As the end of 2023 is fast approaching, all publications rush to churn out their „best of” lists in hopes for some quick engagement. Today, I, with no engagement whatsoever, will also join them.
So how was kpop in 2023? Mostly pretty average, honestly. There weren’t all that many songs to stand out, either positively or negatively, a definite step-down from 2022 which actually had a lot of great stuff, and will be looked back upon much more favourably 10 years down the line. That said, decent tracks still had a pretty consistent flow, with something at least decent coming almost every week. There was also quite the comeback from boygroups, the one truly terrible aspect of 2022, who managed to raise their average level quite signfiicantly and snag a couple of mentions on my lists too.
Before we get to the meat of things:
- Eligibility period: December 25, 2022 until December 24, 2023. Yes, I might be the only person in the world to think so but there is actually a possibility that something good will come out in the first three weeks of December.
- Qualifications: music video or at the very least a proper live stage. Some songs this year happen to stretch those pretty thing but you just got to wait and see.
- Stuff which has videos but is still inelligible: OST songs, Christmas music, covers too close to the original so they don’t have much of a reason to exist at all.
- The honourable mentions are in alphabetical order, which I don’t think is the point I’m trying to put here every year and forget, but it is something. Main lists are ordered by preference.
- If you disagree with what I’ve got to say, you must cry about it and punch a hole in the wall, otherwise Amber Liu might visit you in your dreams. Choose carefully.
- Have fun.
- Or not.
Honourable mentions
Aespa get up all on my area now that the other four-member girlgroup are basically defunct and haven’t even released anything at all this year (Editor’s Note: they actually have but it was so insubstantial, even their fans stopped talking about it altogether after about a day and a half). It’s a rare situation where someone else doing Blackpink does a good job at it, as the two main components of a good Blackpink song – strong riffs and extremely high production value – are both present, and additionally, SM throws all sorts of cool sonic shit on top of it, as they just can’t help themselves. In this case, it’s very much welcome.
Now free from the BraveBros ties, Brave Girls discover more than just a new name but also sounds which are pretty different to anything they’d done before this point. The synths are the clear star here and the song exercises some pretty unexpected restraint as well, coming across as a sort of more refined Ava Max release. The only thing which doesn’t gel all that well is the chorus, which is a tad too repetitive, but even that improves as the track progresses, and the final chorus with additional harmony resolves the issue just fine.
Short and straightforward, clocking in at just a little under 2 minutes long, this song finally has Tablo go a little crazy, and few people across history have been subjected to more stupid netizen hate than Tablo has. It’s sad he rarely ever channels it with music that’s aggressive and punchy so let’s celebrate it now that he finally does. His lyrics here are really quite witty and he delivers them well enough, which for once I can assess, since it’s fully in English, but the real stars of the show are the catchy riffs and a surprisingly catchy vocal hook about some fun family BDSM activities.
Chuu – Howl
Fans of The Group Which Shall Not Be Named may have been viewing their post-breakup output through rose-tinted glasses but to the rest of us, it was pretty clear the solo/unit Loona excursions have been mostly disappointing and surely not up to the golden standard they set in 2017/2018, and have not been able to replicate since. The best of the crop was easily Chuu’s „Howl”, and unlike everything else, this was actually a pretty damn good song. It takes a bit to really get going but once it does, it sounds just like Chuu, and if that doesn’t sound like a good thing to you, you might have to get your endorphin levels checked.
DJ Tiz, Vimoka, Skrrvvy – Raiders
And now the three people who have made it this far into the post might promptly leave, as I talk about the first rap song to be included. Eww, you’re probably thinking, and you’d be fully right, Korean rap sucks almost universally. There aren’t all that many rap songs on the worst part of the list this year, may it be due to my heightened tolerance or it just sucking maybe 3% less than usual, but there surely weren’t many positive standouts either. This one does it, and DJ Tiz might be hoarding all the Wu-Tang albums that got exported to Korea, as he consistently does stuff a bit more oldschool, though he usually copies the soft lovey-dovey stuff that wasn’t all good the first time around. Hope he realizes how good he can sound when he puts some meat into his beats but he probably won’t. Oh well.
JYP didn’t seem to give much of a fuck about Twice at all this year, and that’s probably part of why they didn’t get the kickass comeback I wanted and was hoping for. Although obviously I wouldn’t want everyone to sound like Twice, the window for opportunity to follow the lead surely is open now, and Fromis_9 recreate the chord structure and melodic flavour pretty carefully, and end up with not just the best Twice song of the year but also their own best song all the way since „Love Bomb”.
Girl Crush – Oppa, Do You Trust Me?
You know what, honesty is the best policy. If you can stomach covering the underage 25% of the screen here, what you’re left with here is the Pocket Girls’ „Bbang Bbang” of 2023, in every possible way.
The initial chunk of self-doubt/self-empowerment songs Itzy came out with was fun but came out also a little silly, earning them the imaginary haters label. Now that everything they do actually does get endlessly criticized, this song feels a lot more genuine and relatable, and unlike most of what they do these days, there are no pointless chants, rapping and overall compositional clutter, the track gets straight to business with a simple melody and a beat good enough to carry the tune without any sudden changes. The straightforward appeal reminds of me of 2NE1’s „Ugly” which was also simple and effective, especially knowing YG’s tremendous respect towards women, which is cool but also a little worrying, as it might mean we’re going to get Yeji twerking to Quran in about three comebacks’ time.
Joy Choi – My Husband Is Crazy
Joining the hall of fame of extreme nugus to grab my attention is Joy Choi, this year, whose video on Youtube is preceded with the word „talented” in its title, whether it’s what her label’s called or she just knows her worth, it’s just really funny to me. Not far off from the truth either, as the song is a really cool and unusual industrial music track with a more rock twist around its halfway point. The switching works here more than it does in about 99% of idol pop cases is because the rhythm stays consistent in both sections and the sounds, while different, all definitely reside within the same camp, so it doesn’t ever feel random or unearned. Crazy how good it can get when someone with any musical sensibility gets to do things.
The disintegration of Lovelyz didn’t seem to net many positive results as far as solo work goes, at least until Mijoo decided to step in and show the rest how it should be done. I don’t even know the actress she got paired with here but I’m just going to assume she’s also great, as the girls seem like a fun duo, and the song they have is every bit 80s-influenced as it is adjacent to trot, and that’s one combination which works great, cause it allows for the usual trot melody to be presented in a different sonic context. Who knows how high this would’ve gotten on the main list if it wasn’t for that unfortunate breakdown after the first chorus.
Korean rappers have this bizarre lack of consistency, as if they threw darts while picking their beats. While this technically means even someone like Keith Ape could stumble upon an amazing backing track and autotune mumble his way on top of it, it also means the ones who do get those great songs, will very likely never release anything of worth again. That’s what might be happening here, as red bars on Youtube tell me I’ve heard a bunch of Khundi Panda’s songs, however, I don’t recall a single other one, and I’m just going to assume they were all awful. It’s also why I’m going to hold off praising him too much until he comes out with a second track as good as this. Don’t do trap, kid, I have faith in you.
Koyote – Wish
Given all the complaints about debuting minors – as opposed to abusing minors, which happens much more frequently, to all the debuted adults in the industry as well, mind you – I’m surprised there isn’t more Koyote stanning in the kpopsphere, now these are some old fucks who are probably around three hundred years old combined. They’re so old they even remember T-ara’s excellent Absolute First Album, as „Wish” could easily be an album track on there and would fit right in. Gosh, I sure hope none of them injure their hips too badly doing the dance to this, we could all use a few more songs like this next year.
And speaking of minors getting beaten and made into their uncle fans’ pristine nieces, NewJeans finally have a song worth a damn. It helped a great amount that Min Heejin took more than just visual clues from her first group f(x) here and instead, also ripped off the „let’s do the same rhythmic shit for three minutes straight and just throw whatever random shit on top of it”. „ETA” is actually more harmonically complex than a lot of f(x) tracks but due to its pretty unusual chord progression, it feels more stagnant than it really is, and it allows the weird horn sample to go off all around it without making it sound like a car crash of sounds. And it doesn’t even sound too much like PinkPantheress for once, now that is one plot twist I didn’t see coming.
Have you supported any local bands playing at bars recently? I think you really should do that, regardless of your answer. Sure, I’m not the person with the best luck regarding that, as the last three out of five times I went out, I walked into a jazz night, and I fucking hate jazz, but it won’t deter me and I imagine that sax player was really happy to see a bigger crowd, good on you mate. Maybe the next time, I hit the jackpot and walk into something as good as Off the Menu, and maybe so will you. Maybe someone from the band will see it and personally invite me for a bottle of soju or two. You never know until you try.
Seventeen – Ima – Even If the World Ends Tomorrow
The 19-year-old geriatrics of the kpop fandom may remember when Japanese releases had this sort of unified sound that wasn’t really jpop but at least aspired to be something similar, and it was generally almost all crap. Now that Japan isn’t really the secondary market for kpop groups, that changed to „ok we’ll do the trendy stuff for Korea and then maybe write a proper song for Japan”. No one illustrated the point better than Seventeen whose big release of the year „Super” was plodding along like a lot of similar boygroup stuff from the last years, meanwhile Japan got the light, breezy, great track which rocked along at a brisk pace while also retaining the pop melodic sensibilities so it wouldn’t alienate any existing fans. Maybe this should just turn into a „kpop but exclusively in Japanese” blog.
The best Dreamcatcher could cough up in all of 2023 was „Bonvoyage” which admittedly was a really good song with some kickass bass and an excellent chorus… but all the really rocking parts of it amounted to maybe half a minute and the rest of its running length was spent in ballad build-up land, resulting in a song that was still good but uneven and not the most exciting at the end of the day. Meanwhile, „You’re My Star” might never reach quite the same heights, but is a track much more focused on straight rocking, and the slower bits are also a little better here. I’m all for Dreamcatcher clones, especially Dreamcatcher clones of this standard, that’s definitely a market there’s a lot more space for in kpop, now that even Dreamcatcher only sound like Dreamcatcher in about one song out of four.
Vanillare are among the most fascinating Korean bands for me purely due to how it seemed like one day they had a fight with their bassist so huge that the very next day, all of their videos had large black boxes entirely covering her face, which turned out to be a temporary solution, as later on, they all got re-uploaded, edited in a way like she was never there. I guess „Life Sentence” is what the current members wish she’d got, as the song channels some cool punk energy and is just generally very well-written, we all know artists are at their best when they’re angry losers. Assuming nobody introduces them to therapy and the former bass player becomes a touring musician for Iggy Pop, we’ll have the song of the year on our hands here.
VI’ENX – On My Way
There are a lot of things wrong with this – the video is almost entirely filmed in some weird empty hangar without the snappy cuts of a more experienced director. The strobing lights are oddly out of focus in many shots but once they come to it, they could probably give you a stroke. Then it seems like all they miscalculated how many lights should be used for that shot, as the second location is almost entirely dark. Musically, the song puts the vocals a bit too much to the forefront, mudding up the backing track. However, all of that is easily forgiven, as once you get through to the actual meat of the package, the song goes pretty hard, and with the high gloss top agency treatment, this should be the boygroup stuff that takes over America, ahem.
If „You’re My Star” could double as a Dreamcatcher feature track, this could just as well be one of the better Dreamcatcher b-sides. Now I just feel like „Hate Dami” would be a much better target and could be the start of a legendary diss battle, and the opportunity cost really hurts.
And if you’ve reached this far, have one of the only excellent downtempo songs Korea had to offer in 2023 as a reward.
Dishonourable mentions
Aespa – Better Things
Unlike „Drama” and in fact anything else Aespa have done so far, „Better Things” is a very unusual for SM song in that it’s largely stripped down and simple, no doubt due to how well this approach has worked for NewJeans (if you’re tired of hearing about them already, brace yourself for a lot more, as it appears they were the ones to pave the way for a third of anything that came out in 2023). Of course, they completely crash and burn, as SM have always famously subscribed to the „more is more” production technique so even if the beat here is basic and straightforward, there is still a lot of melodic clutter and tons of unnecessary detail which rub against the track in the wrong way and fully destroy its direct appeal.
Has anyone ever made the list purely for being bland and unexciting? I can’t recall right now so let’s just say AKMU are the first ever, congratulations! Over the years, AKMU have actually perfected the easy-listen stuff that Korea loves, and no other active group do it quite as well, but „Love Lee” has the same boring chord progressions and texture choices as whichever song is currently charting at 87 on MelON. The duo don’t bring any of their usual offbeat charisma into this either but I guess, at their level of fame, you don’t have to try much at all, and as much as I want to add „but it’s not songs like this that got them to where they are”, that would be a lie, as all their early crap was similarly dreadful.
Blackswan – A World Without Pain
The world has some pretty fucked up shit going on just about everywhere right now so you might not be aware but in June, there was a three-train collision in India which resulted in a lot of death and even more injured. As one of the current Blackswan members is from the area, they recorded a song to commemorate the victims. The one positive thing I’ve got to say about it is that at least it’s not an overblown „We Are the World” type disaster, but it’s hard not to think it’s a little emotionally hollow nonetheless, and putting the tragedy aside, it’s just a beyond dull acoustic ballad. Donate if you can and want, stay safe, and probably don’t listen to this.
One fucking time Bobby infamously said that fucking hip hop is all about skipping fucking showers, and while he actually looks relatively fucking clean these days, he just might be stealing his fucking clothes from the fucking homeless, everything he fucking wears in this is just some fucking trash bags, so the fucking jury is still out on his fucking body odour. Mind you, if this fucking song is anything to go by, maybe the new fucking hip hop definition is just „say fuck twice every fucking sentence”, I don’t mind fucking swearing and I do it pretty fucking frequently, but this right here is just fucking ridiculous, especially given there’s no fucking beat to give a fuck about. When he was still under fucking YG, his brainmush fucking music at least had some fucking kick to it. Fuck.
Hey, this is a cool group name, stood out to me immediately among groups NxxxtGenYungBoyz, Girls69420 and LGBTQKPOP, which all might or might not be some new and upcoming groups, sure none of them sound too out there for what we’re getting on the daily. Unfortunately, the musical output is not quite up to the same standard, the brass riffing and blues style singing reminding me of Sistar are already enough to make me groan but if that wasn’t enough, they’ve been paired with some odd sub-bass-heavy backing track, which is just a bit of a mess and a car crash of styles that don’t fit together. Here’s to hoping the girls didn’t have to sell their houses to even appear in this but judging by the video quality, that’s actually rather unlikely.
Chillin Boi G, Howler, Malitabu – Fake Love
Although it seems like we’ve progressed past that point a bit by now, just a few years ago, „mumble rap” was the next big thing, allowing all the most thoughtless and talentless of rappers to use all the same shitty backing tracks but now putting approximately three words instead of seven in there, and slurring all of them, to create a true bucket of shit like no one had heard before. Chillin Boi G (see what I mean about Bunny.T being a positive standout) decided to take it a step further and not include any beat at all and slurring his way through it even harder, removing whatever little of rap he could have here, and ending up with something more of a „mumble mumble”. Unsure if this already exists, I don’t think the shit music studies are quite up to date, I’ll be sure to provide updates on this crucial topic.
It’s so easy to convince kpop fans they’re listening to some high art, you don’t have to do anything past giving yourself the right label. Dalsooobin, once a member of very much an idol pop group Dalshabet, has been releasing pop songs ever since she started her solo career, but by making videos that were sorta weirder and signing to a label which wasn’t exactly the big 3 – although in the original and correct meaning of the word „indie”, JYP is an indie company – she was initially hailed as some of an alternative princess. I didn’t see „Tanaka San” discussed much in any way whatsoever but I can bet, with a decent level of certainty, that you’d have people calling this absolute turd of a chorus some avant-garde masterpiece.
Hippe Rimes – I Hate It More Than Anything in the World
Sometimes they do my job for me but given this track’s placement, there are at least 25 things I hate more in the world, so this is a failure even on the naming front.
Monsta X have always seemed like a group that fit right in with the obligatory military service. You know, the tough man concept, half of the members being built like brick houses etc. Now that their time has actually come, I was proven right, they look their best ever having just hit or just left the barracks. I don’t really know when I.M’s turn is going to happen but I imagine soon, and given his current dedication to objectification, we’re surely going to get some bomb ass selfies and no other solo music for two years to come, a win-win situation no matter how you look at it.
JustB, Alexa – MBTI
Alexa is seriously great, out of all English-speaking idols, she’s definitely on the less corny side, she has some respectable opinions, and can obviously dance very well. Now that her futuristic robot concept is all but gone, she’s getting some excellent fashion to match too, this is easily some of the best school uniform wearing I’ve ever seen in kpop. The song is completely thoughtless R&B rubbish with some truly baffling melodic choices but music clearly isn’t what you’re here for and if it is, I’m just going to put the blame fully on JustB, now who the fuck even are they and why does my way-paving fave Alexa even have to share the same air with these nugus tch. Let’s clear the searches Alexa gorgeous JustB smelly boys MBTI bad for any intelligent human form
To the shock of everyone, Kep1er managed to release some pretty good songs this year, and I might talk about some of them soon, but they also released „Grand Prix” which sucks just as hard as most other things they’ve done. The problem is obviously the chorus which is split into two sections which suck almost equally as much, the first being a truly braindead „like a grand priiiiiiix” hook and nothing else, and the second just boring you to death with more chanting like we haven’t heard that from every other song released by any girlgroup in the last five years, including 90% of Kep1er’s own.
Min Heejin is honestly a bit of a genius, and every single bit of problematic content associated with NewJeans is wholly deliberate and crafted to create the most rage clicks possible, while also retaining just enough plausible deniability to get herself out of any more serious shit. Ok, so the latter part maybe isn’t all that impressive, given kpop fans will settle for „not knowing English slang” but that doesn’t change the fact that she’s capable of toying the line perfectly well. You may as well expect a lot more artistically shot pedobait in the group’s upcoming output, and if that would deter you from interacting with any NewJeans content ever, that’s totally understandable, and I would support the Min Heejin boycott, and if not, then it’s good to at least be aware and see it for what it is. Wait, I was supposed to talk about music? Hm, it seems like nobody has put any here, maybe next time we’ll be more lucky.
Oneus – Baila Conmigo
Unlike NewJeans, all members of Oneus are consenting adults, at least to my knowledge, and I’m not sure how much of the rigorous training and unhealthy dieting that consent covers, but I’m more than certain Leedo covering himself in that gold was hard work and dedication, and such commitment just has to earn a fap or two from me. The outdated latin sound mixed with trap breakdowns because one shitty trend isn’t enough to make a song in 2023 might get in the way of the rhythm, especially since it’s so rhythmically confused by itself, but if it was good enough for Oneus members, I can exercise my own high levels of determination just as well.
Hyoyeon always gets herself into these messy dance tracks, doesn’t she. „Party” isn’t quite as nauseating as „Dessert” and unlike „Born to Be Wild”, you won’t have to test your speakers to see if all frequencies are coming through correctly and it’s really supposed to sound like that, but the messy beat changes, it dropping to halftime every so often, and just the overall weird grating quality to it don’t put it far behind. It’s a wild wild world where the best Girls’ Generation related release of the year is actually Rachel’s Jessica’s.
Red Velvet are no strangers to the bottom half of my lists, it’s like meeting an old friend at this point. „Chill Kill” is a bit of a different beast, however, as it does quite a few things very right, and in parts echoes to the great „Psycho”. It does also feature one of the most bizarrely unfortunate choruses of the year, however, and what a mess that is. The „don’t think about tomorrow” melody is soaring and anthemic and given the right treatment, it could come off amazingly well, but the backing track is some heavy, low thudding nonsense, just about the worst fit for a melody like that, and the two rub against each other in a completely odd way, which just negates everything else positive that the track had built up to that point. In the end it’s like four ideas and one terrible one, which should technically be a net positive, but that one is like when my cat decides to be an asshole and leave the most deadly smelling shit on the floor, and by then, I really could care less that the previous four poops had all been taken care of properly.
Like „Eyes, Nose, Lips” but Taeyang is not shirtless this time, which removes the only use „Eyes, Nose, Lips” ever had.
Treasure once again have a song that’s off to a decent start but once the chorus hits, all hell breaks loose and it shits the bed. We’re in some crappy almost marching band territory this time, and it doesn’t even have the usual high production value YG polish, that’s how you know nobody gave a single fuck about this. I hope the one who’s being made to dress like GD is at least getting compensated for the mental damage, considering he might be writing his raps as far as I know, maybe next year he’ll see enough to buy himself a Happy Meal, though given the inflation, he might have to give the toy up.
„Sweetest Pie” was an awful song that had one good quality – it mostly made sense and was put together with some amount of demonstrated competence. Ok so those aren’t exactly the grounds for something actually good but as it appears, those are also fundamental, cause „Moonlight Sunrise” is pretty much just „Sweetest Pie” without either of those things. The cramming up of way too many words in certain parts while leaving almost none to be sung in others throws off the vocal meter completely, and makes this a way bigger mess melodically than it could and should be, it’s like someone took Korean lyrics, put them through Google translate, and clocked out for the day, with no consideration for how well it could sound once put to actual use. Not that well, as it turns out.
Oh, fuck off. This is just too depressing for me to even continue.
YDG, DBO, Lil Asian, Slaylonie – It’s Okay
Hold on, I’ll always find time for DBO. It’s almost endearing how committed he is to both never improving and sticking with the worst styles of music imaginable. This time, he’s just doing the generically horrible autotune rap paired with some equally worthless R&B crooning, which is puzzlingly actually a step-up from whatever the fuck he usually does, and I’m not even sure which part of this is DBO and which are everyone else, but DBO is the clear king here anyway, let’s just say he performs all of it. I do not take anyone for granted these days but I sincerely hope he keeps popping up on these lists each year for the rest of eternity. It’s pretty much just comfort food at this point.
Bonus song that should be kickass awesome but is actually quite the failure
Sunmi – Stranger
Excellent 80s Pet Shop Boys-inspired verses following Sunmi’s usual formula? Check. Reggae style pre-chorus that copies the cool reggae and is actually cool as shit cause they knew how to produce it very well? Check. Finally, a chorus that’s a secret third thing that still works, as it’s significantly darkened up and straightforwardly catchy? Check check check. There are three honestly outstanding songs here… and none of them ever get to truly take off because the entire package has been given the NMIXX special, so as soon as you really get into any section, it awkwardly switches to an entirely different one, and as each of them have noticeably different rhythms, there’s not really any way to make sense of anything going on. It’s truly a damn shame and arguably the biggest disappointment of the entire year that I still couldn’t quite put on the proper worst list with clear conscience, as if you focus on any singular thing here, outside of its surrounding context, it’s all genuinely fantastic. If any of you are fluent in ChatGPT language, please make it extended all three parts into full-length tracks, now that would be the world’s first ethical artistic AI usage, and would undoubtedly invite a horde of sheep followers to do the same with their quarter-finished songs, and it would majorly blow any other time.
And that is all for today! Tune in before the end of the year for the real-deal lists!
kpop for the average joe 