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.
January 2026 Overall Thoughts
January can be quite exciting for new music. After a year has wrapped up and its songs have been celebrated, we turn the page and look forward to new opportunities. We’ve had some very strong Januarys in the past few years (2024 and 2021 come immediately to mind) and these often portend a strong year to come.
Sadly, this year’s January was the weakest I can remember in a long time. Maybe… ever?
I said the same about last month and couldn’t even pick three songs I thought were worthy of a “top three” placement. I won’t play that card again, even if nothing really stood out enough to warrant a celebration this month.
From a numbers perspective, January’s cumulative rating is the lowest since May of 2020 — a month that was marred by infrequent releases. As far as Januarys go, this was the lowest ever on The Bias List except for the very first month of 2016 right after the blog’s launch when I was still figuring out my ratings system and tended to rate songs much lower than I do now. As a reminder, that January gave us GFriend’s Rough — one of the best songs of the past decade. No such luck this year.
It’s funny. I actively follow more K-pop acts than ever before, yet they all seem to go into hibernation for months before making comebacks at the same time. This has led to a few bursts of excitement each year, interspersed with vast stretches of nothing. We’re in one of those stretches now and I’m not sure relief is on the immediate horizon. Even the one comeback I had been looking forward to next month (TWS) turns out not to be a comeback at all but a re-release of an old track in a new language. We’ve got some big names lined up for February but so far none of the teasers have grabbed me and the artists themselves have a pretty spotty track record. Also, February is traditionally quite slow with the Lunar New Years celebrations necessitating another short hiatus for the industry.
The thing is, I can deal with a low-rated month as long as it bears a few highlights. In fact, this type of month is preferable to the ones that offer a ton of decent material but no knock-it-out-of-the-park standouts. January was both underwhelming and lacking highlights, making it a bore to cover on the blog. I tried to provide interesting commentary to uninteresting songs, but there’s only so much I can do with the material I’m given!
My top three songs of January are a fine bunch. I don’t think we’ll be seeing them in any year-end countdowns unless 2026 continues to be very week (please, no!). I’m pretty confident in my top choice and less so in numbers two and three. Both songs are very recent. One has grown on me, the other has fallen. We’ll see where things stack up in a month or so.
Thankfully, it was actually a pretty strong month for J-pop. I really like all my top three and even have some honorable mentions (XG’s Hypnotize, mostly). Also, my absolute favorite J-pop song of January (Kento Nakajima’s Kesshou) was ineligible since it doesn’t (yet) have a music video. Hopefully it’ll get promoted in February so I can celebrate it more.
As I wrote earlier, I’m feeling pretty pessimistic about February’s chances to turn K-pop’s non-momentum around, though I’d love to be proven wrong. With TWS off the table, we’ve got some big-name artists scheduled (BLACKPINK, IVE, ATEEZ) that could go either way. ZEROBASEONE’s farewell singles have left me cold so far so hopefully the last one will buck that trend. All I know is I really need a couple of 9+ rated highlights to reignite my excitement. It’s been far too long!
Month Cumulative Rating: 7.3
(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. HANA – Cold Night
2. PIGGS – Firedance Saga
1. STARGLOW – Star Wish (review)
K-POP
Honorable Mentions
Apink – Love Me More (review)
ChRocktikal – PEACE (review)
CNBlue – Killer Love (review)
dodree – Just A Dream (review)
idntt – Pretty Boy Swag / Yes We Are (review / review)
n.SSign – Funky Like Me (ft. Peak & Pitch) (review)
Waker – Like That (review)
This Month’s Risers and Fallers
This Week In K-pop: Week 1 / Week 2 / Week 3
This Month’s Global Pop Round-Up
TOP THREE SONGS OF JANUARY
3. 8TURN – Bruise (review)
2. KiiiKiii – 404 (New Era) (review)
1. EXO – Crown (review)
Top Three K-Pop Songs Of December 2025
Top Three K-Pop Songs Of November 2025
Top Three K-Pop Songs Of October 2025
Top Three K-Pop Songs Of September 2025
Top Three K-Pop Songs Of August 2025
The Bias List // K-Pop Reviews & Discussion 
XO, My Cyberlove not even getting an honourable mention is crazy 😭
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Sadly, I found that song quite boring and repeated listens didn’t change that for me 😅
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I get that! I love beige pop and ballads so I am a bit weird but I found the sing very pleasant to listen to!
Anyways, hopefully we get a better February!
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Do you think you’ll get a buried treasure for KiiiKiiis EP? UNDERDOGS!!
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No, but I’ll feature Underdogs in tomorrow’s weekly round-up.
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On the other hand, will there be a better song this year than Bruno Mars’ “I Just Might,” released on Jan 9th? (It’s pretty ubiquitous already, so no point in me leaving a link to it.) I also got excited this week by underground London rapper fakemink’s “fml.” – largely because it samples Burial’s Rival Dealer pretty prominently (the whole track’s built on top of it), one of my favorite albums (actually, an EP) of the last 10 years.
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(sadly i don’t like that bruno song…)
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Nooooooo! I find it irresistible and very retro, like his work in Silk Sonic (I’m hoping for a follow-up release to that album).
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404 has grown on me! The instrumental really is giving it some bite and relatability (similar to Focus by H2H)
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“yet they all seem to go into hibernation for months before making comebacks at the same time”.
I ain’t been into KPop or Japanese music whether rock or pop quite as long as you or some others on here only past two or three years honestly, but gotta say that unfortunately this is quite true from what I have seen, and I mean I get it in a way that of course making music can take time much like making anime or manga or films or pretty much damn near everything in entertainment biz it seems, but at the same time I mean isn’t quite a bit of the entertainment biz about keeping audiences or fans entertained too? So then if ya don’t keep that up eventually ya are gonna lose some and that can mean lost money too from sales and music and such too. So I would think that if they cared at all about their fans they would wanna keep the hits on rolling ya know? I mean I ain’t saying that they should cater to fans every needs, but take into consideration how they react and opinions of their music and factor some of that into making music and the like as well so that way they make a product that not only they like, but their fans will like as well.
Just my thoughts on it is all.
But in my experience and from what some family who grew up in and came from farming in a way both it and the entertainment biz are similar granted farming is far harder work and far more stressful than being in the entertainment biz will ever be, but like I said they are similar in a way in that there are good times or years and bad ones, sometimes have a good year of harvest where the weather for the most part cooperates (not so much flooding or hail or bad weather in summer time and the snow and cooler weather might hold off til harvest is all done) and ya get a good profit other times maybe not so good weather and animals or bugs or weather doesn’t cooperate and ya end up losing some of profit and have not so good a year where ya might barely scrape by enough to survive off of or equipment breaks down too. But, like I said good times and bad times or good years and bad years.
And who knows maybe there is come truly great music on the horizon, ya never know. Like Forest Gump once said “life is like a box of chocolates, ya never know what ya are gonna get”.
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I really liked the NCT WISH Japanese album. No incredible songs, just solid all the way through. As for Korean K-pop:
5 – Apink – Love Me More
4 – Dodree – Just Like a Dream
3 – HADES – Planet B
2 – ENHYPEN – Knife (Massive grower! Top listened for sure.)
1 – EXO – Crown
CNBlue was good too, first song I’ve liked from them since Then, Now and Forever.
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Korean K-pop?
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my top 2 are the dramatic ones and then the 3rd place is the “funnest” one:
EXO – Crown
8Turn – Bruise
idntt – Pretty Boy Swag
Honorables:
CNBLue – Killer Joy (or Killer Lover…whatever Nick calls it is fine by me😂)
Waker – Like That
n.Sign – Funk Like Me
TNX – Call Me Back
1Verse – WABIF
POW – Come True
Can’t be blue – Should be You
January was slow, but some boy group goodies sprinkled here and there kept me entertained.
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