basically making no effort thoughout my life to keep up with them.

Gwangil Jo – YA!

Decent beat, I have no idea if the rap is good or not, but I’ll definitely hire this guy if I ever need to yell at somebody in Korean really quickly.

EZ – Ez Like Queen

Oh dear.

Balming Tiger, Yaeji – Break It Even

Nobody could be fu**ed and it shows.

Peach Truck Hijackers – Compressed Annoyance

Boring song tbh but I’m loving the group name and song name. Points for those alone.

Peach Truck Hijackers – F**k You

This other song of theirs is much better.

WESS – How To Be Cool?

F**ked if I know, imagine asking me that s**t. Just don’t listen to anything in this week’s roundup, that’d be a good start I guess.

Yangpa – Folds of Time

I was going to leave with somethinbg old-school and nice but hey sorry, it’s s**t. Oh well that’s it for roundup good riddance until 2026, gonna start writing my favourites list now and erase this garbage from my memory and enjoy life.

RANDOM BONUS VIDEOS OF THE WEEK

K-Pop MVs Shot at the Paradise Diner

I’m pretty sure that there’s a few of these Paradise Diner compilations floating about, but I thought this was a good one, I enjoyed the context in the captions.

random kpop idols saying the nword (parts 1 and 2)

Oh, relax. They’re probably all miming anyway.

Apink – MYMY

Back in the days before Gfriend changed the molecular structure of the universe, there was Apink and this early song of theirs is quite typical of their early sound and it’s not bad. Looking back it’s surreal how everyone looks just slightly Rachel Kim’ed, she really was the gold standard for k-pop visuals back then. No wonder Mina couldn’t control her jealousy.

That’s all for this week! Kpopalypse roundup returns next week…. no, that’s the last of Kpopalypse roundup for 2025! Thank f**k for that It’s been a fun ride full of great songs, here’s your schedule for the rest of the year!

OUT NOW, CLICK HERE TO PARTICIPATE – 2025 end of year survey/clearing house song submission form!

4th December 2025 – Christmas QRIMOLE!

18th December 2024 – Stats and metrics for 2024!

25th December 2024 – Christmas 2025 k-pop songs roundup!

27th December 2024 – Clearing house post for 2024 (songs that missed roundups)!

28th December 2024 – Honourable and dishonourable mentions for 2025!

31st December 2024 – Kpopalypse’s 30 worst k-pop songs of 2025!

31st December 2024 – Kpopalypse’s 30 favourite k-pop songs of 2025!

…and probably some other s**t, too!

The release of the honourable/dishonourable posts and best/worst posts will also be livestreamed at the usual place. If you want to make sure you don’t miss them, you can access a countdown to the honourable/dishonourable livestream by clicking HERE and a countdown to the best/worst livestream by clicking HERE! Stay safe, caonimas!

It’s time for the last Kpopalypse roundup of 2025! Let’s take a look at some new releases and also have your say in the 2025 end of year sur...

30/11/2025

Today the boycott of Koreaboo expires. Will it be extended? Read on and find out!

It’s the 30th of November 2025 at the time of writing this post, which maks 72 months since the boycott of k-pop website Koreaboo was activated by Kpopalypse. But, why was Koreaboo boycotted? Here’s the probably very boring backstory for those who came in late.

Koreaboo, aka “the Buzzfeed of K-pop” certainly isn’t the only low quality clickbait article k-pop website out there, in fact as we all know, lazy slop and regurgitated press releases is the standard procedure for k-pop “news” sites hoping to squeeze a dollarydoo out of gullible k-pop fans. But Koreaboo in particular came to my attention due to their coverage of the su***de of Sulli of f(x).

Whem Sulli su***ded, all k-pop news sites had an article or two, as you’d reasonably expect. Some even had a few articles. However Koreaboo went into turbo overdrive, cranking out dozens of different Sulli articles around the clock in the 48 hours after her death. I documented this in a post called “Help for k-pop websites who don’t know exactly what to write about Sulli“, which explored the many articles that Koreaboo were making. Repeatedly spamming articles about celebrity su***de doesn’t just suck moose c**k on a general “gosh this site really is clickbaiting for views” level, it has also been proven to increase su***de rates. This is documented in the World Health Organisation’s publication “Preventing Su***de: A Resource for Media Professionals“:

The document recommends that media outlets do not constantly repeat articles about su***de for this reason:

So in other words, in the space of 48 hours after someone’s death, try to avoid doing this kind of thing:

The document also states that when the su***de is that of a celebrity, that it might be harmful to release speculatory articles in the rush to be “first!” in the endless war for media relevance, without having the full story:

So in other words, don’t rush out articles like this at the first sign of a celebrity being in trouble just because you want to be first with the scoop:

Oh and it’s also wise to be careful when reporting about the people who are in mourning because at such a sensitive time, they’re a su***de risk too. If you’ve ever had someone very close to you su***de, you’ll know this all too well first-hand.

I realise that the concept of respecting privacy of bereaved people might have a few gray areas where media reporting is concerned, but wherever the “do not cross” line happens to be, making fashion articles about the black clothes the mourners wore when they were on their way to the funeral seems like it might be on the wrong side of it:

So that’s how Koreaboo earned themselves a Kpopalypse boycott. And no, they weren’t the only news site doing this s**t, but they were probably the most high-profile one that wasn’t already under boycott at the time for other reasons.

So – how have they performed? Has Koreaboo earned a boycott lift?

CRITERIA 1 – HAVE KOREABOO ACTUALLY FU***NG LEARNED ANYTHING?

Evidently not. Despite myself and others highlighting the issues with their reporting, Koreaboo did exactly the same thing when Astro’s Moonbin died a few years later, spamming endless articles once again, forcing me to write a sequel to my Sulli post, called “Help for k-pop websites who don’t know exactly what to write about Moonbin“. It was a very quick article for me to write because Koreaboo behaved in such a similar manner that I was able to just reuse most of the text from the Sulli article without even having to change much of it. Same relentless spamming of articles:

Same making fashion shoots out of mourners arriving at the airport en route to the funeral except this time it’s a fu***ng listicle:

And don’t even get me started on what happened when Goo Hara su***ded:

So, did Koreaboo learn something? Yes, they learned that dead people bring them clicks.

CRITERIA 2 – DID KOREABOO APOLOGISE, OR PROMISE TO REFLECT AND RETURN WITH A MORE MATURE IMAGE?

Kpopalypse boycotts may seem harsh, but as my boycott tracker post states, it’s actually quite simple to circumvent a Kpopalypse boycott.

Any website can apologise and thereby skip to the review period straight away, and obviously I’m going to treat a website much nicer during the review period if they apologise. Unlike most k-pop fans, I don’t play checklist semantics when I assess apologies (“they didn’t apologise to the exactly affected community with the right words that I personally expect plus clap three times and do the secret hand sign”) but rather I just calmly accept the apology in good faith as long as the appropriate reflection is shown. Koreaboo could have apologised at any time but they did not. I even took to my long-dormant Twitter account to try to encourage Koreaboo in the final days of the boycott:

No such luck, nothing but silence. If only Koreaboo were as prolific at replying to Kpopalypse as they are at posting clickbait articles when someone dies, then I would have probably received about three dozen apologies in two days.

CRITERIA 3 – WHAT DO KPOPALYPSE’S READERS THINK?

Then I ran a quick poll on my recently reactivated Twitter because BlueSky can’t do polls yet (annoying… yes okay, checkmate to all you people who said “I’d be back”, I hope you never complain about me not making you happy), and asked my readers what they thought. I didn’t get many votes because most of you are now way too smart to even notice Twitter’s continued existence let alone post content there, but a few of you braved Elon Musk’s patriarchal death machine for long enough to leave a vote:

The vote was nearly unanimous – most of you wanted to see the Koreaboo boycott extended.

CRITERIA 4 – WHAT DOES KPOPALYPSE’S CAT THINK?

Of course, Kpopalypse.com is all about leaving no stone unturned so I went to the number one authority on s**tty website, my cat.

She seemed barely interested her attention wandering frequently. It seems that it was difficult her her to focus… but maybe it was just because the content was so invigorating that it got her excited? It was difficult to ascertain definitive results from her reaction.

CRITERIA 5 – WHAT DOES KPOPALYPSE’S KOOKABURRA THINK?

As the results with my cat weren’t conclusive, I needed a second opinion.

This kookaburra was keen to get my attention, tapping on the window to make his presence known… until I showed him a Koreaboo article. Clearly disgusted with the low quality of peckbait articles, he promptly flew away to investigate better k-pop content.

CONCLUSION – BOYCOTT EXTENDED

New review date – November 31st 2031.

During this time:

Koreaboo will not be linked to from kpopalypse.com in any posts published for the duration of the boycott period

Koreaboo will be referred to as “The Buzzfeed of Kpop” only

Comments referring to Koreaboo that refer to it by its original name instead of the new assigned name/s will be auto-moderated/edited to suit

Readers will be encouraged not to visit the boycotted site under any circumstances

Will humanity still exist by 2031? Hopefully so, but if AI has finally become sentient and found a way to destroy us all, I entrust it to also take care of the Koreaboo review process in my absence at that time. In the meantime, Kpopalypse will return with more posts!

Today the boycott of Koreaboo expires. Will it be extended? Read on and find out! It’s the 30th of November 2025 at the time of writing t...

24/11/2025

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

Breaking news – Kris Wu hasn’t been murdered in prison yet. (Actually the funniest thing about these rumous were the suggestions that he was killed for “knowing too much” – come on, now. Half of them don’t know how to use EFTPOS or catch a bus.)

ILLIT – Not Cute Anymore

Cruisy, consistent, generally very likeable. Not really exciting enough to be song of the year or anything but it’s definitely catchy and a grower. I already want to listen to this again and not whatever other bulls**t is lined up for me in roundup this week.

BABYMONSTER – Psycho

A real mixed bag – a great pre-chorus and reasonable chorus is offset by stupid raps and horrible scotch-snapping, the balance of things is about average in the end.

Stray Kids – Do It

Do what exactly? Not listen to this boring song again I hope, because that sure ain’t happening.

RIIZE – Fame

Pretty unexciting stuff, they won’t have to worry about fame too much if they keep putting out stuff like this… wait, who am I kidding, this is k-pop, nobody gives a s**t about the music, they’ll be just fine.

tripleS msnz sun – Bubble Gum Girl

This song is also not very interesting, so I’d just like to use this moment to say that my end of year lists are coming along nicely, thanks for asking. It’s been a pretty sad year in k-pop (2024 was better) but the top ten songs or so are all certified bangers that are as good as those in any year, so look forward to some positivity from Kpopalypse soon… or check out the worst list if you’re more into me s**tting on things, which a lot of my readers seem to love for some reason, probably because I can say the things that they wish they could say without being cancelled. Oh and this song here won’t be on any list of mine except if I do one called “top 30 songs least likely to appear on a Kpopalypse list”.

tripleS msnz moon – “Cameo Love”

Another miss for the same reason as “Bubble Gum Girl”. For a group so clearly crafted to a specific concept, you’d think the brains behind tripleS would know better than to just boringly follow k-pop’s current musical trends and would instead try to find a way to make them stand out a bit more. The revolution we were promised isn’t here.

tripleS msnz neptune – Fly Up

This one really isn’t any better or worse but it’s a bit more on-brand for the group overall, featuring one of their usual “la la la” choruses and the same kind of disco feel that permeates most of their other previous stuff. I’m sure it’ll inspire another few dozen deludu tripleS fanboy theory-of-the-universe videos.

tripleS msnz zenith – Q&A

Okay last one for this group I promise, and this is the best one of the lot just because it’s got a bit of unusual rhythm in the chorus, which is finally something other than the usual trend-following blandness.

BABY DONT CRY – I Don’t Care

A great chorus helps a lot, but it all just lacks a little something elsewhere. Certainly not an “F Girl” but maybe a B minus.

Handong – Gray Zone

Handong successfully carries on the Dreamcatcher legacy by having a great looking video and a song weighed down with too much slowness and not enough heaviness.

VVUP – Super Model

The entire song sounds like it’s building up to something and never arrives and then it just ends. Much like this review which could have had a proper payoff punchline but instead it

Burvey – Sugar Riding

Starts off with an awesome backing track but the melody writing kind of sucks and the whole thing gets bland really quick. I guess it’s back to complaining about tadpoles in k-pop until we get a decent song out of them.

ATEEZ – Choose

SoReal paved the way but they did it a lot better. I don’t think anyone is fooled here.

San – Creep

It’s better than San’s solo song though. The wayward farting synths sound terrible but they’re also the only interesting thing here.

NEXZ – Next To Me

“Nexz” is a great name for this group because it implies that their songs are so skippable that you can’t even get through saying the word “Next!” without falling asleep halfway through.

Moonbyul – S.O.S

Not the best Moonbyul song but it’s still okay enough, mainly just thinking of my le***an readers here by including this.

IDID – Push Back

I actually really like the chaotic sounding track here but all the vocal harmony singing really takes the edge off of everything.

APEX – Checkmate

Not much of a song but it’s just good to see the saloon from TMC’s iconic “Pew Pew Pew” get another workout in the k-pop realm. Although they never get chess right in music videos for some reason. At 1:15 the guy on the right has a free queen he can take, what’s he sitting there thinking about? Even if you get caught afterward, it’s a rook for a queen, just take it fool.

LOVEONE – Dreamin’

Look at 0:43 it’s just like Hana with the stylist, “get that fu***ng s**t outta my face” hahahaha

Jurin Asaya feat. Rhapsody – PS118

XG girls continue their incredible feat of having someone who actually understands what good English language rap music is write their raps for them, something no other k-pop group can seemingly manage. If tomorrow they all start sucking lyrically you know that some songwriter behind the scenes had a heart attack or something.

Sokodomo feat. Chaeyoung – Wake Up

The quality of this song is more offensive than a thousand questionable clothing choices.

Park Moonchi feat. Jo Yuri – Code: Kwang

Song starts at 1:30, ignore the crap beforehand. It’s not too bad and certainly rocks a bit (harder than Handong this week ahem), even if Jo Yuri looks as bored as somoene watching the voting scenes in Squid Game 2.

AIDEN feat. Seunghee – A to B

Despite the Oh My Girl member being in it, trust me this wasn’t worth a look or a listen, so let’s have our weekly non-Korean LGBT feature here instead, yay! I think that we all assumed that Michael Stipe was q***r as f**k in R.E.M’s heyday, but I missed the memo when he actually came out and said exactly that in 1994. What I didn’t miss was their peak 1980s hits, nor seeing R.E.M live which was… okay I guess, they’re better in the studio honestly. Highlight of the show was Michael forgetting the words to “It’s The End Of The World” and running around the stage screaming “F**K!” into the microphone until he finally remembered his lines. I think it’s the most angry anyone’s ever seen him.

Paul Kim & Yuqi – Have A Good Time

Very much a Fifty Fifty “Cupid” vibe here with the general groove and the vocal placement, but hey speaking of slightly above-average songs have you heard “Starry Night“? You could listen to it, if you wanted.

Hebi – Overlock

Hebi’s actually kind of decent songs are definitely let down by the fu***ng awful visuals every time. Weird for the same company behind QWER, you’d think they’d understand what looks good and what doesn’t but I guess not.

Bronze feat. Jay Park & Sunhye (YOUNG POSSE) – Witty

Jay Park getting upstaged by the youngsters, who would’ve thought? Wait, probably everybody. Well, that’s that, then.

Yein – Landing

Don’t die of fu***ng shock but this song by an ex-Lovelyz member actually has a fu***ng pulse. It’s not all that great but it’s still better than the 57 idol group boy soloists that I removed from roundup completely this week for your sanity.

Cha Eunwoo – Saturday Preacher

This isn’t too bad I guess but it’s also too generic for me to really care too much about it. There’s so much boy-solo stuff and if it’s reasonably uptempo it always sounds pretty much like this. Nobody is trying too hard here.

Romantic Punch – Future.exe

The most amazingly over the top video, finally someone used AI for good. The song isn’t bad either but loses significant points for having that “nyah nyah” chorus melody. If I want to feel like I’m being bullied in high school again I don’t need to listen to your chorus, I’ll just read my own books.

Cotoba – Light, World and Me

Cotoba are always pretty good if never exceptional, they’re the Fifty Fifty of post-rock whatchamacallit. You could listen to them if you wanted.

The Deep – Kpop Bitch

I thought that “Lucky Star” last week was good, but “Kpop Bitch” is knocking it out of the fu***ng park, this is sheer gold. Abrasive and cool as f**k, this reminds me of the early 2NE1 style (“Fire“, “Can’t Nobody” etc) but better than that because the production is rawer and nastier, and it’s not hamstrung by grating hard Autotune that dates it back to 1743 and Dara’s toilet brush hair. Let’s end roundup here for the week because it’s not going to get any better.

RANDOM BONUS VIDEOS OF THE WEEK

PUBG MOBILE x BABYMONSTER Live-Action Trailer

I feel like YG probably should have waited until someone actually gave a f**k about their new girl group before doing a PUBG collab with them but whatever, I guess that’s why they only get the “baby” mobile version of PUBG. Mind you, after PUBG botched the aespa and NewJeans events by hiding all the good stuff behind scammy random-roll lootboxes (instead of just letting us buy the loot upfront like back in Blackpink event days), I should be grateful that the BabyMonster event is mobile-only because I don’t play games on my phone.

ZHEKE – How tripleS Became the VOICE of YOUTH in this GENERATION

Speaking of tripleS fan theory videos, here we go, enjoy this one. I think the person who made this just blew his house deposit savings on tripleS NFTs and is trying to justify it after the fact. Actually it does have some basis in reality in terms of identifying the group’s conceptual identity but the real issue with this video is that the whole overarching premise of it is kind of bulls**t regardless. Nobody I knew who grew up when The Spice Girls were big thought that they were “the voice of a generation”, even the most deluded pops fans at the time were just like “it’s just yet another fu***ng manufactured overseas pop group ripping off Australia’s Girlfriend but I guess I like that one song of theirs so whatever, I’m sure they’ll barely last three albums anyway”. Back then people had common sense, you didn’t have to pretend to glaze everything unconditionally 100% of the time like you do now because there wasn’t a social media to cancel people on.

15& – Sugar

From back in the day when JYP would actually “give them an album”, 15&’s “Sugar” was reasonable enough if not amazing but it was also sadly the only time 15& would actually get a semi-decent feature track. JYP later tried to push 15&’s Park Jimin into variety TV hosting instead, something she complained loudly about, while Lee Hi and AKMU were racing up Korean charts with a similar sound at the same time, which must’ve burned. I guess they’re all now hanging out together enjoying life and swapping ex-s**tty-label war stories, all’s well that ends well.

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

It’s time for Kpopalypse roundup! Let’s take a look at some new releases! Breaking news – Kris Wu hasn’t been murdered in prison yet. (Act...

22/11/2025

It’s time for another episode of Kpopalypse Nugu Alert! Let’s take a look at the last cropo of nugus for 2025!

At the moment I’m very busy getting a headstart on end of year content and trying to work out where I should put your k-pop faves on my best and worst lists for 2025. So it seems like a good time to clean up some nugu submissions that have been hanging around that may or may not be relevant to the lists or to any of you and… f**k it, nobody reads Nugu Alert. I can write anything here. Years ago I went to hospital for kidney stone and the other week I finally peed the stone out of my dick. The doctor said that would happen but I didn’t know it would take over five years for the stone to work its way down. I was wondering why fapping felt odd for a while, it was because there was one of Sorn’s “Sharp Objects” up there. If you’re wondering if it hurt, yes it did – stay hydrated, kids. Anyway enjoy these picks for the final Kpopalypse Nugu Alert of 2025!

Usual Kpopalypse Nugu Alert rules apply, artists must meet the following criteria:

Less than 20,000 views across official channels

Unlikely to be invited to Waterbomb even if they offered to do the event for free and wear even less than [insert your bias here]

Relevant to Kpopalypse

Let’s take a look!

Rekirem – Access Completed

Let’s start of with this “live idol” thing, and Kpopalypse readers would do well to support the Korean live idol scene because it’s totally free from exploitation and all those bad k-idol things, unless you count what happened to Ihoteu which I’ll just totally ignore because it doesn’t suit my argument. Hey at least the agency lets the girls have their phones, even if using them seems to just make them pi**ed off. Rekirem doesn’t investigate that much in the way of production values with “Access Completed” sounding pretty rough around the edges, but maybe that’s a good thing because it’s supposed to be gritty and raw or something… no, actually it just sounds like ass. The song itself isn’t too bad though even if nobody knew how to record it, and the video is even almost pro looking in places. Worth a look.

YouTube views at the time of writing: 9863

Notable attribute: girl with the white tennis shoes from 3:44 is really letting the average footwear standards in this group slip

Nugu Alert Rating: high

X ARA – 1001001

You’ve heard of T-ara, well now it’s time for X-ara who don’t seem related at all although Qri probably has as many artificial bits in her these days as the girls in this video. I’m not sure whether this CGI monstrosity is all AI generated or what, but it’s possible that it at least partially isn’t, it actually has the look of some videos I’ve seen where different groups of university students handle different sections and then it’s all stitched together later, that would explain the odd visual switch-ups every minute or so. Anyway the song’s not half bad and even reminded me of Fiestar’s “Apple Pie” just a little, just try to ignore the various visual crimes this thing commits, like the ugly colours, the furry Marilyn Monroe skirt scene, and well pretty much all of the rest of it too.

YouTube views at the time of writing: 7890

Notable attribute: gosh Michael Jackson reimagined as an ape, I’m sure that won’t upset anyone in particular hey

Nugu Alert Rating: very high

DIVA-X – We Are Diva-X

Diva-X have been on Kpopalypse.com before, a while back I had a look at their fairly pointless cover of After School’s “Diva“, which they clearly chose to do a version of just because of the song name matching their group name. Judging by this neglectful dungeon-dance video, I guess their agency thought that the After School cover would be a better introduction of Diva-X to the world than their actual debut song, but I actually think the two songs are about equal in quality. If nothing else they both say “diva” about 239 times each, which gets about equally annoying as the songs progress, but they do lose Nugu points in this post for having a relatively popular cover. Worth nothing that the company gave such a small about of f**ks about this song that they didn’t even get the girls to lipsync or include a proper audio track, so the version embedded on this website is my fixed version with the album audio, but you can check out the original video here if you want to help their viewcount and leave the girls encouraging and/or misleading comments about not giving up on their dreams.

YouTube views at the time of writing: 564

Notable attribute: bored staff member off to the left of the frame at the start of the video looks only at the piece of paper in his hand, not at the girls, I suspect he’s reading about all the money he blew on funding this debut in his quarterly profit and loss statement

Nugu Alert Rating: average

Ucute – Oppa Kimochi

Basically just a dance track with a girl making dental checkup noises over the top, there’s really not a lot to say about “Oppa Kimochi” musically other than it somehow manages to be a bop despite being basically nothing, which just goes to show that simplicity can really work well sometimes. The song reminded me of years ago when Boram/my mother told me of a song that she grew up with which was called “Mashed Potatoes Yeah” or something, and “mashed potatoes yeah” was supposedly the sum of the lyrics, but I think she’s misremembering because I can’t find such a song anywhere. It was probably actually The Mashed Potato Stomp which has a fair bit more lyrical variety than “Oppa Kimochi”. Anyway enjoy this song plus the animated video which has the Ucute girl street-harassing the guys for a change.

YouTube views at the time of writing: 281

Notable attribute: solid black bicycle basket at 0:18 changes to transparent net black bicycle basket at 0:20, human error or is AI gaslighting us nugu appreciators, you be the judge

Nugu Alert Rating: extreme

That’s all for this episode of Kpopalypse Nugu Alert – the series will return in 2026!

It’s time for another episode of Kpopalypse Nugu Alert! Let’s take a look at the last cropo of nugus for 2025! At the moment I’m very bus...

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