erie’s 2024 in k-pop

Posted: 2025-01-11

Updated: 2025-01-15

Tags: criticism

I spent most of 2024 fairly depressed and mostly finding ways to procrastinate and fuck around instead of getting work done. Thanks to what may or may not be a general decline in academic standards post-COVID, this didn't really affect my life in any way beyond getting really into k-pop, the topic of today's blog post. Prospective readers be warned: my sense of what is good and bad varies from day to day and also I often find myself liking bad things that I know are bad.

I’m a long-time k-pop hater, and even people shilling me on NewJeans when they debuted didn’t really shift my priors. This is mostly because my mental model of k-pop was stuff like BigBang’s Fantastic Baby or the discography of Blackpink which to me is full of insipid vocal lines and obnoxious EDM-inspired instrumentals. Anyways in June I was looking for a new avenue of self-harm and decided to approach the genre with an open mind, partly because a music journalist I like reading (Joshua Minsoo Kim) seemed to have some good things to say about a few acts, and dove in armed with Pop Excellence’s 2022 and 2023 best-of lists.

Here’s 20 songs released this year I liked in roughly ascending order of how much I liked them. I’ve restricted the list to singles, more or less. Criteria for inclusion included musical quality, choreography, how much I liked the concept, and (implicitly) a simp index. The relative weights on the different criteria probably differ across entries, but whatever. Lists I looked at before writing my own: RateYourMusic, Kpopalypse (1, 2), and winterosy. Also girl groups only because I suffer from 直男癌.

Songs I liked this year (new releases)

20. Kep1er - Shooting Star

Nowhere near as good as XG’s “SHOOTING STAR” but I did look it up on Shazam once this year so it squeaks in, partly because I had 18 songs and wanted to pad the list out to 20. I like the use of vocoders.

19. Red Velvet - Cosmic

Red Velvet is something of a critical darling as far as I can tell but nothing in their discography really grabs me by the throat. Anyways this song I think I also might have Shazamed at some point this year so it makes it onto the list. I really don’t understand the praise for the MV, which is clearly just a Midsommar pastiche, which is well-done but should instantly disqualify the concept as being “original”. And what exactly do those Swedish gerontocidal freaks have to do with outer space?

18. tripleS - Door

This is to some extent an affirmative action pick, since ballads are a huge part of popular music across East Asia but I don’t particularly care to listen to them. It seems like Jaden Jeong doesn’t really like giving his groups ballads but this is pretty serviceable although not as good as LOONA 1/3’s “Sonatine”. The Aria subunit generated some pretty funny moments, and Jeong’s recruiting strategy, which seems 1/3 industry blue chips, 1/3 moneyball, and 1/3 random picks has worked out pretty well imo. More on tripleS later.

17. Le Sserafim - Smart

What I actually like about k-pop is that often groups have totally post-modern discographies where their army of hitmakers has scoured the world for new and old trends in popular music and, extracting the souls of those styles from the local contexts and histories that gave them meaning and social value, flatten them into ultra-slick products that, at least on a technical level, are close to flawless. And then they add some cute and/or hot girls to promote and perform the songs while doing dances, which is a pretty winning combination in my book. “Smart” makes it onto this list because it’s an umambitious but catchy take on amapiano, which I don’t usually listen to but find pleasant. Like most of the songs on this list, it wins points for not having any parts that I find actively irritating or anti-musical. “Easy” also could have taken this slot for doing the same with a genre that’s proven much harder for k-pop acts to crack (hip hop). Unfortunately nothing Le Sserafim released this year was half as good as “Eve, Psyche, & the Bluebeard’s Wife” which is probably the closest thing to a SOPHIE track (“Immaterial”) k-pop majors have produced thus far.

16. fromis_9 - Supersonic

The placement of Supersonic on this list is being hurt by the fact that fromis_9 has my retroactive picks for best release of 2023 (Unlock My World) as well as best song (“Attitude”) and this track is in some ways a regression from that high. I was fairly indifferent to this track the first time I heard it, maybe even a bit let down by the anticipation, but I was eventually able to psy-op myself into liking it via the mere exposure effect. The fact that I had to do this means I’ve left it fairly low on the list as a “bubble” song that could either be in or out. However, it benefits by having probably the highest implicit simp index score of any track on this list. When I first saw the “#menow” MV I thought short hair Chaeyoung was the hottest woman I’d ever seen in my life, and the Jiheon section is also peak. Assuming the group disbands I will mourn the loss of what is probably the deepest bench of visuals in k-pop.

Something I find a bit unfortunate about fromis_9’s discography now is that while their highs are quite high (e.g. “DKDK”, “Escape Room”, “We Go”, among others) none of their tracks really seem like they had to go to fromis_9, partly because I don’t think they ever had a very consistent concept. Another aspect of this is that while their live vocals are pretty good (see video), the vocal writing generally feels like it’s either underutilizing them or has included some random line just to remind you Hayoung can hit whistle notes. Luckily “Supersonic” avoids these pitfalls and lands in a Goldilocks zone between being too lax and trying too hard. Apparently this was the title track only because Jiwon campaigned for it to be, which goes to show that Pledis didn’t really know what they were doing with the girls or their repertoire. Anyways I’ve chosen to embed this live performance rather than the MV because it demonstrates that they sing with live mics fairly often and are good at it, plus Jiheon has a cute moment at the end.

15. tripleS - Girls Never Die

This track is a slightly weaker version of last year’s “Rising”, and it definitely doesn’t reach the heights of yesteryear’s b-sides “Seoul Sonyo Sound” (maybe my favourite k-pop song because the instrumental sounds like it was written by an unscrupulous Burial sampler), “Speed Love” (great take on shibuya-kei), or “Beam” (idk what to write about this one other than that it’s good). I do think that this music video and its Youtube comments section are triumphs, though.

tripleS also wins big on minor erie award category “Best Group to Get Parasocially Attached to” via their nearly-daily “Signal” vlogs, and therefore scores very well on the implicit simp index. My ultimate bias is Sohyun, group number S14, because there’s videos where she talks about reading Baudelaire for inspiration while writing lyrics and recommends Marguerite Duras and Milan Kundera. This touched me because at her age they were probably also top 5 authors for me, so I’m really rooting for her to accomplish whatever she’s hoping to get done as an idol.

Overall the tripleS concept is kind of interesting because in some ways it’s transplanting the spirit of AKB48 into the hyper-perfectionist and competitive k-pop industry, with its first revealed member being a girl (Seoyeon) who literally had zero idol training prior to joining the group. Early “Signals” (vlogs) would follow her first vocal and dance lessons. There were more blue-chip picks like Yooyeon, who missed out on debuting on My Teenage Girl by ranking 8th (the top 7 debuted as Classy) or Yubin, a former Source Music/ADOR trainee who might’ve debuted in NewJeans in a different timeline, but also picks like Sullin who as far as I can tell had very little training even in just speaking Korean and was seemingly brought on to fulfill Modhaus CEO Jaden Jeong’s long-held wish to debut a Thai idol. Having an unwieldy roster of 24 is also a great way to rotate attention between members as different subunits are formed and dissolved, and at least publicly their management at Modhaus doesn’t seem to be as freakishly strict and controlling about their image as the major labels. This sometimes shows up in dance performances that are not as tight as their major label competitors (or LOONA for that matter) but I don’t think it matters because to some extent tripleS is kind of like “idols you could have a beer with” (the many underage members excepted) rather than presenting themselves as existing on a higher plane of being. The economics of doing all this are beyond me (it’s been claimed that the food bill alone is something like 21k USD/month) but it’s a nice experiment.

Anyways between tripleS and his work as the mastermind behind early LOONA, it’s clear that CEO Jaden Jeong has next-level vision when it comes to recruiting simp attractors. In addition, I think he’s a genius for turning photocards (collectibles that are exactly what they sound like) into NFTs called “Objekts” that allow fans/simps to vote for title songs, subunit formations, etc. In doing so he probably found the one viable usecase for NFTs, which probably makes him more qualified to run a16z crypto than anybody who actually works there.

14. NewJeans - Supernatural

I’ve chosen to link the dance practice rather than the official MV, which has “Part. 1” in the title, as a protest against the seemingly new practice of shooting 3 hour long feature films and then calling them “part 1” (update 2025-01-15: apparently the 2 parts were because the song was released in Korean as well as Japanese). I think NewJeans is pretty decent, but the idea that their broad appeal and overseas success is purely due to their music is obviously false. Sounding like pinkpantheress is not, in isolation, a strong claim to musical brilliance. There’s really no separating their popularity from Min Hee-jin’s work as creative director reacting against Blackpink-ian concepts and styling. This may be a controversial statement since it gives credit to someone who is sometimes depicted as Han Seo Hee meets Humbert Humbert meets Lydia Tár.

Anyways this is the highest ranked song on my list that got here via checking my Shazam history. It’s kind of like “ASAP” (a top two NewJeans song for me along with “Cool With You”) but city pop. Unfortunately city pop is a genre/amorphous blob with a ceiling since its origins are basically inoffensive easy listening tracks for bubble-era Japanese yuppies who didn’t get John Coltrane or Gustav Mahler, jazz and classical (more accurately “Western Art Music”) being the two shibboleths of good Westernized musical taste in those years. In a way the revival of city pop is to some extent a disturbing reminder of the power that recommendation algorithms have over the daily texture of our lives as well as a testament to an increasingly exhausted and therefore nostalgic culture. But the song is alright.

update 2025-01-15: according to literally everybody else this is a new jack swing song, which goes to show how much I know. And also that my racist ass hears Japanese and instantly goes to “ah, sounds like city pop” lol.

13. aespa - Whiplash

On paper aespa is a group I should like - has a Chinese member, has Karina, has music (this year at least) willing to lean into abrasive and edgy sonics, has a stupid but fun concept. In practice I dislike both “Supernova” and “Armageddon” mostly because the vocal lines strike me as being annoying and borderline anti-musical (although as you’ll see when I get to my non-k-pop list there’s a lot of anti-musical stuff I do like). I will chalk this up to the enduring influence of Blackpink in the industry. Luckily this song has no vocal parts that annoy me and the instrumental is a decent pop take on tech house. This means “Whiplash” has the dubious distinction of being the only aespa song I like even though the bridge is just meh. Of course there was no way the embed for “Whiplash” would be anything but the official music video because this track’s placement on the list is as much due to its concept as to its muscular backing track.

12. ARTMS - Virtual Angel

As a favor to readers I’ve chosen to embed the “Human Eye” version of the music video rather than the brain-melting, seizure-inducing original. Between “Virtual Angel” and “Birth” (with its Leonora Carrington-like visuals), ARTMS had some of my favourite concepts of the year with wonderfully bizarre and possibly ill-advised takes on the dark side of idol fandom and the end of girlhood, respectively. Unsurprisingly, this year ARTMS wins the coveted erie award for “Best k-pop Release” for <Dall>, and only misses out on “Best Debut” because, well, let’s be real, they all have years and years of experience from being in LOONA. (Like fromis_9, watching and hearing ARTMS gives you the comforting suggestion that if you do something for long enough, you tend to get pretty good at it.) <Dall>, like last year’s retroactive winner Unlock My World, is fairly cohesive as a project, possibly because Jaden Jeong has been working with the girls since before they debuted and also apparently has a lot of LOONA vault material just knocking around on his hard drive (like “Butterfly Effect”) or else can produce stuff that sounds like it at the drop of a hat (tripleS’s “Non Scale”). Stuff like the bossa nova break from subunit Odd Eye Circle’s “My Secret Playlist” last year suggested that ARTMS would be a bit more adventurous than LOONA OT12 was and <Dall> has a mix of typically LOONA dance-pop (the aforementioned “Butterfly Effect”) and excursions into future bass (“Flower Rhythm”), breakbeats (“Birth”, briefly), and city pop (“Air”, and my previous misgivings about the genre still apply even if Jinsoul is involved). Not everything is a banger but it’s like seeing an exhibition where at least all the paintings’ palettes were chosen with care even if the final picture isn’t your cup of tea.

11. Yves - LOOP (ft. Lil Cherry)

This is probably my favourite take on UK garage that’s come out of k-pop, including the NewJeans discography as well as f(x)’s “4 Walls”, which would have been my previous pick. Since debuting as a soloist I think Yves’s choice to go to Paix Per Mil has really been justified by the overall creative direction as well as the songs that her labelmates have worked on. The most important question about this song is whether you hate or merely dislike Lil Cherry’s rapping. For me, I think it’s bad, but not as bad as the verse on “4 Walls”, and at least the way it’s weaved through the track feels a bit more purposeful than “mandatory rap verse”. In addition I think that its badness is in some sense dependent on the fact that I can actually understand the English lyrics so in theory there’s a version of this song where I don’t even hate the rapping.

10. CHUU - Chocolate

For whatever reason it seems like Chuu gets the least attention out of the post-LOONA releases, but “Chocolate” and “Lucid Dream” are pretty excellent (I don’t really care for the title track “Strawberry Rush”). For some reason Chuu is forced to rap on this song but since it’s k-pop we’re grading on a curve and we may as well let her pass. As an aside, since I got into k-pop this year it took a while for me to come across some of the original coverage on the Blockberry/LOONA situation that blew up the group. In retrospect it is quite funny that Blockberry decided to go with accusing her of bullying staff members only for every key grip in Korea and their mothers to testify that Chuu is actually the closest thing to Guanyin that exists in this debased day and age.

9. ILLIT - Magnetic

There are a lot of reasons not to include this song on the list, or at least not this high, but whoever wrote that bass line is some sort of Pied Piper of Hamelin-level evil genius and should be placed under observation. Otherwise, the instrumental is a good example of not trying to do too much (a common feature of many entries in this blogpost) with its use of negative space on the chorus, and I think there’s a good argument to be made that this is the first pluggnb inspired k-pop single which is funny enough for me to leave it up here. Also I still haven’t listened to brat by charli xcx partly because when I heard 365 for the first time I was like “hm I will listen to illit - magnetic instead”.

8. Yves - Viola

Honestly the whole brat craze was probably the most annoying thing I’ve seen on the internet in a while, and by being indirectly responsible for that clip where Amy Klobuchar is like “let’s bring Bernie Sanders and Dick Cheney on a nation-wide brat tour!” unleashed an unprecedented evil into the world that will not soon be defeated. Maybe part of why I find it irritating is because it was literally inescapable in the circles that people who cared about it travel in, but it still seemed like they were patting themselves on the back for being so underground and in the know. It’s a bit like when stans complain that their faves don’t get any attention in the Youtube comments of a MV with an 8 figure viewcount. All this is to say that Yves clears charli, and this song is probably one of the better takes on the ever broadening category of internet music that people call “hyperpop”. I think this track was a bit disappointing to me on first listen because the “DIM” snippet in the teaser for I Did made me expect a direction that was very different from what the EP wound up being, but it definitely grew on me. After I bought tickets to see Yves I suddenly liked the EP a lot more, which is kind of like how gambling makes watching sports more fun. The Yves office outfit in this MV is generational.

7. Loossemble - TTYL

This should probably be below instead of above “Viola”, especially since it contains the lyrics “you baddie rizz me tonight”, but I wanted to bitch about brat in the last two entries back-to-back. “TTYL” is here partly on strength of statistics (got a lot of play this year according to my last.fm) but also because in an industry where everyone is processing the ever-loving shit out of their vocals all the time and pretending not to, it’s nice to have a track that throws away the pretense and just shoves a super processed chorus in your face. I’ve never really cared about vocal quality partly because the first band I really loved was Car Seat Headrest and Will Toledo was not much of a singer when he was recording the songs that made his career but still delivered unreal energy and conviction. Furthermore, when I first started “getting” Bladee I realized that there was a world of interesting things you could do with autotune if you weren’t beholden to normal standards of “good” and “bad”, so for quite some time I’ve liked listening to processed vocals because it seems like a space that hasn’t been adequately explored yet and is unfairly maligned (see my previous statements to the effect of “oldheads hating on autotune are destined for the glue factory”). Obviously some, or maybe most, experiments will fail but ambitious failures can be as valuable and enjoyable as a more polished but less ambitious work. This EP also contains some pretty good tracks like “Confessions” and “Cotton Candy” and at least musically seemed like a bit of a step up from their previous releases, earning it a spot on the erie “Best k-pop Release” shortlist, so it’s unfortunate that the contract was terminated this year. Hopefully the members will go on to bigger and better things and at least they ended on a good note as far as the music goes.

6. Billlie - trampoline

This was a late discovery for me, but a good one, with its jazzy keys and syncopated rhythms. At times I get an Isaiah Rashad vibe which is only possible because most of the rapping is actually decent and was written probably with the instrumental in mind instead of trying to replicate the flow from some new jack swing bullshit nobody is listening to in the present year. The video, like LOONA’s “Hula Hoop”, does very little and still works.

5. RESCENE - Pinball

RESCENE enters the list at position 6 with a few accolades: the erie “Best Debut” award and a nomination for “Best Choreo”. Out of “big” groups, RESCENE is probably most similar to IVE with Woni/Minami/Liv seeming to be a blatant attempt at recruiting members that invite comparisons to IVE’s Wonyoung/Yujin/Liz. Now this would be a pretty unfortunate comparison for basically any other girl group debuting from a small company to even attempt, but Minami at least is in fact a very engaging performer (see 1:24 of the embed) and the quality of music that they’ve released so far makes this venture less quixotic.

For some reason, the IVE songs that everyone likes (“I Am” for example) I find kind of typically annoying in the way k-pop melodies usually annoy me, and they have a lot of similar and equally annoying (to me) tracks. RESCENE does have at least one track in this lane (“Love Attack”) which I find much more tolerable and probably could have snuck onto this list. Additionally, they’re not really concept freaks and seem happy to produce good pop songs without too much extra fuss, which is another great thing to have in common with IVE. However, imho RESCENE are in better form floating over a track like “Pinball” which actually does sound kind of like a modified pluggnb beat with its TR808 cowbells and hihat patterns.

Aside 1: I think it’s kind of funny that “nugu” is a totally Western neologism. It’s strongly reminiscent of when I was in high school browsing 4chan and watching people get trolled when their favourite authors/directors/musicians were described as “literally who”. Convergent evolution.

Aside 2: This was my original pick for “Best Choreo” before I saw the winning one in December.

4. Chung Ha - I’m Ready

There were a few comebacks this year that were basically spins on what I might term “homosexual club music”, by which I mean this, Le Sserafim’s “Crazy”, and aespa’s “Whiplash”. In my opinion “Crazy” is bad but “I’m Ready” is so good that I was originally going to leave “Whiplash” off the list because it really just owns this lane too hard. This is probably her best track since “Gotta Go”. That “ah-um” vocal element is just one of a few brilliant flourishes on what is otherwise a fairly minimal and moody four-on-the-floor instrumental, along with the atmospheric backing synths you can just make out on the chorus. Less is more when all the details are getting a lot of love and attention. This is before talking about her army of dudes in sheer shirts and the epic choreography which also gets an erie “Best Choreo” nod. Somehow the waacking seems like a more sincere engagement with the gay subcultures in which these styles of song and dance evolved than most other k-pop tracks doing similar stuff.

3. IVE - Accendio

Having earlier whined about IVE, it’s time to place them 3rd on this year’s list. “Accendio” is my favourite concept of the year and favourite MV as well. I mean that the magical girl concept is good but in isolation “evil Wonyoung” and “evil Yujin” would already be, like, blockbuster concepts. Like “Baddie”, this time they’re on an instrumental that’s a bit less over-engineered and carefully machined than the usual, but unlike “Baddie”, they have much better rap verses, starting with Rei’s delivery right out of the gate (doubling Leeseo’s vocals with a slight delay later on is also genius), thus producing a good rather than a bad song. The sparser production makes the brass stabs on the chorus feel absolutely massive, and that mechanical lead synth is the perfect mix of harsh and inviting. Like with “LOVE DIVE”, IVE is kind of at their best when they’re a bit standoffish and unapproachable.

2. STAYC - GPT

This was my original choice for best of the year, partly off the strength of this stage in Japan where every cut to the audience shows somebody having like a 10/10 best-day-of-my-life peak experience. It’s not a very high bar to clear, but somehow this comeback is the best art anybody has made about AI since deep nets came back into fashion in the early 2010s. While that is a somewhat dubious accolade, less dubious is the erie “Best Choreo” award for the work of Jo Nain, who delivers an adorable routine about being addicted to your phone to avoid the pain of dealing with your meatspace crush. The way the girls mime a text bubble opening on “tell me” is a stroke of genius, and the way holding up a phone turns into a heartbeat is surely expressing something profound about our virtualized, overconnected, and undersocialized society. In an era of rising e-dater populations this is vital artistic work, and also makes you reflect on the fact that, generally, depictions of using the internet or your phone in fiction are still somewhat unsatisfying, with Tony Tulathimutte’s Rejection and Park Chan-Wook’s Decision To Leave being notable recent exceptions for me. The part in the bridge when the girls fan out in slow motion around Sieun is divinely inspired. Finally, this song’s music video introduced me to the charms of Seeun.

As far as the song goes, it’s cute and catchy. Like most users of ChatGPT it’s somewhat lazy but gets the job done. The bridge is cute and the intro sounds like something that The Alchemist would’ve been sampled from the score of a 1970s poliziottesco. J has a more than serviceable singing voice and it makes you wonder why Black Eyed Pilseung would have her rapping on tracks like their debut “SO BAD” (while the UK drill 808 slides are cool it’s unlikely that any k-pop girl group has accidentally signed Skepta). The deep house style piano chords really work for a song that’s otherwise a bit too simple in the rhythm section until the second verse. “GPT” works because (surprisingly) not fucking anything up and mostly getting out of the way of your vocalists is apparently sufficient for a great song.

1. RESCENE - UhUh

RESCENE wins “Best Single” this year with “UhUh”, which mixes industrial sounds like its purring bass line and cast-iron-pan-falling-down-a-flight-of-stairs percussion with girl group harmonies and horn stabs, achieving minor-key glory. The anti-drop is pretty ballsy and linking it to that catchy “ba-ra-ram ba-ra-ram” is just as bold. This track flits between cold and warm sounds to great effect which is probably why I find it to have such good replay value. By debuting with “UhUh” and “YoYo” RESCENE briefly accomplished the oft-claimed but basically never-accomplished feat of having a discography only consisting of good songs, which is what made them the obvious shoo-in for “Best Debut” once I disqualified ARTMS.

Omissions

Some thoughts (mostly negative) on songs that are not on the list.

tripleS - Inner Dance

tripleS rounded out the roster this year with 4-member subunit Glow. This track sounds like a mid NewJeans b-side. I pointed this out to a friend and he said “yeah that’s why it’s good”. Do I agree with that assessment? Hard to say. However tripleS Glow has Jiyeon and NewJeans doesn’t so maybe that tips the scale.

KATSEYE - Touch

I said “this just sounds like someone lazy is trying to ride the NewJeans wave.” The same friend said, “yeah that’s why it’s good”. Catchy but KATSEYE unfortunately doesn’t have Jiyeon.

izna - IZNA

This sounds like nothing. The anti-drop doesn’t really work because it’s mid in isolation, and the rest of the song is also half-baked so there isn’t really any contrast.

MEOVV - MEOW

Fucking annoying. I have seen somebody defend this by saying (paraphrased) “yay k-pop is dumb again, you can admit you like this.” What did they mean by “again”?

XG - WOKE UP, SOMETHING AIN’T RIGHT, HOWLING

“SHOOTING STAR” and “LEFT RIGHT” are pretty good but I think at this point they’ve kind of outstayed their welcome. Overall XG is so transparently “careerist” that the constant rehashing of 2000s R&B chasing hits just becomes irritating. XG frustrates me because they have lots of great tools but deploy them to boring ends. XG’s seven-member roster would easily take 7 spots on a top 10 of rappers in k-pop, partly because the production team has realized that rapping is about personality first and therefore asks for qualities that you wouldn’t want from a vocalist (nasality, pitchiness). The songwriters are competent, the vocal members can belt, and the visuals have escaped the k-pop industry hivemind egregore. (Once I saw somebody say they liked XG because they look like normal people. Due to my terminal diagnosis of 直男癌 I must demur. A k-pop idol, like Christine in Lucky Jim, should have a face so beautiful that it arouses “indignation, grief, resentment, peevishness, spite, and sterile anger, all the allotropes of pain”.)

Overall this is a group that could probably consistently land at the top of erie lists (the most valuable accolade in music). Instead, they release tracks like “WOKE UP”, which demonstrate that everybody is better at rapping than the rest of the industry, but who cares? The problem with Korean rap (and maybe East Asian rap more generally) is that everybody is stuck in a weird version of the past where Chief Keef never dropped “Citgo”, Young Thug never dropped “Halftime”, and Lil Peep never raised a generation of emo white boys. As such k-pop rap is basically doomed to stagnate until Korean Yeat emerges (although Korea did produce whatever this is, which is a point in its favor). To sum up, I think XG releases stuff with great workmanship but the musical vision is never as creative as the visual direction, which is a shame.

This summer I watched the documentary series about the XG trainee process. Because I’m a bitter lazy failson and a chronic procrastinator this somewhat soured me on the group as well, because to some extent I am emotionally invested in denying the idea that you can achieve your dreams through hard work, which probably explains why I grade XG on a curve (the engineering class kind where they pull the average down so they can fail a certain percentage of the cohort every year). In a way this entry serves as a kind of disclaimer that I don’t claim to be making aesthetic judgments on any sort of objective basis.

LISA - ROCKSTAR

Really stupid stuff. Justifies my irrational hatred of Blackpink because it suggests the members themselves have bad taste as opposed to being victims of YG’s house style. Babymonster is also crap so maybe the whole company just sucks at making music.

ROSÉ & Bruno Mars - APT.

Not as bad as the Lisa track but this one I had to hear much more regularly so I hate it more. More grist for the Blackpink hater mill.

QWER - whatever they released this year

This summer I also watched the video series where the bald fitness guy puts together this group because he really likes K-On! and Bocchi the Rock. Now this is a very funny premise and the part where Siyeon moves back to Korea and reveals her suitcase has like 3 changes of clothes and a copy of the Dao De Jing is hilarious (Siyeon screentime in general is absolute cinema). It’s also impressive that they got to a pretty passable level of instrumental ability in a short amount of time. Unfortunately there exists a film called Linda Linda Linda, possibly the greatest-ever depiction of a girl band, in which Bae Doona gives a career-defining performance and (with the help of her Japanese friends) covers “Linda Linda” by The Blue Hearts, in the process producing an immortal work of art by which basically every Asian pop-rock girl band with similar vibes will be compared to. QWER fails miserably by this standard since everything I’ve heard them play sounds like generic anime openings to mid-list seasonal trash destined for oblivion. Like XG, QWER’s inclusion on this list is basically the curse of high expectations since it’s unrealistic to expect k-pop to ever produce a lyric as good as “ドブネズミみたいに美しくなりたい” and also the fact that this is the first year in a while that I’ve been listening to a lot of guitar-heavy bands again. More on this in a future installment on non-kpop music.