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.
December 2024 Overall Thoughts
Oh gosh, what a month for South Korea. December started with martial law and ended with a deadly plane crash. It’s just been an awful string of events for this country, making for a very fraught transition into the new year. I hope 2025 brings stability and safety.
Musically, December is never very noteworthy. There simply aren’t many new releases this month, and those that do emerge are minimally promoted as many music shows go on hiatus. I have a few decent songs in my top three but I don’t imagine any will challenge the upper half of next year’s Top 50 countdown.
Instead, December is all about the year-end music festivals and award shows. If I counted remixes, TWS’s excellent orchestral version of “hey! hey!“ would easily be my top song of the month. I’m utterly obsessed with it and have played it more than any new K-pop release this month. As Korea maintains its national mourning period, MBC’s year-end festival has been postponed and will air sometime in January. After nearly a decade of watching this event on New Year’s eve, it’s going to be weird not having K-pop usher in my new year. I’ll definitely be writing my usual recap when it does air.
On the blog, December is quite busy because it’s the month I unveil all of my many K-pop countdowns. During some years, the top honors are spread out among a wide variety of artists, but this was a year where a couple acts really dominated for me. I hope you enjoyed reading through the countdowns these past few weeks. The masterpost will be removed from the top of the blog tomorrow and shifted to the sidebar for easy access.
In contrast to K-pop, J-pop has a history of unveiling very strong material in December. All three releases highlighted in this post made my “Top 50 J-pop” countdown. Yukiakari has finally urged me to dive deeper into &TEAM’s discography and variety. I really like the song.
The transition into a new year is always exciting when I think about all the new music that awaits us. There were so many great songs in 2024 that have now become part of my life and history. I can’t help but wonder what music is lurking around the corner waiting to become part of that rich tapestry.
Month Cumulative Rating: 8.0
(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
TOP J-POP SONGS OF THE MONTH
3. Ryugujo – ZeroZero
2. &TEAM – Yukiakari (review)
1. ONE OK ROCK – +Matter
K-POP
Honorable Mentions
BABYMONSTER – Love In My Heart (review)
CRAVITY – Now Or Never (review)
fromis_9 – From (review)
Mark – Fraktsiya (ft. Lee Youngji) (review)
ONEUS – Rupert’s Drop (review)
Twice – Strategy (ft. Megan Thee Stallion) (review)
This Month’s Risers and Fallers
This Month’s Global Pop Round-Up
TOP THREE SONGS
3. from20 x Hello Gloom – Blue (review)
2. Treasure – Last Night (review)
1. 8TURN – Like A Friend (review)
Top Three K-Pop Songs Of November 2024
Top Three K-Pop Songs Of October 2024
Top Three K-Pop Songs Of September 2024
Top Three K-Pop Songs Of August 2024
Top Three K-Pop Songs Of July 2024
The Bias List // K-Pop Reviews & Discussion 
An understandably sparse month. Well, the comebacks were decent so yeah…
Anyways, my top 3 are:
1- Strategy (Twice) – 8.75
2- Like a Friend (8Turn) – 8.75
3- Now or Never (Cravity) – 8.5
And that’s it for K-Pop 2024, now let’s see what 2025 has in store for us
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Honorable Mentions
8TURN – Like A Friend
BabyMonster – Love In My Heart
From20 X Hello Gloom – Blue
3. Cravity – Now Or Never
2. Younite – Taste
1. Treasure – Last Night
37 songs released this month
• Month Cumulative Rating: 7,6
I know there were supposed to be more songs here for the amount of songs I evaluated. I rated most songs as “8”, an intermediate rating but still valid for Nick to fit here. Again saying, I don’t include this rating here, if I did, there would be more songs, the following:
Something About U, Rupert’s Drop, Free Fall, Sky Walking, Gradually.
I didn’t evaluate Fromis_9’s disband song, as it doesn’t count as a promotional single, just as it was with G-Dragon’s Home Sweet Home, which I include in my top b-sides of the year and not singles, in fact, the music grew on me. Twice’s song disappointed me even though I didn’t have a bet for this month. Your song stays like 7.75 with me
It only gave this value (I mean, 37 songs) because I evaluated the solo music videos that the members of Stray Kids released. December overall was a normal month for me. Was there little music? Yes. Were there fewer promotions? Yes. But it was still quite normal for me
May 2025 bring a good year for K-Pop. From the bottom of my chest I don’t want a year similar to 2022 or 2023 for this industry. These years were very weak for me
I’m not putting expectations on any artist for January. Although GFriend attracts attention. I’m afraid renowned groups will return with weak music, a recurring event. So… no bets
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Ending the year on a positive note. Loved:
Cravity – Now or Never
Treasure – Last Night
&Team – Yukiakare / Illumination
Honorables:
Sevenus – Slomo
Rose – Toxic til the End
Ash Island – I Don’t Want to be Your Hero
Happy New Year!
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Both of the #2s are among my favorite songs of the year, let alone month…I also appreciate how the performance vids for both songs feature white boyband fits.
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I think from20 x Hello Gloom’s Blue is my favorite of the month. I remember NewJeans released Ditto in mid-December 2022, and it was a monster hit for like half the year of 2023 and set all kinds of chart records. Maybe that’s considered an outlier? because I’m surprised other groups or agencies haven’t tried a similar tactic, sneaking a great song in during the lean winter months of the new year.
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Just to clarify what I was saying about Ditto, it was clear that ADOR was going big with that song, what with the ambitious (and probably expensive) 2-part utterly captivating music video. They knew they had something special, and chose mid-December to release what was clearly intended to be a big song. So it’s a bit surprising other labels or artists haven’t tried something similar.
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The December months seem to be mostly taken over by Christmas music and/or ballads, I feel. But idol releases in January do tend to do fairly well most of the time because they’re in an ’empty house’, so to speak. In recent years I can also remember (G)I-DLE’s Hwaa did really well (until it was overshadowed by the Soojin stuff later that year), but also some January releases by a few groups have been among their own best-performing releases on Korean charts (eg: TXT’s Sugar Rush Ride)
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