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.
October 2026 Overall Thoughts
Well… it’s better late than never, huh? In my mind, October was probably the strongest K-pop month of 2026 so far. After my ratings revisions, the month delivered a whopping five “9” rated title tracks. To put that in perspective, that’s more than the last five months… combined. However, this distinction has a major caveat: October was hard-carried by one particular week. In fact, four of these “9” rated songs were released on the exact same day! 2026 may be underwhelming overall, but both October 12th and April 27th will go down as much-needed “epic days in K-pop.” Comparatively, the rest of the month followed 2026’s general trend of so-so material, dragging down October’s cumulative rating.
The flurry of “9” rated title tracks made my top three songs of the month unusually competitive. Those judging simply by initial ratings might be surprised which songs eked it out to finish in the top spots, but that’s why I have a “risers and fallers” feature. Some songs hit it big right out the gate and slow down quickly after. Others take time to work their way under your skin. Neither option is necessarily “better” than the other, but when looking at these final placements I tend to give the edge to music that sticks around on my playlist and grows more addictive with time. This is why CRAVITY’s Louder should have been an easy number one on last month’s round-up, but with only a single day to judge it I misplaced the song at number two.
For me, far and away the most exciting thing to happen this month was Lee Sooman’s push into the Korean market with his A2O groups. The fact that both Lite and Soul emerged with excellent songs was a welcome surprise. The fact that Neon quickly became a chart-topper in Korea amplified this excitement tenfold. It feels like we’re seeing a changing of K-pop trends in real time. Please let this open the floodgates for vocal maximalism, longer (complete!) song structures and strange, sci-fi lore. These are the aspects that have always differentiated K-pop from its global contemporaries and I really hope audiences are starting to remember that. I couldn’t be more excited for A2O Soul’s official debut next month and any new music A2O Lite may release in the coming months.
Given A2O’s success, the number one trend I’ll be looking out for in 2027 is a return to 2nd/3rd gen approaches in concepts and songwriting. It really feels like we’re on the cusp of this wave. I only hope the industry can navigate it with more flair than they did the overly-muted Y2K resurgence.
Beyond the big A2O standouts, other acts also delivered. Highlights from KickFlip, Sung Hanbin, Xdinary Heroes and MODYSSEY were major pillars in my October playlist. And even when I might not have loved a title track this month, its accompanying album often delivered plenty of bangers. The sheer amount of awesome music released that week of October 12th took me days to fully process. I love when K-pop opens the floodgates like this.
A nod to the past also buoyed my top J-pop song this month. I’ve really fallen out of love with Starto Entertainment’s output in recent years despite being a gigantic fan of the agency’s acts for the better part of a decade. But with the debut of new group KEY TO LIT, Starto has brought back a signature sound (and composer) that makes me hope they’ll realize what made their music so strong and over-the-top in the first place. But I must say, had Bullet Train released a music video for their brilliant Eurobeat track Etrance Fever, that would have been my top choice instead.
With October behind us, we have one more month left before eligibility for my year-end chart has closed. November tends to be the last rush of big releases before everyone moves onto year-end shows/performances in December. It’s also a busy month on the blog as I take a look back at the industry’s biggest agencies and start preparing my comprehensive year-end features. I’ve got some music I’m definitely looking forward to in November, from blog favorites TWS, to A2O Soul’s first album, to comebacks from heavy hitters like TXT, NCT Dream and Nayeon. Hopefully 2026 in K-pop ends with a (good) bang!
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
TOP J-POP SONGS OF THE MONTH
3. Takanori Nishikawa – Reverb Blaster
2. Kaito – swim?
1. KEY TO LIT – KEY TERUYA2
K-POP
Honorable Mentions
AND2BLE – French Kissing (review)
cosmosy – Give Me Love (review)
Eunhyuk – Blue Sky (review)
Flare U – Bloom (review)
IVE – Looks Can Kill (review)
JUSTB – Party Time (review)
MODYSSEY – Ridin′ (Can You Hear That) (review)
NCT Dream – The Sun (review)
PLAVE – Star Trace (review)
RIIZE – Insomnia (review)
Sung Hanbin – Undead (review)
Teen Top – Don’t Stop (review)
tripleS – Andless (review)
V01D – My Youth (review)
Xdinary Heroes – Obsessed With Youth (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 OCTOBER
3. KickFlip – Kick Off The Wall (ft. iann dior) (review)
2. A2O Lite – Neon (review)
1. A2O Soul – Superstar (review)
Top Three K-Pop Songs Of September 2026
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
The month has been majorly okay but the highlights we got (in one day!) are so fantastic, it makes up for the lack of consistency in this month.
Anyways, Undead is my top song of the month, followed by Neon and Obsessed With Youth. I hope November follows through, at least the first half!
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SUPERSTAR and Reverb Blaster are my co-winners!
I think I still prefer I SPY over NEON, but it’s pretty close.
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It says September where October should be.
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Argh I forget to change that every single month!!
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Insomnia and Looks Can Kill both grew on me as well.
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The real question is whether those heavy hitters group from Big 4 label would follow leesooman lead or keep chasing global sound trend again, especially HYBE. I almost lost my faith on HYBE groups except TWS and BND lately.
Well concern for future trend aside, my Top 3 KPOP song this month were KickFlip – Kick Off The Wall, Xdinary Heroes – Obsessed With Youth, and A2O Lite – Neon. For JPOP, TM Revolution – Reverb Blaster, FLOW – Unstoppable, and Madkid – Unbroken were my top choices.
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there’s very little chance that HYBE would, they (specifically BSH groups) moved away from the k-pop sound in the first place to target the Western audience (lol), plus the 2-minute songs for streaming and TikTok
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I have to admit that I loved NEON from the moment I heard it. It wasn’t the same with Superstar. On those few first listens I merely thought the song was “good”. But, the moment those melodies and the instrumental truly “sink in” you, there’s no escaping it. It really is a great song, and the fact that it never feels dull over a 4 minute runtime speaks volumes about its quality (the choreography also beautiful compliments it). I truly loved the debut, both it and NEON. I do want to hold my judgement and excitement for the group until they release their mini. I’m so excited to see what YYJ has been hiding in storage all this time!
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The thing is, K-pop songs used to be more like Superstar. They were built to last, meaning that even if you (I) didn’t get it the first couple of times the song would slowly reveal its charms and grow stronger from there. That’s hard to do with 2:30 songs built mostly on chanted catchphrases, though. These are built for immediacy (TikTok/SNS/any shortform content) — hitting you right away but struggling for any sort of longevity.
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I think you’ve hit the nail right on the spot. It’s happened to me with songs like Rising Sun, for example.
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My absolute favorite songs tend to be those that, on first listen, cause me to think: “I don’t quite know about this yet but there’s something big pulling me back for another listen.”
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huh did a2o may’s bad habits tonite just fall completely out of honorable mentions?
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it wasn’t even featured in any weekly rankings..?
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I think technically they’re not J-pop or K-pop?
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they were tagged as “kpop” under the review
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I’m not counting them as K-pop, even with that tag.
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hey nick, I was wondering what are your thoughts on the new ive ep and what’s your favourite song
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I’ll have two songs featured in tomorrow’s weekly round-up. Overall, the album doesn’t do much for me but there are a couple of decent tracks.
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I actually came here partly to comment about this very EP! I was listening to it the other day and came out impressed with how good it is, and also how cohesive. In fact it’s easier to point out the one weak song: I didn’t particularly care for ‘Girls Girls Girls’, but the rest of it goes from strength to strength and all the songs fit together very well.
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October had some great moments and is probably my favorite month of the year for Kpop this year. All three of my top three are 9+’s (which is also very great!). They would Undead, All of My Life, and Neon(my favorite girl group release this year since Itzy’s Motto) in that order. Also I am really hoping that TWS’s comeback is good because it sounds really promising and I have been struggling to connect with their music, even though You,You has grown on me. Hope y’all have a safe and fun Halloween 🎃
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This was a great month! Always love a KickFlip comeback, and it was followed by a bunch of other strong albums and pre-/debuts.
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My honorable mentions:
-TIOT 5 Hours in Pieces
-NFLYING Still
-VO1D My Youth
-CANTBEBLUE Bluende
-HANBIN Undead
-DAILYDIRECTION Which Way
-JUSTB Party Time
-KICKFLIP Kick off the wall / Puzzle Piece
-XHEROES Obsessed with Youth
-RIIZE Insomnia…if only it had a bridge and an outro, this could’ve been in the top 3
My Top 3:
3 TEENTOP Don’t Stop
2 DREAMIES TheSun
1 A2OSOUL Superstar
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Hey Nick a few review links are wrong as I’m typing this: the JUSTB link also points to Looks Can Kill, while the tripleS link points to an unrelated song altogether.
Otherwise my own highlights from this month are:
1. A2O Lite – Neon
2. IVE – Looks Can Kill
3. tripleS – Andless
Neon is just this alien addictive song that clutched me almost from the first listen; Looks Can Kill is a lot of fun and gets my body involuntarily moving; and Andless simply has great energy which it maintains throughout.
Honourable mention for Undead which also maintains a high energy but feels like a song I’ve heard many times before. And as for Superstar, it’s a well-executed song but it hasn’t knocked my socks off the way it seems to have done for other people. (Moreover I feel that Superstar and Bad Habits Tonite are of the same cloth, to me they feel equally enjoyable so I find it a bit weird that one is getting its laurels but not the other.)
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Thank you for spotting those!
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It’s funny seeing the (musical) criticism of Neon. I’ve seen people call it boring, lackluster, nothing new, but IT IS in this dire state of Kpop. Like, if RV can’t even save Kpop or SM, then you know it’s BAD out here…
This is the kind of fun, infectious, energetic, electronic sound that made Kpop fans drawn to the genre in the 2000s-2010s, which also made non-Kpop fans call Kpop weird and cringe. So it’s no surprise that older fans are flocking back to this song. Huge nostalgia and the classic SM golden era song/training formula. It’s also super catchy, so idk what these haters are saying and calling it payola – the Korean public LOVES them.
The only thing that sucks is they’re all minors and the AI business concept is SUPER weird, but alas… AI usage is so huge in Korea now. I wonder if this song/group would be as popular if the girls were adults… a major contributory factor to their popularity is fascination over how talented they are at such a young age.
I can only hope companies hop back onto this bombastic sound again. Praying for a return to long songs, more vocals, and INTERESTING choruses/lyrics.
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i mean shit if we Really wanted kpop acts to be doing 2nd/3rd gen revival w a modern twist the agencies rlly need to get a known enthusiast of kpop n its history like underscores behind the boards. ill plug her in this regard till im blue in the face
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2026 9+ rated songs
Atmos – 9.5
You You, Louder, Mmchk – 9.25
Undead, Neon, Superstar, Glow, Motto, All the Possibilities, Voyager, Obsessed with Youth, Kick off the Wall – 9
5 additions to this collection this month. Yay.
October 12th
Wow 6 8.5+ rated title tracks, with 4 of those being rated 9 after blog rating adjustments. Pretty amazing. Also solid albums released on that day too.
I SPY got left in a ditch for those songs. I’d say that song is probably an 8 personally, although I can see why you rated the song that way.
Top song would probably be A2O Lite’s Neon. Been mostly addicted to this one. This month has been varied but highlights will shine above lowlights and no huge clunkers this month(aka songs worse than Girls on Fire HOW IS THAT SONG A 6.75 RATING WIOBNASKLDNKALSNDKLASHF IKLANSDKLNASDKPJNASLK:ND AOISNDILASND LKANSDILKANSDLKANSDOIKANSDLKAN IODBASIKOLDNASKLDNLAKSDNLKASDNLKASDNLKASDNLKDASNLKAFDSNLKDNALKSN LKASNDLKASNDKL NKLDSNLKASNDKLNASDKLANDKLANDLKASND IOPASHDOIKASND LKASHDOIPADH).
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I fear the lesson companies will learn from Neon isn’t “people want better songs” but “you can sell everything as long as it’s wrapped in a better song”. I don’t think I’m quite ready to accept three thirteen year olds and AI trained on them to deliver personal phone calls in exchange for a good song.
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NEON is truly a highlight, grew massively on me! I don’t like Looks Can Kill but the EP is fantastic, all the bsides are on repeat, it’s varied and so well produced. Now I might be alone on this but I enjoy ILLIT’s new TT, it’s almost on the level of Do The Dance even with the grating whistle. The bside More is excellent as well.
I also really like Superstar.
Good month indeed
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I enjoyed what October brought, and I’ll be looking forward to what November has in store.
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Superstar is my top song of the month. The evolution of my thoughts about it went something like this:
This looks and sounds like a boys’ survival show signal song
Some of these kids are really talented, especially the one who does the third part of the chorus
Wait, there are four 14-year-olds in the group??
This is growing on me
This is growing on me
This is one of my top songs of the year
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