At the end of each month, I look back at my three favorite title tracks by K-pop artists. I take my own ratings into account, but there’s a bit of wiggle room as certain songs tend to grow or fade.
September 2024 Overall Thoughts
While the first half of 2024 was quite strong, these past few months have been a bit of a slog. It’s not that there haven’t been a number of solid songs released. In fact, I gave a bunch of September tracks a high “8.75” rating. However, until yesterday I hadn’t rated a title track above a “9” since June 24th (Taemin’s Horizon was recently downgraded). That’s a long stretch of time without the kind of knockout highlights that tend to fuel my excitement. Hopefully September’s last-minute standouts portend a stronger October to come.
Most of September’s releases reminded me of this past May. Like that month, there were a handful of very strong releases fighting for a spot in my top three. Many of these tracks could have made it in and will likely find a place on my year-end countdown. It was a pretty brutal match-up for my third spot, and I want to give big honorable mentions to tracks by Vahn, BOYNEXTDOOR, RIIZE and Vanner. Each one of these could have inched their way in, and things might still flip as the months go on. Further complicating things, some of September’s best releases arrived on the very last day of the month — without time to see how they rise or fall. Basically, I’m not overly confident in my ranking.
One interesting September pattern was the steady stream of SM (or ex-SM) solo projects. Three out of four SHINee members released something, while two EXO members also got in on the action. The quality of these releases varied, but I love seeing “older” artists continue to thrive.
There were a few good girl group releases (and some good b-sides) this month, but on the whole my concern with 2024’s girl group sound continues. Back in the day, my listening habits were much more evenly spread between girl and boy groups, but I feel like this year’s countdown will be even more boy group focused than ever. They’re just delivering more engaging, upbeat sounds right now (at least in my opinion). I really need a new girl group to debut and totally change the prevalent trends. Could SM’s upcoming rookies be the ones to do it? We’ll know soon enough.
Speaking of girl groups, I can’t help but wax nostalgic about some upcoming reunions. Both GFriend and Lovelyz are set to embark on new projects. Please let this usher in a renaissance of melodic, ornate GFriend/Lovelyz sounds! Oh, and I also want to give a shoutout to Dragon Pony, a newly debuted band that really impressed me. They join a year of strong rookies.
J-pop had a pretty solid month with a few big highlights. I’m impressed by new group Wild Blue, while old favorites like Queen Bee and Sakurazaka46 released very solid tracks (though the former is ineligible for the top three this month because there’s no mv… yet). There was even a pleasant surprise from an artist I’d never heard of before.
The past few months have suffered from large gaps of inactivity, making promotions feel quite fractured. I don’t think that will be the case for October and November, which are both typically very busy. There have already been a ton of announcements from high-profile acts and I expect (hope?) for that to continue. We need to close the year strong!
Month Cumulative Rating: 7.9
(compiled by averaging the scores of every K-pop review from this month)
J-Pop Highlights
New & Noteworthy J-pop: Week One
New & Noteworthy J-pop: Week Two
New & Noteworthy J-pop: Week Three
New & Noteworthy J-pop: Week Four
New & Noteworthy J-pop: Week Five
TOP J-POP SONGS OF THE MONTH
3. Wild Blue – Wild Blue
2. Qwami – Never Stop
1. Sakurazaka46 – I Want Tomorrow To Come
K-POP
Honorable Mentions
Baekhyun – Pineapple Slice (review)
BOYNEXTDOOR – Dangerous / Nice Guy (review / review)
Chanyeol – Back Again (review)
Dragon Pony – Pop Up (review)
HYO – Retro Romance (review)
Key – Pleasure Shop (review)
Loossemble – TTYL (review)
MADEIN – Uno (review)
NCT WISH – Dunk Shot / 3 Minutes (review / review)
ONEWE – Off Road (review)
RIIZE – Combo (review)
Vahn – Feeling (ft. BLKZEN) (review)
Vanner – Automatic (review)
Yena – NEMONEMO (review)
Yerin – Wavy (review)
Yeonjun – GGUM (review)
This Month’s Risers and Fallers
This Month’s Global Pop Round-Up
TOP THREE SONGS
3. Taemin – Horizon (review)
2. xikers – Bittersweet (review)
1. WHIB – Rush Of Joy (review)
Top Three K-Pop Songs Of August 2024
Top Three K-Pop Songs Of July 2024
Top Three K-Pop Songs Of June 2024
Top Three K-Pop Songs Of May 2024
Top Three K-Pop Songs Of April 2024
The Bias List // K-Pop Reviews & Discussion 
Well, at least September gave her best at the very end of the month after a fine line of songs. October’s gonna be ”packed” packed, so I’m curious to see how it runs out.
Anyways, my Top 3 songs of the month would be:
1- Dunk Shot (NCT Wish) (8.75)
2- Rush of Joy (WHIB) (8.75)
3- Horizon (Taemin) (8.75)
Including B-sides, Last Call (P1H) and Bittersweet (xikers) would respectively be at #2 and #3 (both an 8.75 too)
For J-Pop, I’ll have to think of the ranking, but Naqt Vane’s Fallout is sure at #1, it’s prolly my most played song this month. (: (yep, just checked and it has 125 scrobbles, 2.5x the amount as my second most played one!)
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Horizon – 9/10 amazing, i just wish MV had better color grading
TTYL – 8/10 it was good at first but quickly became annoying
Pleasure Shop – 7,5/10 i need another BAD LOVE or Another Life
Rush Of Joy – 7,5/10 if nothing was a song-
GGUM – 5/10 i need it out of my youtube shorts feed
Yet another uninteresting month in k-pop, Jan-June were so good like wtf
Upcoming releases and my predictions on how much I’m gonna love them:
-aespa 10/10
-Itzy 9,7/10
-Kiss Of Life 9,5/10
-Seventeen 9,5/10
-XG 8,5/10
-Lisa 7/10
-Jennie 6/10
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SVT just announced a DJ Khaled feature for the alleged title track lol I would lower my expectations
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OMG Dj Khaled!!!?? For real??
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https://x.com/pledis_17/status/1840964858592051291
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you made me laugh
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The DJ Khaled feature will be the title track?! Nooo I hoped it would be a bside TT
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Turns out the Dj Khaled feature will indeed be the title track.. which is called ‘Love, Money, Fame’.. my expectations have officially dropped.
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I’m cautiously optimistic, now that they revealed Charli Taft (my mother) and Daniel Obi Klein in the credits
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Heard the Jennie snippet and any expectations fell to the Mariana Trench (maybe not that much, but relatively)
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man these past few months have been so exhausting as an army
we got the media and netz being absolutely vile to yoongi over falling off a scooter while drunk (a FUCKING SCOOTER), mhj and tokkis’ bs, and other social media shenanigans. along with that, the music lately hasnt been good. its only a matter of time before i become kpoppie-phobic 😒
i mean recently, i’ve realized the only group that really stood with me throughout my journey in kpop is bts so…
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i mean good things did happen; hoseok finally came back from the military, seven recently surpassed dynamite as the most streamed kpop song, we’re only months away from a reunion, yoongi’s case against him has finally been closed and he only has to pay a fine, the idolcast is still a flop
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Kstans are so fickle. They want their boys to be bad boys, but then when they really are bad boys they turn on them quickly. Or even when they are bad adjacent.
Back in my day … you’ve heard this one before … back in my day we were happy when our rock stars didn’t fall over in an altered state on stage right in front of us. Almost anything else was fair game.
I saw some time ago an old old interview of U2 on the telly on youtube. They were drinking beer during the interview. Pretty sure Larry was still underage at that point too.
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its all about south korea’s godawful media culture where they’re desperate to make anything and everything a celebrity does into a big scandal and blow it way out of proportion. its what led to lee sunkyun killing himself last year
boracity magazine did a great video on this recently when the news on yoongi first blew up
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I was so worried when I heard Yoongi had gotten into some big scandal.. then when I heard what it actually was, my initial response was just to laugh because it is so unbelievable. Really, it isn’ t funny at the end of the day. I can only imagine what he went through with that much
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*negative attention on him.
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like the only reason kmedia and kpop stans are making this into such big news is bcuz its the worst thing they can find on bts, so they’re gonna use it to try and bring the boys down for all they can
at the end of the day however, bts will prevail
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I too need a girl group to change trends… But I also don’t, kinda, just because two things usually happen when something becomes trendy in K-pop:
Be careful what you wish for. Just look at Itzy and Newjeans…
Anyway. My favorite song to come out this month is probably Yena’s NEMONEMO (I must’ve listened to it like 20 times yesterday, another 5 this morning). I liked Pop up, TTYL is good but I’m not crazy over it, Key kinda let me down, Yeonjun REALLY let me down…
At least the October comeback lineup looks interesting. I’m excited to see what Lisa and Jennie, two incredibly talented performers, will do now that they’ve escaped the YG dungeon. I’m a little nervous with tripleS VV being a dance-oriented sub-unit, best case scenario is a good dance track, worst case scenario is 2019 boygroup type rapping/chanting where it feels like the intense choreo gets in the way of everything else. How will aespa follow up the success of Supernova? And why are they bringing back the ae characters..? Can Illit escape the drama MHJ dragged them into and come back stronger? We’ll see.
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NGL I like the ae characters, as song as they’re just visual (I would not feel the same if SM made the ae ‘sing’ 😐 I don’t need another naevis debut debacle)
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Yes, nothing wrong with the characters themselves (I like the redesign!) but something about bringing them back for this comeback, it makes me think they MIGHT be serious about naevis and AI idols 💀
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my favorites are TTYL, Bittersweet, and GGUM. lets just hope October is better
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I like the new Onew “Beat Drum”.
Also the three songs from yesterday, which I haven’t had a chance to listen to much yet but plan to = Yena Nemonemo, Vanner, Whib.
I hadn’t heard the SKZ46 song until now, but I admire its frenzy. Also its length = 4:40!! wowser. a multi-section feast. Also Key Change!!!People, this is how it should be done.
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Thank you for the Beat Drum mention!!
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I think the songs that came out this month fit my mood because I liked a lot. In fact, I can’t even say which are my favorites and which are honorable mentions so I’ll just go ahead and list them in random order:
I don’t listen to a lot of Jpop or Cpop but these 2 songs have been on repeat…I’m in love:
Also, bsides have been awesome…for example:
I’ll leave Vanner, Whib and Dragon Pony for next month.
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“Three out of four SHINee members released something, while two EXO members also got in on the action.“
I had a laugh at this because it perfectly explains why I am ‘randomly’ (so I thought) listening to EXO and SHINees old discographies again. Apparently I am very easily influenced and very unaware of it!
Pineapple Slice and Beat Drum were some of my most listened to songs this month, but I have also been loving Baekhyun’s Bside Rendez-Vous.
In my usual late-to-the-party fashion I have also been listening to Youngji’s collab with D.O., Small Girl. Very basic song, but a great background bop with a really sweet message that Im sure many girls can relate to.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=11iZcYbq_is
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What I liked
Baekhyun – whole ep with Pineapple Slice on it
Taemin – Deja Vu, Horizon
Oh My Girl – Classified, Start Up
Yeojun – Ggum
Vahn – Feeling
Have to process the new Vanner and Key albums. I think I’ll like them, but I wanted them to be, I dunno, zippier.
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Probably going to group the songs I listened to on September with those on August haha…
Title Tracks/Promoted Tracks that I enjoyed (in no order):
And the b-sides I liked:
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real happy to see xikers in the top three!
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