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 … Continue reading
With their new album, Close Your Eyes have taken the unlikely move of fusing jazz with K-pop. It’s not that this has never been done before, but it’s certainly outside of current trends. So far, this approach resulted in the very strong Open Your Eyes, which really leaned into the concept. Title track Drop That! … Continue reading
Rather than contain my “Risers and Fallers” feature to a single post in June, I’m going to share a bite-sized version at the end of each month. This will let me account for more songs and make a nice lead-in to the monthly round-up post. I anticipate most of these ratings adjustments will be negligible: … Continue reading
At the end of each month, I compile my top three K-pop title tracks and list a ton of honorable mentions. But each Sunday, I’ll offer a compendium of the week’s new releases featured on the blog. And even more than that, I’ll attempt to rank them from my least-to-most-liked. I invite you to share … Continue reading
Close Your Eyes will be returning with an album at the end of the year, but they’re teasing the project today with a pre-release. I’m a fan of this group, but never know what to expect from them. Each album has been markedly different from the last, which means I have strong preferences about which … Continue reading
I haven’t done this before, but now that 2026 is halfway over I thought it would be interesting to see how my “top ten” rookies of last year are doing. Any best-of countdown is tied heavily to the time it was written, but the rookie countdown is particularly malleable because these acts can easily explode … Continue reading
We’re halfway through the year, which means it’s time to check in and see how K-pop is doing in 2026. If I were grading the year in comparison to others, we’d be in trouble. There have been brief spikes of excitement, but overall 2026 has been characterized more by its many missteps than its few … Continue reading
At the end of each month, I compile my top three K-pop title tracks and list a ton of honorable mentions. But each Sunday, I’ll offer a compendium of the week’s new releases featured on the blog. And even more than that, I’ll attempt to rank them from my least-to-most-liked. I invite you to share … Continue reading
Rather than contain my “Risers and Fallers” feature to a single post in June, I’m going to share a bite-sized version at the end of each month. This will let me account for more songs and make a nice lead-in to the monthly round-up post. I anticipate most of these ratings adjustments will be negligible: … Continue reading
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. April 2026 Overall Thoughts I’ve been doing this K-pop thing long enough to know that slumps … Continue reading
At the end of each month, I compile my top three K-pop title tracks and list a ton of honorable mentions. But each Sunday, I’ll offer a compendium of the week’s new releases featured on the blog. And even more than that, I’ll attempt to rank them from my least-to-most-liked. I invite you to share … Continue reading
Close Your Eyes had a banner 2025, though I didn’t connect with their most recent album as strongly as their first two. This is despite their movement into a more dance-oriented style, which would usually appeal to me. I guess I prefer when a group takes time to establish a signature sound before experimenting with … Continue reading
Before I move on to my J-pop and global pop countdowns over the next few days, I like to sum up the K-pop lists that have filled the past few weeks. The title of this post should technically be called “The Best Overall K-pop Comebacks & Debuts of 2025,” since not every album on this … Continue reading
For a moment, I debated whether or not to go forward with this particular countdown this year. Yes, K-pop music videos are generally great, but to be honest I just don’t watch them as intently as I used to. I’m much more familiar with the music than the visuals, which threatens to turn this list … Continue reading
Now that I’ve taken a look at my favorite title tracks and singles of the year, it’s time to move on to… everything else. This countdown encompasses any track that didn’t receive a full music video. This becomes more nebulous by the year, with “track videos” and “special videos” and the like. I allow myself … Continue reading
Now that I’ve taken a look at my favorite title tracks and singles of the year, it’s time to move on to… everything else. This countdown encompasses any track that didn’t receive a full music video. This becomes more nebulous by the year, with “track videos” and “special videos” and the like. I allow myself … Continue reading
This year, I’m breaking my “Top Albums” list into two: one focused on full-length albums and one focused on minis. For the mini album category, things get a bit repetitive because many of the year’s strongest acts released multiple projects and I don’t limit myself to spotlighting just one. As far as qualifications, I consider … Continue reading
I’m back with a recap of K-Pop’s year-end festivals. As always, we’ve got events from KBS, SBS and MBC in that order. However, I wasn’t aware that KBS was saving their “Music Bank in Japan” special until December 30th so I’ll probably write about that one too. Honestly, I thought they’d just mash it together … Continue reading
I’ll take a look at K-pop’s established artists tomorrow, but I like to share my thoughts about this year’s rookies first. For me, 2025 was defined by its rookies. This is probably my most competitive countdown this year, as there were so many new groups I found compelling. Surprisingly, many of these emerged from survival … Continue reading
The end of the year countdowns are finally here! As always, we’ll kick off with the big one: The Bias List’s top 50 songs of the year! Each day this week, I’ll be counting down ten of the year’s best, until number one is revealed on Friday. To be eligible for this top 50 list, … Continue reading
