Asian Junkie Asian pop. Without discretion.
I actually was planning to chill a bit after I caught up on the last Rundown, but there’s been a hilarious amount of releases recently, so why not just stay current?
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LEE CHAEYEON – “No Tears On The Dance Floor”
The foundation here is generic but appealing on its own, and I liked it just fine overall, but the refrain of the chorus leaves a lot to be desired.
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CORTIS – “TNT”
Their sound on “REDRED” was eons better than this shit, and Jane Remover was completely right.
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H//PE Princess – “Stolen”
Not good, but at least it tries something, and I expected worse from a group that came out of the Unpretty Rapstar: HIP POP Princess rap reality program that I had no idea actually went on prior to this being revealed.
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Keyveatz – “Key Beats”
Worse like this from AOMG‘s pre-debut girl group.
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SOYOU – “Girl”
This is rough, literally, but her pre-release “See Through“ was eons better and will be covered in other features since I actually enjoyed it.
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ILLIT – “It’s Me”
This is nowhere near as bad as the teasers primed me to expect, as the sung verses are quite nice and the pounding beat in the chorus is great by itself.
Unfortunately, it’s also perhaps the prime example of how pandering to short-form video virality can fuck up a song’s sound, both in terms of it seemingly just cutting off before the said verses and beats can really get going, and via the quite frankly straight-up annoying as fuck refrain just being yelled over and over. Would literally be better with just the verses and an instrumental chorus. Never thought I’d ask for that in pop, but it’s true.
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Billlie – “WORK”
Kinda like the poor man’s version of aespa‘s “Whiplash“, which makes it pretty good. The “work” repetition doesn’t quite … work as well, but the beat carries.
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Billlie – “ZAP”
Unfortunately, their other release is just not very good and was off-putting to me.
Can I also just say that while I lowkey enjoyed their convoluted and “deep” titles of their albums, but between that and their AI lore controversy that they feel is artistically necessary, for their two singles to then be just repetition of “work” and “zap” over and over is hilarious.
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BABYMONSTER – “Choom”
It only achieves something resembling the club banger status it wants to be in the last chorus, and it might’ve worked if the whole song had that energy. Unfortunately, it doesn’t at all due to needing to incorporate all the members via bratty momentum-killing raps. They look great, though. And yes, I’ve heard the criticism that it sounds like a YG Entertainment retread, but if you expect anything different at this point, it’s almost on you.
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Man, they are flooding releases over the last month or so.
