Now that I’ve finished all my K-pop related countdowns of the year (yay!), I liked to take a macro view and determine which specific comeback or debut was my overall strongest of the year. There are always some personal surprises here, but the numbers don’t lie.
As before, I took five categories and gave them a weighted rank. First place gets ten points, second place gets nine, tenth place gets one and anything below that counts as one point each. Once all these numbers are added up, I’m able to rank my top picks on a points-based system. Think of this as the grand prize, given out by The Bias List each year.
And in an odd twist of fate, my number one comeback had the exact same numbers as last year’s top choice. They were even in the same categories!
Here are the countdowns I included as part of this aggregate:
Top 50 Songs
Top 10 Albums
Top 10 Music Videos
Top 10 Choreography
Top 40 B-Sides
Honorable Mentions
8 Points: ENHYPEN – Orange Blood, Golden Child – Feel Me, J.Y. Park – Changed Man, Treasure – Reboot, U-Know – Reality Show
7 Points: Just B – ÷ (Nanugi), LE SSERAFIM – Unforgiven
8 (tie). ZEROBASEONE – Youth In The Shade
Title track(s): 1 point
Album: 1 point
Music Video: 0 points
Choreography: 0 points
B-Sides: 8 points
TOTAL: 10
8 (tie). TXT – The Name Chapter: Freefall
Title track(s): 2 points
Album: 0 points
Music Video: 0 points
Choreography: 7 points
B-Sides: 1 point
TOTAL: 10
7 (tie). The Wind – Beginning: The Wind Page
Title track(s): 1 point
Album: 8 points
Music Video: 0 points
Choreography: 0 points
B-Sides: 2 points
TOTAL: 11
7 (tie). SHINee – Hard
Title track(s): 6 points
Album: 0 points
Music Video: 0 points
Choreography: 0 points
B-Sides: 5 points
TOTAL: 11
6 (tie). Jungkook – Golden
Title track(s): 3 points
Album: 0 points
Music Video: 6 points
Choreography: 4 points
B-Sides: 0 points
TOTAL: 13
6 (tie). B.I – To Die For
Title track(s): 0 points
Album: 4 points
Music Video: 0 points
Choreography: 0 points
B-Sides: 9 points
TOTAL: 13
5. TAN – TAN Made
Title track(s): 1 point
Album: 7 points
Music Video: 0 points
Choreography: 0 points
B-Sides: 10 points
TOTAL: 18
4. RIIZE – Get A Guitar
Title track(s): 9 points
Album: 0 points
Music Video: 0 points
Choreography: 10 points
B-Sides: 0 point
TOTAL: 19
3. The Boyz – Phantasy Pt.1 Christmas In August
Title track(s): 3 points
Album: 9 points
Music Video: 9 points
Choreography: 0 points
B-Sides: 3 points
TOTAL: 24
2. IVE – I’ve IVE
Title track(s): 9 points
Album: 0 points
Music Video: 10 points
Choreography: 9 points
B-Sides: 1 point
TOTAL: 29
1. NINE.i – New Mind
Title track(s): 10 points
Album: 10 points
Music Video: 0 points
Choreography: 0 points
B-Sides: 17 points
TOTAL: 37
The Bias List // K-Pop Reviews & Discussion 
Why did Ive get 0 points for their album?
They had some insane b-sides on it. Not your girl, hypnosis and blue blood are GOATS lol.
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The points are based on this year’s countdowns. IVE’s album wasn’t part of my top ten in that particular countdown, so it gets no points. Doesn’t mean it’s a bad album, though!
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I knew NINE.i’s comeback will be in first place for you lol! I can tell based on how often they’ve been on and topped your year-end lists.
For me, my favorite debut/comebacks overall have to be IVE’s I’ve IVE and ZB1’s Youth in the Shade. There were a bunch of honorable mentions for me but these two were the only debut/comebacks that had amazing pre-releases and title tracks and the majority of their respective albums was a solid piece of work imo.
Now that we’re wrapping up the year-end music recap list for this year, I want to say that I did check out the k-pop songs on your top 50 that I missed and out of that list, TAN’s “Heartbeat” stood out to me the most. The complextro vibes are something else! I cannot believe I missed out on such a gem but better late than never. 🙂
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Speaking of year-end lists, I enjoyed your post on revisiting your top 10 k-pop songs of 2016 from last year as well as your post on last year’s list earlier this month. It would be so nice if you are able to revisit your top 10 k-pop songs from 2017 onwards and give your thoughts on it. I would also love to hear whether your rankings have changed for those.
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Yeah, those are fun to do! I may post some in the coming months when new releases tend to be a bit slower.
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those two were my favorite comeback and debut as well!
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It’s Jungkook for everything.His entire album is classic.
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I love seeing nine.i getting so much love!
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Not too surprising given what you liked this year, and frankly I am not too inclined to disagree. Kudos to NINE.i, New Mind was probably my favorite K-Pop comeback this year too.
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I’ll name some comebacks I dug immensely:
MX – Reason (this stayed on my playlist since last January)
Baby Cheese – Guilty
Champion Vanner – Veni Vedi Vici
fromis_8 – unlock My World (aka the most consistently excellent album top to bottom of ‘23)
Fragments of Nu’est – Baekho, Minhyung, and Ren were just plain good this year
THE WIND – That album with the blue cover
NCT Dream – ISTJ – I went from being bitterly disappointed to loving the thing.
Keyro – Killer, Good and Great
Cavity – Master: Piece
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Also Jungkook and Onew but I didn’t like their whole albums. Although that could change…
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What about August D ( Suga ) and D- Day that was an amazing album thru and thru.
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Lil fucker has some bias hah
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If you mean I tend to like certain comebacks more than others each year, then… yes?
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