Board Thread:Off-Topic/@comment-29512888-20190822210303

Oh damn, I'm super duper ultra mega extra hyper late on this! Sorry guys... Actually, I had prepared the final draft last week, but I was always busy and I also had problems with Internet due to my aunt trying to upload 1GB-heavy videos to WeTransfer using our connection *facepalm*

Anyway, let's start!

Introduction
So this month was... not that bad, honestly! I dived into my potential candidates with low expectations, too, but I ultimately realized these four new weeks actually had quite a lot of good stuff to offer, resulting in a satisfying change of pace compared to May and June. Let's start with our Honorable Mentions!

Honorable Mentions (the second and third one have no available lyrics)
This doesn't count, but it's still cool and worth a watch just to see how much N-Flying have worked in Japan over the year. Seriously, aren't they tired of releasing one single each month? This is what happens when someone tries to remake Kim Lip's Eclipse and its music video with about one quarter of the production budget. Mind you, the result is still good! What I love the most about K-Pop is its unpredictability, and this song is the umpteenth example - no one ever expected a hot-dog commercial to be this good, but it is somehow. Not much to say about this one, except that it sounds a bit like Love Cherry Motion and it's almost as good. BewhY finally churns out a decent song after five years of career. I don't know why it took him this long but hey, at least his discography is not 100% garbage now!

10. GWSN - Red Sun (021)
In the constantly-changing visual landscape of K-Pop, it's nice to see a group sticking to a suitable concept for a long while, and GWSN have been no exception thanks to their sci-fi story or whatever the f it is. However, the musical results have been pretty damn average with no signs of improvement, and it was a shame because they really had some potential attached to their name. Thankfully, they managed to raise the quality bar a little bit with Red Sun (021), which slightly diverts from their typical material thanks to an unusual drop that stuck out since my first listen. Maybe I will forget about this song next week like I did with (G)I-DLE's Senorita but, for now, it can stay here.

9. Arran - Puzzle
Another thing that is not very common in K-Pop is artists who write and/or produce their own music, since most groups have zero choice in what to do or say. One of them is Arran, a girl who has been co-producing and co-writing for a while for a few names in the genre, such as Lovelyz and fromis_9, and now she decides to step into the summer spotlight with this breezy bop called Puzzle. In a summer drowned into dull R&B and terrible YoloTune, a song with such catchy melodies and fast pace is exactly what was needed, and I'm glad someone committed to saving K-Pop's fun-dried landscape with their musical creation (and it's also worth noting that the results are good, because other supposed "summer bops" didn't reach these levels of quality). I don't know if more music is in progress, but I'm definitely looking forward to her future solo activity!

8. Taemin - Famous
In the meanwhile, Taemin is no stranger to K-Pop and has spent years cementing his position as the ultimate Michael Jackson wannabe. Famous is his latest addition to the queue and, just like every other solo song of his, it mostly works thanks to the sinister beat and Taemin's whispered vocals, which all give an eerie yet fascinating vibe that immediately hooks you from the first chord. Then again, SM always gets this kind of song right (as far as I know), so was this really a surprise to you?

7. DAY6 - Time Of Our Life
OH MY GOD DAY6 ARE BACK AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!! Seriously guys, you have no idea how much I've missed you! Sure, there were N.Flying and IZ delivering more rock when I was in need, but... you know, DAY6 are DAY6, you can't deny it. Anyway, onto this song, and it's not that different from what they did before, it's just that I missed them so much that I wanted to put this here for sheer nostalgia - and also because the song is one hell of a banger, of course.

6. Lazybone - Tropical Night
And then there are people who pop up from absolutely nowhere and still manage to beat your biases with less punches than One Punch Man. I really have no idea who these guys are (except for the fact that they exist since the 1990's) and how Kpopalypse managed to find this song to feature it in his Roundup episode, but I do know that I like it a lot and I absolutely needed this in my playlist. Contrary to DAY6's song above, which is more traditional rock, Tropical Night tilts more towards the experimentation route, borrowing from ska and reggae and blends their typical instrumentation with an incredibly fast beat and weirdly funny raspy vocals, as well as a weird breakdown where everything slows down for a while and then the pace dramatically rises again. All of this leads to a cheesy yet funny performance that describes how K-Pop usually is: too bizarre to be taken seriously, but also too amusing to ignore.

5. HYO - Badster
Holy crap, has Hyoyeon hit it out of the park this time! I've been fully enthusiastic about her solo work as a DJ since last year, and the results have been getting better and better so far. This is easily her best musical output at the time of writing, which exploits as many influences from Eisenfunk's Pong as possible to create a messy, entertaining beat rooted on hard-hitting synths and faster-than-light 808 taps. And yeah, Hyoyeon has never ever ever ever ever ever been convincing as a rapper (especially when she tries to sing those cringeworthy English translations of her own DJ songs), but the music has always been great enough to compensate. There has been a lot of competition in terms of Korean EDM this year and, while it's definitely not the best song in the genre, it still holds a pretty damn high position in my opinion, and will likely continue to do so.

4. Stella Jang - YOLO
I've already discussed about K-Pop's ill-advised tendency to always change concepts, but that's not necessarily a bad thing because it can often bring a breath of fresh air to artists whose music has never been particularly great. After mentioning BewhY in my Honorable Mentions, it's time to pass the spotlight to another example: Stella Jang, another soloist who has been in the K-Pop industry since 2014 without reaching the "above average" mark. Now it's time to change the situation with YOLO, which, as opposed to what the title might suggest, is actually rooted into something K-Pop has never tried before: the acapella loop. It starts with some simple taps and claps, and then it blooms into a choir of syllables and soft shouts that immediately puts the listener at ease. Then, the actual song starts, using the aforementioned loop as the backing track, and the two things go together as masterfully as Nutella and a crepe. To be fair, it's actually a bit disorienting to see a regular pop verse being tacked on the loop because I hoped for the whole thing to be constructed like that, but then you can still hear it in the background so it still drives its relaxing point home.

3. Kimhwol - Down
Well... If this is not the ultimate K-Pop surprise, then I don't know what is. Not only is it a ballad, but also a literal lullaby, and yet it's here at #3. How was that possible, in spite of the ridiculously HUGE number of ballads released each month? Let me explain calmly. First of all, I hate 99% of K-Pop ballads because they only serve as a means to show off the singer's vocal prowess, without caring about crafting a musically decent result with some actual songwriting behind. Kimhwol's Down, however, doesn't fall into that trap because the producer spent most of their effort creating a really nice ambiance thanks to a more minimalistic approach. The typical Korean ballad instrumentation (piano, strings, soft vocals, etc) is all there, but it doesn't try too hard to be dramatic because it only cares about doing one uncommon thing: making everyone feel comfortable and consoled, even your neighbor's furious dog. Does it make you fall asleep? Definitely, but that's the point. You usually don't see such a successful attempt at making a ballad in South Korea, and highlighting it is the best thing I can do, not only to recommend good music but also tho show the entirety of South Korea's ballads creators how to get it right next time. Sadly, we're very, VERY far from improvements, but hey, there's still some hope!

2. Honey Popcorn - De-aeseohsta
Man, GFriend have been a HUGE disappointment this year. Yeah, they have released Flower, which is easily one of the best K-Pop songs of 2019 so far, but I've never been crazy for Sunrise, and Fever is such a generic tropical house song that it might have as well been made by anyone else. Fortunately, a much lesser known girl group called Honey Popcorn decided to beat GFriend at their own game the exact same week Fever came out, with a new single called De-aeseohsta that retreads all of their rivals' musical repertoir (sweeping choruses, dream-like ambiances, catchy riffs) and brings the typical flavor the original owners should have stuck with instead of suddenly changing cards for no reason. Of course the final result doesn't live up to those of GFriend's best tracks because the agency behind Honey Popcorn had much less money, but all the effort was still well-paid in the end, and its value grows even more when you consider how much of a letdown their counterpart's work was.

1. KNK - Sunset
And now we close things on a much more nature note with a sexy comeback from another nugu group called KNK (then again, Honey Popcorn's members are all Japanese porn actresses so this kind of fits in a way). They manage to stand on everyone else's competition with a new song called Sunset, and all of this happened because it does something not all sexy K-Pop songs do: it doesn't just look sexy, it also sounds incredibly hot. If you wonder why, then you can definitely thank producers Nassun, DALGUI and DONO for polishing this amazing house beat with its dark synth, vibrating bass and overall breath-taking atmosphere. And of course the KNK members also play their part, as they sing in their lower register to amp the testosterone percentage up to one million - and also look their part *ahem*... oh wait. what did I just say? Sorry, I just let my inner kinky side leave its shell lol. Anyway, this song is amazing and deserves twice the streams of your bias' latest song, which I'm almost sure is inferior by a large mile.

Recommendations
So I decided to make the entire Recommendations section revolve around the theme "B-sides", and this is the first one. Not the best song ever, but the unusual sounds get it over the line. Sorry if I was too harsh on GFriend this month, but I really want them to go back to their original form. In the meanwhile, I'll play this cool album track. Speaking of artists losing their core sounds, Coldplay should also rediscover their roots (even though their latest songs aren't too bad), and this song is an example of how to do it. DAY6, on the other hand, know exactly what they are doing, especially now that they have hardened their sound, and they don't need to change for any absolute reason in the world. I don't know what to say about this one, honestly, except that it's slightly inspired from the 80's and it's pretty good. No lyrics for this B-side track from BewhY's The Movie Star, actually, but it's so retro and banging that I still want to show it as an extra recommendation. It's weird to see BewhY claiming to be "the greatest" in spite of him not releasing anything worth a dam for four years, but then he actually did it for once so I shouldn't be too nitpicking. 