As it's coming up to Halloween, here's a scary k-pop themed horror fanfiction for you all to enjoy!  Have fun reading and don't worry, Kpopalypse doesn't do jump scares!




Picture this.

You've a young female music fan living with your parents and attending senior year of high school.  You've always liked pop music TV shows, like [insert country here] Idol, X Factor and The Voice.  Although it's obvious to you that to a degree these shows are fake and manufactured, they nevertheless warmed your cynical heart - in such a commercial industry seemingly so image-focused, just the sheer premise that talent mattered meant something to you.  You might not always like the songs, or even the singers, and definitely not the decisions of the judges, but you could certainly listen and appreciate the artistry of a talented vocalist excelling at their craft.

Then something new happened.  You discovered and fell in love with k-pop.

You spent the first month of your interest in k-pop discovering the many outlandishly lavish music videos and getting blown away by the catchy songs.  After a while however you noticed something - while the videos were almost universally great, the live performances were usually a disappointment.  Certainly not in terms of dance or staging, but vocally - k-pop performers really aren't all that good as live singers, for the most part.  It's frustrating to watch k-poppers sing over backing tracks that contain their own voices, why don't they sing over instrumental versions of the tracks instead?  Are they hiding something, perhaps just coasting along and letting the backing track's vocal do the heavy lifting?  Thus began an obsession with the science of vocal pedagogy, MR Removed videos, and finding/stanning the absolute best singers in k-pop, after all how can you stan anyone who isn't truly talented?  You're not interested in becoming a singer yourself, you just wanted to make sure you're supporting true talent.

A year into your life as a k-pop fan and now you have a large forum presence and your own blog dedicated to k-pop vocals, frequently visited by many people with the same obsessions - you're fully absorbed into the world of the k-pop vocal analyst.  It's little wonder that when you see the following advert circulating around all the vocal forums you visit, your heart starts racing:


After spending a while to calm down, you read through some of the forum discussions about this topic.  After all, it pays to research.  There's so many scams out there, one has to be careful.  Would Ailee really host a k-pop vocal camp?  Is it too good to be true?

Taeyeonfap666 - this sounds great but there's obviously going to be a ton of us wanting to go to this and only limited places.  It's probably very expensive, I bet the people who get to go are all rich.
Bomsux - I'd do it just to meet Ailee, she's the best vocalist in k-pop for sure.  Or nearly the best.  Please don't argue about it just for once, everyone.
Istantruvocals - what exactly is a "k-pop vocal fan camp"?  We don't have to sing, do we?  Please don't make us sing, Ailee, I just want to listen to your amazing voice.
Freeminzy2NE1 - I hate it how k-pop events don't tell you everyone who will be at the event.  Don't they want the extra sales from fans?  Seems dodgy.
KRYing4Suju - I went to one of these last year hosted by Kyuhyun from Super Junior, it was pricey but unforgettable and totally worth the money, it really helped me with a lot of questions I had, definitely a life-changing positive experience.  I can afford the cost but I'm not sure if I can afford to take a week out of my life, although if it was Kyuhyun again and not Ailee I probably would.  Sorry, Ailee fans!
Yoloswag420 - I heard Jimin from AOA is going to be the keynote speaker at this.  I can't wait.
Davichiwonderland - I'm going to this, I don't care what I have to do!  I don't care how much it is!  Anyone wanting my spot will have to fight me!

The general consensus among the vocal fan forum community seems to be that the event is legit, but pricey.  It figures - surely everyone would want to go, and seven days of accommodation and food plus meeting k-pop stars, the costs to put on such an event must be through the roof!  You look further on the event's website, the event organisers even include transport from Incheon Airport into the cost, all you have to do is buy a plane ticket and turn up at the airport, they do everything else!  The economics don't bear thinking about, but what does bear lots of thinking about is that you've got the savings to go to this.  All you need is your parents' permission.

You wander into the dining room, where your mother and father are talking after dinner.

"Mum, can I go to this?  It's in Korea, but... I have the money, and it's school holidays" - you show her a printout of the advert.

Your mother looks the advert up and down.  "This is in Korea?  And you'll be gone for a week?  No, definitely not!"

You look to your father.  "Dad?"

Your father sighs, and looks at the advert for a long time.  He then looks at your mother and takes her hand.  "You know... I honestly think we should let her go.  It'll be good for her independence to travel, and it'll teach her some new things."  He winks at her.

Your mother is aghast and draws her hand away from his.  "No way!  She'll be alone in a strange country!  I'm not letting her go, anything could happen!"

An hour of arguing later, and they agree to let you go to the event, under the conditions that you keep in constant touch via social networking every night to let them know that you're safe.  You couldn't be happier!


After an uneventful flight, you arrive at late afternoon through the gate at Incheon airport.  After you
move through customs you see an older Korean man wearing a suit and holding a sign with your name on it.  You wave, walk over to him and introduce yourself.

"Hi, I'm here for the Ailee vocal camp!"

"Ah. welcome, good to see you!", he replies, smiling warmly.  "I'll be your driver.  How was your flight?"

"Good, I guess.  I'm really tired, but I can't wait to get to the camp!"

"We will be there soon.  Come with me, we'll collect your bags and then the drive is about one hour."  The man motions silently for you to walk with him and you follow him to baggage claim.

At the baggage check you scan the conveyor belt for your luggage.  Feeling awkward, you decide to break the silence.

"What's the Ailee camp like?" you ask.

"It's interesting." he replies.

"Interesting how?"

"You will not forget it.  A uniquely positive, life-changing experience!"  The driver smiles at you again, that same warm smile.

You spy your luggage and the driver helps you grab the bags, then ushers you out to a waiting van.  As you enter the van you notice that you and him are not alone, a girl a few years younger than you with long blonde hair sits in the van's back seat, waiting.

"Hi, I'm Sarah!" says the young girl in a chirpy, rapid-fire voice.  She continues talking excitably with barely a breath as you settle into the vehicle and the driver starts moving.  "You might know me as Davichiwonderland on the forums, wow I'm so happy to be going to this!  Imagine meeting Ailee it's going to be OH MY GOD SQUEEEEEEEEEEEE I can't wait to ask her all about her singing and stuff, she's the best, I really like her, oh except Haeri is maybe a little better because Davichi is my bias you know that's why I'm Davichiwonderland but oh my gosh I'm just so excited and it's so great to be here and how are you?  I'm so good I really like posting on the forum a lot and this is like living my dream and I get to meet Ailee and OH MY GOD I wonder who else is there, who do you think will be there besides Ailee?  I think it's going to be IU I really think IU will be there that would be nice IU's really nice too but I think Ailee is a bit better her voice has a bit more resonance you know and she has better vibrato because that's important oh my god I'm so excited I haven't eaten all day but I'm not even hungry because I've been thinking about this I didn't get much sleep last night but I'm so excited right now and..."

You sigh and look at your phone.  59 minutes  and 13 seconds to go.


59 minutes  and 13 seconds later, the sun has gone down and you're still on the road.  Sarah is still talking.

"...and you know there was this girl on the forums and she said that Ailee is the best, but I'm not sure about that she's good really good and I mean really good as in really really good but she's not at Beyonce's level who is just AMAZING or Mariah's level and is just AMAZING too or she was before she stopped taking care of her voice because you know that's important and so many singers don't do that, I mean why wouldn't you look after your talent rather than letting things side, you know I think there's a lot of drugs and alcohol that singers do and they get the good life and they just start buying all the drugs and all the alcohol and having it all at once and that's really bad for them so they have health problems and then they get dumped from their contracts because they can't sing like before I think it's a real issue I don't know why people don't take it more seriously because we've lost so many great singers all the time this way like Whitney Houston who had that crack habit from that asshole Bobby Brown who must really be a dirtbag she could have had anyone she wanted why did she pick that loser oh my god he's such a douche and his music is bad too and he can't even sing properly he like strains and everything it's so painful to listeOH MY GOD, DRIVER IS THAT IT?  IS THAT WHERE WE'RE STAYING OVER THERE?  IS THAT IT?  OH MY GOD!" - the van starts noticeably slowing and Sarah points up ahead at an old mansion.


"Yes, this is it" says the driver, smiling.  You're happy but you begin to wonder if he has more than one facial expression.

Sarah starts spazzing annoyingly.  "OH MY GOD OH MY GOD IT'S SO BEAUTIFUL IT'S LIKE A PALACE WOW I CAN'T WAIT OH MY GOD WOW AILEE IS IN THERE AND EVERYTHING IT'S SO PERFECT THIS IS GONNA BE AMAZING"

The driver brings the vehicle to a stop and turns around in his seat, he looks Sarah dead in the eye, and his smile vanishes.

"Please be aware, that in Korean culture it is important to be silent before your elders.  When you see Ailee or any other staff you must be very quiet and speak only when spoken to, or she will see it as a sign of disrespect.  Disrespectful behaviour may mean that Ailee becomes upset, and you do not want Ailee to get upset.  Do you understand?"

Miraculously, Sarah shuts up.  You wish he had said this an hour ago.  The driver smiles again.  "I am glad that we have an understanding.  Please exit the vehicle."

All three of you exit the vehicle and enter the building through the main doors, which lead into a small hotel-style reception area decorated with flowers.

"Glad to see the last stragglers have made it" says a lady in a formal suit, behind the reception desk.  She's reading a newspaper and doesn't even look up, she looks incredibly bored.


You recognise her instantly as Moonbyul from Mamamoo.  Fortunately, Sarah doesn't recognise her so you're spared and earful of spazzing.  Moonbyul points off to a doorway on her right.

"Everybody's in there waiting", she says.

You wait until Sarah is safely out of earshot and whisper to her: "Moonbyul?"

"Yes what is it?" she says, looking up from her paper from the first time, giving you a withering stare.

"You're an idol - why are you a reception person?" you ask quietly.

Moonbyul rolls her eyes.  "That shit doesn't pay the bills.  Now get going through the door, don't hold things up any more than you already have."

You move through the doorway into a large meeting room as Moonbyul resumes reading, muttering something under her breath.  You shut the door behind you.  In the meeting room there are several people sitting in a circle on chairs.  One of them is Ailee, all the others are girls and boys your age or younger.  Ailee looks amazing, like she does in all her videos, just as you'd imagined.  There is one vacant seat left, Ailee motions to it for you to sit down.

"Great!  Now we're all finally here, we can get started!"  Ailee's tone is a little irritated, but unlike Moonbyul she's doing her best to hide it by smiling.  "So, I'm Ailee, as you know, and this is my k-pop vocal camp!  We're going to learn lots of fun things about k-pop vocals and you're going to get to meet all sorts of k-pop stars!  Are you excited?"

Everybody in the circle responds with an emphatic "yes", except Sarah who says "yes oh my god yes oh yes I'm totally excited I just can't wait oh my god".  Ailee drops the smile off her face and stares down Sarah blankly until Sarah shuts up.  Ailee then instantly resumes smiling and continues.

"So.  We'll get to the learning and all the complicated stuff.  For now, it's late so let's go around the room and introduce ourselves, then we can have some food and you guys can get some rest!  Starting from you and going around in a circle, tell the group a little about yourselves!"  She looks to the girl on her left.

"My name is Sally, and I'm 14 years old.  I like k-pop and I love good singers!"

"Feel free to be a bit more specific" Ailee prompts.

"Well... I really like YOU, and I like BoA, and..."

"BoA?" Ailee interjects, raising her eyebrows.  "Okay, that's enough.  Next person, tell us about yourself."  She motions to a slightly chubby guy who seems a little nervous.

"Hi, I'm David, and... do I have to give my age?"

"You're telling the story", Ailee replies.

"Okay, I'm 16... well, 16 and a half if you go by Korean age..."

"Nobody cares about Korean age.  Be relevant" quips Ailee.

"Okay, sorry... um, and I really like Sistar and Hyolyn especially, because..."

Ailee interrupts, cutting David off.  "Tits, right?  You can say it.  Because of her tits."

David stares at Ailee, dumbfounded.

"Repeat after me, David.  'I like Hyolyn because of her tits'.  Go, your turn, say it."  Ailee stares at David with no discernable emotion.  David spends a few seconds stammering, he doesn't want to say it in front of her, his face goes quickly red.  After about five seconds Ailee gives up.  "Forget it.  Next!"

Sarah is next.  "Hi I'm Sarah and I'm so happy to be here and this is going to be so wonderful and OH MY GOD AILEE I LOVE YOU YOU'RE THE BEST!  CAN I HAVE YOUR AUTOGRAPH?  CAN I TAKE A SELCA WITH YOU?  YOU'RE SO PRETTY OH MY GOD I LOVE YOUR LONG HAIR AND YOUR LIPS AND YOUR VOICE IS SO AMAZING AND I THINK EVERYTHING ABOUT YOU IS GREAT AND..."

The door that you came through opens.  Moonbyul appears and looks at Sarah with a puzzled expression.  Sarah can't see Moonbyul because of Sarah's position in the circle.  Ailee and Moonbyul give each other a little nod.  Moonbyul taps Sarah on the shoulder and Sarah turns around.
"Hey, you're Davichiwonderland, right?" she asks, smiling for the first time.

"Yes that's me oh my god you know who I am?" Sarah replies.

"Yes, sure!" says Moonbyul, smiling.  "Hey you know what, I'm going to pull you out of this group and we'll return later, okay?  You want to meet Haeri, right?"

"OH MY GOD HAERI FROM DAVICHI IS ACTUALLY HERE??!?  OH MY GOD WOW YES YES YES" - Moonbyul puts her hand over Sarah's mouth, and then puts her finger up to her lips indicating Sarah to be silent.

"Haeri doesn't like loud noise much, so you have to be very quiet.  Do you know she has a hearing condition?  Loud noises can really hurt her so try not to be loud okay?  Anyway come with me, we'll go to meet her now, she's just a few rooms down the hall." Moonbyul and Sarah disappear off together.  Ailee clears her throat.

"Right, sorry about that interruption.  Okay, next person, tell us about yourself!"  Ailee points to a girl with bobbed hair who looks about your age.

"Hi, I'm Amy and I run the forum about k-pop vocal analysis, I'm 17 years old and I've been studying vocal pedagogy since..."

"Oh, you're one of those people" Ailee interjects.  "I see.  I see" she says slowly, nodding to herself.

"What?" asks Amy.

"Oh, nothing.  Keep going.  Tell us more."

Amy starts talking.  "So I really got into vocal pedagogy when..."

Ailee puts up the palm of her hand quickly.  "Actually no, stop there.  Next person!"  It's your turn.
"Actually I like vocal pedagogy too, it's neat" you say.

"Oh great!" Ailee smiles.  "Saves me the trouble.  Next!"

You breathe a sigh of relief while the next person starts talking about himself, a young skinny guy.
"I'm Mark and I'm 13 years old.  I really like T-ara and..."

Ailee interrupts again.  "Why do you like T-ara?  Your balls don't look like they've dropped, have they really?"

"I just like the..."

"Sure you do.  Do you jerk off?"

"What?"

"You heard me.  Do you jack it?"

"What?"  Mark looks confused, he doesn't know what to say.

"I bet you do.  I bet you jack off all the time.  Every day, wake up, jack off, go to school, jack off, come home, jack off, jerk it jerk it jerk it all fucking day.  Try not to mess up the sheets too much tonight, someone has to clean those.  Next!"  Ailee motions to the last person in the circle.

"Hi, my name is Leanne and I'm 15, and I really like singers who have a lot of resonance in their voice, like..."

Ailee interrupts her.  "Actually, enough of this.  Let's eat.  All of you, head through the door on the other side of where you came in, there's an all you can eat buffet.  Do any of you have any special dietary needs?  I think one of you was a vegan from the ticket info?"

Leanne speaks up.  "I'm a vegan."

Ailee nods.  "Okay well, I guess you won't be eating, but everyone else eat up and then follow the signs to the dorms.  I need to rest my voice, I'll see you all tomorrow!"

Ailee gets up and walks out of the room, smiling and waving at everyone.  The entire room says "Goodbye Ailee!" and move next door to where the food is.

The buffet is amazing!  Rows and rows of all sorts of Asian meat dishes.  Leanne unpacks and eats some kind of roll she brought with her, everyone else tucks into the meat buffet and then gets settled into the dormitory, one room with several bunk beds and no windows.

That night while getting to sleep the conversation naturally turns to Ailee.

"She's not what I expected" says David.

"What did you expect?" asks Sally.

David sighs.  "I don't know, she was really blunt.  The way she'd smile and be really blunt at the same time, I don't get it."

"She cut me off, I didn't like that" says Amy.

"Maybe she's on her period" offers Mark.

"Ewww, you're gross!' says Leanne.

Mark shrugs.  "Well, maybe she is though."

"Maybe you're a dickhead though" retorts Leanne.

"Has anyone seen Sarah?" you ask.

"I guess she's still with Haeri.  Weird how she got picked out like that.  Why didn't we get picked?" says Sally.

"She probably paid extra - seems like the type" David replies.

"We might get picked tomorrow" you reply.

Everyone eventually goes to sleep.  You text your parents that you're okay and then doze off.  You sleep with some difficulty, thinking about what the next day will bring makes it hard to switch off your brain.


The day starts at 8am with Moonbyul wheeling in a breakfast cart and offering everyone a choice of various cereals or raisin toast.  Everyone orders except Leanne who once again eats something that she brought with her.  You're still the only one who recognises Moonbyul.

"Hi, good to see you!" you say to Moonbyul.

"Don't talk to me.  Cereal or toast?" she snaps back abruptly.

"Toast, thank you."  Moonbyul hands you some raisin toast and says nothing further to you.  She serves the others and then leaves.

At 9am on the dot Ailee walks into the dormitory.

"How are we all?" she says, smiling.

"Good!" everyone responds.

"That's great!  Today is the first day of your vocal appreciation education!  Is everybody looking forward to it?"

"Yes!" replies the room.

"Fantastic!  I've brought in a computer with some songs on it!  Spend the day listening to them, and do some vocal analysis - there'll be some questions on the songs this evening, plus you'll get to meet new k-pop stars!"  You notice the laptop in Ailee's hands, she sets the laptop up on a dressing table by one of the bunk beds.  "I'll leave this with you all, meet me in the meeting hall at 6pm... and don't forget to use the outdoor facilities, everything is there for your use!  There's outdoor gym equipment and basketball hoops if you need a break - remember that there's no such thing as too much exercise!  Plus the views are great!"

Ailee smiles and leaves the room.  Everyone huddles around the computer, while David accesses it for the songs.  It takes him about 10 minutes to find any songs on the laptop at all, as they're deep in hidden subdirectories, but David eventually figures out the nuances of the computer's search function and finds the following four songs only:









The whole room stares at each other.

"She's kidding, right?  Vocal analysis, on these songs?" asks Amy.

You shrug and look around.  Nobody has any answers.


At 6pm, everyone from the dorms is in the meeting hall sitting down on a row of chairs before a small stage - everyone except Sarah, who nobody has seen or heard from.  Ailee enters the room, to a round of applause.

"Hi everybody!  Glad you could all make it!"  Ailee smiles and waves.  "Before we get into our questions, we're going to listen to a keynote speech from our good friend Jimin from AOA!  Everybody give Jimin a round of applause!"

Everybody claps politely.  "Why Jimin?" Amy and David ask each other.  Jimin appears from the side of the stage, takes a microphone off Ailee with a quick "thank you", and clears her throat.  She doesn't look as good in person as in the videos, but boy does she sound exactly the same!  Jimin then begins a speech in her characteristic vocal tone, one which you've never been able to stand.  You grit your teeth and bear it.

"Hi, I'm Jimin, the motherfuckin' top madam.  It's good to be here.

How would you feel if you knew that today was your last day on Earth?  What would you do differently?  You would probably re-prioritise your life.  Perhaps you would stay home from work or school, and spend more time with loved ones, friends or family.  Maybe you would travel, or experience something completely new.

What if you knew that something was happening, or about to happen, that had the potential to completely change everything in your life, that there was no going back from, and that you could do nothing to stop?  Would you tell everyone, or keep it a secret?  If there was something that you could do to stop it, would you?

The landscape of both Korean and international k-pop music fans is undergoing a paradigm shift.  Vocal analysis has been on the rise for the last decade, largely thanks to people such as yourselves who are spearheading the cultural movement of k-pop fans in this direction.  As a result, vocal analysis has now reached a critical point.

Cycles of analysis are ever-shortening.  The "cycle of analysis" is the aggregate time between when a note is produced by a singer, and when that same note is analysed by people who run and participate in k-pop vocal threads, forums and so on, people such as yourselves.  Due to the current wide popularity of vocal analysis, combined with the exponential growth in k-pop product and k-pop's global reach, plus the rush of fans to study each new product that appears, all of which are exponentially increasing, mathematical models now show that we will soon reach a point called "global vocal analysis singularity", which is when the popularity of vocal analysis is widespread and the aggregate "cycle of analysis" time drops to near zero, or under one second.  At this point it will not be possible for singers to produce a note without billions of analysts dropping all other activities to study the note that was just made.  At this point, everything ends - death by vocal analysis.

Ailee K-pop Vocal Fan Camp is committed to being proactive about reducing the risk of a "singularity event" which could stop all society from functioning.  There is something we can do to avert this fate, and that is why we have brought you here.   Thank you.

Jimin leaves the stage to polite but confused applause.  "I don't get it.  What was that all about?" you ask.

Amy shrugs.  "I don't know either, I honestly wasn't really listening.  I hear that squeaky voice and I just tune out every time.  Why is she even here?"

Ailee re-enters the stage.  "Go and grab some food from the buffet, and then go back to your dorms, everyone.  You questions are waiting for you there!"

Everyone walks to the buffet and picks up a plate of food, except Leanne, who once again is not catered for.

"I've had enough of this!  I wrote 'vegan' when I applied for the ticket and they said they would cater for me, I want something to eat!  I paid good money for this!"  Leanne storms off in the direction of the kitchen.  You follow and watch what she's doing, you can't hear her over the kitchen noise but she's obviously talking to the chefs about getting them to make her something that complies with her diet.  Leanne comes back two minutes later with some kind of sandwich roll in her hands.  "About time!" she says as she begins eating.

About halfway through eating the roll, Leanne starts making strange gestures with her tongue.
"What's wrong, is everything okay?" you ask.

"Yeah, fine - I think I swallowed a hair though.  I can feel it stuck to my throat, it's gross!  There's not much hygiene in that kitchen!"

Leanne eventually locates and spits out the hair, and you both look at it.


"Ewww, I should report them to the health department" says Leanne.

You examine the hair.  "That hair is blonde - and long.  That's weird.  Did any of those chefs have long, blonde hair?"

"No.  None of us do either."

"Oh wait, except..."

"...Sarah."

You both look at each other not knowing what to think.

After dinner you go back to the dorms, where you immediately notice everyone else is looking a bit odd.  You're about to ask what's wrong, but you don't need to.  Mark shows you the question form.


"This isn't what I expected", says Amy.

"This is just hypothetical, right?" asks David.

Nobody knows how to fill out the form.  What do the questions have to do with vocal analysis anyway?  Nobody can figure it out, so everyone leaves it blank.


No-one in the vocal camp group gets much sleep.

At 8am Moonbyul appears, wheeling in a breakfast cart and offering everyone a choice of various cereals or raisin toast.  Everyone orders except Leanne who doesn't eat, she's out of self-brought food.  You're still the only one who recognises Moonbyul.

"Cereal or toast?" Moonbyul asks you.

"Moonbyul, what the hell is going on?  Please help us understand!"

Moonbyul backs away from you.  "Don't you FUCKING ask me for shit!  And don't use my name!  Cereal or toast?" she whispers.

You sigh.  "Toast, please."

Moonbyul is angry, she almost throws you the toast on a plate, serves the rest of the room and then leaves.

At 9am on the dot Ailee walks into the dormitory, carrying a laptop.

"How are we all?" she says, smiling.

"Good!" everyone responds, half-heartedly.

"Did you all complete your questions?" asks Ailee.

Everybody looks at each other in nervous silence.  Ailee picks up the question forms, none of which have been filled out.

"Oh wow, none of you did any of these.  How can we continue to do the k-pop vocal camp if you guys won't participate?"

"We didn't know what to write", says Amy.

Ailee sighs and approaches Amy, furious.  "Amy, are you not a vocalpedagogist or whatever the FUCK it is you people call yourself?"

Amy nods.  "But these questions are not about vocal..."

"What does it say on the top of the form?  READ IT!"

"It says vocal analysis questions, but..."

"So are you telling me that you're willing to get up on your high horse and be a fucking expert in vocals on the Internet, but you can't answer three SIMPLE FUCKING QUESTIONS about your life?  Is that what you're telling me?"

Amy is silent.

"Fine, say nothing.  Here's the laptop, there's two more songs on it.  Get to work.  More questions tonight, plus I expect the other forms filled out completely tomorrow, by everyone!"  Ailee dumps the laptop on the dresser and storms out of the room.

After Ailee leaves, Amy says "fuck this.  Ailee is a psycho bitch!  I'm out of here right now!  Goodbye everyone!"  Amy packs her bags and rushes out the door.  Everyone else opts to fill in the form instead with just anything, hoping to pacify Ailee with results.

The next laptop is opened and David searches for the songs.  Now that he knows what he's doing, they're easy to find and he gets the results in under a minute.  Everyone remaining gathers around to watch.





Once again, not exactly ripe vocal analysis material, although you could probably write a small thesis on how Bom strains her notes and doesn't connect them properly if you had to.  The other camp members listen to the songs over and over to try to figure out what Ailee might want, but you've given up.  You go out to the exercise yard and shoot hoops for a while, and spend some time texting your parents.  You don't want them to worry and pull you out of the camp, you're also trying not to worry yourself about Ailee's tantrum so you tell them everything's going fine.


That night, there's nothing happening at the meeting hall, so the vocal group all go to the buffet.  It's very quiet, there are no chefs on duty this time, or anyone else around, but the buffet is full -  all the food has been prepared earlier and left waiting for you.  Everybody except Leanne grabs a plate, Leanne instead goes straight into the kitchen.

New question forms have been left on the dining table this time, you pick one up and take a look.


"Um... guys... come and take a look at this..." you say.

Your words are interrupted by Leanne screaming.  Leanne comes rushing out of the kitchen.  "It's Amy!  She got Amy!  And Sarah!"

You look in the kitchen, Amy and Sarah's severed heads are both sitting on the kitchen benchtop, with a large butcher's knife sticking out of Amy's forehead.  Some of the flesh from Sarah's skull has been cut away into thin strips, that look a lot like the thin strips in the buffet pork tray, which all of you except Leanne have been eating daily.  It's impossible to look at the kitchen scene or the buffet further.  Everyone except Leanne starts feeling instantly violently ill and vomiting, Leanne instead starts running in circles and panicking.  "Let's get out of here!" she screams over and over.

You try to compose yourself while wiping away the chunks of vomit from your mouth.  "That's what Amy tried, look how she ended up."

"We can't run, we have to defend ourselves!" exclaims Mark, between regurgitations.

Everybody rushes into the kitchen and raids the kitchen drawers to grab knives.  Nobody wants to touch the big butcher's knife embedded in Amy's skull, but the kitchen is well-stocked with knives so soon everyone has a weapon.

"There's only one of her, there's five of us." says Sally.  "I think we can take her on."

All of a sudden a loud banging noise is heard, and you are blinded and knocked back onto the floor of the kitchen.  Something has landed on your face.  You wipe your eyes, to find Sally is now with you on the ground, except that she has only half her head left.  You realise that what you just got knocked back by was possibly her exploding brains.

"Four", says Ailee, holding a shotgun and pointing it at all of you.  "Don't try any fancy shit.  Everyone drop the knives and let's go, back up to the dorms."

Ailee marches you all into the dorms, closes the door and locks you all inside.


No-one in the vocal camp group gets any sleep at all, the night is spent planning how to escape.  The plan is to rush Moonbyul when she appears at 8am and make a run for it.

At 8am Moonbyul appears like clockwork, wheeling in a breakfast cart, at which point everyone makes a rush for the door.  Prepared, Moonbyul has a pistol already drawn and shoots Mark in the stomach as he's the first person to nearly reach her.   Mark doubles up on the floor, bleeding and in pain.  You're still the only one who recognises Moonbyul.

"Cereal or toast?" Moonbyul asks Mark.  "Don't make me wait!"  Mark is unable to say anything and just groans in pain, so after a few seconds Moonbyul gets bored of waiting and shoots him a second time in the chest, killing him instantly.

"Cereal or toast?" Moonbyul then asks you.

"Toast please", you reply as quickly as possible.

Moonbyul hands you a plate of raisin toast, with double the slices this time.  She serves the others, leaves and locks the door behind her.

David starts crying.  "Well that idea was shit!  What are we going to do now?"

Leanne says "Ailee arrives in an hour.  We're probably doomed."

However Ailee doesn't turn up at the usual time.  The hours pass uneventfully.


At 6pm Ailee unlocks the dormitory door and enters.  She's brandishing a laptop, plus the same shotgun that she used to remove Sally's cranium.

"Final exam."  Ailee places the laptop on the dresser.

"...Ailee?" Leanne says.

"Yes, what is it?" Ailee replies.  You wince - you can't see this ending well.

"Why are you doing this?"

"Do you know how much I fucking hate you vocal fans?  You're so pathetic.  I can't sing a note without it appearing on ten different sites with people talking about how I could have sung it better.  People with NO talent, MINIMAL AT BEST singing ability, NO understanding of the technical aspect, and ZERO creativity to do anything else besides piss about on the Internet stroking themselves off acting like they're FUCKING EXPERTS about shit that they don't even know the first thing about and picking apart everything.  You people are the reason why I have to overdub my voice fucking ten times on everything.  I fucking hate you all so much, you disgust me.  I wish I could kill each and every one of you, but there's too many of you pieces of shit."

"But... I just like voices that are resonant, what's wrong with that?"

Ailee quickly shoots Leanne in the stomach.  "DID YOU HEAR THAT?  My shotgun barrel is 26 INCHES LONG, that's a RESONATING FREQUENCY WAVELENGTH of 454.2 Hz! YOU FUCKING DUMB BITCH!  RESONATING FREQUENCIES ARE IN EVERYTHING!"   Leanne is already dead but Ailee keeps screaming at her.  "YOU FUCKING STUPID CUNT VOCAL FAGGOTS OBSESSING ABOUT POINTLESS SHIT!"  Ailee shoots Leanne a second time for good measure.  "LISTEN AGAIN!  THAT'S BETWEEN A4 and A#4, I SUPPOSE YOU GIVE A FUCK ABOUT THAT TOO YOU FUCKING WASTE OF SPACE!"  Ailee then storms out of the room, slamming it and locking it behind her.  You and David, now the only two left alive, both breathe a small sigh of relief that she didn't go gun-crazy and kill you both as well.

David opens up the laptop and searches for songs.  Only one this time.



The intro seems bitterly ironic.


At 8am Moonbyul appears, wheeling in a breakfast cart and brandishing a pistol.  However neither you nor David intend to try anything after yesterday.

"Cereal or toast?" Moonbyul asks.

You and David both choose toast and are given double portions each.  Moonbyul then lumps the bodies of Leanne and Mark onto the breakfast cart and wheels them away.  She also leaves behind a couple new question forms.


Both you and David fill out "yes" for all three questions without hesitation.


Ailee arrives at 6pm, unlocking the door and opening it slowly.  She's still carrying the same shotgun.

"Forms", she says.  You hand the forms that you and David have filled out over to her.  Ailee looks them over.

Ailee sits down on the edge of the bed.  "Okay, quiz time.  I need to know that I can trust you both to do this correctly.  Anybody can fill out a form, it's another thing to actually have a brain.   Let's start with you".  She points the shotgun toward David.  "I just released two new songs - what are they?"

"'Mind Your Own Business' and 'Insane'", David replies.

"Correct!  Now - which song do you like more, and why?"

David thinks for a moment.  "Well, I thought 'Insane' had the better vocal performance in terms of overall feel, but then I really liked the high notes in 'Mind Your Own..."

Ailee shoots David in the face killing him instantly and spraying blood and brains all over the rear wall of the dormitory.  "Gosh, I'm so terribly sorry, that's the WRONG FUCKING ANSWER", she yells as David's corpse falls to the floor, leaking blood.  Ailee then turns the shotgun towards you.  "I trust you have a more satisfactory answer?" she asks.

You think for a moment, but you're really not sure.  "'Insane' was okay but I liked 'Mind Your Own Business' more, but I'm not sure why.  It was just a better song, I guess?"

Ailee releases her grip on the shotgun.  She smiles at you.  "Congratulations.  You are cured."


It's the next morning and you're on the plane back home.  You never told your parents about any of the events at the K-pop vocal camp, even though you could have texted them at any time - if they found out, they'd never let you have any freedom ever again!  Also, what could they do from another country away?  Nothing, obviously - you were trapped.  It was traumatising seeing so many people die in front of you, and not knowing from one moment to the next if you were going to live or die yourself... but there's one thing you can't deny, you learned a lot... and perhaps also unlearned some things.  It's probably better that way.

You're on your phone making a post about how you're putting your k-pop vocal blogging on indefinite hiatus, when the passenger next to you taps you on the shoulder, to alert you to the arrival of the airplane food trolley.

"Cereal or toast?" asks the air hostess.

Fapcams are back.

In this edition, I will focus on dance covers of the quite good song "Cha Cha" released by the Rainbow subgroup Rainbow Blaxx (aka the best Rainbow: Jaekyung, Woori, Seungah, and Hyunyoung)

So here's "original" version:




I chose this fancam because:

1. Hyunyoungishot andhasthebestbodyinRainbow (although her face face can be a bit of a turnoff).
2. This fancam has the most views.

It's simply brilliant! I would pay a lot to see her sex tape or anything like that.

Is there any chance that a cover would be at least close to this god-like level of fappiness? Let's find out!


For this edition, I decided to give you the right to choose the best fapcams! So we will change the "rules" a bit.

The "original" is chosen by me, and I'll try to find many great fapcams so you will have hard time choosing which one is the best. Also, from now on, I'll include fapcams of other members of the chosen girl group so you can vote for them and prove to me that my taste in fapcams is poor.

Enough talking, let's get to fapping work.


1. Eunsol (은솔) from Bambino (밤비노) [150501]



3. Hadam (하담) from Bambino (밤비노) [150501]




4. Kim Yeon-Jeong (김연정) from NC Cheerleaders (NC 치어리더) [140411]



5. Mint (민트) from Love Cubic (러브 큐빅) [140217]



6. Seungah (승아) from Rainbow/Rainbow Blaxx [141211]



7. Jaekyung (재경) from Rainbow/Rainbow Blaxx [140626]



8. Hyun-Jung (현정) from BMS [141221]


9. Woo-Jung (우정) from BMS [141122]


10. Unknown girl from BMS [141221]




So, that's it. Too bad I couldn't find any Woori fapcams D:

Here's the survey, so let me know which fapcam you think was the best!

I've already made it pretty clear that this thing isn't weekly, even though it's called "Weekly Showdown." You also already know by now that I'm a lying piece of shit, so that probably doesn't come off as a surprise. Do we have that out of the way? Good.

Now I am here to ask you all the most important non-music related question ever to exist. I am honestly curious as to what people think about this.

Armpit hair?


Or no armpit hair?


You know what I think? I have no fucking idea. If a male doesn't have armpit hair, it's considered "unmanly." If they do have armpit hair then ... eww armpit hair. It'd be better if they didn't have armpits at all. Maybe they could have like a giraffe or a butthole there instead, the possibilities are endless! Or that's my two cents anyway. What do you guys think?


(I left the "Other" option there just in case you're as weird as I am.)

It's a clear day on the beach, with just you and Qri, there's not too many people around, the sun is shining brightly and Qri looks great in her correctly-proportioned striped top.  However, behind her sunglasses you can sense that all is not right with Qri.  You've been talking about the world of Korean entertainment all afternoon and as you speak, her attention wanders.  Something seems to be increasingly on her mind, and you get the feeling that Qri seems to want to tell you something profound to shake your preconceptions... but what could it be?







You have no idea if what Qri is telling you is true or not.  As long as she keeps wearing clothes like that, you figure that she can continue to believe whatever she wants to believe.

Everyone knows T-ara is too hot for Koreans to handle, so they spend most of their time robbing Chinese guys of their money ...

Lately, it seems the girls wanted to remind us how hot they are and how much Koreans have lost.

🐰http://weibo.com/u/5696220378 2015 T-ARA Great CHINA TOUR CONCERT IN Hefei 💗💗💗💗💗

A photo posted by S*소야니🐰 (@melodysoyani) on Oct 13, 2015 at 3:10am PDT

Sir! Yes, Sir! Let us pray and appreciate Soyeon's discrete cleavage since she was generous enough to show it to us!

🍎👣👠📍♨️❌🔺🎪💯♦️💋⭕️💃‼️

A photo posted by HyoⓂ️in (@hyominnn) on Oct 10, 2015 at 6:46am PDT

Hyomin is hot even when fully clothed.

👑

A photo posted by JIYEON (@jiyeon2__) on Oct 3, 2015 at 8:13am PDT

Visual Queens

코스프레체험 캬컄 #코스프레 #광고촬영중 🎈

A photo posted by Qri 큐리 (@qtfreet) on Oct 17, 2015 at 2:19am PDT

Qri is a hot cosplayer. Let us be thankful for her nicely done augmentations.

카키색렌즈 이뿌다 #컬러렌즈 #칼라렌즈 #greenlenses #khaki #colorlenses 오래는 못끼겠다ㅜㅜ

A photo posted by Qri 큐리 (@qtfreet) on Oct 17, 2015 at 5:56am PDT

Cleavage strikes again!

Welcome to Best of the Worst: awkward photoshoot edition. Here, we have plenty of awkward photos for your viewing, um, I guess you'd call that "pleasure."

There's Dara, Mistress of the Night:

And "Unpretty Rapstar" Jessi taking a bite out of Dok2:

Surely, it's in response to this performance.

• Chorong finds religion, leaves A Pink behind for a higher calling — solo magazine shoots. 

• 2ne1's Park Bom spotted in public for first time since summer 2014, in video showing her walking 2 seconds to her ride. Maybe in another year and a half, we'll get 4 whole seconds of Bom.

• Big Bang's Seungri does something actually halfway cool, dances with fan who ran up on stage. (Girl's Day did it better, but let's not quibble.) 

• Big Bang's Taeyang spotted in Sydney with much-too-hot-for-him girlfriend Min Hyo Rin.

• Sooyoung's boyfriend gets shit for following Sooyoung on Instagram. Mhmm, yes ...

• SHINee's Minho thinks you don't become a true adult until gradually after you turn 29. 

• And winner of this week's I Can't Believe It's News Award: Sistar members reveal which celebrities they'd want to team up with in case of a zombie apocalypse. This comes with a bonus! Please enjoy the week's most awkward interview, with heart-warming examples of group solidarity such as this:

Sistar bond is real <3

BEG are preparing comeback and thanks to that we got a chance to witness their hotness in GQ

I never was a big fan of JeA, but those photos are unreal.




 Miryo is the perfect example that you can look 1000000000 times better with wise usage of PS.



Miryo should give her surgeon contact info to Bom; maybe he could help her.

Nicole is doing great since leaving KARA, and here's proof (and at the same time, reasons to stan her).










What can I say?





[BONUS]

Crappy scans of magazine

Not to long ago, kings of melancholic indie, MoT returned after an eight-year hiatus as a five-man band.

IMHO they are one of the best bands when it comes to psychedelic-melancholic music. I was really pleased to hear they are returning to the music scene since after their last album in 2007, one of the members, eAeon, released "two" solo albums and other one, Z.EE, focused on making soundtracks ... and all this time, there was gossip that they're still working on third album, but there was no credible info ...

Back to the topic ...

Since their comeback, they have played a gig at Grand Mint Festival, one of the biggest festivals for "indie" artists in Korea (this year: Zitten, 10cm, Kiha & the Faces [which includes this guy who isnow fucking dating IU], Hyukoh, pippiband, The Solutions, Glen Check, the koxx, Epitone Project, Life and Time, Thornapple and others).

Apart from playingtheir oldtracks and their comeback track, they played a glorious cover of "Bae Bae."



Let me remind you of the original one:



The original was actually quite nice, considering the other utter shit released by BIG BANG lately, but still ...


MoT made this song sound a hundred times better:

K-pop albums.  I get so many fucking questions about k-pop and albums it's ridiculous, and I couldn't be fucked answering any of them really, but it seems that you all really want to know everything about albums so here I go with a post about albums where I try to compile all of your questions about albums into one big thing.  I hope you all people who want to know about albums appreciate this post and I never have to answer any more questions about this shit again.


Yes, I'm aware that this post will probably backfire and I'll now get more questions about this shit than ever before, plus a side-helping of a bunch of smartass cunts picking apart this post and telling me that I'm wrong about this or that, pointing out meaningless exceptions, snobbily telling me I'm condescending because I dare to make educational posts about things they already know, etc.  Oh well, read on and hopefully the people who strangely like my posts will be more entertained about this bullshit than I was when I wrote it and the rest of you haters will be able to restrain your natural urge to be a snobby elitist cuntosaurus.


So, what technically constitutes an album?

A collection of songs.  The very first albums were sheet music sold in a book or folder format, then when audio recording formats finally became cheap enough to able to be purchased by ordinary folk (around 1900), albums became collections of shellac discs that were usually 10" wide (but not always) and designed to be played at 78 revolutions per minute (RPM).  78 RPM shellac was a really crap format though because they only had a playing time of a few minutes per side so you needed multiple discs to constitute an album, plus the weight of the discs was heavy and the audio quality mostly wasn't great.  When the lighter 12" 33 RPM vinyl format was adopted by the industry after World War II that could store nearly half an hour of music per side with generally better audio fidelity, people transitioned to this "long-playing" format, hence the term "LP" being used interchangeably with "album" from the 1940s until the late 1980s when compact discs (CDs) finally overtook vinyl as the most popular physical album format.  Albums have been issued in several formats since (including cassettes, Minidisc, laser disc and several others) but the most common physical format currently is still the CD.

How is an album different to a mini-album, a single, or an EP? 

A mini-album is just an album with a shorter running length.  There's no completely set-in-stone global consensus on where that line is drawn, although some countries have rules for determining if a collection of recordings is long enough to qualify as an album for chart purposes and also if mini-albums qualify or not.  Korean mini-albums average at about 6 tracks whereas a full album is usually about 12 tracks.

A physical "single" paradoxically has two tracks, the A-side (the song you bought the single for, also called the "feature track") and the B-side, another song.  The extra song is there because vinyl has two sides and it was not much extra expense to cut something on the other side of the vinyl and give the consumer an extra track.  Singles later transitioned to CDs and are now almost exclusively digital in most markets, however this practice of giving out a free "B-side" track is still common even now as a way to showcase the artist's less commercial material when you also buy their hit.  CD singles often have more than one B-side track.

An EP is an "Extended Play" single. The most common format for an EP is four tracks, or two tracks per side of vinyl.  Extended Play format was used for artists who released very long singles mainly in the 60s and 70s, that wouldn't fit over the running length of one side of 7" vinyl.  It was never the dominant format.

There's also 12" vinyl singles which usually have extended mixes, these are still a popular format for club DJs, plus there's quite a few other terms like "maxi-single" etc which are mainly just record companies making things up as they go along.

What are the main differences between k-pop albums and western albums?

K-pop albums have:

• Much more lavish packaging (usually)
• Big photobooklets with lots of pages (usually)
• As many pervy and slightly creepy photos of your biases that will fit into the space (usually)
• Horrible liner notes where the performers thank God over and over insipidly (usually)
• Photocards and souvenir items (sometimes)

Oh and they come with a CD mostly, but nobody uses that bit, so just throw it away or use it as a fancy reflective drink coaster.

The closest equivalent to Korean albums in terms of physical presentation is the western "box set", except in the west the "box set" isn't the regular edition of the album but a special version.
Why are Korean albums so insanely packaged?

K-pop companies have worked out over the last few years that it's only die-hard fans who buy physical albums these days, so they're meant to be something special for the fans.  Insane packaging of k-pop albums really kicked into high gear as a standard practice at the start of the Golden Age (2008-2011), before this CDs were usually in standard jewel cases.  Companies now realise that most fans actually already have electronic copies of the music and are buying the physical product chiefly for the photobook, for the same reason that many people who buy vinyl albums these days never play the vinyl and often don't even own a record player - people like to fetishise the package, and fans like to feel like they're supporting the artist by buying something extra.

I have a Korean single and it's called a "single album" but has only two tracks on it, huh?

Korean singles tend to use the word "album" to refer to the book that comes with the CD rather than the CD itself which harks back to the original pre-shellac 19th century definition of an album as a collection of pages, in the same sense as a stamp collector's album.  Given the substantial amount of content in a k-pop single's booklet vs what you average western CD booklet has, this kind of makes sense.

After School Blue's "Wonder Boy" is a "single album" with only two tracks on the CD, but the photobook is just as big and filled with pages of pervy/weird/creepy photos as any full k-pop album.

What's a repackaged album?

Sometimes after an album is released, a k-pop agency will decide to release a follow-up song to promote the album again.  The catch is that the follow-up song isn't actually on the album, so they release the same album again a second time, with a different booklet, a different name and with the extra song included.  The plan is to make hardcore fans buy the same album twice.  SM, Woollim and MBK are all notorious for doing this, but they're not the only ones!

The "repackaging the same stuff with different extra content to grab a second sale" practice actually started in the American market, with CD singles - a company would release a feature track with a couple B-side tracks, then release another single with the same name and the same A-side but slightly different artwork (usually just a different colour) and different B-side tracks.  Diehard fans would want ALL the different B-side tracks so they would buy the single twice, and because both singles had the same name it counted in the music charts as purchases against the one item, increasing theoretical likelihood of good chart positioning.

In k-pop, because the photobook is a large reason why people buy physical albums, a repackaged album isn't as much of a rip-off as it might seem, as usually (but not always!) the photobook content completely changes in the repackage.

What are photocards?

K-pop albums for groups often come packaged with a special photocard of a random group member (two at most).  Not all agencies do this for every album, but many do.  Sometimes the photocards are small laminated things with rounded edges, like miniature playing card size, sometimes they are bigger.  The idea is that die-hard fans will want all the photocards, or at least more of them than one purchase will give them, so they will buy the album multiple times.  Alternatively, they might want to trade their album photocards with friends, so a conversation like this may transpire:

You: "Have you bought the new Lovelyz album yet?"
Friend: "No, should I?"
You: "Yes!  I want a Seo Jisoo photocard but I didn't get one in mine... but you might get one, and then I can trade you for yours!  She's the best ever cum in my life!"
Friend: "But isn't she a puppy-kicking rapist?"
You: "No, she's a symbol of freedom from the oppression of rumour-mongers and netizens who'll believe any old shit they read on a gossip site, laying bare the stupidity of the electronic hive-mind and serving as a shining beacon leading the way for society to ascend into a bright future."
Friend: "Okay, I'll buy it just to shut you up and also so I don't ever have to hear that 'best ever cum in my life' joke again."

The net result is the same - somebody buys the album a second time.

Just to confuse the issue, some k-pop albums have the actual booklet divided up into separate cards rather than bound pages.

The best ever photocard in your life.

What's a "limited edition" album?

"Limited edition" is ultimately sketchy press release jargon that means nothing, because while it may seem legit, all that "limited edition" in practice means is "limited to however many we can sell".  For instance, T-ara's "Paris & Swiss" photobook and CD set had an initial run of 7000 copies, a "limited edtion" - however initial orders for the package worldwide exceeded 7000, so the company just said "fuck it" and printed more of them.  They could sell more, so they did, and why wouldn't they?

How many k-pop albums do you own?

The amount of k-pop albums I own is usually holding steady at about 100 at any given time.  I buy a lot but I also give away a lot of them for radio competitions.

My k-pop bookcase at home. There's another shelf that didn't fit on this picture, and a few others that are so big that they don't fit in the bookcase at all.  Have fun squinting heavily and spotting your faves!

Are k-pop albums worth buying?

It depends!  They're worth it for me because they're great items for prizes.  As for whether it's worth it for you, be aware that the most sensible outlook is to buy it for the photobook.

What about the music on k-pop albums?

What about it?

Well, is it any good?

Generally the feature tracks are always the best tracks and you're wasting your fucking time buying the entire album for the actual music because the rest of it is all bullshit.  There are some notable exceptions to this, but usually this is the case.

Are there any other reasons why I should be wary of buying k-pop albums specifically for the music?

Yes, those of you foolishly planning on this would do well to be aware of the following sneaky cao ni ma record company tactics:

• Padding albums with instrumental mixes - sure, aspiring singers or players might want an instrumental mix to practice over, but most people don't.
• Remixes that aren't - watch out for the "remix" which isn't any different to the original apart from a slightly different intro or middle eight bars.  MBK love doing this one.
• Foreign language versions - do you really need a song in two different languages you can't understand instead of just one when the songs are otherwise identical?
• Autographed albums - while it's nice to get the scribble of your bias on your album, if he or she signed a thousand albums like this, the value of yours hasn't actually increased that much but the value to the label for them to do this is huge.  Say an album sells for $5 more with a signature and your bias spent an hour doing 1000 signatures, that means for one hour's pen-work he or she just made the label $5000.                                                                                                     

Copies of T-ara's AND&END album during 1000-album signing before being shipped to retailers.

Tracklist for Stellar's "Marionette" mini album. First track is a really short intro. Track 6 is an instrumental of track 2, track 7 is a not-very-different remix of track 5. At first glance it looks like you're getting seven songs here but you're actually getting only four.

Why do k-pop albums mostly suck so much?

The problem isn't with k-pop albums, it's with pop albums in general.  Most pop albums around the world suck just as much.  To understand why, we have to look at the methodology that creates a pop album.

In the early days of contemporary pop album making, the album constituted the hit group's A-side, their B-side, and just enough extra "filler" material to get the album over the line so it technically constituted an album for contractual and chart purposes.  These extra "filler" songs would usually be ballads, for the simple reason that ballads have a slower tempo, which means that you can stretch the same amount of song material over a greater length, increasing the chance that you'll need less of these songs before the total running length of the entire album meets contractual requirements to be called an album.  If you go to any albums that you own you'll notice that this is true and that the slow songs usually have a greater running length.

Another common variation is the "rejected singles" album, which consists of the A-side, B-side, and the other songs are all tracks that were submitted by songwriters and producers for feature track material but which didn't make the cut.  It's easy to spot an album like this, every track is by a different producer!  When a pop album is being made these days it's quite common for the executive producers to spread the word that they're hunting for feature-track material through song solicitation services.  The best one gets used, the "almost but not quite" ones get album filler status.

It wasn't really until the 1960s when companies started to think of an album as a cohesive whole with different tracks that complement each other or at the very least which are meant to sound as good as the feature track in their own right.  However this isn't always the objective that's wanted, it's usually "corporate wisdom" which dictates whether pop albums go down this path of not.

It's worth telling the story of singer K to understand how market pressures may not be always conducive to creating a decent pop album.  Singer K was a newly debuted female singer who had a massive, MASSIVE hit about two decades ago with a hugely iconic first single that was everywhere, and I mean everywhere, globally, a #1 hit in several countries, if you're between the age of 25 and 55 and have listened to radio at least once in your life I guarantee you that you've heard of this song even if you don't remember who sung it.  We'll call this iconic global pop hit song "Smoking Cock".  Once "Smoking Cock" was released, the singer and her mastermind producer J got a big pat on the back by the record label execs who said "rightio, good job team, now get to work on making an album that is just as good", so for the next few months singer K and her shit-hot producer J who co-wrote "Smoking Cock" with her slaved away making a fantastic album.  The result was great - each track was a little bit different.  Nothing sounded quite like "Smoking Cock" (which while a good song was certainly very one-dimensional), instead each track on the album fit together nicely as a whole and showcased a different unique side of singer K, essentially setting her up for a fate as a critical darling with a long-term career (think Tori Amos, Bjork, etc).  Producer J was immensely proud of what he had achieved with singer K and presented the final product to the label:

Label: "Nope, I'm sorry, we don't want it."
J: "What?"
Label: "There's no Smoking Cock part 2 here.  What are we going to release as a follow-up single?  It's too intellectual and fancy, please start again and give us some hits."
J: "But we put our heart and soul into this and it's great!  This album will set her up for the long term!"
Label: "We need another Smoking Cock.  This album doesn't have it, don't waste our time and money.  We gave you clear instructions!  This is a business!"
J: "Nope, I'm not doing it."
Label: "Then we'll hire someone else if you don't want to do what you're told."
J: "Fine, fine... I'll get you your fucking hit..."

Producer J reluctantly scraps the album and starts again from scratch at the insistence of the label, this time working with the clear instruction "we need another Smoking Cock or GTFO".  Singer K is also unhappy as she also loved the initial album, but she cooperates in the hope that it will all work out in the end and maybe if she maintains her high profile they'll get the leverage to do what they want at some point down the track.  With both the singer and producer having lost their creative focus, the resulting album is a weak patchy mess, a collection of songs that all sound more or less the same, similar but slightly inferior versions of "Smoking Cock".  The album is released and does poorly critically, landing singer K with an undeserved reputation as a one-hit wonder who got lucky with "Smoking Cock" and doesn't know how to do anything else, which of course only pours salt on singer K's and producer J's wounds as they know this isn't true in reality.  The album does well commercially, but disappoints the music-buying public who were getting a little worn out from overexposure to "Smoking Cock" and was hoping for something a little different from her album.  As quickly as her success came, the public stopped listening.

Producer J goes back to the label and says "I told you so!"  The label says "okay, well the first album was a hit so for the second album you can do what you want"... but by this time it was too late.  K and J are now given free reign, and the second album was the departure that they always wanted to make, but by this time singer K had gone dead in the marketplace, nobody was listening and the album completely flopped.  The label then cut their losses and removed singer K from the roster.  The label simply had no thought about grooming singer K as a long-term artist in the first place, they just got addicted to those quick "Smoking Cock" bucks.

But there are exceptions in k-pop, yes?

Yes.  The better albums in k-pop usually happen when one artist gets to work with one producer, or a small group of producers consistently AND those producers show the ability to write decent songs or have a consistent vision driving all the songs.  Another exception is when the album has a really good concept that unifies all the songs.  The worst albums are usually a different producer on each track, or just a ton of shit ballads clogging up the second half of the album for reasons previously mentioned.

Name some good albums, please.

Oh god.  If I must.  I do this with extreme hesitation because I don't want people to use this post as a lightning rod on forums to champion their biases and I also think people give my opinions on music way too much unwarranted importance.  It's only one person's opinion, calm the fuck down.  However if I don't answer this, cunts will keep on asking me until I do so let's just get it out of the way.  Just a few examples of k-pop's rare decent albums (pictures not to scale):

T-ara - Absolute First Album - very good album, most tracks are great and the same producers worked with most of them.  "Breaking Heart" repackage also exists with two extra songs but inferior packaging.


IU - Modern Times - retro 1930s/40s concept unifies the collection.  I think there are two different repackages for this album that you can get, but the extra tracks suck.  Not sure how the actual package differs.


Wonder Girls - Reboot - retro 80s concept unifies the collection, the best tracks are great, oddly the feature track is actually one of the worst tracks on it.


f(x) - Pink Tape and Red Light - f(x) get a bit more scope for unusual content than other groups on SM due to their different marketing flavour, therefore less generic ballads and more unique pop songs that can stand on their own.  Fans will notice how when f(x) perform on shows they often do non-feature tracks.


2NE1 - To Anyone - same producers for most of it once again, plus they were actually on-form back then and could write things that didn't go SWAGSWAGYOLOYOLO.


That will do, it's enough.  You can discover your own good and bad k-pop albums (mostly bad).  And let's not forget the one mini-album review that I did and will hopefully never do another of.

What about if I'm a rational person who is buying the k-pop album only for the pretty packaging?

It's worth nothing that different labels tend to package albums slightly differently.  Here's what I've noticed from the copious amounts of physical product buying that I do:

SM - always top quality packaging in terms of appearance but frequently impractical as fuck.  Good luck working out how to get the CD out without damaging everything around it.  You will always get a photocard.

Girls' Generation - "The Boys" album.

YG - weird boxy packaging and other inconvenient gimmicky shapes that make filing a pain but at least you can always find the CD quickly.  YG love metallic and weird looks.  In a earthquake that destroys your bedroom your k-pop CDs will probably emerge from the rubble unscathed.

2NE1 - "second mini album".

JYP - not as insane as YG or as annoying as SM, size/scale of the packaging seemingly directly related to how much money the group is making!


MBK - consistently amazing and generously chunky photobooks for T-ara, smaller packaging for everyone else.  They know which side their bread is buttered on.  Expect hilarious Engrish usage.  You will not get a photocard unless it's a Japanese edition.

Lots of T-ara albums.  Note the size of the bookcase needed to display them!

Woollim - neat-looking but a pain in the ass to actually do anything with other than look at, similar to SM.

Lovelyz - "Girls Invasion" album.

CUBE - random as fuck, no discernable pattern to anything, complete lottery pick as to what you get.  If you're really lucky there might be a CD in there, have fun getting it out once you find it.

4Minute - "Volume Up" and "4Minute World" mini albums.

Starship - big pages, so you can fap or cut it out and pin it up to your locker.  Thoughtful.

Inside Sistar's "Touch N Move" album.

Pledis - singles are in crap jewel cases, albums are in whatever their visual designer thought up after he rolled out of the wrong side of the bed that morning.

Orange Caramel "Lipstick" album and photocard.

Smaller labels will sometimes go for DVD-size cardboard cases and the really stingy ones will use an actual plastic DVD case or a CD jewel case, but you'd be surprised how many smaller labels actually have quality packaging that's just as good as the more well-known labels.  Japanese editions are almost always in standard (western) sized jewel or cardboard cases, probably because Japan still has a heavier emphasis on physical product that actually sells in reasonable quantities and Japanese retailers don't want to deal with finnicky-shaped boxes.

Is k-pop album packaging expensive or tricky to make?

Depends on what's used.  It's a complex area that I could devote a whole separate post to (but won't).  Some basic rules:

• Colour printing is up to three times as expensive as black and white printing.  Black and white is rarely a purely aesthetic choice, it's usually used to cut costs.  Note that pure black and white is not the same as grayscale (shades of grey), there's an expense difference there also.
• Standard CD and DVD sized cardboard and jewel cases are cheap because they are a standard format that most people use, economies of scale at factories making such items means less costs.
• Economies of scale also mean that companies which move many physical units such as SM pay little per unit for their custom EXO packages for example.
• Graphic design and printing of packages is time-consuming and the number one cause of delayed album releases worldwide.

Three examples of innovative English usage from the booklet of Gangkiz' "Mama" mini album.

Why do k-pop albums have so much English use in them?

For the same reason that English crops up in the songs themselves, Engish is trendy in Korea.  The more an album is being pitched to young trend-followers, the more English use you can expect in both songs and album art (so for instance, trot and ballad albums aimed at older audiences within Korea often have relatively little English compared to the latest boy-band release).  Also some English helps the albums to sell internationally and it's easier for filing and sorting when dealing with multi-regional shippers who are used to dealing with English-labelled product.

The rear covers of Big Bang's "Still Alive" album, and trot performer Tae Jin-Ah's "I Love You Darling/LA Song" album. Note the differing quantities of English usage.

Where can I buy kpop albums?

Kpopalypse recommends YesAsia who are reasonably cheap (comparable to western album cost) and so far have never fucked up any of my shipments, they also give free shipping to my country if I buy over a certain amount.  I've heard KTown4U (previously known as DVD Heaven) is also good with reasonable costs although I've never tried to buy from there.  I don't recommend Amazon, I find their shipping times to be crazy and often things arrive damaged, but people from the Americas might have a better experience.  I also recommend staying away from EBay and secondhand sellers.  Do you really want a package someone else has already fapped to?

That's it for this post!  Hopefully you've enjoyed this excursion into k-pop albums and never feel the need to ask another question about them again ever!  Yay!

Welcome ghouls and gals to this Halloween edition of Best of the Worst. OK, so it's just the same stuff as usual, but with your favorite idols dressed up

 ... that is ... if your favorite idols are from SM.

#SMTOWN_WONDERLAND#SMTOWN#바이럴#Vyrl#SMT_SEOUL#소녀시대#Girlsgeneration#윤아#YOONA#유리#YURI

A photo posted by SMTOWN WONDERLAND 2015 (@smtown_wonderland) on Oct 29, 2015 at 6:21am PDT

#SMTOWN_WONDERLAND#SMTOWN#바이럴#Vyrl#SMT_SEOUL#레드벨벳#RedVelvet#슬기#SEULGI#웬디#WENDY

A photo posted by SMTOWN WONDERLAND 2015 (@smtown_wonderland) on Oct 29, 2015 at 5:41am PDT

And if they aren't, well that's really a "you" problem, isn't it?

• SM holds its best annual Halloween party yet with appearances by Sulli (metaphorically feasting on haters in the form of a stuffed bunny) and Seohyun as the evil villain she secretly is deep down.

• Here's something for non-SM stans: BTS holds Halloween party with some fans.

• And more: 2PM half-ass dresses up for their Japanese tour.

• Comedienne transforms into Angelina Jolie for Halloween. The result is terrifying, but I give her props for the effort.

• Red Velvet's Irene glares at man smoking next to her. I think the city of Seoul should hire her as some sort of morality ambassador, shaming people into be good in the same vein as this MV. Disapproving Irene could do a lot of good in the world. 

Disapproving Irene — making the world a better place, one jerkass at a time

• This article is about two idols from different groups, whose concepts are nothing alike, who don't interact with each other, who one would never have reason to talk about together in an article except that they showed up at the same event wearing starkly different outfits, and thank goodness they did because now we have something to write about to fill our daily quota. 

• Suzy's upcoming photobook is called "suzy?suzy." The photos are good, though.

• Ga In grows out her shaved part in response to negative reactions to her teaser. Are you happy now?

• Your faves, including Hani and Na Eun, share their tips for good skin. It's all about dat moisture. 

• Beenzino's girlfriend makes him translate all the mean comments about her online. 

• And winner of this week's I Can't Believe It's News Award: Kim So Eun's nostrils irk netizens.

Gross girl, why are there, like, holes in your nose?

Hello and welcome to another edition of the officially most unpopular and nugu Kpopalypse series ever, Kpopalypse Nugu Alert!


It's time to scout out and reel in another fresh crop of nugus!  Read on and let's get the nugu fun started!

Idols getting into acting is a topic that divides opinions among k-pop fans as well as fans of Korean TV series, dramas and movies.  Several people just love seeing their bias on the TV screen cutting their teeth in a dramatic role, while others feel that idols generally don't do a good enough job for them to be worthy of taking the place of regular actors and worry about job losses and financial hardship among the regular acting crowd.  Of course the economic reality is that even if their acting is sub-par, the idol's star power will usually provide a bit of extra interest in the audiovisual content for their legions of crazy fans to get excited about so their inclusion ultimately means more employment for everyone as a lot of shows probably wouldn't even be very economically viable at all without their star power.  Like their inclusion or loathe it, the reality is that idol actors provide an important economic function and aren't going anywhere anytime soon.

However, what about when the shoe is on the other foot, and actors who are not musicians find their way into drama music videos?  This is a side of acting which pays the bills for many Korean actors and actresses, plus another way in which the Korean music industry helps feather the nest of starving thespians.  However you don't often hear so much about actors getting MV work and it attracts far less controversy, probably because it's less easy for cynical media and rabid anti-fans to twist this kind of activity into the usual trendy "look at these idol bitches ruining everything again" narrative inside their own heads.  The popularity of music videos with drama content means that the relationship between idols and actors is not adversarial at all and in fact quite symbiotic, and as a result nowhere does the actor/idol debate seem more stupid than within the entertainment industry itself.

The following Korean music videos demonstrate this important and vital symbiosis by featuring outstanding acting skills, showing idols (okay, would-be idols) and actors working together, flexing their professional thespian abilities to breaking point, all in the name of entertaining you, the viewer.  Please now appreciate the following nugu videos so the efforts of these individuals are not wasted.

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Blast - Git It Girl

Let's kick things off with an outstanding reader submission.  K-pop boy group Blast invite you with their catchy slogan to "Be The Blast", and remain true to their moniker by spending most of the required singing and dancing quota of "Git It Girl" in what looks like the inside of a nuclear reactor undergoing some routine maintenance.  They've also got the moves, with lots of only-slightly-awkward shuffling, a hot jacket-slide-off routine at 2:19 and an outstanding finishing-the-song move of a calibre rarely seen in k-pop nugudom.  The real star of the show here however is of course the acting, as the boys of Blast sleaze, creep and sexually harrass their way through various interactions with a lady who has seemingly had a gutful of their shit and is holding out for a more popular k-idol to throw in her chips with.  You can almost hear them say "I want you to be my blast, baby" or some other horrid pick-up line as the girl rolls her eyes and laughs at their mop-tops.  The various eyebrow-raising and bitchface expressions all throughout the video are pure gold, and the creepy dudes getting consistently rejected and never getting what they want is an unusual plot-twist for k-pop MVs where constant advances from pushy douchebag guys usually ends in a generous dose of classy-sexiness - but Blast are modern reconstructed 21st century men who get it into their thick skulls that no means no - eventually.

YouTube views at time of writing: 11755
Notable attribute: incredible freeze-frame drink-throwing skills, where's Seungri's towel when you need it
Nugu Alert rating: high

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Tina - Happy Day

At the start of this video an old woman (who actually looks like Tina herself with a grey wig) see a young couple and reminisces back 40 years ago to a time when she and her partner were young and hot and all the technology was exactly the same.  Her first fond memory of yesteryear is of them spending lots of time having an absolute laugh-riot at an airport terminal, because airports were such hilarious places back then.  Further exciting locations include a three-star hotel with a crappy water-feature in the courtyard, a generic shopping mall and boating on an only slightly polluted river, with our couple smiling a lot and generally being really thrilled to be out and about.  I guess their day jobs when not on holiday consisted of gold-farming shitty computer games in rotating 12-hour shifts if all it took to generate such an exuberant reaction was staring longingly at some wavy bits of water.  Eventually Tina wraps up her holiday reminiscing thinking about that time they all got rip-roaring drunk and danced and sung a much better song than "Happy Day" with a bunch of losers in front of some hut somewhere.  The acting performances are outstanding and by the end of this video you'll be thoroughly convinced that Tina and her partner are just as insane and easily amused as the video is portraying them to be.

YouTube views at time of writing: 11119
Notable attribute: at least 80% of budget probably spent on CGI heart at 3:30
Nugu Alert rating: high

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Blissday - My Pride

Many years ago, I was chatting with a (sadly now deceased) friend who was a Visual Kei DJ and who had quite a strong obsession with Japanese culture generally.  She told me about how she collects "lolita magazines", and after some confusion on my part she clarified that these magazines were not what I was thinking but were in fact completely legal and dedicated to "lolita fashion".   She then gave me a couple of these magazines to flip through, and I spent the next ten minutes looking at hundreds of pages of lolita fashion models, all wearing slight variations of seemingly the same Rococo-inspired outfit.  One particular lolita fashion model caught my eye due to her stunning appearance and uncanny smile in every single photo.

Me:  Who is this girl?  She's kinda cute but also kinda weird looking.
Her:  Oh, that's [can't remember her name], she's a well-known celebrity and one of Japan's top lolita models.
Me:  Her smile is strange, there's something about it.
Her:  Yeah, you're not imagining that.  In order to have such a perfect smile, some lolita models get surgery on the sides of their mouth where a slight upward cut is made, so after it heals it looks like the model is smiling all the time.
Me:  No shit?  That's fucked up!  What do they do if they're sad?
Her:  They're not paid to be sad.

I don't remember who the girl in the lolita magazine is these days and I definitely couldn't recognise her from a photo, but if you're curious to know what that uncanny surgically-altered smile looked like, you can see the actress in Blissday's "My Pride" video make almost exactly the same smile that I remember at 0:03, 0:08, 0:11, 0:15, 0:23, 0:32, 0:35, and so on.  Trust me, you'll get to know it well by the time this song is over.  It's a completely captivating and terrifying performance from the actress, with her glazed-over stares directly to camera completely convincing.  The whole experiences comes off like a Blair Witch Project/Cloverfield style POV horror film of balladeering hell where you're trapped in an endless cyclical relationship where you court this creepy girl over and over again and your mouth is taped shut so you can't just scream out "let's just be friends".  All the film is missing is for the camera to pan down at the end of the video to show the iron chains around your ankles that shackle you and her together... but then, you do end up marrying her at the end of the video which is kind of the same thing.  I couldn't even write a horror fanfiction this disturbing.

YouTube views at time of writing: 76
Notable attribute: how good an actress is she to get so convincingly fucking fascinated by a few green leaves at 2:46
Nugu Alert rating: extreme

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Thanks for reading!  Kpopalypse Nugu Alert will return again at a future date with more nugus!