With the flu season well and truly in motion, the second day of Christmas day food leftovers kicking your ass, and the general fatigue kicking my ass in particular, the only thing left to do is to look at the worst music that has haunted me throughout the year.
These look so familiar, almost as if you read them yesterday:
- Eligibility period: December 25, 2021 until December 24, 2022. Yup, I’m not a fraud who writes December off completely, even though most labels do.
- Qualifications: music video or at the very least a proper live stage. If the group themselves couldn’t have been bothered to get the song out there then, I couldn’t have been bothered to listen to it either.
- Stuff which has videos but is still inelligible: OST songs, Christmas music, covers which don’t change the source material to a satisfying degree. What is a satisfying degree knows only me in the future who will be forced to put a cover on the list.
- I always put a point right here and then forget what I was going to say. Maybe one day.
- There is a chance you will disagree with a position or two here. That is obviously punishable by law, as my opinions are the end-all be-all and should never be disputed.
- Have fun.
- Or not.
25. NMIXX – O.O
Preparing any year end list is usually a fun endeavour due to how unpredictable it gets. However, every once in a while, there is a song which everybody and their mother knows very well is going to be here, and there was probably never anything else as obvious as „O.O” making its way up here. From being frequently referred to as the worst girlgroup debut of all time to others flat-out claiming it’s some sort of a diversion tactic after the Ukrainian war started, there’s just not much to say that hasn’t already been said. So I’ll try this – there are about 50 seconds in this track which are genuinely cool and worth listening to. Of course it’s the middle pop rock part I’m referring to, it’s got nice instrumentation, is bouncy and upbeat and I just feel like there is so much potential for it to be a kick-ass full length song. Unfortunately, that’s also one of the song’s biggest downfalls, as everything that comes before and after that part is so wildly different, you start to question why anyone needed the shift in place at all. While all the other sections are a horrendous waste of time, they seem to at least somewhat follow a similar yelpy trap-themed concept, and the song actually could have just escaped the list inclusion without the solidary decent idea accidentally shitting all over it.
And this is the best song on the list. Brace yourselves.
24. NewJeans – Hype Boy
When NewJeans came around, I thought their marketing style was fantastic. No teasers, no member reveals months in advance, no dull variety shows to grab your attention away from the music, just a straight-forward „hey, our song drops in 30 minutes” message and that’s it. Amazing – if kpop really is about music like its fans like to claim, that should be the standard, no screwing around, just getting straight to the point. Unfortunately, it soon became clear why the release was handled that way. With each further NewJeans release, it became more and more increasingly obvious how pedobait their concept truly is, to a point where even some of the less one-eyed of the group’s fans stopped and thought for a second. For the record, „Hype Boy” is not the worst offender of that – that would be between the night-time television callgirl music video for „Hurt” and the pretty disgusting for a group of 15-year-olds lyrics to „Cookie” – and I’m not saying this should stop you from listening to NewJeans, who are far from the only group appealing to perverted uncles. It’s just important to acknowledge it’s there and maybe consume the product a bit more consciously. With that in mind, „Hype Boy” is on the list purely for its questionable musical merit. The verses here aren’t too bad actually, and the members do a reasonable Tinashe impression, but it all comes undone in the chorus which has serious rhythmic issues. The vocal meter, hi-hats, and snares all have a degree of swing to them, and all three have slightly different degrees of swing, which combined makes the song feel extremely confusing and disorienting. While having one of the elements be slightly off-beat wouldn’t be the end of the world, and swing was one of the cooler aspects of jazz back in the day, all of them happening at once while the backing track is also very busy, is just overbearing and irritating. If you don’t quite get what I’m saying, just look at the song’s choreography during the chorus – it’s frantic and awkward, and it’s not the girls’ fault, as every other cover in existence has the same motion sickness aspect to it.
23. Class:y – Surprise
As far as I know, Class colon why are a group formed from the tragically creepily titled survival show My Teenage Girl, and much like NewJeans, they had people complain about how young the members were, and in much the same fashion it lasted about 2 days and 16 hours before everyone forgot, how charming. Perhaps the reason for that in this case was that these girls were noticeably more impoverished and no one actually wants to support the less fortunate, but even then, their company was able to cough up enough for a dance practice video for a song that undeniably is a „surprise”. Between the dull descending riff, misfit major scale notes all over the place, a stray dance breakdown that every song needs now apparently, an aggressively random brass-based rap verse and a chorus no one should be made to sing ever, there is nothing here that gels with anything else, and I know I sound like a broken clock, but utterly bizarre randomness was an enemy of many a kpop comeback in 2022. I remember when making the good 2020 list, I thought it was a bit one-note and repetitive because of how much of it was taken by the then-leading new 80s revival. And yet, it feels positively varied compared to now when the tracks might sound completely different – and frankly, it would be a legitimate miracle if any two even came close to one another – but all share pretty much the exact same set of problems.
22. (G)I-DLE – My Bag
A common first impression of my character, online or not, is that I’m overtly negative, so why not start the list with an uplifting statement that will no doubt shock all of you – I have a lot of time for Soyeon and have over the years gained more respect for her as an artist. She seems smart, resilient and most of all, has a vision she’s committed to achieving and doesn’t let her limitations stop her. Sure, that may sometimes backfire in some really comical ways, cause what does „I like to eh on drinking whiskey” even mean but she doesn’t care, and I love that. Unlike the rest of the industry which is mostly so risk-averse, they won’t release anything which doesn’t fit into any of the last 12 months’ trends, she makes music for herself, first and foremost. I’d really like to see more of that attitude across the board. The only real problem here is actually quite significant and it’s that either Soyeon’s songwriting skills are highly undeveloped right now or our tastes just don’t happen to have any common denominator, as (G)I-DLE have been appearing on the wrong end of the list pretty frequently, and „My Bag” just might be the worst they’ve done so far. There’s about as much to say about the song as there is music in it, which is nothing at all, and by the 15-second mark you could say you’ve heard the track in its entirety, so let’s just move on, as Soojin did.
21. Bumkey – Incurable Disease
At the beginning of the video for „Incurable Disease”, we see a shot of an empty couch in pastel yet toned colours with the clear focus being on the retro-looking radio and the significant amount of pillows on said couch. Once the song properly starts, Bumkey doesn’t really know what to do with himself and just sort of awkwardly stumbles over the place before deciding sitting for a minute straight is the right option, at which point the video has an aging effect as if it was shot on those cameras which still needed you to input film into it and had limited capacity, and if I sound like a dork trying to explain that, it might be because I haven’t used such either. Later, we proceed to look at Bumkey sit down at a table laid for a romantic dinner for two, except he’s the only one there, the four bottles of wine have all been emptied, and all he can eat is a sepia photo of I don’t even know what or whom, it’s deliberately not shown clearly. Then he’s at some wooden house where he just sits and doesn’t really do all that much else, and the video ends. When you think of it, it kind of just sounds extremely boring, depressing and miserable, so frankly, even if there seems to be no reason to watch the video at all, at least it perfectly sums up the feeling the music gives off.
20. NTX – Old School
Korean or not, boygroup music has always been much more conservative and written straight to a template than girlgroup, which is part of the reason why each time kpop gets introduced to a wider audience, it’s through artists like BoA, Girls’ Generation, or Blackpink, and not their boygroup counterparts. While it’s not always a bad idea to stick to the book, 2022 became one of the dullest boygroup years ever, with almost every single one of them releasing tired nonsense with slow beats, cheesy rapping, and pointless chanting, resulting in tracks which never even negatively stood out enough to be in consideration for this list. „Old School” was not like that, however, and frankly, on the mere merit of its title, it sparked my interest slightly more. Surely, old school must mean it’s going to be different and cool, right? Well, I suppose a part of that is correct, with the song kicking off with a highly bare-bones 90s style beat, which is somewhat of a change in itself, and then completely breaking the mood with a pentatonic scale chorus which I can only assume was intended to be romantic, but fails miserably, as it has little to do with anything else happening here, and instead, repeats all the mistakes of 90s pop music, which relied almost entirely on rhythm and sound effects and pretty much never had any good melodies to get over the line. As it happens here, decent groove and production quirks are absent as well so what we’re left with is a really awkward song, which at points seems to be apologizing for its existence and to its credit, that’s what it should be doing, anyway.
19. Kim Jongho – Do You Want to Get Hit with the Hook?
While most songs which end up here are probably earnest attempts at creating something really good that happened to fail somewhere along the way, my favourites are always the ones so bizarre and out there, there is no way anyone involved in the creation ever thought of it as a legitimate, serious product. As seen in the Youtube description for „Do You Want to Get Hit with the Hook?”,
The song features parents’ troubled children and social problems.
Children growing up in this violent and abusive environment!
Artists should be able to inspire and teach lessons through their art.
Commercial things are important and they pursue profitable purposes.
Is it right to have a negative impact on someone’s life?
So you know you’re in for some real social messaging. However, where the track really goes off the rails, is in the way Kim Jongho delivers his preaching, as the song (which has delightful hard-coded English subs in the music video) features stellar lines, such as: „The booger on your face! It seems sad to go to the convenience store looking messy!”, „Swag? Give it to the dog!” or „He gambled with his toes when his wrist was cut off!”. In case the message got a bit lost in between all that, every verse painstakingly reminds you the song is about those other horrible rappers who lead children to the sin of materialism and violence, and furthermore, Kim Jongho even offers a solution… which is to punch it out of them. Then there’s also the musical content, which has the entire rap delivered in what sounds like some corporate bathroom without any soundproof measures provided (and it’s not just due to the video looking like that, on streaming services it’s all the same) and the song randomly breaking into 90s R&B ballad territory in the chorus, and the entire package becomes just as painful as it is endlessly fascinating.
18. Choi Yoojung – Sunflower (P.E.L)
I never follow which producers did which songs in kpop, as one, it doesn’t matter to me much at all, and two, there are very few who have a consistent style recognizable across records, and when they do, they’re usually hired by a group for more than one comeback, which in result gives the group itself a sense of a unified sound, even though it is just the producer’s work and once they’re gone, the group is going right back to meandering just like any other. That said, I do know „Sunflower (P.E.L)” was produced by LYRE, and that’s because one of the members of that production group made a video explaining how the song came to be. It’s a pretty good watch I’d recommend to anyone who’s starting out to produce pop music, Korean or not, and also very well explains why the song is a failure. The woman in the clip explicitly states the track was intended to be very simple with very sparse trap-style percussion and minimal effects calling back to pop and R&B music of the early 2000s, and that leaves the vocals to do most of the work here. That was very much the wrong choice to make, however, as even though LYRE all seem like nice and fun people to be around, topline doesn’t also seem to be their main strength, so Yoojung is basically left with a dull circle-of-fifths melody which needlessly stretches every note out in a really ugly way, and the pitch shift almost makes it sound like she’s yawning all through the chorus, which might be appropriate given how boring the few guitar chords sound, but doesn’t make the experience for the listener any more pleasant. But hey, it could be worse – if it really was released by Taeyeon like originally intended, we would have a bunch of people pretending to like it.
17. One Way Out, Lozik, True Kim, Theray, Wiz Hartz – Mo
Although kpop is generally quite intent on copying everything American, every once in a while there is a trend which fully eludes Korean songwriters. One of those was those lifeless early 10s DJ/producer featuring pop star „collaborations” that weren’t really because otherwise, every second song released in the States would have to be billed as Max Martin & Woman Of The Week. Off the top of my head, the only real examples I can think of are Sistar with Giorgio Moroder (and that was understandable due to the name) and f(x) members a bunch of times, which was funny itself, as f(x) was always set out to be a more left-field group, even if less so towards the end of their run. The trend sure was not missed but just in case anyone got a funny idea, „Mo” serves as the exact PSA not to do it that we need. As for some reason these days trap is considered acceptable party music, the track is almost all just hi-hats and reverb, and from what I can guess, the rappers aren’t very well-skilled at rapping, as each of their verses seems to slow the poor excuse of a beat down even further. Then you have the very few and apart sections which actually do somewhat resemble what people over the age of 7 would call club music, but there is little relation of those to everything else happening, so it just rubs against the already (barely) established rhythm and flow of things. The performers might be trying their best, although why would they really, but what they really succeed at is highlighting the track’s listlessness towards the end where they all look like me after the third hour of overtime.
16. Isaac Voo – Time Bomb
One of the more prominent problems with kpop songs not just in 2022, but for the past couple of years as well, has been the tonal mismatch between vocal melodies and underlying harmonies. So many groups these days, regardless of gender, want to act tough and yell about independence so much you’d think they actually some, but the music always lags far behind those grand statements. It’s not as much the backing tracks, which are often bass and brass heavy and would indeed make a good fit for the presented image, but just listen to those toplines and tell me there isn’t anything wrong with it. I get why it’s happening, as idols are still expected to be your forever cheerful and upbeat partner, and god forbid they got a real one, but it doesn’t make the music any less jarring. One of the worst offenders in that category this year was Isaac Voo’s „Time Bomb”, a glaring mess where the major scale melodies, silly bo-bo-bo-bomb hooks and the softer pre-chorus (because of course every song has to have one) are just about the worst possible fit for the backing track which would heavily benefit from, first off, having little vocal at all, second, some much more rough vocals. If it were up to me, I’d turn the beat up to 11 and make it into an industrial-almost track, and that still probably wouldn’t help matters a whole lot, as without the glaring atonality, what we’re left with here is just another dull filler.
15. Kim Doeon, So!Yoon! – Fort
I don’t like putting nugus who make genuinely different sounding music on this list because not only is life for nugu artists already hard enough, the kpop scene also has everyone else mindlessly following trends, so any innovation is welcome. However, different doesn’t automatically equal to good, and Kim Doeon and the ridiculously named So!Yoon! (and I’m not even doing the fancy capitalization) unfortunately fall on the other end of the spectrum. The song actually does not start off too badly, with some agreeable later-day Björk style ambience, however, also much like in many later-day Björk songs, the problems start with the vocals. The phrasing and rhythm might not be as extreme here as in Björk’s case but at the same time, no one here has quite the same understanding of how to make the voice lines work. The atmosphere is therefore quickly ruined by the vocals and wind instruments occupying much of the same space in the mix, making it annoyingly cluttered and tough to listen to. Despite clearly aiming for something airy and ethereal, there is too much sonic information to process here which results in an opposite effect. Maybe it should’ve just remained an ambient instrumental track, everything else is so jumbled it would probably be better off just reworked completely.
14. Cheng Xiao – Lonely Beauty
It’s been such a long time since any of the Chinese WJSN members acknowledged their former group that even their most one-eyed fans started to suspect they aren’t going to come back. And why would they, it’s pretty obvious they’re doing better than ever as solo artists. For most kpop covering sites, this would effectively mean their current endeavours would no longer be covered. However, I deliberately keep the eligibility criteria as broad as possible (within music video/decently-shot performance reason, of course) since there is a lot of cool stuff to discover that remains largely ignored by the average kpop stan. „Lonely Beauty” unfortunately is anything but, and in fact is much worse than anything else anyone in WJSN has ever been involved with. Aiming at the tired Latin sound, whoever wrote the track either has never heard any actual Latin hit or actively tried to create something different, but regardless, the result is a mess. The verses are weirdly minimalistic which I guess wouldn’t be too bad if they offered any interesting melody or chord changes but even if, it would still crash against the chorus where a flute, brass and vocals all come clashing together. It’s yet another case of too many ideas fighting for space at once, and the ideas here are further underpinned by the generic, dull Latin rhythm, effectively copying the worst aspect of Latin pop while having none of the appropriate instrument choices, which are rarely its only saving grace. Here’s hoping Cheng Xiao’s big talents distract everyone who happens to listen to this.
13. Q6IX – Imaizing
Different levels of unpopularity in popular music, especially with the level of competitiveness that Korea offers, have always been pretty fascinating to me, just because of how wildly different the definition of „unpopular” may be depending on whom you ask. To some, a nugu group would be something like fromis_9 who aren’t really doing all too poorly, even if not quite up to par given the big label they’re on, to others, DIA who had always struggled with just about everything, but you could still see some sort of a budget and a creative idea pushing the project forward, and then at the very end of the line, there are groups like Q6IX, where you really just feel sorry for the poor girls getting their names and faces associated with such catastrophic embarrassment anyone could see straight away. In case Q6IX sounds oddly familiar, yes, this is the group that was the talk of the city for about 2 days this year due to how mind-bogglingly incompetent, just from a strictly technical point of view, their other song „Blue Heart” was. With volume dropping all over the place, little dynamic movement anywhere, vocals not being properly layered, dull echo everywhere over the track, and the random guitar solo just taking a huge crap over anything else happening prior to it, it was just as painful as it was fascinating. However, while still a long shot from „good”, „acceptable” or „not completely garbage”, the track did have some actually interesting ideas and with some production polish, could maybe pass as a cute third-rate Dreamcatcher clone. The same cannot be said about „Imaizing” which has all the same issues, but replaces any ambitious sonic choices with a dreadful bassline, crappy ping-pong noises, and a zoom in the music video so ridiculous you know you should stop watching approximately three seconds in.
12. Xindy – Mermaid
Ok, guys, so we’re stretched pretty thin right now. Maybe those shots on the way here weren’t the greatest idea now that our driver is in the hospital in a deep coma because those bills sure left us with a budget of $14.67 but sure we can manage right? The hell you mean the guitarist left to do an OST song for a donut and half a miso soup portion? Oh fuck that dude, we can do better on our own anyway. Wait, what is that? That’s the fourth guy who left us this week because of OH&S violation? Nonsense, the scene we rented out on Tuesday collapsed 2 minutes into the song, that’s a personal fucking best right there. Ok, ladies, so this ugly dress and the one set is probably about the best we can give you in these conditions but don’t worry, you don’t need to be particularly good at whatever it is you’re doing there, you’re all Asian so someone’s gonna fetishise you no matter what. Song? We’re making a song here? Well, damn, now you’re just being a pain in the ass. Here, we don’t have many options, so just start singing… oh shit, you kind of sound like a pained squirrel but sure, sweetie, you’re doing just fine. We’re just gonna put some royalty free beats underneath and since all our musicians are currently on the way to court, we’ll just take these three awful vocal tracks and fill every empty here with them. What do you mean it sounds like ass, there is an Asian girl, she’s in a bikini, and can move a little. Now you get it. Bonafide hit.
11. Homies – Broken Ferrari
Compared to last year, the list for 2022 includes far less trashy rap music. I wonder if it’s because I grew more tolerant of it (possibly), its quality has somewhat improved (unlikely) or there have been more crappy songs coming from all the other suspects (undeniably). In any case, Korean rappers couldn’t come out completely unscathed, and here you’ve got one of those tracks that you could just tell was going to be awful before you even hit play. With a name like Homies rapping about a broken Ferrari, because I suppose that’s about the most they could afford around these places, you know you’re in for a rough start, and once the obligatory „skrrt” appears at the 16-second mark, you may as well turn it off and just guess how well the rest of it is going to go. And I assure you it’s even worse.
10. NMIXX – Dice
„Progressive pop” songs have historically never done too well for themselves on the blog so I’ll understand if you take my word with a grain of salt but I genuinely dig the core NMIXX concept a lot. JYP already had groups doing his preferable retro style pop, he currently has Twice consistently knock it out the park with each release, and a bunch of other projects to financially fall back on. Why not go somewhere crazy and prove to be the real leader of the Hallyu wave in the new age kpop scene? It’s not like progressive pop is an inherently flawed idea either. Queen have time and time proven for it to be an excellent vessel for ideas to really come together, and more recently (and with less of a rock edge to it), Girls Aloud had the outstanding „Biology” utilize a weird structure where the chorus only happens towards the end of the track, making the entire first segment into a huge build-up of sorts. Crazy how good that can sound, right? Upon hearing the above examples, it should be no wonder why those work and why NMIXX does not. If you hear a part of „Bohemian Rhapsody” and then skip 2 minutes ahead, you might not like what you’re hearing but you are going to think „ok, I see where they’re coming from, it fits”. With „Dice” what you’re getting is four (really bad) tracks surgically snitched together with no thought behind it. The sense of actual progression, and the satisfying segue from one section to another, are not present here, as the track choppily shuffles between ideas, and worst of all, everyone’s aware of how little this makes sense. There would be no need for someone to constantly yell „NMIXX change let’s go” with the song fully stop in its tracks if there was really no logic behind how we got from point A to point B. I really do hope one day someone writing for this group figures it out and when they do, I have no doubt it will be amazing, but today is not that day.
9. YooA – Selfish
There are many sad stories in kpop, and so is Oh My Girl’s, especially that one member who left (no, not the other one who left) and was later revealed to suffer from anorexia, whoever you are, I hope you’re doing better today. However, let’s look past how these girls had to starve themselves to debut, probably danced to the point of fainting trying to stand up, and how they likely have got paid maybe once in their life, those are such boring trivial things, gosh. Instead, let’s focus on their increasingly depressing musical history, after having one of the best hit-to-miss ratios in all of the industry:
- Tropical house. Ok so this was actually quite decent and I enjoyed it but ask any Oh My Girl fan what they would like their next comeback to be, and I guarantee you no one would say tropical house.
- Some really dull disco bollocks, followed by even more disco bollocks, with one of the worst choruses recorded in the history of pop music, that only escaped the list because a half of it was already released during the eligibility period for 2021, making it effectively not qualify for either.
- A whole damn fucking lot of children music that I won’t even link, what the fuck.
- YooA’s „Selfish”. Do I even have to add anything past that.
It all was just somewhat bizarre to witness because sure, consistency isn’t a strong suit of anyone in kpop, but in their heyday, Oh My Girl were leading girlgroup song quality with music that was fresh, fun and even a little imaginative. „Selfish” is anything but, it’s like everyone forgot to write any melody, interesting chord changes or even a single word, aside from the repeated four, and I guess if you were to dig deep for a positive thing to say about it, the song is quite catchy, but so is Covid-19. To those sad about that other non-YooA member leaving early this year, think of how she escaped misogyny, emotional prison and best of all, music like this.
8. Gemtopia, Kyurim, Eun U, Hana, Dabin – In to You
If you’re a naturally gifted driver, feel free to skip this section altogether, fortunately, pretty much the entire readership of the blog is different shades of LGBT, so you’re no doubt going to relate. Remember your early driving lessons? Hitting the pedal way too strong, accidentally turning on long lights inadvertently pissing whoever was in front of you off, and most importantly, trying to switch gears? For many of us, I imagine the last one was a bane of existence, as it really takes a bit to do it smoothly, and some can’t even do it all that well years later (hey cousin, if you’re reading this, I have not forgotten how you almost drove us right into a moving tram). It takes a bit of musical practice to effectively switch songwriting gears as well, which is also why the really big groups are rarely the big problem – it’s the unpopular artists copying them that bring out the worst of the worst. I haven’t even heard of Gemtopia before, and it’s highly unlikely I hear about them again, but it will definitely take some time before I can shake off „In to You”, the first certified nugu take on NMIXX. While in terms of arrangement, it’s slightly more straightforward and logical than „Dice”, the sections actually make even less sense when stuck together, with the song introducing some truly insane rhythm changes. I was fully perplexed when I realized the track is entirely in 4/4, it absolutely does not feel like it, just because the shifts are so sharp, sudden and off-the-wall crazy. It’s just like those early gear switching lessons when you turn that 3rd on way too early, or accidentally put the car on reverse instead of 5th. Painful and better left off in the past.
7. Min.mi – Jump Jump Jump
Earlier in the year, I was watching a video where musicians were talking about styles of music they hated the most. While frankly not the most memorable of topics, there was an answer around the 5-minute mark by a drummer named Shawn Crowder, which basically stated what people often hate the most is the stuff that’s similar to what they really love but has elements they feel are done incorrectly, which creates a real uncanny valley feeling to the listening experience. While I’m not entirely sure I fully agree with that, as most of the styles I dislike the most have nothing at all in common with what I do enjoy listening to, there is undeniably some truth to it, and there was no better example of that all year than „Jump Jump Jump”, a song which tries to go for the cutesy, upbeat kpop feel but failing miserably on just about every level. Gone are interesting chord changes, cool vocal melodies and general stylistic cohesion, what we get instead is an oddly incessant snare put way too forward in the mixing, horrible forced „girly” voice and a trap breakdown because it’s 2022 and we can’t have nice things that are consistent from start to finish. It really is just a bag of rubbish all around that would suit better as a theme song for some D-tier children cartoon rather than a proper kpop comeback, and come to think about it, it truly is all the more frustrating that it maybe could have been made into something decent. At least if it was modern jazz, no one would expect it to be any good from the get go.
6. Treasure – Jikjin
Man, I sure feel bad for Treasure sometimes. Treated like nepo babies despite working their way much like anybody else, and probably having to dodge YG’s many shady business tactics along the way, and then hardly even getting to enjoy any of the benefits of being on the label. If anything, it just shows how people are truly bound to repeat all the same mistakes of the past. No one even really remembers how much shit 2NE1 threw Blackpink way when they only started out, so apparently, it’s ok for Blackpink stans to use all the same dimwit arguments as to why Treasure are trash and should’ve never debuted. Their existence sure does impact the girls’ workload, they had so much of it beforehand, after all. Therefore, I decided I won’t be talking ill about Treasure at all – let them have their safe space on the internet. What do we have here then, another banger, I presume. That’s some nice guitar to start the song off, a cool introduction, now it just needs to add a proper beat to truly set things in motion. Oh wait, it does just that! What a cool groove does it establish too. A little slow-down before the chorus, that’s fine too, building the tension up and showing off that Treasure are surprisingly competent in the vocal department, who would’ve thought. Guys, I think I’m going to stop right there, at the 0:50 mark. I’m positive I’ve now heard all there is to it. This is all fine and there is nothing all that wrong with it, what was I thinking putting it in here? Gosh, I need to plan it out better next year. Oh well, I guess I may as well leave it in to promote the next generation YG talents.
5. Broken Lips, Shiner – Heung (Korea Vibe)
Long before starting this blog, and in fact long before I even turned 18, I had been writing for a local passion-project-turned-real-deal music website for a few years. Of course, that concept is every bit as ridiculous as it sounds – what could a teenager without any sort of musical background or knowledge even contribute? Well, as it turned out, quite a bit actually, and in case it wasn’t glaringly obvious by now, I can tell you first-hand you need just about zero in-field expertise to become a music journalist. What matters is the ability to make the reader feel like you know what you’re talking about and have some sort of authority, the rest will fall into place. With that in mind, it makes perfect sense why critics were against pop music as a rule for the longest time. It’s not as much pretentiousness, although it surely played a part as well, as it is a mere inability to describe it in outlandish, unusual words. On the contrary, „Heung (Korea Vibe)” seems like a song crafted specifically to cater to the average Pitchfork writer. It’s dull as dishwater, completely devoid of any substance and the trap beat creates a really ugly clash with the traditional Korean instruments and the old-school style of trot singing but does that matter? No, when you can flex how eclectic, varied and culturally enriched your taste is. It functions as nothing more than potential literary masturbation, which it undoubtedly would become if the artists involved were any bigger than they are. Or who knows, maybe this is satire aimed exactly at the thing I’m getting at, in which case, I’m the moron but the track still sucks just as much, so by then, everybody here is a major loser.
4. F.Hero, BamBam, Youngohm – Skrrt
Hey, what was that about the „skrrt” noise being an infallible way of telling you’re about to experience music of low quality again? Oh yeah, right, whenever someone uses it in a song, you may as well throw your speakers against the nearest wall, and assuming they completely shatter and break, you’re still probably going to hear a more pleasant sound than whatever the skrrt track was going to be. Given all that into consideration, capital „Skrrt” is pretty much a nightmare come alive, a song fully built up on one of modern music’s worst cancers. I’m all in for outlandish ideas but this a disaster even Stevie Wonder saw coming. Backed by whom might be the most frustrated flute player in the world, F.Hero and Youngohm meander their way through no beat worth a damn, but frankly, their parts are still at least relatively passable in comparison to BamBam who’s just beyond awful here and who also happens to hog by far the most of the song’s length. Picking the worst line would truly be a challenge, and given his lines are all in English, there is no hiding no rap worth a damn is to be found, and there are also the track’s two (!) failed hook attempts: first, the „oh no!” yell which annoyingly hits the same note over and over, making the song feel somehow even more stagnant, and secondly, there’s the skrrting everywhere reminding you you’re wasting your life away, although probably not as much as the people behind the production desk. It’s not quite „It G Ma” level of humanity low-point but even that piece of rubbish had a less ill-advised underlying idea. Skrrt skrrt skrrt.
3. Dbo, Digital Dav – Rockstar Lifestyle
Rap is a fun genre as you don’t need any level of music theory knowledge to create it. That is also its biggest downfall because when you really don’t have any skill in that regard, there’s a good chance the result of your work is about to be shit out of ass. In a way, it also negatively impacts consistency – when a rapper with hardly any musical background hits gold, you should expect them to fuck their next attempt up and much in the same vein, someone who’s consistently sucked prior might out of the blue come up with something cool and catchy. With that in mind, Dbo was one of the few I fully believed would never create anything of worth. Just a gut feeling, you know? To an extent fuelled by how his highest artistic achievement up to this point was an epic music video joke where it looks as though he’s getting a blowjob where in fact, he and his one night stand are actually playing phone games. Truly inspiring. Therefore, I was really quite surprised when „Rockstar Lifestyle” opened up not with the fully expected trap drum machine nonsense but instead with some more memorable synthesizers. Synthesizers are heavily underutilized in rap music in general, both by the talentless and by those who somewhat know what they’re doing, which is in a way understandable, as nothing can beat out simple percussion and bass for the toughest beats. However, with how much rap music has evolved and changed to accommodate different styles, it sure feels nice to hear something different every once in a while. Although the intro to „Rockstar Lifestyle” wasn’t the most inspired use I’ve ever heard, it still gave me hope I was about to hear something of similar quality and if not that, at least something which doesn’t outright blow.
Then the rapping started and all balance in the universe got restored. And yes, this is almost entirely a copy-paste of my review of another Dbo track from 2021, but I feel like he needs to be told this a couple of times before he really gets it.
2. Jung Dan – You Jinn Indisputable
Preparing the worst song list is always a bit more difficult than the good one. Not only do I keep less track of music I dislike, which I’m sure would come as a shock to anyone meeting me for the first time, but I also obviously listen to this shit a lot less frequently. That said, while preparing the draft of possible tracks to pick from, I was eventually left with 72 positions total, with some I knew would be going in straight away, and some I had to pounder over a little longer. A bit over half of all included songs came from groups or soloists which were or had previously been in groups, but only a select few were songs from artists who had had entries on the bad lists before 2022. Some of the more interesting bits:
- The very worst song of the year, Oh My Girl’s woeful remake of „Baby Shark”, was not eligible for inclusion at all. I decided to stop including covers of previously existing songs altogether unless they sufficiently change it to make it feel brand new, which is also why „Now” by PSY and Hwasa (originally: Jermaine Jackson and Pia Zadora) and „Good Night” by Rolling Quartz (originally: Dreamcatcher) are not a part of the good list despite both being excellent. On top of that, I’m sure Oh My Girl have enough children music PTSD as is, right now.
- Red Velvet may have been the only group to make it both onto the good and bad end of the list but they weren’t the only ones considered. Treasure redeemed themselves with the fun and upbeat „Hello” while Cravity’s musical diabetes „Boogie Woogie” definitely would’ve been a dishonourable mention if I extended it by just a few spots.
- NMIXX were undisputed leaders in amount of songs in consideration, a whooping three, and all of those made it in, too! An incredible feat so early into their careers, however, I’d be remiss not to mention the industry veterans (G)I-DLE whose grating „Nxde” was only a tad more tolerable than „My Bag”.
Ah, stats, don’t we all love them? So much, in fact, I almost forgot I was meant to review some music. Fortunately, there is none here, so I haven’t missed anything important.
But wait, what could possibly be worse than Jung Dan?
All NMIXX songs have already appeared.
The Boyz are busy occupying the 25 songs least likely for Vilppu to give any fucks about list.
Tiffany Hwang Young did not even do anyt- Tiffany?? Put that knife down, oh my god, Tiffany TIFFFAANNNYYYYYYY
1. Er. Worship – That Day
Although the power of christianity, and probably religion as a whole, is undoubtedly falling over time, it is not at all surprising to me how and why it was once this indestructible force. Of course, many people would be heavily discouraged if they found out the old testament was largely about, you know, not being a dick to the person beside you, but the thing that draws people in, is that at the core, christians only want you to ensure you also do believe in some old guy in heaven deciding whether you’re going to be screwed for the rest of eternity. The details of the agreement are to be discussed but by then, you’re already part of the community. It stands directly against Tiktok and Twitter movements where if you aren’t 100% flawless according to somebody else’s impossible moral standards – which they certainly do not apply to themselves, either – you may as well go fuck yourself. Even though sources of information these days are often at best questionable, there is also far more of them, and the increased awareness of how the world operates, as well as how fucking disgusting church truly is, generally draws people away from religion, but undoing hundreds of years of solid community-building isn’t a week’s work.
Much like with any other form of fandom, religious crazies do also have their own forms of art, starting from fanfiction (all the elements of the bible which do not have factual historical evidence), ending on Christian Contemporary Music (CCM), a style that borrows thematically from actual church music and musically from the lowest common denominator rock bands, making for a truly puzzling style, with very little reason to exist. A lot of groups performing CCM aren’t very good musicians, and they don’t even need to be – much like mentioned above, as long as you sing about how god is good, how horribly you do it doesn’t matter a whole damn lot. With that in mind, I think even the most devoted CCM defenders have to have even the barest of standards, and if they do, the only reason why „That Day” came to be a thing in the first place, appears to be to test where their limits are. Rarely ever, in any genre from any country nowadays, do I hear songs which sound this wrong, completely straightforwardly. I’m not talking about the message, they could be singing about burning orphanages here for all I care (and it would at least make for a text more interesting than what you’re reading right now) but the way it’s delivered. Right from the very beginning, you can tell this track just is not sitting right, and while it may be hard to pinpoint exactly what it is, because there is actually quite a lot thrown your way, so let me try to break it down bit by bit. Firstly, the bass has been moved to middle frequencies in the mix making it so that it competes with the vocals directly, and it has this odd sort of echoey quality to it, making it seem omnipresent in a track supposed to have a light, airy feeling to it. The vocals, on the other hand, are hardly pitch-corrected and are not double-tracked at all, not the greatest fit while the bass is front and centre. There are random acoustic guitar stabs cutting through the mix at every first and third note of the bar but they’re pushed all the way to the left, which is sometimes a deliberate production choice, but here it makes the track feel very empty, as if something is missing (because it is). Mind you, that is all just the first 15 seconds of the song, and right after, you’re hit with maybe the most devastating part of it, the keyboard patch which is not even in the right key, and throws everything you’ve heard up to that point into an even more puzzling frenzy. After that point, the song tries to pull out an almost polyrhythm of sorts, with one kick for every two hi-hats beats, but with now two different guitar sounds, both happening in the opposite channels, it doesn’t come off as an inspired choice, and only adds to the compositional clutter. Once you get to the chorus, the track shifts gears again, with what I may only guess was meant to be a more funk guitar feel but without a strongly defined rhythm previously, it just falls flat right on its face, and by the time the post-chorus breakdown rolls in, it’s almost welcome, mostly because the song stops being itself for a few blessed seconds. Even the most poverty-stricken nugu groups aren’t usually this confused, and it really is a shame as Er. Worship look like a nice, inoffensive bunch, and they’d probably be happy if they heard what I consider to be this song’s downfall above all – it feels like an appropriate anthem for all things christianity-related.
And that is it for today! If you are not fully understandably planning to petrol bomb my entire general area, tune in tomorrow for songs which are ever so slightly better!
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