The next few weeks on The Bias List will be stuffed with all manner of end-of-year countdowns. From K-pop to J-pop to global pop to dramas, it’ll all be covered. This is a fun way to tie a bow on the year and celebrate all the things I loved in 2024. These countdowns kick off tomorrow with my biggest one: The Top 50 K-Pop Songs of 2024.
Honestly, this has been a strange year for K-pop. The industry seemed more scandal-plagued than ever and ended its year with a flurry of disbandments and controversies. It’ll be interesting to see where we head going forward. As far as music is concerned, 2024 was split neatly in half. A vast percentage of my favorite music came from the first half of the year, leaving the second half quite underwhelming. Despite this, I’d consider 2024 stronger as a whole than 2023 (though for me this is thanks to the work of a relatively small group of artists).
There will be plenty of space to talk about musical trends later, but I am definitely in the mood for a change. I adopted the term “beige pop” to describe many of this year’s offerings. Subdued sounds seem to be in. Even when artists borrowed from traditionally bombastic genres, they often did so in a more nuanced way. I’ve never been the biggest fan of nuance in pop music, so that’s a bit of a problem when it comes to personal taste. For this reason, my list this year is especially short on girl groups. These trends seemed to affect them more than boy groups and I’m very eager for a return to a more forceful sound (think Kara, GFriend, T-ara, WJSN, Sistar, etc).
Of course, there were plenty of excellent songs released this year — from boy groups, girl groups and soloists. I’m excited to spotlight them over the next few days. Personally, I’m a bigger fan of my top ten than I have been in years. In the end, 2024 was more “quality” than “quantity,” with a handful of songs I adore cutting through the year’s many, many skips. On balance, it all works itself out. And for those interested in stats, there are also some new records within this year’s countdown that will become apparent once everything is revealed. It’s always interesting to see how things shake out.
This is also a great time to preface the countdown by reiterating how it is different from other year-end countdowns. This is not a list picked by consensus, nor is it one based upon any metric of success beyond how much I personally enjoyed a song. There will be hits, commercial flops and many under-the-radar picks. You probably won’t agree with everything, but just like The Bias List as a whole, you can be assured that it is 100% authentic to my taste.
Speaking of the blog, 2024 is on track to continue year-over-year growth in views and visitors. That’s nine straight years of improvement. As I do every year, I want to thank each and every reader — whether you’re in agreement with my reviews or not. Thanks for continuing to visit! Feedback and activity are the things that keep me posting on a daily basis.
This year-end feature is my 820th post of the year, which is up again from this time last year. That’s 260,000 words — or a couple novels’ worth of content, if you’d like to count it that way!
Eligibility criteria for my Top 50 Singles list hasn’t changed since last year, but for those who are new to the blog, here are the rules. This year, there was one song that didn’t quite fit the criteria but I just couldn’t justify counting it as a b-side.
Eligibility criteria:
- A song must have been released as a title, follow-up or promoted track between December 1, 2023 and November 30, 2024.
- A song must be paired with a full music video or big-budget performance video (the lines get more blurred each year).
- English-language singles are eligible. Japanese singles by K-pop artists will be part of the J-pop countdown.
Before kicking off the countdowns tomorrow, here are the ten songs that didn’t quite make the Top 50.
The Bias List // K-Pop Reviews & Discussion 
Oh crap, the year is INDEED strong when Cosmic and Touchin&Movin, both which have barely reached the “9” mark (though the latter fell from 9), are barely out of the Top 50 O:
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if Cosmic is this low then the top 50 must be THAT good
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To be fair, Cosmic didn’t connect with me as strongly as it did with most listeners. It’s a song I appreciate more than actively enjoy — one of those objectively great tracks that just didn’t hit me.
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I 100% understand what you sare saying. I feel the same exact way about Cosmic and another that a LOT of people love: 0x1=Lovesong
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I’m surprised to hear you say you think the top 10 this year is better than last year. When I look at my favorites from 2023, – NewJeans (Ditto, Super Shy, Cool with You/Get Up, ETA, OMG), NINE.i – Turn It Off, Nine (OnlyOneOf) – BeyOnd, B.I – Die for Love, Le Sserafim – Eve, Psyche, & Bluebeard’s Wife, aespa – Spicy –
– there’s only about 2 songs this year that I would rank with those. Those would be RIIZE’s Impossible, TWS’s Plot Twist, and surprisingly, maybe my #1 (no one’s more surprised than me, it’s just too infectious & fun!): Rose’s APT.
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(And every year, there’s usually that one song that everyone loves and gets ranked really really high, but which I find over-rated and even annoying – songs like IVE’s I Am, Girls’ Generation’s Forever 1… and this year, that distinction belongs to aespa’s Supernova.)
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😐… Oh?
It’s difficult to guess which song will enter your Top 50 Singles and Honorable Mentions at the end of the year. Suddenly you put ‘8.5’ songs mixed with ‘8.75’. It’s difficult to guess your criteria when there are songs that didn’t even appear on ‘Risers and Fallers’. Nick is a mystery
I’m still putting together my Honorable Mentions, but to summarize there are many songs rated ‘8.5’. K-Pop has lowered my grades
In fact, I haven’t finished or completely closed my Top 50 yet. My list covers January to December 🤷
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Damn I thought cosmic would place higher. It’s my favourite kpop song of the year, and prob in my top 5 Rv title tracks. The chorus and bridge r very beautiful, especially Wendy’s voice as the song goes into its final chorus. From reading an English translation, the lyrics seem to be unusually poetic. And although the bar is in hell for k/pop lyricism, I do think the metaphor of the star is quite well done. Although unrelated to the song, the mv is also gorgeous, particularly that final scene, I must’ve rewatched it over 50 times. On the face of it, I guess it appears to be a “simple” song — but I think it captures a feeling of wistfulness wrapped in a some magical, euphoric quality, unlike many other songs I’ve heard
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Cosmic and Welcome to the Show are on my Top 10😂
Interesting how we can agree on so many things but still have different end of year results.
Nu Shoes was adorable and fun!
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Can’t wait to see TWS take over the top 10 🤭 (as they will mine)
Love Cosmic and Imaginary Friend though, so I’d have them higher up on my list.
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Ah, and Welcome to the Show and Nemonemo too! Honestly, I haven’t gone through the year very thoroughly yet to make my top lists but I’m realizing it might be stronger than I initially thought. I’m one of those people that put on the survey that 2024 has been average in comparison to previous years but as you said, the highlights overall might make it stronger than 2023.
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I wouldn’t even question it if all their singles made it lmao. (personally my list would have Oh Mymy : 7s, If I’m S, Can You Be My N? & Last Festival)
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I have plot twist, hey hey, SN, and Last Festival in mine! We’ll see where they place in Nick’s list 👀 particularly I know Last Festival has grown on him but I’m wondering how much
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Hurts to see Imaginary Friend so low it genuinely is one of the most prettiest composed songs this year.
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Seeing Cosmic here, in it’s first week upon release I thought it was gonna be the only girl group release I ended up liking this year. It didn’t age that well for me and I left the song in my music basement afterwards, while Welcome to the show aged better than I thought it would, I guess I ended up liking the melody. With December, it seems Strategy will be my only liked girl group release this year🤔
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Glad to hear you’re happy with this year’s high-end releases.
Looking back at my top list from 2023, nothing this year comes close. Riize’s love 911 and Illit’s Magnetic are the only songs that would make top 20 probably D:
And 2022 felt like a weaker year than 2022 and 2021…
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katy perry’s woman’s world was such a flop she cursed the rest of the second half of this year into being mid, we should be blaming her
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Oh this year is a pass for me. I about one-third of the number of songs as usual years, dominated heavily by old favorites releasing new material. I went weeks without even charging up or syncing the ipods. Then I went through a frenzy of buying the SHINee back catalog. I think I will have a top 5, perhaps 10.
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Highly surprise to see Touchin & Movin is here…. It’s one of my top song wrapped this year (totally biased). Also just wondering why would your lower down your rating on this song, since there’s someone asking on the rise & fall but you didn’t answer tho… haha
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It’s one of those songs that’s very strong but just didn’t have any legs for me. I hardly listened to it after February, so I couldn’t justify putting it higher. I’d still rate it 8.75 today. I quite like it.
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Last year you ignored viviz, i hope it doesn’t happen again
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I can’t believe Cosmic didn’t make top 20, omg.
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Already seeing one of my top songs of the year in the honorable mentions! NemoNemo is one of my favorite songs ever. I’ve been considering getting into Jpop purely because I’ve heard they have more songs that sound like it. (Side note, I really hope Yena sticks with this kind of sound. It suits her really well.)
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Nemonemo is one of those songs that no matter how loud I play it it still feels I should be playing it louder, which is one of the highest compliments I could give to a pop song. It definitely rates a lot higher on my list for the year too compared to where it’s placed here.
And yes regarding its sound, my first thought when it came out was “I’m surprised this is a Yena Korean release and not a Yena Japanese release”. I’m sure it’ll make its way across the sea eventually.
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yes re: jpop for sure, you should get into yoasobi and ado for starters 🙂
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Kinda late to this, but I only listen to Christmas music until the day so I was highly anticipating this countdown especially this year since I followed your best of the month entries. I added many 2024 songs to my k-pop playlists and can’t wait to see which ones made the cut into the top 50.
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