This is one of the hardest intro paragraphs to write each year, because it’s the list most intensely personal to my tastes, and yet is often the one that lasts the longest, as it tends to get the most attention late into the following year and beyond. Most years all I can really point out is the pattern of album types making the list each year, so here we go:
Oh my word; the boys sure did come out to play in 2024. Seven of the ten total albums on this sub-divided page (honourable mentions aside) and all five of the full-album entries come from male acts, which I’m pretty sure is unprecedented. In addition, for the first time ever there are no girl groups on either of the two top fives. I don’t know why that is; I wasn’t trying to do that as I worked on the lists. It just so happened that I liked more of the lads’ work throughout the year.
Predominantly English/Japanese albums don’t count for this page, so Rose’s much-hyped rosie won’t be here, but it’s pretty good – and you should also check out Milena’s Foggy if you enjoy relaxed R&B.
1-3 tracks = not eligible
4-7 tracks = mini album
8+ tracks = full album
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VR BEST OF 2024 DISCLAIMER
This list represents my opinion only. I am not asserting any kind of superiority or self-importance by presenting it as I have. My opinion is not fact. Nobody ever agrees with me 100%. Respectful disagreement is most welcome.
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5. ACT – Kang Daniel
Kang Daniel’s 2024 EP puts its MV track in the crucial third track slot, which is such a rare move even this far into K-Pop’s globalised album production era that I had to take notice as soon as a mate recommended ACT to me. But it turns out it’s no quirky, showy play: that very song, the catchy bounce and double-keyboard drive of Electric Shock, needs a full track’s worth of distance between itself and opener Losing Myself, which is simply one of the best B-sides of the year and was at risk of overshadowing the lead single. That chorus build-up and the chaotic ensuing breakdown takes over any pair of headphones, threatening to collapse upon itself with a gloriously cacophonous breakdown. The rest of the EP is no slouch: soft harp vibes contrast with crunchy garage beats to beautiful effect in Chung Ha duet Come Back to Me, and closer 9 Lives turns up the bassy synth as Daniel proudly declares he’s “leveling up”. I’ll say.
4. The Winning – IU
Another *ahem* winner of an EP from one of the most reliable artists in the business, IU not only makes The Winning sound effortless, she gives off the unmistakable vibe that she’s enjoying every note. Trademark wispy vocals saunter through Holssi over the kind of offbeat backing not seen since her Chat-shire days, and the way everything harmonises together should not come as a surprise – but it still sounds so fresh. Immediately afterwards comes Shh.., one of the most indulgent songs at its conservative BPM level I have ever heard. Jazzy, sassy and fabulously supported, the track has the gall to end with an acting segment even though the EP is nowhere near over – which still works because Love wins all starts real soft. That’s an IU power ballad, though, so you just know it’ll be swelling with sheer orchestral scale soon enough – and it sure does. If anything, the opening and closing tracks are the most vanilla of the package, but of course they’re still produced and performed to the highest standard.
I may have celebrated a decade of K-Pop appreciation a couple of years ago on this site, but 2024 marked a less glamorous – though no less important – milestone for me: it has now been ten years since a slate of Korean label drama that felt no less than calamitous at the time knocked the proverbial scales of fandom off my eyes and I began to listen to K-Pop without loyalty to specific groups, or without even really taking into account music videos until a song or album had already lodged itself in my brain. So basically how I approach the hobby now.
2014 also brought about enough real-life situation shifts that my curated sources of new K-Pop dried up for the majority of the year, and I had to rush my countdown; despite a few time-honoured bangers at the top, that 2014 Top 15 list is still the playlist I repeat the least in my personal listening time. Though nowhere near that dramatic, 2024 at times felt functionally similar: indefinite podcast hiatuses, changes to curated public playlists, and simple differences in the people I see regularly had me scrambling to do a lot more of my own legwork than usual to find the songs I liked.
But 2024 is not 2014; there are a lot more decent tracks around these days and an awful lot more sources to recommend them.
To make this list, a song has to either have a music video or be the clear lead release from its album or EP. To clear up increasingly blurry fringe examples, only songs containing Korean lyrics count, but you should still listen to H1-Key’s Thinkin’ About You and from20’s Demon. It’s also worth mentioning that much of this year’s playlist is defined by simple audio elements produced well, so I recommend the best set of headphones you’ve got.
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VR BEST OF 2024 DISCLAIMER
This list represents my opinion only. I am not asserting any kind of superiority or self-importance by presenting it as I have. My opinion is not fact. Nobody ever agrees with me 100%. Respectful disagreement is most welcome.
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15. APT – Rosé feat. Bruno Mars
We are immediately stretching technicalities for this first inclusion, as the relentlessly catchy single-word repetition coursing through the chorus of viral worldwide hit APT seems both too basic and yet too significant to ignore with my “inclusion of Korean lyrics” eligibility rule. So here it is, in all its irrepressible ear-worminess. The song starts with a crunchy beat that doesn’t overcomplicate itself, and Melbourne’s own Rosé is having so much fun it’s infectious, but the track isn’t much to write home about until Bruno Mars appears to add those famous ad-libs and then triple the impact of the chorus with some of the most satisfying harmonies of the year. By the time the bridge arrives APT is firing on all cylinders, and it has solidified itself as one of the most successful western collabs in K-Pop history.
14. Funk Jam – n.SSign
There’s some interesting distortion echoing around the background of the verses in this one, but the core appeal of the song is simple. In fact, it’s so simple that the title – and the pivotal chorus line – pretty handily tells you everything you need to know: you’re listening to a funk jam. It’s not a world-changing funk jam, but it still slaps pretty hard. In the ongoing race to find the worst K-Pop group name of all time, n.SSign put in a strong effort when they debuted last year, but none of their early music moved the needle in quite the same elite way until the boys boiled it all down to a simple keyboard / guitar setup and started messing around with blues-y sliding notes.
2021 may have thrown my Korean music listening habits all sorts of curve balls, but at the end of it all, this consistently maddening list was once again the hardest and most time-consuming one to construct. No matter how much musical content I skip, there is always a mountain of quality Korean album content to grace my ears; there are always tight calls to make in the ordering of those albums; always moods ready to take hold and change up how I respond to them at any given time. Those moods were quite often on the more negative end of the spectrum this year, and 2021 was a particularly strong year for ballad B-sides, so you may see that reflected in the rankings.
In any case, the list before you now is done now and I’m pretty confident it represents a strong line-up of audio quality. Headphone up.
A special mention this year has to go to LambC’s excellent full-length album treat I’ll see you when I see you, which would have ranked very highly on the list except it’s entirely in English – It didn’t quite feel fair giving it a proper ranking given what I’ve disqualified in the past. But please, go listen to it.
1-3 tracks = N/A
4-7 tracks = mini album
8+ tracks = full album
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VR BEST OF 2021 DISCLAIMER
This list represents my opinion only. I am not asserting any kind of superiority or self-importance by presenting it as I have. My opinion is not fact. To agree with me 100% is beyond unlikely. Respectful disagreement is most welcome.
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5. I burn – (G)I-DLE
One of the coolest things to come out of (G)I-DLE’s fruitfully unexpected partnership with League of Legends is the fast-tracking of star member Soyeon to the role of group producer, and never before has the leader been given as much control over a multi-song project as she has with I burn. Conceived as a spiritual continuation of the HANN vibe that punctuated the group’s debut year back in 2018, I burn’s title track HWAA can’t help but feel a tad derivative as a result – at least when experienced alone. Listen to the entire EP, however, and you just might find the most sonically consistent mood piece in mainstream K-Pop this year.
Building out of seven sombre piano notes that spread out and become a melancholy intro with light – but not airy – vocals, the mini album finds an ethereal pocket and stays hovering there, doing somersaults for occasional flair but never threatening to break out into a sprint – or quite dipping into ballad territory. It’s all full-sounding, lower-register vocals mixed around one another at a mid-tempo pace on moody backing tracks. Even Where is love, the danciest track on the thing, uses all the trappings of a modern girl group B-side without actually raising the heart rate. The best tracks are the final two, LOST and DAHLIA; they work because the embers within the preceding songs have been fanned with such a steady, unbroken pace, and what’s left is a chance to really smoulder with style.
4. Stairs – Stella Jang
Stella Jang at last puts her trilingual songwriting prowess into album form with Stairs, the pocket follow-up to last year’s full-length easy listening triumph Stella I. Though 2021 was the most prolific year in Jang’s fringe-skimming career – she released singles with wistful thirty-something relatability, understated city-pop panache, and ragtime reimagination while cameoing on that aforementioned LambC album – another sustained studio session was always going to hold the greatest potential for another hit of that emotional resonance she managed in 2020.
In mid-October we finally received that hit: a piano instrumental backed with faint heartbeats and footsteps in stereo giving way to an English lead track packing plenty of Jang’s signature bitter whimsy. A pair of Korean tracks follow – an old-timey lounge-leaner and a mid-tempo acoustic jaunt – neither one losing that paradoxical tone. Then the finale: a full-on French flex with simple ambitions that ties together the European undercurrents of the whole EP and promises to open yet another avenue for a discography that is finally starting to gather some real steam.
3. Planet Nine: Alter Ego – ONEWE
The increasing acceptance of actual bands into the stables of K-Pop labels not ostensibly known for employing instruments isn’t just allowing for said labels to diversify their sounds; it’s starting to produce some delightfully confusing emotions for yours truly. Some of the songs on ONEWE’s Planet Nine: Alter Ego (yay for another needlessly complex album title) sound like they wouldn’t have been out of place on my CD rotation as an angsty teenager in the mid-2000s. Exhibit A: The wistful, bellowing chorus of the lovesick AuRoRa, which kicks off the tail of the EP following lead single Rain to Be, which I talked about last week.
But that’s not all this handy mini-album can do; the chorus of the similarly-themed Veronica brings in a decidedly bubblier J-Rock riff to encourage some different emotions (both name-themed tracks incidentally ascended to get their own music videos later down the track). LOGO scrubs up the processing to let a single electric guitar sing before hitting the ground running on a soaring anthemic chorus line, while A.I. brings out a relentless circular rhythm that carries the EP’s momentum through to its final stretch. You could do much worse in the growing Korean pop-rock sphere than this gem.
Yes, this is where I’m putting that extra point from the shortened consoles list.
2019 was in my estimation the craziest year for quality K-Pop mini albums I’ve yet experienced. For a significant chunk of this year I toyed with the idea of outright replacing this list with a top ten purely devoted to the EP format. With the extra point and more honorable mentions I’ve pretty much ended up with one anyway, which is great because thanks to an expanded K-Pop recommendation circle I did uncover a good amount of worthwhile full albums in the end as well. I may have bent some rules, but I’m really happy with the list this year. Happy listening!
1-3 tracks = N/A
4-7 tracks = mini album
8+ tracks = full album
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VR BEST OF 2019 DISCLAIMER
This list represents my opinion only. I am not asserting any kind of superiority or self-importance by presenting it as I have. My opinion is not fact. To agree with me 100% is rarer than an EA game without microtransactions. Respectful disagreement is most welcome.
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6. Kill This Love – Blackpink
Yes indeed, once in a while a YG girl group actually releases enough songs at the same time to count as an album! In Blackpink’s case, the loooooong time between drinks just about paid off in 2019, because Kill This Love brings three A-game B-sides and a pretty decent remix to slot in under the bombastic title track and create a winning EP. First-change rumbler Don’t Know What To Do leverages the drop-happy stylings that have helped slide Blackpink out from under 2NE1’s shadow, while Hope Not finally brings back the all-too-brief magic from the group’s debut year acoustic B-side Stay. The sealer is the middle track, however: Kick It is a low-key better song than the actual lead single, Kill This Love, which is no dud itself. Uniting big drop with strumming flourish, it rocks.
We back with an eighth attempt at summing up the year in K-Pop, as I bring you my fifteen personal favourite songs deemed worthy of music videos. As always, that’s the distinction: These aren’t my favourite music videos per se; I hadn’t even seen most of these MVs before starting to write the list. I rank these songs based mostly on the songs themselves.
A massive shout-out has to go to the community of the recently-reborn This Week in K-Pop podcast, which is now a Twitch call-in show airing weekly on Sundays at either 3pm or 8pm CST depending on the week. Those lovely people are responsible for just over a third of the list, as I once again spent about two thirds of the year not listening to a lot of Korean music. They know how to recommend the good stuff.
And for what it’s worth, this might be my favourite list of honorable mentions ever. There wasn’t much separating them all in the end. It was a good year for K-Pop, particularly for pop-adjacent rock bands and emerging solo artists. Let’s dig in!
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VR BEST OF 2019 DISCLAIMER
This list represents my opinion only. I am not asserting any kind of superiority or self-importance by presenting it as I have. My opinion is not fact. To agree with me 100% is rarer than an EA game without microtransactions. Respectful disagreement is most welcome.
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15. Umpah Umpah – Red Velvet
We begin with yet another Real Summer Jam from what is now my most featured K-Pop act ever. Red Velvet brings those unchallenged layers of harmony and that quirky bass sampling as brightly as ever, but now featuring late stage vocal ad-libs and references to their own half-decade career (Wasn’t it just yesterday they debuted?) By RV standards Umpah Umpah is actually rather straightforwardly produced – I guess after going B-side-level weird with earlier 2019 single Zimzalabim they needed a palette cleanser – but it’s still got that wonderful flavour you expect from the group’s upbeat output.
A happy new year to all of you reading this! Here’s hoping 2019 is everything you could hope for. May your Avengers and Star Wars finales be satisfying, your K-Pop playlists overflowing, your first-party Switch exclusives meaty, and your new consoles well-priced, smartly-marketed and player-friendly!
In case you missed any, here are the links to the ten lists I put up over the last two weeks to summarise 2018:
2018 was arguably (and this really is arguable because music is so subjective) a significant step up over 2017 for that unique range of K-Pop sounds that have kept people like me connected – however loosely – to the industry for so long. But 2018 was also the year that I spent the least time listening to K-Pop since this list has been a thing. That’s not necessarily an indicator of the future – for the first half of the year it wasn’t clear whether the podcast I relied on for most of my K-Pop exposure was on hiatus or actually done (It turned out to be the latter) and I also stopped listening to the curated playlists I would normally enjoy while running because of a shockingly persistent knee injury. During that lengthy period I only really listened to the biggest-name releases, though I eventually readjusted my habits – quite late in the year it must be said – and took in a whole bunch of K-Pop at once. That probably had an impact on my positive outlook for the year, because I didn’t have to wade through as much average sameyness, but I maintain that I still find this Top 15 stronger than last year’s. Take that as you will.
The list only considers songs that have a corresponding music video (with one odd exception) and have a significant amount of Korean lyrics within them. It’s an audio-first critique, however – Some of these MVs I hadn’t actually seen before I sat down to write this. It’s restricted to one song per act. Oh, and if this is just about the only K-Pop stuff you’ve watched this year, I recommend hovering over each video and turning off the automatic captions as you go. They’re distracting and usually not exactly poetry when translated. That’s just the way I do it, though. You do you.
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VR BEST OF 2018 DISCLAIMER
This list represents my opinion only. I am not asserting any kind of superiority or self-importance by presenting it as I have. My opinion is not fact. If you actually agree with me 100%, that’s odd, but let’s have a beer. Respectful disagreement is most welcome.
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15. POP/STARS – K/DA
What’s that? This doesn’t count? I’m using a League of Legends promotion as clickbait? I am outraged at the mere accusation. Have you heard this song? Against all odds, what could have come across as a cheap attempt to cash in on LoL‘s sizeable Korean player base is in reality a hyper-polished production effort worthy of a top tier K-Pop label, complete with affectionate nods to such tried-and-true Korean music video tropes as rapid-fire freeze-frame poses, member-specific sets, stationary expensive cars, minimal footage of actual dancing and an ultra-serious group logo stinger. Featuring just enough Korean language to count for this list – duly provided by a third of (G)I-DLE – POP/STARS was composed almost entirely at RIOT Games, which seems unfair to the rest of K-Pop because it is a banger. Check out the hologram-infused live performance of the song at the LoL World Championships if you fancy.
Happy new year! 2017 is going to be a hard act to follow for entertainment media, what with its great movies – both blockbuster and indie in spirit – and especially its decade-topping lineup of videogames. Big event movies will certainly come in 2018, headed up by the most ambitious Avengers film yet and the second Fantastic Beasts flick, and smaller gems will emerge as they always do. But there’s a fair bit of videogame uncertainty going into the new year. Will Microsoft nail all their proposed releases this year? How close are we to a new Playstation? What can the Nintendo Switch’s second year possibly bring to even hope to match up to its first? Time will tell. In the meantime, here are the links to all ten of my 2017 year-end countdown lists:
NOTE: This list was already written when we received the news of the apparent suicide of SHINee’s Kim Jonghyun. At the time of publication this development is still less than a week old, but I cannot write it into the main article without sounding flippant about it, and so have left the list un-edited. Kim Jonghyun was literally the first male voice I heard after discovering that I liked K-Pop, and his voice also kicked off my first K-Pop Top 15 at the end of 2012. His loss has rocked the K-Pop community worldwide, and on a personal note has hit me just as hard as the Chester Bennington tragedy earlier this year. I can only imagine how his family must be feeling. He will be missed.
Ah, 2017. If you were a K-Pop fan around when I started being invested in the genre (is it even a genre anymore?) half a decade ago, and you’re still here, then congrats. Your ears have clearly been through a lot and your tastes must be resilient. Though 2016 saw many more big-name K-Pop groups bite the dust, the official dissolving of Sistar and the Wonder Girls in 2017 – alongside respective three-member exoduses from T-ara and Girls’ Generation – meant a 2017 K-Pop fan can hardly be accused of holding on to past glories.
There were quite a few fresh influences and trends worth getting excited about this year, even if they flooded the market so quickly it was hard to find quality at times. The most prevalent surely must be the KARD-and-Winner-led influx of tropical house, because at one point it felt like every group was trying on the sea-and-sand beats. Korea’s ongoing recent fascination with contemporary EDM beat drops also spread into the realm of American DJ collaborations this year – particularly so among the top-tier boy groups – and that helped solidify BTS in rarefied air on the Billboard Top 10 Artists chart in the USA. It seems K-Pop’s year-on-year growth in online popularity around the world has reached a point that no “niche” categorisation can hold back some fandoms. Let’s not forget that we now live in a world where the CinemaSins guy can riff on a Red Velvet video and get views for it. But fear not, because K-Pop was still pulling out plenty of offbeat gimmicks all its own in 2017, from the song-a-month themed schedule of Day6 to the slow revelations of new LOONA members one solo performance at a time. I found a decent amount of K-Pop to enjoy in 2017, and hopefully you did too.
As always, some rules I like to hold myself to: No more than one song from each act and no B-sides. A song needs to have its own official music video and be sung primarily in Korean to be on the list, even though this disqualifies some pretty good songs like Girl Next Door’s Deep Blue Eyes, EXO’s Electric Kiss and Dumbfoundead’s Water (although, to be fair, the latter comes from an actual American rapper). Here’s my sixth annual K-Pop Top 15 list.
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VR BEST OF 2017 DISCLAIMER
This list represents my opinion only. I am not asserting any kind of superiority or self-importance by presenting it as I have. My opinion is not fact. If you actually agree with me 100%, that’s strange. Intriguing, but strange. Respectful disagreement is most welcome.
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15. Don’t Wanna Cry – Seventeen
It felt like this song was around every corner when I was looking for K-Pop throughout the majority of 2017 – on YouTube, on curated streaming playlists, on podcasts – and for good reason. It may not have the most exciting backing track, bridge or rap section, but it sure has one catchy hook. Some nights I just can’t get that chorus line out of my head. I want to scream it out right now. Also, it’s Seventeen, so the choreography is amazing and executed with ridiculous accuracy to boot. Who actually wants to cry, though, Seventeen? Who?
All things considered, 2016 was pretty good for the entertainment media I cover on this blog (I use “cover” loosely – sadly I barely wrote here in 2016). And I don’t even really watch TV shows! 2017 can potentially be even better when you look at what’s coming on paper, sitting there all promising in its un-delayed state. Here’s to a more consistent videogame release schedule, more wonderful RPGs, maybe a decent DC universe movie? 2017 looks like it could have a nice ring to it. In any case, here are all the links to my 2016 countdowns:
Vagrant Rant 