Feature

TAEYEON: A Career In Song Ratings

Posted on by 21 Comments

There are a number of acts who have debuted in the past few decades and have dozens of song ratings on this blog. I thought it would be fun to lay these ratings out in chronological order, line-graph style, and take a macro view of their careers so far. Then, similar to my “Underrated K-pop” features, I can average their ratings into one mega-score and place them in a pantheon alongside other acts.

As always, this feature has some rules of its own. I’m including any “Song Review” ratings as part of this graph, including Japanese releases and collaborations with one other artist. I’m not including Buried Treasures or solo/sub-unit releases. For the ratings themselves, I’m using the most current number on this blog, so if a song was part of a “Risers and Fallers” or “Legendary Songs Inauguration” post, that’s the rating you’ll see displayed here. That means there will still be a few ratings here and there I find slightly inaccurate, but it’ll mostly reflect my up-to-date feelings.

Finally, these scores are completely subjective. Feel free to agree, disagree and argue (that’s part of the fun!), but know that this chart reflects the opinion of only one person (me).

Check out TAEYEON’s placement on the ULTIMATE ARTIST RANKING page!

TAEYEON: A Career In Song Ratings

The Breakdown

Highest Rated Songs

I

Lowest Rated Songs

Happy

Imperial Phases

The Blue Night Of Jeju Island -> I Got Love (2016-2017)

Slump Phases

Lonely -> I’m All Ears (2017-2018)
Stay -> Voice (2018-2019)
Happy -> Let Me Go (2020)
What Do I Call You -> Hate That… (2020-2021)

Rating Average: 7.74

Overall Trendline:

21 thoughts on “TAEYEON: A Career In Song Ratings”

  1. A little correction: you missed out Don’t Forget by Crush featuring Taeyeon

    But yeah, it’s a fair average for her, she has a couple of bops, but mostly, her catalogue is chill, coffeeshop fare. Time Lapse still remains as her strongest song.

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  2. Ah, I, the song called I, the one on my own personal list of misheard lyrics in English. To me, its “Peaches from the sky-ee-i-ee-i-“.

    “Lonely” is the saddest song ever. Penned by Jonghyun, the lyrics have a different impact now years after. Its like take “End of Day” but make it all three ticks lower. Beautiful and sad and melancholy and sad.

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  4. ok a few completely unrelated questions:

    • r u gonna do a buried treasure for the new idntt mini? kinda selfishly asking cuz lovestruck is one of the best kpop songs ive heard all year n its actually over 3:30!!
    • do u think ur ever gonna do a pt 2 of that intl producers who should work w kpop artists thing u did yrs ago? cuz theres a tonnnnn more u couldve added given how many yrs its been
    • n speaking of intl producers have u listened to frost childrens new ep? i think ud love gutted afterlife n faster specifically

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  8. Taeyeon with less than 8 is a crime. Never beating the misogynistic allegations. So many trash boygroups with better scores.

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      • Girl group stans like this immediately rush to “misogyny” during online discourse. It’s a bad trope at this point. The irony is that they’re stanning acts within one of the most misogynistic industries I can imagine.

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      • he isn’t misogynistic he just has an extremely narrow taste in music, basically cheesy anthemic pop music, a lot of girl groups and soloists tend to be a lot more sophisticated and artistic where atmosphere and subtlety, nuance and liminal emotions are more often explored, girl groups are overwhelmingly praised by music rating sites and serious critics and boy group music in heneral is looked down upon, I dont think there is an issue with one guy sharing a different taste in music

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          • Obviously not all are quality, but critical acclaim is heavily skewed toward female acts. Why don’t you look at the K-pop artists most praised by serious Korean music reviewers? f(x)’s Pink Tape is famously the only proper idol group album in the 100 Greatest Korean Albums of All Time, while Perfect Velvet and Reboot hold similar legendary status. If you look at user-curated databases like RYM and AOTY, the top-rated K-pop projects are completely dominated by girl groups: Red Velvet, (early) Loona/ARTMS, f(x), Nmixx, Billlie, GWSN, NewJeans, tripleS, Twice, Dreamcatcher, Ladies’ Code, After School, and SNSD. The exceptions are SHINee (a rare boy group produced with a girl group’s sonic blueprint) and scattered highlights from other male acts.

            K-pop boy groups act just like pop boys in the West. They make generic, performance-based tracks or simple, cheesy music, relying on fandoms and passive listening. On the other hand, female artists face the GP directly and must constantly fight to be heard, forcing their producers to naturally make more innovative, better music. That is just a fact.

            You are The Bias List, so it’s fine to follow your narrow taste; that’s why I enjoy visiting occasionally. But a serious music critic should have a wide palate, rating a song based on whether it achieves its own goals, NOT what you personally want it to be.

            Mind you, this is the blog that wanted the lush, theatrical “Cosmic” to turn into a generic EDM track, gave f(x)’s masterpiece “Shadow” a 7 because it was “too difficult to grasp,” claims B1A4 has a superior discography to Red Velvet and f(x), and gave IU’s legendary “Through the Night” a 6 for sounding like a lullaby (which IS literally what it’s trying to be lol) instead of the “big pop music” he wanted, claiming you could not comprehend what Koreans see in her music. Is this proper music criticism? No, it’s just penalizing great art for not fitting into his specific 2012 boy group taste.

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            • A couple things, and this comment will be WAY too long for the rapidly diminishing space of this comments section, but you brought up a lot of points that are interesting to chew on and got my mind working.

              1. Pink Tape and Reboot are two of my absolute favorite K-pop albums, so no argument there. I’d probably choose The Red over Perfect Velvet because I prefer more uptempo energy, and I’d also add Breaking Heart, Red Light and pretty much any Japanese SNSD album to the mix (among many others).

              2. I balk at the idea of “critical acclaim” and “the best.” Anyone can post on RYM and if you look at AOTY they don’t even review boy group albums beyond the one or two acts that are too big of names to ignore. How can you say what has “critical acclaim” if the critics aren’t even engaging with half of the music available? And who gets to decide what “better music” means? What’s better to you might not be better to others so you can’t say something is “better” as a fact. If you’re going to try to do that, you must set really clear parameters of what can be objectively measured (which isn’t much when it comes to art, honestly). Same thing with “innovative.” With so many decades of popular music under our belt, I’m not even sure what counts as “innovative” anymore since everyone is drawing upon the history of sound popularized by other artists. And just because something is “innovative,” does that automatically make it better? Compare Radiohead’s Kid A with ABBA’s Arrival, for example (I know, I know… CRAZY comparison!). Is Kid A “better” because it’s innovative? Or is Arrival “better” because it houses Dancing Queen, which has permeated global culture and memory for decades after release even if it was maligned at its time? Impossible to answer because “better” is completely subjective, but it seems to me that many people who consider themselves critics jump to something being “better” just because it’s more dense or difficult or moody or minor key. But even if you’re looking for “innovative/experimental” music, I could point you toward a boy group for every girl group you mention (ONF, OnlyOneOf, SHINee, NCT, Infinite, TVXQ, etc), so I don’t think it’s fair to say that innovation is completely segregated to one side.

              3. The idea of a “serious” critic also gives me pause. First of all, I’ve never proclaimed to be a “capital C” critic nor is that the purpose of this blog. Music criticism is in the toilet these days, but it kind of always has been if you’re looking for some objective perfection. The only true critic is time. Even outlets that base themselves around criticism will usually assign certain albums/artists to writers with knowledge or interest in them. In a perfect world, I suppose you’d have a K-pop website with a compendium of critics who each specialize in a different sub-genre or interest. Then, readers could find the voices and tastes they connect most with. That’s how I prefer music criticism. I like to find those tastes that I align with for music recommendations, or people’s perspectives I find interesting (whether I agree with them or not) that help me think about music in a new way. For me, criticism that tries to be too objective often ends up saying very little.

              4. I don’t want to be defending men because god knows men are in no need of being propped up in this world any more than they already are, but there is a vast over-representation of girl group stans in online places. I suspect this is what we’re seeing in RYM and the like as well. I don’t know if it’s just a venn diagram of these fans being the most likely to comment about music online, but in almost every general K-pop space there is a loud majority of people who seem to only listen to female artists. A song is ignored or openly dismissed simply because it comes from a male act. Look at K-pop reddit, for example, which routinely garners hundreds of comments under each gg release and hardly any under even the bigger bg releases. There are so many forums that only post gg videos and don’t even engage in music from male acts. Even my blog sees higher numbers for almost any gg review. There is just a sizable audience that only wants gg material and actively states that. So, it’s hard to take them seriously when they proclaim how much “better” ggs are than bgs when they don’t even listen to bgs. I’m not saying this person is you, but it does really skew perception online. People are free to agree or disagree with my taste, but at least I listen to everything. I just don’t think you can comment about what’s “better” than something else if you haven’t experienced the full spectrum.

              5. I get what you’re trying to say, but stating that someone has “narrow” taste and then belittling what you perceive their taste to be (“cheesy,” not sophisticated) is not the nicest way to go about it. First of all, who gets to decide what’s defined as “serious” or “sophisticated”? I consider a wonderfully written, timeless pop melody to be very serious business. They’re not easy to write! When I think of someone with a “narrow” taste, I imagine a person who listens to only one thing over and over again, isn’t open to anything else and has a very little pool of music to draw from. This just doesn’t match my experience as a music fan for decades with a vast library of songs from pretty much every era, genre and locale you could imagine. Nor does it match the curiosity I still feel about finding new music and new artists. Also, you’re misrepresenting some quotes you pulled from my writing. I never said Shadow was “too difficult to grasp.” I said it was difficult to grasp onto – as in, the song has a mercurial, almost intangible quality that I didn’t enjoy as much as some of their other work. And I never said I wanted Cosmic to be “generic EDM.” Adding electronic percussion or a trance beat doesn’t automatically make something generic. And while I’d probably put Red Velvet and B1A4’s full discographies on similar levels, I think B1A4 have the better, more consistent singles run (which is what these posts are built upon). Their albums are really great too, though. Have you ever listened to one?

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        • yeah, cuz gnarly and pinky up are SOOOO subtle and nuanced, eating zucchini has such deep meaning too. don’t forget the “who’s your bias”, that must be actually talking about the pressures of the idol industry 🥺🥺🥺. genuinely stfu

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