This BARELY qualified for the list, as it was a B-side to their feature track from earlier this year called Come To Me. When Come To Me flopped, rather than pack it up and call it a day, Blady's company decided to promote Oochie Walla Walla on music shows (None of those performances are full or are on official music show channels, so this Arirang radio performance is the best thing I could find.). Thank god they chose to put this out, it's honestly great. K-Pop shows again that it can take inspiration from the most disparate of places, featuring a Nas sample, of all things. While the result isn't exactly polished, it makes up for it by being infectious as hell.
14. Jun Jin ft Eric - Wow Wow Wow
The perfect earworm: there's no telling what will make it, but sometimes it not necessarily the most euphonious sequence of tones. That's certainly the case in Wow Wow Wow, where the titular phrase is pitch-shifted to sound like Fozzie Bear is singing it, and good lord does it nag at your brain once you've heard it. I don't mind it at all, as this part adds some levity to the ridiculously dark and heavy track. It's a great dance song that will fill out any system you can throw at it. Speaking of darkness, Jun Jin is a ridiculously good looking and suave old-young fellow, and the dance looks cool, but it'd be nice if I could actually see him in this video so I could appreciate the choreography (And fap to him.). Look at this shit:
lol wait, you can't. Now try and make out what's happening here:
Lookin' at chu my ass. Who thought black on a black background would be a good idea? Shame on you, stylists.
The Rorschach test is a psychology tool where proctors record their subject's responses and analysis of inkblots, and these results are used to shed light on their thought processes. This leads to the classic results where normal people view this as a butterfly, weeaboos view it as an Evangelion unit, and if you see a bleeding uterus you're likely a serial killer who fashioned your mother's skin into a lampshade or upholstery. Or maybe it doesn't mean any of that, as many question its validity as a diagnosis tool. Point is, the images barely look like anything regardless, but it's your brain that fills in the blanks. So where there's really just a cool modern/interpretive dance in nude tones that is really not uncommon for dance in the first place, some people are going to see something they're unfamiliar with and just interpret it as sexually charged. Regardless of the video, Elastic Heart is great and features more of Sia's punk-isms. I actually like this better than Chandelier, this song cares less about hithp-hop leanings and loudness and just focuses on putting out a good melody.
14. Macklemore & Ryan Lewis ft Eric Nally, Melle Mel, Kool Moe Dee, Grandmaster Caz - Downtown
Never underestimate the power of a great chorus. The song barely holds itself together throughout half of its running time, at best an average funk track (Helmed by the Take Me To Mardi Gras sample that everyone and their undead great-grandmother uses to communicate that a track is supposed to be funk.) with Macklemore buying time with an equally average-at-best rap. Macklemore probably gets too much shit for finding commercial success in a genre where the most successful tracks weren't even that great anyways, but his violent self-deprecation and self-immolation on the public pyre has made him more annoying and sickening than anything else. But my second-hand embarrassment immediately dissipated upon hearing that awesome chorus: Eric Nally musters his best Freddie Mercury impression (It fails, but at least he has flair.) and delivers what is perhaps the best chorus to come out of Western pop music this year. Downtown could've pulled any other atrocities it wanted after that sweeping melody, it's hard to ruin something that golden.
An Open Letter To CL - on dealing with independence, musical quality, and dignity
Ever since discovering the group upon my introduction to K-Pop, I have been rooting for 2NE1 all the way. Their excellent 2009-2011 run holds some of the best K-Pop songs of all time, featuring crazy hip-hop bangers, shocking electronica, and rich R&B. CL always stood out due to her command of the stage and overwhelming presence, and I always thought she would have a promising solo career.
So when she released her first solo song The Baddest Female, I caused me to take a step back. I was not expecting it to be such hot garbage. Literally a collection of random noises, such that it might've been composed by a inbred child with a tacky soundboard app. It was bad. And not bad meaning good but bad meaning bad, y'know.
I was a bit more cautious when it came to CL and solo opportunities after that. "It was just a fluke, not all artists get good songs on their first try" I told myself. Then MTBD off the Crush album came.
"No CL" I said to myself, "no, you have to fight this. You say you love hip-hop? These aren't hip-hop beats, and whatever they are, they certainly aren't decent." But it was too late. She would feature on Dirty Vibe later that year, helmed by the Great Satan himself, Skrillex. While the wild, seizure-like convulsions of the beat smothered what little faith I had left in CL's competence as a soloist, at least I saw a silver lining in not even her fans being able to enjoy the song, or even call it K-Pop with how poor its quality was.
And here we are now, with Doctor Pepper. It's obviously awful. The beat, while not as sickening as Dirty Vibe or MTBD, is unequivocally boring and thudding and unfun for a song we're supposed to bounce to. CL barely raps, and just chants the "cool and trendy" English slang lines that Scooter Braun teaches her over and over again. The hook is so awful that CL fans convinced themselves that they were just placeholder gibberish for the real lyrics. CL gets out rapped by Riff Raff. You just don't do that.
The song is the least of my worries, however. With the release of Doctor Pepper, the realization dawned on me: "These songs are consistently bad; what if CL likes how these songs sound?"
As a K-Pop fan, I will not stand by or defend CL's solo output any longer. And as fans, clearly we have no power to control what artists produce, but we can voice our dissent by not talking about CL any longer. We need to stop praising the work of artists who consistently disappoint. That's our job. I want to focus on good music, so I am not interested in subpar work and will refrain from covering it any longer. But if this would cause any FOMO in the lives of K-Pop fomos worldwide, know that crap like this can be found by switching on your nearest hip-hop station, both Korean and English, or by pulling up this page.
I love you, CL, but I know you're better than this.
14. Stephanie ft L Joe - Higher
You may be familiar with the site World Star Hip Hop: A site primarily oriented towards the showcase and glorification of videos showing the scum of society abusing hapless victims. Oh yeah, and hip-hop. They sometimes get exclusive premieres of music videos. (Not for major artists, just ones like Lil' Dicky and Migos.) So, bear with me, when I first heard this song came out, the only place I could find the MV was on the HotSexyKpop69 YouTube channel
I could've choked over the prospect that somehow HotSexyKpop69 had gotten an exclusive world premiere of Stephanie's song. Like how much farther can you fall? Unfortunately, life isn't nearly as funny as fiction: turns out that her company's metadata person failed her as it's impossible to find this music video without the Korean title. Still, wouldn't it have been freaking hilarious if my theory was true?
Anyways, I said World Star's main function is the glorification of attackers' violence towards their victims. Oh boy, if that doesn't apply to Stephanie: A former member of SM's failed ballad group The Grace, surely she's been subject to some abuse from SM. For starters, she was in a ballad group. Secondly, her contract was probably crap, she never probably saw much money, and SM likely beat and starved her like they did with all their other groups around her age. And lastly, she was in a ballad group.
Like all goody-goody teen acts that eventually break away from their chaste origins, Stephanie became radically different once she went solo (See Miley Cyrus, Britney Spears, and the most wild of teen pop acts, Debby Boone.). Sadly, abuse is a cycle, desensitizing Stephanie as to what shit music sounds like, and encouraging her to now victimize the general populace with some of the trashiest garbage K-Pop has ever seen.
Higher is probably the worst of it. It's the same thoughtless electronic club filler that Stephanie insists on doing, but this time with a trap break in it with a electronic screwdriver used as a sound effect! I guess that actually makes this the most trendy thing Stephanie's done yet, but it's an absolute earsore of leaden beats.
How she got a Teen Top member in this music video is a mystery to me... But wait, he doesn't actually appear in the music video, just his voice does.Stephanie just mimes his lyrics and styles her hair in a masculine way, but that was honestly enough to trick me on his absence for the first few views, as Teen Top members look effeminate anyways. I guess even he had better things to do: He might as well be Siwon Choi compared to a Z-lister like Stephanie. Doubt she's going to be rising up from that rank with dreck like this.
Ah, what a perfectly staid, turgid, wrist-slicer of a country-ballad. This was clearly written to be a torch song played at the end of a concert where the audience pulls out cigarette lighters and sway side to side, but I could only be tempted to immolate myself hearing this. If I said this clearly generic song was generic, well, that still would be more unexpected than anything that happens in this song. Just three minutes straight of blocky piano and guitar chords, with a drum set thrown in at the last chorus to provide a climax. Too bad that the song is so pitifully slow that even that can't give any life to this carcass. And the lyrics: let's pretend as if the song is actually addressed to a real person: (Clearly it's addressed to Dawes's fans, and your favorite band they hope stays together is clearly themselves.) the subject in this song is described as a hick-ish assclown who probably needs prayers for keeping his own life together, forget about his favorite bands.
Song's greatest offense comes at 3:22, however. People cry over children both domestically and around the world being unable to go to school and get a safe education without fear of getting shot up, or having bombs blow up over their heads, or getting struck down by a drone missile: but children getting sent to school to sing Dawes songs in a choir? Is this what we're doing in America? Could fear of being vaporized really be much worse than this?
14. Lil Wayne & Charlie Puth - Nothing But Trouble
OK, I know it's rude to ask personal questions of people you don't know... And no, I don't want to ask about Charlie's sexuality, who really cares. I want to ask about something physical... No, it isn't his eyebrow. What I want to ask is, "Is your ass surgically attached to that piano bench?" This is the fourth video where Puth for the the majority of it sits his ass in a chair and just plays that goddamn piano. Oh and I want to ask if he's a eunuch, as his voice sounds more feathery and testosterone-less that it's ever been on Nothing But Trouble. Dude sounds like Him on this, although Him might have less reverb layered on his voice.
Is Charlie's castrato purposeful on this? His parts sound just like some sort of gothic opera with all the gaudy choir backing he has, but it still doesn't sound any better. Let's not even touch on the inanity of the lyrics. Complaining about popular Instagram figures, really? Between this and Marvin Gaye, Puth is proving himself to really suck at hooks, how he landed on the soundtrack to a franchise as esteemed and acclaimed as Fast & Furious is a mystery to me. This song vacillates between the horrendous chorus where Charlie wails as if his testicles had been torn off to the slightly less horrendous performance of Lil Wayne, who per usual sounds as if he had Charlie Puth's severed testicles stuffed into his mouth.
Were you the one that posted Ochie Walla Walla in the kpop thread? I love it now though.
I like Doctor Pepper, the video is very "I watched Genesis by Grimes once and I was inspired" but I love the hot garbage. The beat to MTBD is so good though, sis. I thought everyone loved it
Were you the one that posted Ochie Walla Walla in the kpop thread? I love it now though.
I like Doctor Pepper, the video is very "I watched Genesis by Grimes once and I was inspired" but I love the hot garbage. The beat to MTBD is so good though, sis. I thought everyone loved it
8thpwincess is the only one I ever saw hating on it
Elastic Heart is surely Sia's best song. Or may I say, her best post-mainstream career.
IA. Glad you enjoyed!
Quote:
Originally posted by madonnas
Were you the one that posted Ochie Walla Walla in the kpop thread? I love it now though.
Most likely, I don't think anyone's following Blady tbh, although that's understandable as I've checked out their other songs and OWW is really the only good one.
Quote:
Originally posted by Sunderland 4ever
Downtown was okay but it's been the single I liked the least from them so far.
The only other single of theirs I liked was Can't Hold Us, but Downtown has the better chorus while CHU has the better instrumental
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Thanks for commenting! Will try and get #13-11 up tomorrow!
Have this done so I figured I might as well post it now!
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13. A.KOR - Always
Life must be hard as a international Blackjack. Netizens roast Park Bom with such fervor that you'd assume there must be warrants out for her arrest in Korea (Not like they'd help much, any picture of her face would become outdated if you wait a week.). CL is fucking around in America, putting out music so terrible that you couldn't be forced to say you're a Blackjack, even with a gun pointed at your skull. And the last member Minzy has become a nun or something. 2NE1's producers haven't cared about them since 2011 either, giving them either boring ass ballads or pieced togethersong snippets because they can't be fucked to write anything new for them. Count their boss among the people who dgaf about 2NE1 as well.
Now, let's say you're a Blackjack and... Hey, stop laughing, this is hypothetical, I know very well they don't exist anymore, but let's just imagine they do. Now, you're a Blackjack and someone disses one of the group's members. What do you do? Maybe chuckle a bit and forget about it? Maybe admonish them with a stern comment over the internet, and then move on with your life at most. OR you could come to your helpless unnie's defense in a noble statement by dislikinganythingevenmarginallyrelated to that disser, including all their groupwork. There are still plenty of dislikes on A.KOR's latest videos, so clearly Blackjacks are actively following them to know when they upload new material so they can dislike it. Clearly Blackjacks are heavily bothered by A.KOR for some deeper reason than that diss, but what is it? Is it because Kemy is clearly a better rapper than CL, and has better material than CL could ever dream of getting? Is it because they're jealous of A.KOR's songs so far being quite good, with Always reminding them of great 2NE1 songs like Go Away that Blackjacks are sure they'll never get again in the stead of crap like Come Back Home?
...Or maybe Blackjacks just actually really dislike the kinds of songs A.KOR do, despite them clearly being inspired by 2NE1's best tracks. I am a firm believer of putting your money where your mouth is and showing your dissent with negative feedback, as that speaks loudest to businesses. Maybe this is why 2NE1's songs are so poor lately: YG saw that every time a group put out a 2NE1-esque song, Blackjacks ripped it to shreds and hated it, so he decided to put out something totally different (And much suckier), resulting in their poor output since 2012. Thanks Blackjacks!
12. Stellar - Vibrato
Let's talk about Stellar, or rather people's perceptions of Stellar and their image. Quick look at their history: Stellar started off with some real awful tracks until one day they weren't awful and in fact actually quite good. Obviously the songs had increased in quality, and Stellar's profile had raised, but people couldn't leave it at that. Any conversation involving Stellar you'll see someone say "well the songs are good, but if only they weren't controversial, then they might actually go somewhere" (Hm, strange how no one tries to say that about Gain when she does the same damn thing, wonder why?). Sorry to burst your bubble, but the only reason anyone knows what a Stellar is is because of the video that launched a thousand dicks. Marionette was the first semblance of success that Stellar ever got, and the video is the reason why, not the song. Maybe in a perfect world where songs are rewarded off of merit, but this is K-Pop, so that's obviously not the case. Then there's the squeamish people who try and view Stellar's songs as being separate from their concepts. Maybe that's how it should be assessed in a strictly musical arena, but in a visual genre like K-Pop, the total package should be analyzed. And oh boy, that couldn't be any more true for a group like Stellar.
You'd think after songs and music videos like Marionette, Mask, Fool, and now Vibrato, people would start thinking "hey, clearly there's an overarching theme when it comes to Stellar's work, so separating the visuals from the audio experience kind of defeats the point of Stellar's entire concept." Nope, K-Pop fans haven't quite gotten there yet. Vibrato is the best song Stellar's done so far, the tempo shift in the bridge is flawless and the whole song is treated with what has to be my favorite mix job of the year.
11. Minx - Love Shake
Copyright! Let's talk about the history of covers:
Fairly innocuous today, if exceedingly uncommon, covers were anything but in the early 1900s. Not everyone had the resources to produce brand new songs, but you're still a singer with expenses to pay for: why not just cover someone else's song and sell that? Sounds like no big deal, but the thing is, music didn't disseminate nearly as fast then as it does in the era of the Internet, so no one really cared or would find out if you just covered a popular song in one region of the country and sold it in a different region without permission. See, back then copyright law protected the recording, but not the song, meaning a record label couldn't sell another label's popular record without permission, but getting their artist to sing it and sell that was totally fair game. Eventually US Copyright Law expanded to ban this practice and force people to get permission to cover other people's songs for commercial usage, and the practice of pushing covers as commercial records diminished as a result.
And here we are with Minx's Love Shake: a cover of Dal Shabet's album track off of their 2012 Bang Bang EP. Love Shake is an anomaly as it is 1) a good album track off of a K-Pop album and 2) the cover actually improves on the original by cutting the inappropriate electronic break in the bridge. It sounds like Girls Day's really goodearliersongs and no wonder, it was actually written by the guy who did their early stuff. What the hell did they do with this guy, anyways? Their songs sucked until he wrote Nothing Lasts Forever for them, and then they went right back to sucking when they dropped him after he wrote them Expectation. Minx is showing that they have potential to be a strong K-Pop group after this and their equally excellent Why Did You Come To My Home? from last year. Love Shake in my opinion was the clear winner of the 2015 Summer Girl Group War, putting SISTAR and SNSD's attempts at ultra-chipper summer pop to shame with its earnestness.
Earlier this year I had done some travelling for a business competition. Essentially, the trip was a convention whenever the actually competitive parts aren't going on, and as anyone can tell you, conventions are unbelievably boring. No one wants to go to that shit, so you mostly spend time in your hotel room. The hotel we were at was especially nice, great bathroom, and most importantly, a lot of free movie channels and cable like HBO. The group I was rooming with were bored out of their minds so we just switched on HBO and let it run in the background as we went about our business.
There was one movie that caught our interest, however: Olive Kitteridge. Basically, the movie follows Olive as she becomes an old fuck, making many mistakes along the way because she has no social competency. She watches everyone around her die and her son comes to hate her. Severely depressed, she decides it would be best to kill herself, but she's so big of a fuckup she can't even do that correctly.
You may complain about me spoiling this whole multi-hour miniseries but trust me, it was no good watch. Everyone in the room was bored as hell watching it, it was dry. The only reason no one could be bothered to change the channel was because the movie's ennui spread to us, rendering every person viewing it too lazy to switch the channel.
I mention Olive Kitteridge because for one, the music video for Standing Egg is filmed exactly like an HBO original would be, black bars blocking 40% of the screen to make it more "cinematic" (And if that was lost on you, then the director makes sure to hammer it in by having credits with his name listed at the end.). It's also treated with the same muted coloring to make sure nothing in the video is too vibrant or excitable.
Oh, and I also mention Kitteridge because the song is boring ballad trash that is tedious as hell. Like Kitteridge, it only exists to emotionally manipulate in context of the visual. Take away the MV and the song is worthless.
Finally, Miss You is similar to Olive Kitteridge as the protagonist in the MV tries to commit suicide as well by jumping off a cliff. He succeeds, and I can't help but feel more sympathetic for him than Olive: While all her family may be dead or estranged, I'd count being trapped in the music video of a shithouse K-Pop ballad as a much worse fate.
12. Lee Jin Ah - Road to the Airport
This next song is...
Quote:
Uploaded By: Hyundai
Oh my god no please not another song from that Sing The Road series dear god.
Well, maybe I'm being too hard on this series. Let's try to find some POSITIVES about Lee Jin Ah's song, shall we?
It's good that I know what they're selling this time
The song actually sounds like it could be slotted in a commercial (Maybe would be better for coffee or something but let's stay POSITIVE)
Some people might find Lee Jin Ah's voice very interesting, as it sounds like she's sucking her own uvula down her throat. Memorability is good for commercials!
JYP is in this video, instantly making the song more palatable
OK but no the song is awful Wiggles feel-good crap. If you're three years old you'll bop, if you can wipe your own ass you'll cringe at Lee Jin Ah trying to use counting down numbers as a chorus. Also minus points for JYP not singing or whispering his name at the start of this song. Finally, not the smartest move to advertise an alternative form of transportation in a commercial for a form of transportation. Maybe "Road to the Hyundai Dealership" would've been a smarter choice of song title.
11. Luhan - Lu
Lu reminds me of Vocaloid: beginning producers who had a clear talent for sound design, but no experience or capability of actually executing their vision. Some early vocaloid songs projected really great and atmospheric soundscapes, but the actual vocals, music and songs were so shit that the mood was rendered null. They were a bit punk in the aspect of them being not very good but trying anyways, (Although what they put out was vastly subpar as compared to any metric.) and they're the perfect example of what good production as far as sound design goes is: They were great producers, in fact, they got their concepts across to their audience, but they were also terrible audio engineers and the songs they wrote were pure crap.
You're probably completely confused by now. "Those Vocaloid songs are great, but they're crap at the same time? They were great producers but they sucked?" Stick with me, because things are about to get more confusing.
Lu has a great and really creepy atmosphere: the problem is, this isn't a sinister or macabre song. The song has good mixing, but the arrangement and song is terrible, as are the vocals. Lu is similar to the above Vocaloid songs I mentioned, except for the fact that its mood is completely accidental. Lu has bad production, meaning I actually regard it less than those songs.
To me, the record is a mismatch of moods, a bad song, and a comically terrible vocal performance. I don't think I need to explain to anyone why this is on this list, as it was pretty much universally panned. Just wanted to explain why I thought there was something redeemable in this catastrophe. Also redeemable is the honestly terrifying video, but again, it's mood dissonance: the producer MIGHT'VE been going for a threatening feeling, but Luhan projects none of that in his performance, and it's lost in the lyrics. Even then, I'm not sure if the lyric video's creator was planning on making a creepy video, but goddamn if that deer isn't scary.
And yes, there were ten worse songs than Lu released this year. Buckle up, because the top ten worst K-Pop songs of 2015 is going to be a mess to get through!
