Kpop music thread. Stan talent, Stan-all.

Girls Generation - Forever 1

It's pretty cool to see a K-pop girl group in their early to mid-30s that isn't some kind of parody or reality show gimmick. I'm gonna check out the full album in a bit.

I've been enjoying the new Girls Generation.

Also, I really am loving the style and energy of YENA. She impressed me with her debut, SMILEY (feat. BiBi) and this comeback has the same sort of feel (girl-crush but make it cute?)

YENA - SMARTPHONE

Yuju ft. Big Naughty - Evening

Time to represent the boys a little.
This might be my favorite Ateez song after just a couple listens.
Ateez - Guerilla

Also enjoying this track from the album: Cyberpunk

Jackson Wang - Cruel

This is similar to the mini mashup Kai did last year for his album. Really cool.
DPR IAN - SERAPH | 1 SHOT | MOOD | RIBBON | OFFICIAL MIITO MOVIE (PART I)

This dude has incredible stage presence.
Hoshi - Tiger (Studio Choom performance)

BlackPink - Pink Venom

This is their pre-release single. Their second full album, Born Pink, will be out next month.

Ive - After LIKE

I've let this one sink in a bit, but if Eleven and Love Dive were both 10/10 pop songs... this one's maybe 8/10.

It also left me with a couple of thoughts:

Spoiler:

1. How long does a sample have to be before you're just playing a second song in the middle of your song?

2. Are they going for a behind-the-scenes sort of theme? Because the MV just comes across as unfinished to me.

No offence intended to the members of Ive who are all talented and sound great.

I'm actually liking "After LIKE" more than "Eleven", which landed a bit flat for me, but I still agree with your spoiler commentary. The extreme shaky cam during the chorus choreography in particular did not look good.

Cover: Dreamcatcher Jiu & Yoohyeon - Monster (orig. Red Velvet - Irene & Seulgi)

A couple other's I've been listening to lately:
Hyolyn - Over You

Junny ft. Chungha - Color Me

TWICE- Talk That Talk

New album, Between 1&2, is also out. Can’t wait to check out the b-sides.

Billlie - RING ma BELL (what a wonderful world)

Not the disco track that the title might suggest... at all. Truly every release from Billlie has been completely different than the last and I'm living for this.

MAMAMOO+ (Moonbyul and Solar feat. BIG Naughty) - Better

I had seen social media posts about this but didn't realize it was already out a couple days ago.

I follow Lara Crigger on twitter so now I know there's a Kpop ETF (exchange traded fund, I don't have money to invest so don't know much about).

https://twitter.com/LaraCrigger/stat...

Chuu - One and a Half

Can I talk a minute about Chuu and Loona? Orbits are at a weird place right now in their fandom of Loona. Months ago it was reported that Chuu was suing Blockberry Creative to have more independence in her scheduling. It seemed like a smart move as she was becoming popular as a youtuber and for her appearances on various shows. She won. Then they announced the world tour- but Chuu wasn't going to be a part of it because of her "schedule". Later this month Loona will be releasing their second Japanese single- but once again Chuu is not a part of it (all promotional photos so far have only included 11 members). It feels kind of weird, and their is lots of speculation as to what current events might mean to her future in Loona. Of course that's all an unknown and any speculation is just that.

On top of that, the tour for Loona seems to be full of problems for the members. It's a long tour, and their first big tour, and there was basically only travel time scheduled between shows- with little to no downtime for the members. Many members have had to sit out all or part of shows due to injury- HaSeul, YeoJin, Kim Lip, JinSoul, Choerry, Yves, and Olivia Hye. Some sat out multiple shows. HaSeul sang while sitting off to the side for some shows due to her injury. At least one show had only 7 or 8 members on stage by the end of it out of the eleven members who were touring. People seem to be upset at both Blockberry Creative and MyMusicTaste for not taking the health of the girls into consideration when scheduling this tour.

Just a kind of sad and unfortunate series of events. I even read that when they returned to South Korea between the North American and European legs of their tour, the airline they flew on had lost all their luggage. I've been busy with other stuff lately so I only see random tweets or reddit posts about what's going on, and I'm partly grateful that I haven't had time to go fully down the rabbit hole of what's going on at those concerts. I hope the tour ends without too many more incidents and they get the rest they need and their company and tour promoters learn from their mistakes.

Anyway, I just had to vent a bit. I hope everyone enjoys the new Chuu song posted above.

Much has been said online about the debut of the new group, New Jeans, which debuted with 4 songs about a month ago. In particular, the discussion has revolved around their ages- the oldest member is 18 and the youngest 14. This became even more eye-raising with the release of their song Cookie, which has some fairly suggestive lyrics.

All that aside, their song Attention has grabbed my attention:

NewJeans - Attention

This has such a laid back and cool vibe and definitely gets stuck in my head after hearing it.

And here's Cookie, the song I mentioned above. Regarding the lyrics, they claim that "cookie" is a metaphor for their album or song that they've worked on and any other 'dirty' meaning of the word wasn't intended.

NewJeans - Cookie

They also have released 4 music videos for their song Hype Boy, each focusing on different members. You can pick from the 4 videos on the end card of Hype Boy (Intro) or maybe just watch the performance video.

And for completion here's the M/V for their song, Hurt. It's another great song with a cool vibe- maybe my second favorite song after Attention.

Any controversy aside, they seem to be pretty unique in K-pop, seem to be pretty popular and could be a group to look out for in the future.

YOUHA - Last Dance M/V

Another song I'm late to the party to. Youha did Abittipsy and Island, which both were previously posted here I believe. This new song is from a 5 song digital EP. I'm checking out the rest of those songs right now.

You mentioning NewJeans reminded me of MLD Entertainment's new girl group, Lapillus. Interestingly, the Leader is from Japan, and there's a Filipino vocalist member and Chinese-American main dancer. There's a handful of Koreans, plus the Maknae (which is the reason I thought of them after your post). She is considered the youngest active idol as of last month--only 13 currently.

I'm mostly only aware because a lot of the Momoland crowd I followed have started posting more about Lapillus (since they're actually active) and it seems MLD has been putting their effort more toward the new group than the industry veterans (who probably only have a year left in their contracts at this point and I personally doubt they'll sign again because it's not like they've done a whole lot since the restructuring. As opposed to Twice who have been cranking out releases and all renewed their contracts, I believe). Anyway, here's Lapillus debut "Hit Ya!" again.


As long as I'm here, though, check out:

FC TrotQueens - For the Victory


P1Harmony's new B-side - Different Song For Me


Kim So Yeon - Hey, Ocean

This was probably already posted, but I really love StayC - Beautiful Monster


And we'll round this out with Lucy - Play

I have a few more to share, but figured I'd break it up a little for easier management of the page

Nell - Still Sunset


Gaho - Beautiful Night


Hyolyn has a new album and I know it was posted just a bit ago, but I'm really enjoying "Over you." To me, it's got some good "youknowbetter" vibes, which is one of my all-time songs, so I'm really into this one. I just love the emotion in Hyolyn's performance & lyrics.


I just discovered the group LAS. Their musicality is just so enjoyable. The harmonies and featured artists in each of these two songs are just amazing. I've put both repeat a lot recently.

LAS - Everywhere

LAS - A Waste of Time


Oh, speaking of musicality, you just have to check out Narin. They're an acapella group that's been picked up by MLD. I only gave them a passing glance at first, but once I heard the opening harmony and beatboxing, I was hooked. I can't wait for their next releases, but I'll keep listening to this one for a long time.

Narin - Sweety

I haven't seen DIA show up on my list for a long time. A cursory check in Apple music shows no releases since a 2020 EP, but I don't know the story of where they've been since or if they just took a pandemic hiatus. Any which way, they've returned with a sweet farewell comeback and a MV for the title song looking back at their careers

DIA - The Blinding Past

SORN reunites with one of her CLC members:

SORN - Nirvana Girl (ft. YEEUN)

NCT 127 - 2 Baddies

2 baddies, 2 baddies, 1 Porsche.

Black Pink in your area!

BLACKPINK - Shut Down

I'm really liking this. Enjoying all the callbacks in the MV too. Full album, Born Pink, should be out now.

LOONA - LUMINOUS

Japanese single release with 11 members (Chuu wasn't involved due to "scheduling" reasons).

NMIXX - DICE

One common complaint about NMIXX's debut, O.O, was that it was disjointed and sounded like 3 separate songs spliced together. So do they do for their first comeback? Oddly, they seem to both double down on the concept and also learn from the complaints. I'm finding this more listenable than the debut but they definitely keep intending to switch things up mid-song.

Hi, I heard about this thread on the podcast and wanted to stop by and check it out. I've been listening to Kpop for, well, over ten years now I guess (ugh I'm old); basically since Genie by SNSD was released give or take. None of my friends are into it so I thought it'd be nice to have an outlet to discuss releases and maybe discover some new favorites.

I'm still catching up on the previous pages but I just wanted to say hi and hopefully I'll be able to add some new groups/songs to the mix once I'm caught up. AMA I guess if you want to. I may be referencing some older posts (they're new to me) later on so I hope it's not too annoying!

gurusloth wrote:

Hi, I heard about this thread on the podcast and wanted to stop by and check it out.

IMAGE(https://i.gifer.com/2U5U.gif)

This was mentioned on the podcast?? Does this mean I made it? I was behind on my podcast listening, but just listened to the latest episode. Thanks for the shoutout, Antichulius!

And welcome gurusloth. I'm always happy to see new faces here. I've know as much as I've delved into this genre there's always more to discover so I welcome any new insights and I am willing to offer any knowledge that I might be able to share.

Antichulius wrote:

... they've returned with a sweet farewell comeback and a MV for the title song looking back at their careers.

This gives me the sad feels; I was always kind of pulling for them to pick up a bigger fanbase but you could tell it was just not gonna happen. At first I thought the IOI connection via Chaeyeon (she seemed popular at the time when that group finished promoting) would have been a bigger draw, but in the end it seems like it all comes down to budget and they never had a large enough one.

gurusloth wrote:

Hi, I heard about this thread on the podcast and wanted to stop by and check it out. I've been listening to Kpop for, well, over ten years now I guess (ugh I'm old); basically since Genie by SNSD was released give or take. None of my friends are into it so I thought it'd be nice to have an outlet to discuss releases and maybe discover some new favorites.

I'm still catching up on the previous pages but I just wanted to say hi and hopefully I'll be able to add some new groups/songs to the mix once I'm caught up. AMA I guess if you want to. I may be referencing some older posts (they're new to me) later on so I hope it's not too annoying!

Welcome! We're a small group of participants, so it's always nice to add another. Don't be shy about referencing older posts if anything catches your eye.

What are some of your favorite groups/artists?

Tscott wrote:

Anyway, I just had to vent a bit. I hope everyone enjoys the new Chuu song posted above.

Dang, that sounds rough. It always sucks to hear about members being overworked or not properly cared for.

On a positive LOONA note, I've been listening to this song quite a bit lately: Sick Love

It looks like I have quite a few new songs to check out from the last month. Allow me to add a few more to the mix:

Oneus - Same Scent

pH-1 - Zombies + Tipsy

Shaun - Road

H1GHR Music - BRB

Rocket Punch - Flash

Basically my wife is obsessed with Black Pink and with Liisa. Send help!

JohnKillo wrote:

Basically my wife is obsessed with Black Pink and with Liisa. Send help!

IMAGE(https://i.imgur.com/QE5NHXt.jpg)

Like this?

What sort of help do you need? A list of Lisa's best dance videos? Where to find the best variety show content? My best advice right now is be sure you try to price match with Amazon if you buy their new album from Target.

I should buy that for her.

Edit; bought the b side of their new album. I hope she gets the Lisa variant.

Dyni wrote:

What are some of your favorite groups/artists?

IU is my all-time favorite. There's just something ineffable about her singing voice. Also she seems like a decent person so that's an added bonus. I haven't seen any references to her her show on Youtube
(a new episode just came out today) but I recommend it if you are a fan, if only for the part at the end where she covers a song by the guest artist on the show and the guest covers one of her songs.

Beyond that I follow and enjoy a lot of groups and soloists, primarily girl groups (Oh My Girl, Red Velvet, and Loona are pretty high ranking on that list) but I like some songs here and there from other male groups and artists (Shinee, G-Dragon, Psy, Taeyang, EXO). I'm making a list of stuff that I haven't seen y'all post about then editing it when I stumble across it later in the thread (currently on page 28).

One thing I noticed is that you haven't (up to where I'm at) discussed any of the competition shows that have aired over the years aside from a brief mention of KpopStar and it's connection to AKMU. Have you watched any of them (Sixteen, Produce 101, Mixnine, Idol School, Girls Planet 999, etc.)? If not, why not, and if so, what's your take?

I think most of us around here are pretty bit IU fans. I'm subscribed to her YouTube channel, but I have only watched a few of her videos.

gurusloth wrote:

primarily girl groups

Well you'll fit right in here then

gurusloth wrote:

One thing I noticed is that you haven't (up to where I'm at) discussed any of the competition shows that have aired over the years aside from a brief mention of KpopStar and it's connection to AKMU. Have you watched any of them (Sixteen, Produce 101, Mixnine, Idol School, Girls Planet 999, etc.)? If not, why not, and if so, what's your take?

The only Kpop competition show I have watched from start to finish is Queendom season 1. I went back to watch most of KpopStar season 2 after discovering AKMU, and I watched quite a bit of Unpretty Rapstar season 3 a couple years ago to check out more of Soyeon.

I haven't watched any of the ones that led to new groups, mostly because of all the vote manipulation rumors that I've seen floating around. I know Mnet got in big trouble for that a few years ago with Produce 101.

ITZY's new Japanese track - Blah Blah Blah