Posts Tagged ‘ten’

29 Dec

Best of 2021: Top 10 K-Pop Albums

Posted by vagrantesque in Best of 2021, K-Pop, Lists, Music. Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , .

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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MINI ALBUMS
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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.

Click here to let the tunes roll on

1 Jan

Best of 2020 Closer

Posted by vagrantesque in Best of 2020, Misc. Tagged: , , , , , , , , .

Well now I guess we’re in 2021. While that isn’t magically going to solve all of 2020’s problems, it will reset the multiple arbitrary counters in my mind and allow me a little while to play/watch/listen to things that don’t absolutely have to go onto a pile for consideration towards the next annual countdowns. It sounds silly, but that feels like a massive load off at the moment. I hope the calendar reset has, in some small way, made you less stressed as well.

Anyway, here’s all the good stuff from last year:

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1. Top 10 Disappointments

2. Five Special Awards

3. Top 15 K-Pop Singles

4. Top 10 Movie Characters

5. Top 10 Game Consoles

6. Top 10 Movie Scenes

7. Top 10 Gaming Moments

8. Top 10 K-Pop Albums

9. Top 15 Games

10. Top 10 Movies

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31 Dec

Best of 2020: Top 10 Movies

Posted by vagrantesque in Best of 2020, Lists, Movies. Tagged: , , , , , , , , .

Just one more day of 2020 left, so it’s perhaps fitting that this series of countdowns ends with the list most affected by the year’s defining pandemic. Finding good new movies in 2020 was a tall task throughout most of the year due to the ongoing game of film studio chicken going on overseas, but streaming services did just enough to hold us over with their own exclusive releases until the flurry of bigger-name films began to hit around mid-to-late October – only accelerating from there. For a long stretch of the year I was seriously considering reducing this list to a more casual top five, but in the end I was just about able to scrape together a full list.

A quick thing I realised while finalising this list: I saw way fewer movie trailers this year than any before it; and while that probably means I missed some movies I might’ve checked out otherwise, I really think it improved my actual watching experience for quite a few of them. Just a thought that came to mind as I was grabbing trailers for this page.

Anyway, it’s time to put 2020 behind us.

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VR BEST OF 2020 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 an utterly bizarre coincidence. Respectful disagreement is most welcome.

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10. Onward

It already feels like years since I watched Onward – 2020 will do that to ya – so all that really stands out to me about it when I look back is that amazing finale. But the rest of the movie is still worth checking out; it’s basically Pixar’s take on a road movie, and even if that well-worn comedy hi-jinks structure feels like a bit of a waste of a really cool fading-magic-world setup, Chris Pratt and Tom Holland give spirited vocal performances backed by Marvel chemistry to keep things engaging. The mythical supporting cast is also good fun to watch while the movie prepares its pile of emotional bricks. Whenever Pixar sets its sights on a family unit, you just have to watch your tear ducts.

9. Mank

This one feels weird to talk about, because I can’t really tell you much of what Mank is trying to say as a story, and I’m sure plenty of old-school Hollywood references soared right over my head; ultimately my enjoyment of David Fincher’s latest film comes down to every layer of production except the deepest ones. The shot composition and period-apt transitions are on-point; the first of two jazz-soaked December 2020 scores by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross (there’s an utterly weird bit of trivia) is just fabulous; and not only is every performance excellent, there’s proper variety in the work of each major player. Lily Collins and Tuppence Middleton steal scenes on opposite ends of the patience scale, Charles Dance commands the movie on the strength of his reaction shots alone, and of course Gary Oldman and Amanda Seyfried take turns making themselves at home within every frame. A case of style over substance that works for me.

Click here to bring the year home

30 Dec

Best of 2020: Top 15 Games

Posted by vagrantesque in Best of 2020, Games, Lists. Tagged: , , , , , , , , .

Ah, 2020 – you came, you saw, you reduced us all to the last shreds of our sanity. But my word; you sure gave us some incredible videogames to fill the time.

This past year brought the interactive goods like it was 2017 all over again: the genuine power behind Dreams’ boundless player expression; the frenetic flow of Doom Eternal; the absolute ton of new content in Persona 5 Royal; the revolutionary VR jaw-dropper Half Life Alyx; the shiny systems sandbox of Watch Dogs Legion; the viral push of Valorant; the unreal ambition of Microsoft Flight Simulator‘s return; the grand scale of Immortals: Fenyx Rising; the unlikely success of long-awaited sequels Crash Bandicoot 4: It’s About Time, Spelunky 2 and Streets of Rage 4.

We had gorgeous remakes like Resident Evil 3, Demons’ Souls and Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 1+2. We had acclaimed games with laser-targeted niches and actual budgets, like Wasteland 3, Star Wars Squadrons and Nioh 2. We had strategic gems like XCOM Chimera Squad, Gears Tactics and Othercide; amazingly fresh indies like Spiritfarer, Carto, Paradise Killer, The Pathless, Bright Memory and Sakuna: Of Rice and Ruin; hugely successful spin-offs like Minecraft Dungeons and Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity. And of course, we had the one and only Cyberpunk 2077.

That’s just the stuff that didn’t make my list.

To qualify a game for this top fifteen I need to have played it for more than five hours and/or finished it, unless it’s multiplayer-focused. That disqualifies a lot of good stuff that I was enjoying but stopped playing early due to interruptions, such as plenty of the games I just mentioned but particularly Ikenfell and Sakura Wars. I also cannot use a 2020 re-release of an old game on a new platform unless I didn’t play the original release at all – This last point means some of the best games released this year (A Short Hike, Pikmin 3 Deluxe, Dragon Quest XI S – all of which you should definitely play) cannot count.

Without further ado, these are my fifteen favourite videogames from 2020. Parentheses indicate where I played each game.

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VR BEST OF 2020 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 an utterly bizarre coincidence. Respectful disagreement is most welcome.

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15. Animal Crossing: New Horizons (NS)

2020’s Animal Crossing: New Horizons really could have gone anywhere on this list; anyone who got involved in that initial two-month wave of communal playing could tell you that as long as it’s got new content to offer, this is less a game and more a daily life activity on roughly the same level of necessity as brushing your teeth. As a result some people will have this in their number one spot while others may forget to even think about it in the GOTY conversation – and so using it as an introduction of sorts to this list just feels right.

I’ve been playing the Animal Crossing games for almost two decades, so I’ve seen plenty of games in the series get away without adding much shiny new content. Though it’d be easy to see New Horizons as simply another addition to that legacy when looking at the right screenshots, the genius of this one is that it takes the opening moments of most Animal Crossing titles and essentially makes them the endgame of this one. You build up day-by-day from a desolate island with a mere campsite to a bustling remote town with a host of diverse facilities – all with the help of a clever new crafting system – and then eventually you get to terraform the island itself. The secret of Animal Crossing has always been about self-expression, but New Horizons takes the concept through the stratosphere.

14. Genshin Impact (PS4/Mob)

This is a weird one, because I played Genshin Impact for eight hours on its PS4 launch day (my laptop was being repaired at the time), then checked in daily over a couple of weeks for no more than the login bonuses, tried the mightily-impressive (sadly cross-save-incompatible) mobile version for an hour or so, then never went back to it. But I just can’t not have it on the main list; this game may be a confusing pitch blending the gacha mechanics of standard free-to-play mobile RPGs with a distinctly skin-deep Breath of the Wild approach to environment design, but in its moment-to-moment gameplay it is something else entirely. It plays more like an action RPG with on-the-fly elemental mixing mechanics that – bizarrely enough – remind me of Starlink: Battle for Atlas. Its cast of characters bring vastly different playstyles to the table and slot into the story interchangeably without consequence – or emotional investment. Genshin Impact somehow feels like both the shallowest and deepest game I played in 2020, and I’m still trying to reconcile that in my head.

Two down, thirteen to go – click here

29 Dec

Best of 2020: Top 10 K-Pop Albums

Posted by vagrantesque in Best of 2020, K-Pop, Lists, Music. Tagged: , , , , , , , , .

When you’re locked down at home or the studio, you can write some pretty good tunes. That’s the message the K-Pop industry (and its satellite subgenres) sent to album fans all over the world in 2020. It was an embarrassment of audio riches this year, and I don’t think it’s a stretch to say I listened to a higher percentage of it than in any previous year (thanks again to the great Stankpop community). But I think I’ve proved my point that the state of K-Pop album production is in a better place than it was half a decade ago, so I won’t open the floodgates for honorable mentions like I did last year. Music is of course intensely subjective, but know that every single record on this page comes with my enthusiastic recommendation.

And yes, this is where the SM boys ended up; thanks for asking.

1-3 tracks = N/A

4-7 tracks = mini album

8+ tracks = full album

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VR BEST OF 2020 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 an utterly bizarre coincidence. Respectful disagreement is most welcome.

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MINI ALBUMS
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5. Maria – Hwa Sa

The first MAMAMOO soloist to put out an EP I’ve enjoyed the whole way through, Hwa Sa’s big collaboration-heavy year unleashed Maria as its crown jewel. Brazenly self-reflective in a way not attempted by too many K-Pop group members, Hwa Sa uses her English name as a motif repeatedly throughout the seven tracks, letting in just one featuring artist – DPR Live – on penultimate Salsa-tinged track I’m bad too. The bounteous strings and piano on soaring spiritual closer LMM really sit with you after the mini album is done, feeling like an emphatic answer to the question posed by the diary entry of an introductory track; WHY is the big industrial centrepiece that helps get you there, though, and there’s more sardonic fun to be had within the shifting beats of the Zico-produced Kidding.

4. Jackpot – Elris

Shifting gears to something far fluffier and more energetic; Elris’ fourth mini album is a surprisingly great sugar hit with some serious crunch on hand to substantiate things. The introduction is a brilliantly-constructed 75-second build that might make you wonder why so few producers get their own intros so wrong – it slots right under the title track with ease and improves it out of sight. But the delightful carefree chorus of the headliner isn’t even close to the best thing on the EP, as the three ballad-free follow-ups absolutely fly by. This Is Me is a harmony-rich dose of old-school K-Pop energy that’s honestly just a better song overall (which someone behind the production must have realised, because there’s a well-produced dance video for it). But if the bass and vocals are the star there, Like I Do announces its intention to fill your headphones with delectable bell-chime treble from its first moment. Final track No Big Deal is the mini album’s secret weapon, letting the vapours of its celestial pre-chorus sprinkle over an aloof hook with minimal backing. Colour me mad-keen for the next Elris package.

Click here to let the tunes roll on

28 Dec

Best of 2020: Top 10 Gaming Moments

Posted by vagrantesque in Best of 2020, Games, Lists. Tagged: , , , , , , , , .

What a spicy year for videogames this was. I’ll get more into the sheer volume of good ones in a couple of days, but long story short I played a lot of games this year and finished a fraction of them. This gave me a monster of a shortlist for cool moments within those games, and they came in all sorts of flavours. The year brought us gameplay surprises, narrative shocks, and good-old fashioned feelings of accomplishment. Sadly 2020 was lacking in the ‘local multiplayer gathering’ kinds of moments that usually find their way onto this list most years, but we’ll just have to hope 2021 lets us bring more of those back.

Anyway, these are the ten gaming moments I feel like talking about the most this year.

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VR BEST OF 2020 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 an utterly bizarre coincidence. Respectful disagreement is most welcome.

THERE ARE BIG VIDEOGAME SPOILERS ON THIS PAGE.

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10. Space Infomercials – Journey to the Savage Planet

Every time you return to your ship in the darkly funny commoditised exploration adventure Journey to the Savage Planet, a colourful screen buzzing with over-the-top energy and a yelling voice of some kind awaits you. Sometimes it will show a plot-focused recorded message from the CEO of Kindred Aerospace, the 4th-best interstellar exploration company in the galaxy. But whenever it doesn’t, there’s a randomly-chosen bizarre advertisement with daytime TV vibes to chew on – and I can’t pick just one for this list. Whether it’s the visceral horror of the animated waste Meat Buddy, the purple structure-changing food replacement goo known only as Grob, or the explosion-laden pitch for fictional game Moba Moba Moba Mobile VR v17 (where microtractions are the game), the main adventure always had to take a break whenever one of these came on during my playthrough.

9. Baby Shark… – Maneater

I didn’t exactly love Maneater, but it’s definitely quite a bit of fun at the start, and I wasn’t expecting the weirdly charming low-budget-aquatic-GTA shenanigans to turn so suddenly dark immediately after its extended tutorial. I had a physical reaction when the powerful, confident shark I’d been playing as fell into the clutches of happy-go-lucky villain Scaly Pete; the guy abruptly puts an end to your predatory avatar with one gruesome slash of his knife, revealing that you were pregnant the whole time. As a sneering act of cocky faux-pity, Pete throws the newborn shark into the river, simultaneously revealing that this shark is actually the game’s true protagonist. Then it’s back to the goofy attack-feed-upgrade loop.

Click here for more moments (with some spoilers)

27 Dec

Best of 2020: Top 10 Movie Scenes

Posted by vagrantesque in Best of 2020, Lists, Movies. Tagged: , , , , , , , , .

We return to the movies, and to a list that’s always fun to write – even, as it turns out, when there aren’t all that many movies to choose from. Because I tried to widen my movie-watching scope to fit what was available this year (especially when it came to horror films and/or films with bad reviews), I feel like I was surprised by movie scenes more than usual; even if that’s all in my head, I definitely get to talk about some real corkers this year.

Quite a few of these scenes are more about execution than narrative surprise, but that doesn’t change the fact that this is always the most spoiler-heavy list of the year. Proceed with caution.

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VR BEST OF 2020 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 an utterly bizarre coincidence. Respectful disagreement is most welcome.

THERE ARE HUGE MOVIE SPOILERS ON THIS PAGE.

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10. Demon Bear Battle – The New Mutants

Yes, this is a scene that actually happens in the otherwise low-energy, high-angst teen-fiction-esque The New Mutants. Right at the end there is a giant, multicoloured spirit-bear-thing that arrives to destroy absolutely everything – I’m pretty sure it makes slightly more sense in context. The bear immediately solves one of the main problems faced by our principal gang of super-powered misfits, creates a brand-new one straight afterwards, and then proceeds to save the movie. We finally get to see the young mutants act like a team and use their formerly-mysterious powers in tandem, shipping in some emotional payoff where there wasn’t much earlier.

9. The Mall – Wonder Woman 1984

The opening action set-piece of Wonder Woman 1984 is sprawling, dramatic and epic, but it almost plays like its own weirdly unrelated short film. The second one is really something else, though. Anyone who grew up watching live action comic book adaptations of any kind before the turn of the century will find something to cringe at here, from airborne launches that look like they don’t have the budget to cover up the wire work, to cartoony spins as baddies are left in a daze, to Wonder Woman’s centre-frame commercial-ready wink at a wide-eyed child. Oh yeah, and the establishing shots for the scuffle literally start by panning up from a pair of leg warmers, then moving through neon-saturated streets and corridors lined with garish ’80s shoulder pads and perms. WW84 is absolutely in on the joke and the gleeful nostalgia had me grinning in disbelief the whole time.

Click here for more spoilers

26 Dec

Best of 2020: Top 5 Game Consoles

Posted by vagrantesque in Best of 2020, Console, Games, Lists. Tagged: , , , , , , , , .

So here we are once again, in the launch year of proper “next-gen” consoles. The gaming world is in a wildly different place than it was in 2013 – as anyone who tried to get a pre-order on one of the new consoles can attest – and while that would’ve been the case even without a pandemic, it’s hard to look anywhere online at the volume of overall console demand in 2020 and call it run-of-the-mill. It feels like the Switch spent the entirety of 2020 breaking sales records, and we seemed to get an apology from a different gaming CEO every month apologising for the lack of some form of hardware stock.

So a few more people have videogame consoles in 2020, but which one had the best feature upgrades and exclusive games this year? Which one felt the most like this was its year? Yep, it’s time for this merry-go-round once again; this is my opinion on the Top 5 Game Consoles of 2020.

No, PC and mobile are not consoles.

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VR BEST OF 2020 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 an utterly bizarre coincidence. Respectful disagreement is most welcome.

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5. Xbox Series X|S

LAST YEAR: N/A

Over the last month and a half I have not been shy about expressing how much I appreciate the new generation of Xbox consoles. They’re so fast to get anywhere or do anything; they’re compatible with mountains of games and accessories; they look sharp and modern; they love being connected to good screens and for the most part, they just work. However, right here at the starting line in 2020, it feels like the Xbox Series X and Series S can’t go anywhere on this list but at the bottom. I’ve always used two main factors to navigate console placement on the year-end list: fresh advances in the world of user features, and exclusive game releases. Microsoft has made both of those things quite irrelevant within the marketing pitch for their new consoles at this point in time, but more on that in a couple of paragraphs time.

I promise they’re great though. I had to pull myself away from playing my Xbox Series X to write this.

Click here for the other four

25 Dec

Best of 2020: Top 10 Movie Characters

Posted by vagrantesque in Best of 2020, Lists, Movies. Tagged: , , , , , , , , .

2020 was not a great year for movies, or indeed movie-watching. As we’ve already covered this week, several studios spent the year buffing up 2021’s release slate instead. But as long as there are new films trickling out, there will be characters from those films that stick in the memories of those who watch them on a screen. If anything, lower-quality and/or lower-budget movies are more likely to have characters that stand out from their surroundings, so this list wasn’t as difficult to put together as I thought it might be.

A quick note: Here in Australia we get Soul and Wonder Woman 1984 today and tomorrow respectively, so they sadly won’t be able to count for this list if they are hiding a cool character or two.

Also there will be some unavoidable but minor plot spoilers in this one.

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VR BEST OF 2020 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 an utterly bizarre coincidence. Respectful disagreement is most welcome.

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10. Black Canary – Birds of Prey

Birds of Prey (and the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn) isn’t the ensemble movie that it could have been, which I say is to its detriment – but then again I’m not the world’s biggest Harley Quinn fan. The movie barely manages to tell two coherent DC stories in parallel, but the fact that it does get there is hugely down to the enthusiasm of its cast. On the non-Quinn side of the narrative is the Renee Montoya sick-of-this-shit police tale, which contrasts perfectly with the hilariously awkward wannabe-baddass Huntress (who almost made this list). But if not for the committed performance of Jurnee Smollet-Bell as Black Canary, it’d all fall apart. With a compelling set-up, a handful of cool action beats and one of the most novel approaches to a superhero arc I’ve seen in a film, it’s a shame she doesn’t get more of the spotlight throughout.

9. Roy – Palm Springs

I had absolutely no idea J.K. Simmons was in holiday-themed time loop caper Palm Springs before I caught it’s late digital release down here in Australia. So I was absolutely thrilled when he popped up in what I thought was a cameo, resplendent in full military camouflage paint. Then the movie reveals more of its central premise, and it turns out the versatile star has a whole lot more to do in his role as the gruff, vengeful Roy. A cameo this sure ain’t, as Roy needs to simultaneously sell a laundry list of outlandish visual jokes and one of the finale’s key theme-capping monologues.

Click here to read more

24 Dec

Best of 2020: Top 15 K-Pop Singles

Posted by vagrantesque in Best of 2020, K-Pop, Lists, Music. Tagged: , , , , , , , , .

Lockdowns, quarantines and shutdowns slowed a great many things to a halt in 2020, but they couldn’t quite stop the music, and across the ever-widening scope of Korean tunes crammed under the label of “K-Pop”, there was plenty to get excited about. A lot of the best tracks this year released without the slick music videos that would qualify them for the ninth edition of this list (!) – we will get to the album B-sides of 2020 in short order, fear not – but the headliners still provided just enough quality to make for a top fifteen that I really enjoy. You might too, particularly if you enjoy the kind of synth-heavy 1980s throwback sounds that the industry regularly utilised this year.

I must send my apologies to the boy group stans out there – this is the first time ever that the list hasn’t featured a single male voice in the top five. That’s probably a teensy bit tied to the fact that this is also the first K-Pop list I’ve ever written without a single entry from SM Entertainment – Oh how far we’ve come.

As always, a quick shout-out to the 2020 Korean releases that definitively slap but don’t qualify for the list’s criteria: ChungHa’s funky jam Dream of You (with R3HAB), Eden’s LEEZ team-up Paranoid, and BVNDIT’s  gloriously cheesy Cool are all exclusively in English (with the latter also breaking my one-song-per-act rule); THAMA & SOLE’s chilled masterclass Google Map does not have a music video (nor is it a B-side), putting it in technical no-man’s land; and the sensational K-RnB giga-collaboration Automatic Remix is over 15 minutes long so there’s no way I’m talking about it here.

Another massive shout-out to the community of This Week in K-Pop‘s Stankpop podcast, which just finished its first full year of shows under the new call-in format. Without their vast and illuminating tastes, this 2020 list would have been a complete shambles. Anyway, get your headphones on, crank up the volume and let’s get into it.

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VR BEST OF 2020 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 an utterly bizarre coincidence. Respectful disagreement is most welcome.

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15. I Can’t Stop Me – Twice

We start without wasting time – Here’s an immediate hit of that ’80s sound with which this past year seemed infatuated. Constructed by an eclectic mix of international producers, the synth-loving headliner to Twice’s excellent 2020 full album puts the light and breezy energy the group brings so consistently to use over a slamming stadium beat that only briefly gives way to the omnipresent industry trap sound. Can’t Stop Me‘s oddly thin vocal production isn’t the top-drawer stuff you often get with Twice (see the group’s recent collaboration with the League of Legends team) but the rest of the song’s parts more than make up for it.

14. Ohio – Crush

In this house we sure do enjoy a bit of experimental percussion, and Crush’s Ohio is ear-catching from moment one. Like a controlled tumble of wooden toys looping forever, the crunch of this beat is set in perfect contrast to some of the smoothest pipes in K-Pop – each half of the song enhances the effect of the other. The encroaching piano seals the two halves together, only dropping out twice to let some more acapella touches breathe over the beat. By the time the bass guitar swells underneath Crush’s falsetto for the final flourish, Ohio has established itself as one of the more successful spicy songs in Crush’s extensive discography.

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