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.
September 2026 Overall Thoughts
I don’t usually have great expectations for September in K-pop. It tends to be a pretty dry month with the Chuseok holidays. I’m also super busy with back-to-school work and the whole month just feels very transitional. In all the years I’ve been keeping track, my top song of the year has only come from September twice (2013 and 2020), and that definitely won’t be happening again this year.
With this said, September 2026 was actually a pretty sizable uptick from the past few months. Because of the holiday, releases were heavily front-loaded and back-loaded, with a wide swath of barren landscape in between. This made for some very busy blogging days, but it’s always fun to have an influx of new music. Very few of my personal faves returned this month. Instead, it was a series of pleasant surprises with strong albums from acts I’d never paid much attention to (or had been very hit or miss) in the past.
One thing I really noticed this September was the gender discrepency. Boy group releases almost always outnumber girl group releases in any given month, but this month was especially lopsided. Out of 56 song reviews this month (geez that’s a lot for a so-called “slow” month…) only a measly eight were for girl groups. So… where did they all go? I feel for all you girl group song lovers!
My top three songs of the month are all very solid. Nothing blew me away in an “oh my god, soty!” way, but I’m quite pleased with them. We’ve even got a couple “9” rated songs in there for the first time in awhile! To be honest, I’m really not sure which song deserves my top place. I hate when great tracks are released on the final day of the month because that’s just not enough time to reliably rank them against material that’s been around for longer. We’ll see how things eventually shake out later this year, but I’m considering the songs at my number one and two spots to be essentially tied.
Even more than my top spots, I’m happy to have a long list of honorable mentions — many of which were rated in the mid-8’s on the blog. While none of these felt like major standouts, a bunch of good-to-great material is better than a bunch of nothing!
We’re now entering the last two months of eligibility for my year-end countdown. October and November tend to be quite busy with one last burst of activity before the industry’s year-end shows/events slow everything to a crawl. I’m hopeful that we’ll see a few big highlights from this period — especially from some acts with a great track record — but I don’t want to set myself up for disappointment. So… I’ll get what I get and I won’t throw a fit.
Month Cumulative Rating: 7.7
(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. Generations – Vibe
2. One Love One Heart – Aisaretaimajide
1. RUNIDRE – On Your Mark
K-POP
Honorable Mentions
ALL(H)OURS – Dang Dang (review)
ASC2NT – If I Die Tomorrow (review)
Big Ocean – Love Sign (review)
Close Your Eyes – Open Your Eyes (review)
DAILY:DIRECTION – Up (review)
Doh Kyung Soo – Guitarist (review)
Evan – Death Of Me (review)
hrtz.wav – Alive (ft. RIIZE’s Sungchan) (review)
KickFlip – Puzzle Piece (review)
LE SSERAFIM – Made My Night (review)
Minho – Make It Hot (review)
VERIVERY – Don’t Panic! (review)
xikers – Just For Fun (Minjae, Sumin & Yechan) (review)
Youngtak – GOGO (review)
&TEAM – Good Boy (review)
This Month’s Risers and Fallers
This Week In K-pop: Week 1 / Week 2 / Week 3 / Week 4
This Month’s Global Pop Round-Up
TOP THREE SONGS OF SEPTEMBER
3. Pentagon – Coward (review)
2. CRAVITY – Louder (review)
1. ONEUS – Say Yes! (review)
Top Three K-Pop Songs Of August 2026
Top Three K-Pop Songs Of July 2026
Top Three K-Pop Songs Of June 2026
Top Three K-Pop Songs Of May 2026
Top Three K-Pop Songs Of April 2026
Finally the first ever month of 2026 that doesn’t suck, we cheered! Ofc the Chuseok holidays killed a bit of momentum and Allday Project terrorized us with a couple of clunkers but it’s been a great month.
Anyways, my top 3 will be Louder, Dang Dang and Say Yes
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Guitarist really grew on me so much – it’s so slick and idk if anyone else hears this but it’s like if Itzy’s Motto got transformed into the form of Riize’s Get a guitar to me 😂
Top 3 probs Guitarist, Louder and New trick
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Honestly, I’ve been out of the loop when it comes to K-pop, but I’ve got more 9+ rated songs in 2026 than I have for 2025, 2023 and 2022, so it hasn’t been that bad for me.
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YOUR USERNAME ☠️☠️
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I liked Puzzle Piece well enough on first listen but I can tell it’s the type of song that needs time to grow. Super annoying, then, that it’s not available for streaming or purchase yet. I hate when k-pop agencies do that!
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i already mentioned this before but it’s so surprising to have september be the month that picks up the slack of the rest of the year. my favorite k-pop idol tinashe also made a comeback and released her new album this month too!
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XDDD Tinashe is the Kpop final boss. They ain’t ready for her!
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Tinashe is one of those artists I really want to get into but I’m just not hearing the appeal. I’m baffled by how well the new album has been received, as my preview of it felt like listening to every other mid/downtempo, repetitively-phrased pop/R&B of the moment. What am I missing? I genuinely want to board the hype train
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Wow, alot happened this month. From some of my relatives birthdays to navigating situations in my life, things have been great! On top of that, this month for Kpop was a step up compared to all of Summer 2026 and I’m really grateful for that. Death of Me and Coward were my 2 standouts this month but of course, Mark’s My Friend is slowly becoming one of my favorite releases this year ✝️🙂.
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