best of Seffers' Best of 2022 - Most Disappointing KPOP Comebacks Posted!

[Seffers]

First time doing this - 2022 was really a great year for music for me so I decided to give this a whirl.

I am not a graphic girlie so do not expect that at all but here is what you CAN expect!

- Top 50 Songs (mix of K-Pop and English)

- Top 5 KPOP Albums

- Bottom 5 KPOP Albums/ 5 Most Disappointing Comebacks in KPOP 2022 (this isn't necessarily tied to bad music perse, just.. some thoughts )

- other stuff if I come with up any ideas/have time

 

so if you enjoy gay ass bops and/or KPOP come on over, or if you don't, discover it and fall in love

Edited January 2, 2023 by Seffers
realized 20 albums for KPOP is a bit too much fajhjsf

[Seffers]

reserved number oneee

[rvx]

Can't wait

[smholiv]

Yesss excited!! curious about the kpop disappointments 

[Alldeezy]

Can't wait.  I been listening to fair bit of kpop lately so may know a few 

[Sanguine]

Heyyyy excited for the disappointments too :teeheehee:

[thecptz]

period

[Kinich]

not disappointed yet 

[TheWayWeWere]

not really familiar with KPOP, but happy for you doing your first list  

[K$Ellie]

most disappointing... perched

 

[Seffers]

Top 5 Most Disappointing KPOP Comebacks of 2022

(not synonymous with worst albums, which will be coming .. later! )

 

So let’s get into a few clarifying remarks before the list commences:

1: Chart performance has nothing to do with being disappointing, mega smashes are still up for grabs in this category (and frankly, every category tbh you chart obsessed kpop fans are of a different breed). 
2) There are SONGS on here I enjoy, this is more the whole package of the comeback.

3) Most of this comes down to the label, not the girls in the groups, so don't be coming for any of them

 

With those out of the way, let us start with a comeback that shook the entire fandom .. cue the kidz bop theme track!

 

5: Sneakers by Itzy

 

 

 

Shocker shocker chicken rocker - the first entry is the infamous Sneakers. So.. let’s talk about this now that we’re a few months away from it, and mixed in is the fact that somehow this did better than Cheshire on the Korean charts *currently as of publishing this* (don’t ask me how, I will not be trying to answer this). To properly dissect this fever dream of a comeback cycle, we need to start from the beginning. For those of you who may be unfamiliar to .. this iconic for all the wrong reasons comeback cycle, the picture teasers started off with this dark but cool theme, for example - here is a picture of Yeji!

 

 

These continued on for a little while, until out of absolutely nowhere, the entire ITZY fandom was pranked with the horror that was the following:

 

 

Then, in what I will like to call ‘every ITZY fan pretending everything is fan to not go insane’ - they started pretending these were fake teasers and that the real MV was still the theme of the first. Well.. spoiler alert: we were served with Kidz Bop! Now, reasons why this isn’t higher mostly amount to this being the beginning of JYPig realizing Chaeryeong is actually the main vocalist of this group, and to be quite honest the song has grown on me fffff.

 

4: Ven Para by Weeekly

 

 

 

Concept changes in KPOP are far from unique - and can often draw more interest and word of mouth for groups on the up-rise. With Weeekly, coming out the heels of a TikTok smash with After School, they decided to switch it 180 - and give us Ven Para. After School was unique, vibrant - a breath of fresh air in all honesty. Weeekly was building their signature sound, and then they were dealt this EXTREMELY generic girl crush song that any girl group could sing. At least the bridge was cute! Nothing much more to say here because I was never into Weeekly outside of their title tracks, but I just wanted to briefly touch on them since After School was literally one of the best songs of 2021 and Holiday Party was a cute and lovely followup!

 

3: We Fresh by KEPLER

 

 

This one I like to call the Queendom 2 Curse! But in all seriousness, Queendom 1 was massive for almost every participant (Oh My Girl had a MASSIVE hit with Nonstop, G-IDLE are now global massive superstars, Lovelyz had a few good hits, Mamamoo was already relatively big prior but had their biggest hit with HIP, Park Bom got back in the spotlight, and well…. we’ll just ignore AOA ffff. Then, Queendom 2 had nowhere near the same effect for ANY of the participants (LOONA is basically done, VIVIZ has no promotion for their new comeback at ALL, Brave Girls are just living their best life somewhere, WJSN was robbed by the public cause the comeback was QUALITY, and Hyolyn released some music yayy! afsjfsjifas) but then we have our lovely MNET girls Kepler... 

 

For starters, the song is just awful Like.. I tried objectively to not just throw a comeback on here if the song was awful, but this and #2 are  a bit too painfully bad to not exclude . My head hurts constantly when listening to this, there’s just sounds every which direction for what feels more or less just to make it sound different or trendy. The MV isn’t awful, which might be one of the more positive things in this ranking. The main problem, and where I feel like many people have an issue with is the continued line distribution fumble/the preferred treatment of certain members. If you aren’t too caught up in KEPLER land, there’s a member named Bahiyyih. Her sibling is in TXT (Hueing Kai!) - and has always seemed to get the short end of the stick when it comes to lines and screen time. (also, I'm not getting into the theories of why she was even chose to begin with cause that's a whole 'nother conspiracy theory novel ).  In We Fresh, she barely has any noticeable lines outside of some shout lines, and has a few solo shots. As you can probably already guess, outrage ensued. 

 

While I’m not a hardcore ‘line distribution should be even’ KPOP fan, I do believe every member should be able to showcase what they present to the group, and with Kepler, I feel as if there are several members (just not Bahiyyih) that are suffering from not being able to showcase their talents of the group.  Finally, and this might be me reaching a tiiiny bit, but Kepler doesn't really have a sound like IZONE had, nor do they really have any star power hitters that IOI had, which just leaves more incredibly underwhelmed by this comeback.

 

2: Nabillera by HyunA

 

 

 

woo boy here we go. I have been a HyunA fan since 4Minute days, and her solo stuff has for the most part been spectacular … but then we get this. The song is painfully bland, it has no character or uniqueness to HyunA. Gone are the days of Lip and Hip, Red - songs and concepts that push the envelope when it comes to censorship in Korean media, and we were given this bland song. Like, the chorus choreo has the ******* macarena in it.. what were they trying to do..  The mini is more of the same, nothing to distinguish Hyuna’s signature song from trendy 2022 beats and tropes. I really was wanting more from her first solo comeback since Flower Shower (Ping Pong is a pandemic fever dream that exists) - and hopefully now that  she left PSY’s label, her next comeback will go back to her older stuff and be great again. Also, hopefully we actually get more music since her and DAWN split, hope the queen is doing okay

 

1: the entire Born Pink saga - BLACKPINK

 

woo boy here we go [2]. I will try to keep this one as short as possible, but warning this is going to be quite a novel. 

 

The year is 2022, we’re coming up on 2 years without any sort of music from the nation’s biggest girl group - and then, finally, when we were all down and ready to give up, YG releases BLACKPINK from the dungeon! We’re going in chronological order so starting with the random ass PUBG collab MV and song Ready for Love.

If you are a BLINK, you know this was leaked in like mid 2021. The demo version is better than the actual version. This song is straight out of like 2013 - and like it isn’t the most offensive thing on this list, but it’s just dated as hell. That's basically all I have to say on Ready For Love.. it was EDM woop woop beat for a company, nothing much more.. so then, the teasers for Pink Venom - which were actually okay-ish, and then the song and MV release as the official pre-release single to the album.  We’ll be starting first with the MV.

 

 

 

This is edited in such a violent, jump cut every half a second type of way to shove in as many different outfits and scenes that it takes away from any one specific moment in the MV. If you blink, you are going to for sure miss something, there are that many jump cuts. The positives I will say regarding the MV are that several of the sets are AMAZINGLY done, especially Jennie’s first and the final water scene (which was absolutely ****** by the editing). As for the song, I can appreciate that this is finally semi-not DDD 4.0 or 5.0 or whatever at this point, but (spoiler alert: this comes up later too) I feel like this is basically a Jenlisa song ft. splashes of Jisoo and Rosie. That being said, this is literally in my top 5 Spotify Wrapped so like.. 

 

 

 

Fast forward a month and like two live performances of Pink Venom later - we are at the album release and Shut Down MV! This might be the highest point in this entire novel. I actually LOVE the MV with all the past references updated, and the hints of moving on and evolving next comeback (whether or not that comes to fruition or not we will see ). The song is a little one note, but I find it cute. On the other hand, the Born Pink album..

 

For it being TWO years, we were served 8 total songs, and at this point, “six” (five if you wanna remove Shut Down) new songs. This in itself is totally inexcusable, regardless of how much you love this group. On top of that, figuring out some of these songs are older songs and/or demos (Typa Girl was pitched in 2021 for Lisa’s solo, Tally was confirmed to be years old and has a Bebe Rexha demo floating out in the universe, Ready for Love has technically existed since 2020 in the Netflix documentary) - was another slap in the face. But, this isn’t the first nor last time YG will pull this gig, even with BLACKPINK. Finally, there’s a Rose solo song on an 8 track album. While the song is one of my personal favorites, the fact that after two years there’s only one solo song on the album as opposed to giving every girl a solo song is baffling. The album should of been at least, AT LEEEEAST 12 songs! Also, this was hella rushed as there's like no live performances of anything cause they got to celebrate the release and all the milestones for a solid week and then had to prepare for this giant tour

 

Only time will tell where the girls of BLACKPINK go from here, but at least they’re out smashing a world tour (which was amazing and all the wannabe haters on social media can go touch grass). Also I still stan BLACKPINK, they just deserved a whole hell of a lot better than what they were dealt

Edited December 11, 2022 by Seffers

[luckystrike]

Nabillera and Sneakers were horrible  deserved 

 

Born Pink was a disappointment from Blackpink tbh but PV and SD did grow on me a slight little bit ddd, but deserved their spot on here too tbh!!

[Polgg48]

expected from top 2, they will be fine unlike other three in danger of losing careers though. imo kep1er EP isnt that bad

[Remmy]

sdjif oop at the BLACKPINK rant  Yeah I don't even follow them but I've seen several fans (or ex-fans) be super mad about how their music/career is going recently. Only heard a snippet of Nabillera and I can definitely understand why that's here  What a mess.

 

I don't listen to much K-Pop but luckily nothing I enjoyed this year is on the list  Ready to see what appears in the Top 50 Songs!

[Kinich]

Fans making theories about it not being the real title track was one of the funniest things in kpop this year

 

I do enjoy the song tho!

 

Yeah everyone and their momma jumped the sinking weeekly ship once ven para was released, it really turned off a lot fo their stans.

 

I love Pink Venom, tho YG is crazy on including RFL in the album but you cant spell recycling without YG!

[Into The Void]

I like Pink Venom and I'm not a fan of kpop

[Seffers]

3 hours ago, Insanity said:

I like Pink Venom and I'm not a fan of kpop

afaoifs I probably made it sound like I hated it but I actually do enjoy it

---------------------

albums are next up - probably coming sometime this week if work doesn't completely destroy me first **** the holiday season

[Sanguine]

Drag Itzy, Kep1er (what a messy debut year they’ve had) and Blackpink! Especially Itzy, they’ve fallen off so hard and at this point idk if they’re coming back

 

Nabillera is… a guilty pleasure of mine :kii6:

 

I’ve already forgotten what that Weeekly comeback sounds like so I’m pretty sure you’re right? Because I loved We Play from last year

[BlackoutZone]

Lmao you did not lie at all, all of them are absolutely DONE for me  Like genuinely terrible output