MV Review- KARA Shoot Straight Through My Heart With "Cupid"

It's clear that, even after being somewhat saved by Youngji, KARA cannot return to the lofty heights of their 2010-2012 days. Whilst "Mamma Mia" showed a much more energetic side to the group, this time they've done a slight shift towards a more sophisticated route whilst keeping that signature KARA sound with the excellent "Cupid".

KARA Perform Cupid at Dream Concert, KBS Upload MV Clip Early

Yesterday at Dream Concert 2015, KARA performed their comeback single "Cupid", and thankfully the song's just as brilliant as you'd expect from the group. Hara said the group would be "transformed" with this comeback, but fortunately the song doesn't stray too far from KARA's usual sound. Youngji did look a lot less relaxed here than the other members but I'm sure she'll find her comfort zone soon (and in the future I'm guessing she'll become the resident rapper in the group).

Meanwhile, KBS uploaded the first half of the MV as its latest K-Pop Hot Clip, a good day or two earlier than they probably should have but I'm certainly not complaining:

Of note is the complete lack of choreography or story shots, perhaps hinting that this isn't the final, "official" version of the MV (a similar thing happened with AOA's Like A Cat, where KBS played a clip of the MV that didn't feature the narrative of the 7 girls trying to break into a bank). Fortunately we'll only have to wait two just over a day for the full thing now, and even less if it's getting released at midnight!

Dal Shabet are Coming Back to Save K-pop

FLAWLESS

Today Dal Shabet have uploaded both the second teaser for "Joker", which gives us a much better idea as to what the song sounds like than the first, as well as the highlight medley for their eighth mini album "Joker Is Alive". The mini consists of five tracks (possibly six, if an instrumental of "Joker" is included at the end): "To Darling", "홀여", "Joker", "I'm Not", and "OK Boy". It's already revealed that Subin got involved in production for all songs on the mini, and by the sound of the teasers we've been, "Joker" is set to be a fantastic follow-up to the fantastic "B.B.B". 

MV Review- SNSD's "Catch Me If You Can" Is Different, But Is That Good?

Let's be honest, 2014 was a horrendous year for Girls' Generation; five dating "scandals" (including the absolute mess of Baekyeon), disappointing performance from both "Mr.Mr." and "Holler", and the departure of Jessica meant the invincible wall they had erected finally started to crumble (the fact that Girl's Day, Apink and SISTAR had been continuously pounding away since 2013 didn't help either). Now it's no secret that whilst they've more or less achieved a status of immortality similar to TVXQ!, their invincibility is at serious risk, and Girls' Generation needed something particularly outstanding to fend off the numerous rising girl groups that are desperate to snatch their throne (including junior label-mates Red Velvet). Many complained that the brilliant "Mr.Mr." was just too generic, and SM have seemingly retaliated by giving us something completely different... but it might just be the worst thing they could do.

MV Review- Red Velvet Continue To Confuse Everyone With "Automatic"

SM seem to be determined to confuse us as much as possible with Red Velvet, first they announced Yeri would be joining the group and now out of NOWHERE SM have decided to release an MV for "Automatic", which is an album track on their upcoming first album, "Ice Cream Cake". So far it's been rather ambiguous as to what Red Velvet's overall image would become as their previous singles "Happiness" and "Be Natural" were worlds apart in both sound and style. It's a good thing this is just a pre-release though, because "Automatic" does nothing to show what Red Velvet are really about.

MV Review- Rainbow's "Black Swan" Is Easily the Strangest Single This Year

Nineteen months. It has been nineteen months since Rainbow released "Rainbow Syndrome Part 2" and since then all we've had was the debut of sub-unit Rainbow Blaxx, who despite a solid mini album failed to compete with Girl's Day, AOA, or even Dal Shabet. After being overtaken even by rookie groups such as Red Velvet and MAMAMOO, it seemed all hope for Rainbow was long gone, and they'd be left to hang around the "borderline" tier forever. After a painfully long wait they've finally returned, but a lot of people have been sorely disappointed, and I'm not surprised, because "Black Swan" truly is a peculiar song, and I've had to rewrite this review twice because of it.

Kpopular's Highly Educated Predictions (Wild Guesses) For K-pop In 2015!

2014 is over, and so K-pop fans everywhere are making their predictions in threads/blog articles/chatrooms. And of course I thought why not upload my own bullshit stabs in the dark onto the web for everyone to laugh at when none of them come true! A smashing idea.

Prophecy #1: Dal Shabet will be the next girl group to breakthrough

But if they keep releasing songs as good as "B.B.B"
I don't care if they're mid-tier forever.

Okay, so it may seem like I just picked a random girl group here, but I'd like to think there's a reasonable chance of this happening. As it is the group are reasonably popular and hover around the "pretty decent" level, with "Have, Don't Have" being the only single of theirs to not reach the top 20 in the digital charts (it just missed out at 21). "B.B.B" as a single got to number 16, but the mini album was so far their biggest selling physical release yet, and probably could have fared a lot better if they weren't ignored in favour of AOA's "Miniskirt" and Girl's Day's "Something". The group is just one single away from rising to the top, and with this comeback in January they might succeed.

Prophecy #2: Netizens continue to hate Taeyeon

1. [+1,288, -99] This sly fox just doesn't know when to stop, does she? ㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋ

First dating Baekhyun, then kicking Jessica out of SNSD, and NOW flaunting her tummy on Instagram? What a bitch ㅋㅋㅋㅋ She should stop using SNS, there's some wrong with her head!!! What will this despicable vixen do to damage SNSD's good name in 2015?

That smile...what is she plotting this time?!

Prophecy #3: People will still talk shit about YG yet eat up everything the company release

"Songs like THIS, with TALENTED ARTISTS, make me a YG fan."

Over the past couple of years YG artists have been releasing utter trash, with a few select AKMU album tracks and Seungri's "Gotta Talk To You" being diamonds in a stinking turd. Yet YG has somehow managed to get a reputation for consistently releasing "quality music" from "real artists", and pretty much anything by an act under the label does extremely well in the charts. To make things even more confusing, netizens constantly trash-talk about the label for its relentless "media play" and their acts often getting into big scandals. Make up your mind, netizens.

Prophecy #4: AOA Black return but no one cares

Remember how many people gave a toss about AOA back in the "Moya" days?
If you guessed "pretty much no one" you'd be right!

AOA were my nugu faves since their debut days, so you can guess how happy I am with their big success this year (though after my MV review of "Like A Cat" you probably already knew that). What I'm not so happy about is that people have been demanding AOA return to the image they had as nugus when no one cared about them and the majority of the fandom weren't around to see (let's not forget that AOA Black has both the visual and the most popular member missing!) AOA Black will return next year as previously stated, but you can bet the single will be nowhere near as successful as this year's outputs (and fans will still probably whine about it "not being the same").

Prophecy #5: 100% will stay nugu for some reason I can't quite fathom

Not even flaunting their abs was enough. That really is tragic.

I love 100%. They originally caught my attention with the brilliant "Want U Back" and "Bad Boy", but this year they released "Beat", one of the best songs of 2014, and the not quite as good but still fantastic "U Beauty". I can even play the "oppas are so talented omg!" card with them because my god do they live up to their name during their lives. They release adorable videos to pander to fangirls on their channel, and to top it off they come from pretty popular group Teen Top's label! Alas after 2 years they're still as nugu as they come, and I can't see them making it big any time soon *sob, sniff*.

Prophecy #6: A boy group will return with a stripper concept

Hopefully with homoerotic shots to really rub it in.

This needs to happen next year no matter what. Just imagine the reactions as fans who condemned AOA, Girl's Day, and Stellar stare hopelessly in horror as their oppas prance around shirtless and shake their behinds. They can't say it's hot now, they'll look like hypocrites!! Cries of "why is K-pop now becoming so westernised?" will be heard, as if the genre hasn't always been criticised for being a carbon copy of western music. But which boy group will be desperate heroic enough to do it? Will it be the nugu kings 100%, sick of always being under Teen Top's shadow? Perhaps multinational group Cross Gene after their daring crotch-rubbing in "Amazing - Bad Lady" just wasn't enough? Maybe the people at Starship will decide it's time for an image change for Boyfriend! Whoever it ended up being I would stan them forever for being trailblazers of gender equality and for gifting us with what would be the most hilarious controversy in 2014.