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.
August 2025 Overall Thoughts
In the immortal words of BABYMONSTER: “Sheesh!”
Based on recent history, I’ve decided the month of August is either feast or famine for K-pop. If you were curious how the past few years have stacked up, here’s what I’ve got:
2020: Famine (ish)
2021: Feast!
2022: Major Feast!
2023: Feast!
2024: Famine
2025: Major Famine…
If my somewhat arbitrary pattern holds up, we’re due for another famine next year before three consecutive August feasts.
At the risk of mixing metaphors, this August felt like one big punt. Few interesting things happened and not one album stuck with me for more than a listen or two. There were a couple of good singles, a couple really bad ones and a lot of dull, forgettable releases. The most notable comebacks/debuts disappointed, with Stray Kids and IVE releasing clunkers and Big Hit’s new boy group CORTIS taking a marketing and musical approach I found very off-putting.
Compared to June and July, my honorable mentions list this month is very small. There just wasn’t much I enjoyed. And though I’m technically picking a top three, only the top two songs would have any chance of competing in a more stacked month. I’d say the same thing about my J-pop choices.
Overall, the summer of 2025 was reasonably solid for K-pop releases, though they all seemed to be packed into the last two weeks of June and the first two of July. This created a really fun stretch of new music, bookended by long periods of dullness. Maybe let’s try to spread out the goods more equitably next year?
More than anything, I’m very curious to see how my year-end countdown shapes up. I’ve heard a couple SOTY contenders so far in 2025 but it still feels like I’m waiting for that one song that indisputably takes the crown. If that song does emerge in the coming months, it will almost certainly be the “latest” number one song in the history of this blog. Until now, the latest-released SOTY is Taemin’s Criminal (released on Sept 7th, 2020) followed closely by G-Dragon’s Crooked (Sept 5th, 2013). No SOTY has ever emerged from October or November. In fact, no post-September track has even breached the top three since 2018 when Golden Child’s Genie took the runner-up spot. We still have comebacks scheduled/rumored from many of my favorite acts, so this record could certainly be broken this year. I hope it is!
On a side note, this year the Chuseok holiday is in early October so I anticipate that at least the first few weeks of September should be a bit busier than normal before we get that week or two of nothing when music shows are canceled.
Month Cumulative Rating: 7.6
(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. Party Party – Knock Me On
2. One Love One Heart – Bagucchau Ne (review)
1. King & Prince – I Know
K-POP
Honorable Mentions
AB6IX – Stupid (review)
BoA – Crazier (review)
idntt – You Never Met (review)
Jeon Somi – Closer (review)
Kep1er – Bubble Gum (review)
KiiiKiii – Dancing Alone (review)
RE:WIND – Little Too Late (review)
This Month’s Risers and Fallers
This Week In K-pop: Week 1 / Week 2 / Week 3 / Week 4 / Week 5
This Month’s Global Pop Round-Up
TOP THREE SONGS
3. 8TURN – Electric Heart (review)
2. NCT Wish – Surf (review)
1. Key – Hunter (review)
Top Three K-Pop Songs Of July 2025
Top Three K-Pop Songs Of June 2025
Top Three K-Pop Songs Of May 2025
Top Three K-Pop Songs Of April 2025
Top Three K-Pop Songs Of March 2025
The Bias List // K-Pop Reviews & Discussion 
This month is probably one of the worst months in recent years, but THANKFULLY squeezed in a few highlights, although barely managed to do so by the second half-ish. Rest were either super disappointing (IVE just… why?) or… meh. Nothing notable enough sadly, and that’s saying a lot given hopes were lowkey high for Cortis given BTS and TXT’s legacy (you know, TXT’s super solid debut year) and knowing how TWS and BND are thriving, but well… be careful for what you wish.
Anyways, my top 3:
1- Little Too Late (RE:WIND) (I’m not gonna lie, this is such a grower, this is very likely to hit the 9s for me in the future)
2- Hunter (Key)
3- Electric Heart (8TURN)
Honourable mentions: Bubble Gum (Kep1er) and Surf (NCT Wish, a close third!)
I hope September’s a redemption arc of sorts, and I’m sure TWS’ coming back by October (or November?), I hope they don’t disappoint though the little spoiler from today doesn’t sound too promising (unless it’s a dance break, although they managed to sell Double Take decently but oh well)
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did hunter rise for you? i thought it was faller
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No. There were no 9-rated songs for me this month.
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2023 takes the crown, since I rate Nine.i/Sweetune’s Turn It Off above every other song on those lists. It’s funny how just one major Sweetune song can turn a year around for me.
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One songs stood out from everything else this month and that’s Electric Heart by 8Turn❤️
Epex’ Grateful to Tears and Xngan’s Heavenly Blue from late July were favorites as well❤️
Honorables:
AB6IX – Stupid
Key – Hunter
JunHee – Supernova
JustB – Too Late
TeenTop – Cherry Pie
The highlight of the month was Gdragon’s Crooked live in concert…I cannot find the words to describe how I felt those 5 minutes. It was certainly a dream come true🤩
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thanks to all these droughts of good music these days, pretty much any song that isnt rated 8.5 or above or isnt from a big artist im gonna end up looking over, i just want a month thats consistent with bangers again…
even the ones i do end up listening to end up overlooked thanks to this…
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Highlights for me were Hunter, Dancing Alone, and Boa’s Album, and the skz music bank performance I saw, hip hip hooray!
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I’d give this month to Jeon Somi’s Closer follow by Re:wind’s Little Too Late.
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