Yes, it’s the post that the k-pop Internet has been secretly waiting for all year, welcome to the list of Kpopalypse’s favourite k-pop songs of 2024!
So, welcome to Kpopalypse’s favourite k-pop songs of 2024! So how was 2024 as a year in k-pop? Well, I think it was better than 2023 for sure. I wouldn’t say amazing though, maybe not quite up there with 2020 or 2022, but still decent enough, certainly good enough to make me feel like I”m not wasting my time making these lists for you, my lovely readers! Those who check my weekly roundups and livestreams will probably be able to guess a lot of this content, but those of you who don’t follow this site closely (or ever) should expect some surprises!
New readers, or readers who are easily confused, may wish to read the following dot points, which make clear this list’s scope and intentions:
Songs are eligible if they were released between 1st January 2024 and 31st December 2024, although the cutoff does extend a little bit prior to both dates to catch songs that were released in the dying days of the previous year. This list was published on 31st December 2024 but may appear earlier for some readers due to timezones.
Songs have to be feature tracks/singles, but B side and album tracks are eligible if they were also “debuted” on TV shows or had their own official video made for them.
Songs for OSTs are not eligible for this list, because they’re almost universally terrible and just not worth the effort to cover.
Songs for festive and sporting events are not eligible. Christmas songs have their own separate list, and sport event songs are ignored in the hope that if we ignore them they will just stop making the sport ball shape.
Songs that have confirmed AI use in either the music or accompanying visuals are considered artistically invalid and banned from consideration in all Kpopalypse lists oh fuck it literally EVERYONE is using AI now, if I enforce this goddamn rule we’d have about three videos in the list this year. However this rule still applies to lazy “AI one-shot” videos that are clearly little more than some person typing one single AI prompt into something like Sora and branding the output as their music video.
Chart performance, cultural relevance, attractiveness of the members, who won something on some awards show that nobody with a brain cares about, whether someone is a morally upstanding citizen or otherwise etc are not relevant factors for this list and just like with my weekly roundup series these aspects are only commented on for “narrative colour”. This list is my 100% subjective opinion on music quality only and is purely reflective of my own personal taste, it does not constitute an authority of any kind.
“K-pop” is deliberately defined a little loosely for this list – as music either originating from or existing/trying to exist in the Korean industry. Songs that aren’t strictly “pop music” are eligible. Songs from Korean agencies trying to break into non-Korean markets and/or singing in non-Korean languages are eligible. K-pop artists featuring on non-k-pop artists’ tracks are eligible. Non-Korean attempts at “being a k-pop” and trying earnestly to exist within the Korean system are also eligible.
I write these lists for fun, good times, the joy of sharing good music with others, an easy way to collect songs that I like so I can play them later, and as a fun writing exercise because I enjoy writing. If you’re enjoying these lists for what they are (harmless subjective opinion, expressed with twisted cunty humour) then cheers to you and I appreciate your support and readership! However if you hate it, then that’s good too, please keep coming to this advertisement-free site that does no self-promotion at all and upsetting yourself over someone else’s opinion, I promise to continue to serve your special needs.
On the other hand if this post was too sunny, bright and positive for you, you may wish to consider reading my worst k-pop songs of 2024 list instead so you can feel appropriately miserable. There’s also an honourable and dishonourable mentions list which has more songs that this list doesn’t cover!
Without further ado, let’s get on with the list!
KPOPALYPSE’s 30 FAVOURITE K-POP SONGS OF 2024
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30. XG – Woke Up
For those who have been following my roundup selections all year, this will probably be the song that you least expected to get on this list, and yes it is eligible for this list (XG are Japanese but based in South Korea and actively trying to be part of the Korean system, so they are eligible for inclusion for the same reason that Lana, Kaachi, Chad Future etc are also eligible). The fact is that I didn’t really like “Woke Up” much at first, mainly because the backing track generally isn’t the sort that I like in rap music. However then I realised that Cocona shaved her head just for this video so of course I had to watch Cocona’s iconic head-shaving moment over and over again and after doing that a bunch of times I noticed that the backing track has a cool atmosphere and the raps are actually really good. Like, seriously good, XG are doing something that idol groups in Korea or elsewhere have never done before and that is have raps that are decent and not a fucking embarassment. I don’t know who’s writing them (clearly not the girls themselves, it’s too much of a coincidence that they would all have the same quite decent wordplay abilities) but they’re doing a bang-up job and it’s the kick in the pants that idol pop music has needed for the last four decades. Also, unlike their other songs there’s barely any singing in this one, and all of XG’s singing parts suck, so that makes this song a winner. Overall I’m so happy that this exists and I’ve been playing it a lot, now we’ve just got to get baldness trending in k-pop. Kpopalypse paved the way.
29. Jin – Running Wild
Speaking of paving the way, BTS’s fandom sure paved the way in the late 2010s and early 2020s by taking harassment, doxxing, cyberbullying and toxicity to new never-before-seen levels in k-pop. However now that the members of the group have gone their separate ways in enlistment and solo projects, clearly never to reform except for maybe the odd “special” reunion apperance, that fandom have gone very quiet all of a sudden. I know this because my friends who used to get sexually harassed and sent racial slurs daily in their DMs by strangers, have reported that they’ve been going for stretches of weeks on end without a single request to put their mouths on someone’s genitals or kill themselves just for having an opinion about a boy in a boy group. I think it’s pretty clear what’s happened, the BTS fans have all just gotten distracted and moved on. Such a shame that the fans have lost interest in the group, because they are probably not even going to notice that Jin has released the song of his career with “Running Wild”. Look at this fucking thing, it’s only got fifteen million views at the time of writing, that’s less than 1% of BTS’s biggest comebacks, and the song kicks ass. It has great melody, fast pace, solid sonic choices, decent vocal phrasing, even non-cringe English lyrics(!), it just does a whole bunch of stuff very very right that BTS as a group could never manage. Okay, maybe that falsetto voice in the chorus is a bit ill-advised (someone should get Jin down to the testicle clinic for a quick check-up) but apart from that, it’s really hard to even fault. If BTS actually had a fandom left they’d be all over this, but they don’t, so they’re not, and we music lovers have to pick up the slack instead. I guess those “fans” didn’t really care about the group at all, they were only ever interested in using BTS as a vehicle to harass others. If only BTS fans actually loved music as much as Jin loves his dog, the world would be a better place.
28. Ryu Jihyun – Get ready, Set, Go!
Of course it’s not just BTS fans who are weird. K-pop fans in general are so fucking strange because they obsess so creepily over vocals in a way that nobody who listens to any other style of music does. They judge every song by the singing only, always completely ignoring that there’s actual musical isntruments behind that voice that is 90% of the reason why most songs work (or don’t). It’s particularly hilarious when you consider how k-pop is one of the genres of music where singing is basically not even a requirement at all, and you can have an entire career in the style with no voice whatsoever thanks to all the electronic pitch-correction that is thrown over everything these days (just ask [insert your bias here]). Watching k-pop fans expecting actual vocals out of k-pop is like watching people buying mobility scooters to compete in Formula One racing – that would be equally funny and equally moronic. So these k-pop stupids probably aren’t even going to notice the completely whacked out bonkers instrumentation of Ryu Jihyun’s track that’s carrying the whole show, because they’ll be too busy listening oh-so-carefully to the singing and filling out their vocal technique bingo sheet, that is, if they’re even listening at all, given that this thing has less views on YouTube than the average k-pop pimple–popping video. They’re really missing out because this song has all sorts of weird and wonderful shit going on, like those frenetic guitars, reversed keyboards, and even a rap breakdown which almost gets into blast-beat territory. You’ve never moshed so cutely.
27. Candy Shop – Don’t Cry
Candy Shop are a group with a rare distinction of being interviewed in one of those western k-pop documentaries that overseas companies naively try to make from time to time. Of course it’s just another missed opportunity with the filmmakers getting cockblocked at every turn, not being allowed to film anything meaningful, and with the staff intervening whenever possible to make sure any awkward truth doesn’t slip through the cracks. This type of stuff is why I started interviewing idols myself, but of course few have the balls to even talk to me at all these days, everyone deep in the idol system is way too scared. At least they could have covered how Candy Shop have a banger of a song with “Don’t Cry” but it seems like they weren’t even allowed to do that much, which seems like a serious misstep by the company, what a way to completely fuck up the one thing that could have potentially gotten some random viewers on side. The track as it happens is a little busy in the verses in that awkward k-pop way where they throw in a whole bunch of rapid-fire melodies that don’t quite fit together, but when the chorus comes in it all makes a lot more sense. It’s quite nice and I’m sure from the look of their management that this group are going nowhere fast so enjoy this song while you can.
26. aespa – Supernova
It took a fair few tries with aespa, but their agency SM Entertainment finally started getting their creative direction right this year. I think the reason why it took them so long is that SM have always been by nature a fairly conservative company, and so when Blackpink blew up large a few years back, SM dumped whatever plans they might have had in store for what aespa should sound like and said to their contracted producers “I’ll have what she’s having“. It’s pretty fucking obvious to anyone with two ears that aespa’s early songs were all that same slow, maudlin, downbeat sound that was “in your area” at the time, but now with the trend in k-pop being faster beats again (thanks NewJeans) aespa has switched up the tempo while keeping the dramatic sound, and now they finally have something that suits. As a result, “Supernova” is bright, punchy, catchy as all hell and SM’s first genuine organic hit with any of their groups in years (as opposed to something that the fandoms mass-stream to get the numbers up but nobody else cares about, so it drops out of the charts as soon as the fandom buzz dies out). Also it probably helped that SM decided to outsource their Kwangya bullshit concept to an AI instead of dragging down aespa themselves with it like they have in the past. Maybe next time SM debuts a group, perhaps the concept they run with should be good music instead of some dicksucking neo-culture-techno-assfuck nobody cares about. They probably won’t learn their lesson though, given that they’re the company that still can’t get their performers to hold microphones correctly even though they’ve been told how to do it for over a decade now, stupid company can apparently pay attention to who I interview but can’t read a single fucking microphone post, useless. Here’s hoping “Supernova” at least taught them something about music.
25. Synsnake – My Soul Is A Wasteland
Synsnake are a metalcore group with male and female vocals, a cool corporate-goth look, and riffs that will break your brain but in a good way. When the song explodes at 0:29 after the inevitable slow intro, out comes some of the best guitar phrasing I’ve ever heard in this style. The music gets even better as it progresses with high-flying melodic sections and a surprising violin-driven breakdown that really adds to the atmosphere. Synsnake deserve to be as big as Unlucky Morpheus as they’re similar in concept and plumbing the same musical territory, just a little more focus on the soloing and giving the session violinist some screentime would be all it would take to get them there. Or then maybe it wouldn’t given that nobody seems to give much of a crap about music like this when it comes out of Korea for some reason. Who the fuck knows, anyway just listen to it.
24. Cravity – Love Or Die
Some songs are just fucking great straight out of the gate and “Love Or Die” is one of those, it’s song where in the first two seconds it’s just blatantly obvious that they’ve gotten the whole thing pretty much right. I say “pretty much” because the actual “love or die” hook I think is the weakest part, but it’s carried along so well by everything else that it ends up not mattering. Finally it’s a welcome return to the punchy, fast sound that actually made me like some of the boy group bangers from the early 2010s, and I sure didn’t expect one of these from Cravity given their track record of songs is hardly great. I’m not too suprised though – if I’ve learned anything after following k-pop for a decade and a half, it’s that if you’re being truly honest with yourself (instead of buying into the fandom bullshit where music is sport, where your bias is always perfect and everyone else sucks) both a good and a bad song can come from anywhere. Here’s the bit at the end of the review where I’m supposed to make the usual “cravity in my cavity” joke but in a good context instead of a bad one for a change, but I can’t think of one because I’m too busy thinking about this great song so fuck it. I should ask Holland about it, I’m sure he’d have some ideas.
23. FIFTY FIFTY – SOS
So many groups in Korea shoot for “relaxing” and “smooth” because that’s the market in a country where everyone is being worked to death in a hypercapitalist hellhole of pure misery that’s so excruciating that defectors from the North often can’t wait to return home again once they find out how shit it is, but so often these songwriters just overshoot the mark and land in “boring”. Fifty Fifty on the other have hit the mark pretty consistently, and they’ve been serving above average songs that have been both “smooth like butter” and “actually not dull like dishwater” ever since they debuted. “SOS” is definitely their best song yet, with all the elements that worked well in previous Fifty Fifty songs being applied successfully there, but the star of the show for me here is that gorgeous fat bass guitar tone and how it sits in the mix. Also the visual presentation is great, with nice dresses, great sets, ducks, not-overused CGI and ducks. I know what you’re all thinking, “blah blah boycott, blah blah industry”, sorry but shut the fuck up, because I pointed out how the original lineup were obviously being starved a full year before their legal case happened and all the dumb kiddies were like “who cares it’s just some nugus”, “I’m not reading all that”, “he’s so weird, what a creep”, “there goes Kpopalypse just making up random shit again, such a yapper when will he shut up” etc. According to you, what I say isn’t important because everything’s just fucking fine and lovely in k-pop land, so – you ordered it, you fucking eat it. Now open your fucking mouth, here comes the aeroplane, cunt.
22. Taemin – Horizon
Taemin basically just does Loona’s “Star” again, hitting on exactly the same structural and textural elements, and that’s fine by me because “Star” was a fucking awesome song and I might just go and listen to it now actually. [Five hours later after having “Star” on repeat the entire afternoon] I think Loona’s song is superior, because Taemin’s producer goes way, way harder on the cheesy 80s keyboard stabs and drum fills at the expense of straightforward riffing and melody, but even a somewhat messy version of this template still kicks ass. I will happily take more cheesy 80s synth bangers, if we’re lucky we’ll get one or two more of these before the trend dies. For now this is a worth addition to Taemin’s catalogue.
21. LOVE X STEREO – Future Unknown
Future unknown? I think the future is very much known, in that Love X Stereo will continue to be good while your faves remain average. This group have no fear musically are always mixing it up and doing different shit, bravely exploring all sorts of sounds that are not in vogue right now but probably will be in a few years. Here they have sort of a early 90s UK style breakbeat indie pop hybrid thingy like Happy Mondays if they weren’t a bunch of drug-fucked losers and it’s actually really good not to mention a fair bit better than most of the songs it’s taking inspiration from. I wish I could remember those old songs and link them for this review but I’m sorry the originals were all so bland that they’ve barely a tickle in my brain cells at this point. Who cares when we have this great catchy song that updates that tired old style with fresh modern production and general coolness. Also, did you know that singer Annie Ko singlehandledly stopped the slaughter of all dogs for meat in South Korea? This is probably true. Clearly they are a group that meets required dog standards, you should definitely support Love X Stereo, why not buy their stuff from Bandcamp, do it for DeeJay, pet food doesn’t pay for itself.
20. STAYC – Stay with me
Most “for the fans” songs are actually not “for the fans”, and I think that’s actually the real difference between a good and a bad “for the fans” song. Your average “for the fans” song reminds me of Gibson guitars and their shithouse marketing. Any Gibson promotional blurb is always about “we are this prestigious guitar brand, because we’ve been around so long and are so awesome, we’re so authentic and cool, gosh you are so privilieged to be able to play our fine guitars”, whereas any other guitar company is like “here’s our guitars and their features that we made just for you to suit your playing style, we’re here to help you be the best guitarist you can be”. Likewise all the absolute dogshit “for the fans songs” have a tone of “look how far we’ve come, we’ve had our highs and lows but aren’t we the most awesome group please stay with us for the love of god we need your money” whereas the few actual decent ones have vibes more along the lines of “I hope you do well in your exams or your sportball thing, we’re cheering for you, gosh I hope you like us at least a little bit”. There’s a subtle but important difference, and Stayc definitely are on the right side of that line. Mind you it probably wouldn’t matter if the song sucked, but somehow they get that right too. Someone worked out that inspirational rock songs rock more if there’s actual rock in them, who would’ve thought.
19. Alice Longyu Gao ft. Mega Mongoliad – Korean Girls
Mega Mongoliad (much like their origin group, Balming Tiger) have always been promising but also way too brainless and thudding for my taste, they often explore very cool sounds nobody else is doing, but rarely have much of an actual song to go with them. Cool sounds are of course cool, but alone they do not make a cool song, you need some kind of hook to go with the electronic noise and bring it all together to draw people in. Enter Chinese singer Alice Longyu Gao to provide that hook, and she’s fantastic, providing the appropriate over-the-top dose of BADING energy that Mega Mongoliad have always lacked, and giving absolutely no fucks. It’s my favourite collaborative pairing this year along with Knocked Loose and Poppy, and they should all just stay together and keep working with each other, fuck it, this is too good to be a one-off. Some trivia: one of the car-wash girls is Bebe Yana, a decent k-pop in her own right, cheers to her for being a good sport and consenting to this madness.
18. Shin Euijin – Girl, run to the light
Someone who has been releasing consistent rockers over the last couple of years is Shin Euijin. If you wished that Dreamcatcher had the melodic smarts of early Gfriend and also decided to keep the guitars more at the front of the mix, then you could do a lot worse. Sure, hearing the same girl’s high-pitched voice all the way through with a bare minimum of the high-gloss electronic pitch-correction treatment that k-pop fans have come to expect may leave you with the feeling that something’s a little “wrong” with the vocal, but that uncanny feeling is actually just you hearing real unaffected vocals, something that k-pop fans don’t get to actually do very often at all given that almost every single “live” k-pop performance ever created is faked. Trust me, you’ll learn to adjust once you hear how cool this song is. Since Dreamcatcher have spent the entire year fluffing around in soft-rock land, you could do a lot worse than Shin Euijin.
17. ILLIT – Cherish (My Love)
It really must kind of suck being in Illit right now. The group are probably not going to crawl out from under NewJeans’ shadow just in terms of popular opinion in Korea anytime soon, and their company’s insistence on weirdly under-the-radar “youthful” sexual themes in their concepts definitely isn’t helping them get much love internationally either. “Cherish (My Love)” is certainly no exception to that and shouldn’t need too much explaining, (just look at the video and then think about at what age people get their first wisdom teeth) but if you’re perhaps feeling that something’s just a little odd about the direction of Illit’s concepts, you’re probably not imagining that. All of this however doesn’t take away from the fact that Illit’s music has actually been… really rather good. “Cherish” hits the same sonic territory as Fifty Fifty but just with a little more rubber on the road in terms of sonics because the beat hits harder and there’s less of a coffee-shop direction to it. Who knows what the future of this group will be but we’re good at least for now, until all the girls become of age and Bang Si-Hyuk then suddenly mysteriously loses interest in giving them songs, you heard it here first.
16. ITZY – Imaginary Friend
There seems to be two types of Itzy songs that make the cut for feature release – random fucking screechy noisy crap with no melody or catchiness to speak of, and songs that a reasonable person would actually possibly listen to. “Imaginary Friend”, much like “Bet On Me” from the previous year, falls squarely into the second category. Of coruse it’s getting a big backlash from Itzy fans, because the first half a dozen or so Itzy songs were all that first type of tuneless bullshit, so Itzy fans have now come to expect absolute unlistenable trash as the group’s “style” and get upset when they don’t get what they want. Still, it’s pretty good for the rest of us, so let’s just enjoy this song which has an actual melody, structure, chord progressions and harmony – all fairly new developments in the Itzy cannon which I appreciate. If they keep this kind of quality up, they might even have more misses than hits, who knows.
15. Lee Ye Ryoung – Knee
Okay so the story of Lee Ye Ryoung seems a little strange. It was difficult to find out much about her, but apparently she is an Instagram influencer who had some sort of incident where she was accused falsely of bullying and harrassed online for it in Korea. The song’s video tells a story of bullying as well, presumably for this reason. What’s really interesting is that if you read the Korean YouTube comments they are full of people still calling her a bully and levelling all kinds of accusations, like smoking, drinking, making someone else kneel for some reason or something (hence the title, allegedly? Fuck, I dunno), forging official documents… it all reads like the fake rumours about Lovelyz’ Seo Jisoo where they tried to smear her with 50 different things at once. I’m sorry, but what high school kid doesn’t do these things? We’ve all tried alcohol and drugs and handjobs behind the bike shed and humiliating some loser and trying to hack the computers in the computer room, like, what the fuck else is there to even do at school? I think these people are just bitter that she actually has friends, she’s a streamer with more than ten followers and that her song is actually really fucking good, some fast-beat driven thing with a high-flying melody and some really nice piano. The only problem with it is it’s a little short, but then so is she probably. Hopefully she doesn’t take offence to that comment, but if she does, she can bully me with this song anytime.
14. Solar – Colors
BADING! After tons of dreary Mamamoo and solo tracks I certainly didn’t expect Solar to come out with the Korean girl’s answer to N.O.M but here it is, and it’s fucking cool as shit. There’s not really a lot to say about it as musically it’s fairly minimal, and that’s exactly the way it should be – nothing would ruin a song like this faster than Mamamoo’s usual vocal improvisations, so they’ve pitched this one about right but keeping the beat tight and not letting any musical wank on the track. I guess this is what the kids call “cunty” these days, which is cultural appropriation of my Australian bad language as far as I’m concerned. Still, I guess I don’t mind, if what it means is a song that kicks this much ass. More gay club bangers in k-pop please.
13. Mimiirose – The Flowers Swayed
Mimiirose are that group that was famously floated by trot singer Im Chang Jung who supposedly sold his entire song catalog to pay for their debut. Then he got caught doing some weird naughty stock market fraud shit which I guess was his plan to recoup the money, so Mimiirose bailed on him and signed to a new company. Such antics tend to destabilise groups and don’t usually lend themselves to things like access to consistent songwriting quality, but hold up a fucking second because “The Flowers Swayed” is a fucking great song. Looks like the girls made the right move because whoever’s managing them now gave them this kickass song which is simple, straightforward and just good, certainly way better than anything else they’ve been handed up until now. Im Chang Jung’s foolishness at letting Mimiirose slip from his grasp must be enough to make him want to reach for a glass of soju, he should have kept collecting that trot song money which was netting him quite a bit of royalties apparently. Maybe I need to add a “washed-up trot singer” tier to my Ko-fi, but I don’t think I have have tiers lower than one dollar and I think that’s all he can afford.
12. MAYLIZ – Tonight
Here’s this list’s most extreme nugu pick – Mayliz have only 25 subscribers to their channel and only 200 views on “Tonight” at the time of writing, which qualified them to be featured in an episode of Kpopalypse Nugu Alert, the longest-running English language nugu series in k-pop writing history. However their song is amazingly good, a semi-trot number in the style of old second-generation k-pop comebacks that hits all the right notes. It’s a song you definitely won’t see on anyone else’s top songs of the year list because other publications are busy sucking down that corporate cock and worrying about what’s “culturally relevant” to actually take the time to find decent music. There’s not a lot else I can say about it simply because there’s not a lot else I even know about them, but I hope they stick around to make some more cool songs in future… and I don’t know, maybe get a video director capable of doing things other than getting the camera crew to continually zoom up on the floor for no reason. Let’s cheer for them!
11. ILLIT ft. Ava Max – Baby It’s Both (Tick Tack English Version)
Unfortunately a song without a video, but that doesn’t make it ineligible for Kpopalypse list inclusion as it was released as a single, “Baby It’s Both” is a very rare example in k-pop of an English language version of a song being far superior to the Korean original. Generally speaking language difference in a pop song makes no difference to me – I usually couldn’t give a fuck what language it’s in, but generally it’s all the better if it’s one I can’t understand because pop lyrics are usually insipid – but the two versions in this case are also quite musically different. “Tick Tack” in its original form had pace and style, but it also had backing track choices that didn’t mesh with the vocals, indistinct harmony, and some seriously weak and rambling verse melodies that really dragged the whole light, airy feel of the song down hard. The English version fixes every single problem the Korean version had: new melodies with more melodic variety and actual space in the phrasing, sensible transitions added to the harmony so it makes more sense to the ear, and the tinny annoying synths and drums replaced with… well, okay, the replacement is very “generic 2020x gym music” but formulaic as it is, it still does the job a lot better than the crowded mess they had there before. It’s exactly the shot in the arm that this song needed, the only real downside is the vocal wanking excursions right at the very end which are a bit unnecessary but when that kicks in I usually just stop the song right there and replay it from the start again. And yes I suppose the new lyrics are a bit ick given the ages of some of the girls, I guess HYBE really is taking the idea of Illit as a NewJeans replacement group seriously on every level, but that doesn’t really take anything away from the song itself. I suppose different people’s mieage may vary on how much they can separate those things out, so if it bothers you, just pretend the girls are singing about the treatment they get in TAG PR boardroom meetings and maybe it’ll all start to sound introspectively poignant, you can even imagine that the girls on the front cover are running away from Justin Baldoni’s limo with tinted windows… framing it that way, “Baby It’s Both” might be the girls’ anthem we all need, the hiding-in-plain-sight “#metoo” of k-pop protest songs. Just a thought.
10. QWER – T.B.H
In 2024 QWER quickly ascended to become Korea’s leading feminist group, and it’s all off the back of their stunning debut “T.B.H”, a kick-ass fast paced anthem to something or other about having a crush and… wait, what do you mean QWER aren’t feminist? Well, let me count the ways, cunt. Firstly, they’re girls in a fucking rock group, not a traditionally designated place for women to be, and girls who actually can play their own instruments to a reasonable standard too, unlike certain other girls in Korea who rely on ghost performers to do all the hard yards whenever they pick up instruments every once in a blue moon. Then there’s QWER’s close collaboration with G-Idle’s Soyeon, the most feminist feminism that ever was a feminisim, and who surely wouldn’t lend her valuable studio time out to a bunch of redpilled wannabe tradwives. On top of that, some feminists are a bunch of cunts, let’s be real, Chodan was probably dead right to complain about some of them. Feminism isn’t a one-size-fits-all movement, there’s considerable debate even within the feminist community about what feminism is and is not, that’s why there’s so many books about feminism, because feminists are still debating with each other and trying to figure all this shit out. There’s feminism that promotes free expression and female empowerment, and feminism that’s in bed with right-wing christian elements and tries to shut down the free expression and female empowerment of others, and lots of feminisms in between. QWER, being creative artists actually doing stuff, would be in the first category, but since they’re attractive and thus prone to incite jealousy, they’d be dealing with feminists from the second category all the time trying to fuck with them – I know because I’ve seen exactly this happen with female performers in my own groups. The fact is that people can’t handle the fact that QWER are attractive women rocking out and making better music than them or their bias possibly could, and if you even thought about any of this stuff instead of rocking out to this great song all year like you should have been, you’re officially boring.
9. Stray Kids – Stray Kids
Stray Kids’ self-titled song is a cringe-inducing millennial-whoopfest that I should be shitting on but I can’t, because I have to admit to myself that they’ve done such a great job of it that I can’t help but like it. That keyboard riff that starts off the whole deal sets the tone really well and it never wavers much from there, keeping everything solid amd moving along. It’s a song with simple chords, soaring melodies, and a message delivered effectively without needless bullshit. Also I just know that whacked-out kooky tinfoil hat wearing “k-pop is an illuminati conspiracy” types are going to get that bit where they insert the key into the “hellevator” and have a lot of fun with it, so it’s awfully nice for Stray Kids to throw those wackjobs a bone so we can all laugh at them. What a bunch of cunts (I mean that in the positive Australian context, to be clear), we all need a good chuckle so thanks Stray Kids, get a dog up ya.
8. KAVE – You
It was a pretty shit year for k-pop men, even by this list’s usual standards, and Kave represents the highest that any male group managed to climb in 2024. However the defintiely deserve the spot here with this smooth rocking song. Sure, the English lyrics are completely borked in ways that the likes of G-Idle’s Soyeon could never even imagine, with words and syllables improperly emphasised so they fit the flow of the music better, but that just shows they have good taste – I’d rather they shoehorn the words awkwardly around the music than the other way around and fuck the groove of the song up just to get the pronunciation right. Fuck the English language, it’s true what Soyeon says, it’s a bullshit language, definitely destroy it if you can. I know nothing else about this song at all, it really hit me out of the blue this year, in fact I don’t even know if Kave is a person or a group, but whoever [insert pronoun here] [insert verb conjugation here], “You” is fucking great and deserves to be listened to as much as [insert your bias here].
7. H1-KEY – Let It Burn
H1-key just keep getting better, not that they started off badly, “Athletic Girl” was a fantastic song that was only overshadowed at the time by some bullshit nobody cares about, and the group haven’t had a single sucky song in their catalogue since then, which is quite an achievement in the realm of k-pop where stinker songs abound. It was definitely a pleasure to see them when they came to my city this year because their short set was all killer, no filler. So it didn’t surprise me too much that “Let It Burn” is another H1-key banger but what was a little bit unexpected was them upping the ante on the rock guitar sound, something which has been mostly absent from their tracks so far. It’s a sound that definitely suits them and the high-flying instrumentation makes this the best H1-key song so far. With an excellent feature track record plus an Australian visit under their belt, can they do no wrongin the eyes of Kpopalypse? I guess odds are that they’ll have a shit song at some point in their careers, but it hasn’t happened yet so I’ll remain waiting with fingers crossed, one of the rare times I can actually say that I’m looking forward to a group coming back with another song in future.
6. Chungha – I’m Ready
Chungha has been a massive, massive disappointment ever since she debuted from whatever bullshit survival show spawned her career, so I’m really pleased to see that in 2024 she finally has a kickass song, and what a song it is. The smoky, pulsing electronic grooves, dynamic instrumentation and mantra-like vocal hooks remind me of the better Jackson Wang songs without the anti-Chinese racism, and it’s impossible to forget that soaring chorus melody after you hear it. “I’m Ready” takes me back to the days when girl groups and female soloists would have songs with actual hooks in them instead of endless breakdowns, stupid raps, chanting and grab-bag melody writing that makes no sense. Hopefully Chungha can push better k-pop songwriting back into greater relevance.
5 . NMIXX – Love Is Lonely
Here’s something you probably didn’t expect, NMixx riding high on the Kpopalypse favourites list. I haven’t been shy about criticising NMixx for their terrible attempts at k-pop in the past, their early songs were nothing short of complete messy disasters as their “Mixx-pop” medley concept completely failed to fly with both Kpopalypse and regular k-pop fans alike. Mercifully, JYP seems to have listened to the extreme negative feedback, shelved that idea for good, and refocused his energy on trying to get NMixx some actual songs with a more normal structure that make sense from start to finish. The results have been mixed (pun intended) so far but with “Love Is Lonely” they finally hit the nail on the head with a beautifully emotive ballad… yes that’s right this is not just an NMixx song but a ballad and it’s in my top ten of the year. That’s when you know a song is good, when it breaks all the rules of what should be popular on these lists but still gets in anyway, it’s honestly beautiful and if I was a parasocial-relationship-having kind of person this would be making me buy all the merch and obediently streaming long into the night, good job.
The next four songs are completely amazing and any of them could realisitically be number one but I have to put them in some sort of order, so here we go. There’s very little separating any of these songs quality-wise, just know that I’m really clutching at straws here to differentiate how much I like them.
4. Aespa – Whiplash
The best song from SM Entertainment in a very long time, with “Supernatural” SM finally got aespa’s concept right, and with “Whiplash” they doubled down on what made that song work, turned the tempo up even more and ended up with SM’s answer to Viviz’ “Untie“. The spartan, harsh electronics are perfect for the concept, and are matched with an equally austere video which blasts the viewer with high-contrast images and crazy stylish sexiness. Ningning’s “fancy” rap from 1:09 is about the hottest thing I’ve ever seen and I don’t even like Ningning, it’s just that compositionally everything in both the visual and audio from her look to the swooping camera angles to the vocal meter cutting across the beat to grab attention works so well together that it sells the messaging perfectly. Ice Cube said once that his video for the song “Wicked” was the one where he felt the audio and the visuals were the most in-sync in terms of being on-brand, and that’s exactly how I feel about “Whiplash”, there literally isn’t a thing more they could have done to match everything up so well (although more Winter screentime would have been nice, isn’t that right Annie). Yes, this blurs the line regarding whether I’m reviewing music or visuals here, but k-pop is a visual form as much as it is an auditory one, and when it’s done right that line should be blurred. “Whiplash” is a masterclass in creative direction as much as it is a great song in its own right and proof that maybe, just maybe, someone in SM is finally working out how to do this, let’s hope they get a bit more creative control in future.
3. ROSÉ & Bruno Mars – APT.
There have been several international k-pop collabs over the last few years (BTS members alone have been churning them out at the rate of approximately one per week this year) but most of them fail to have any genuine impact outside of their respective fandoms because it just feels like a gimmick to boost the brand value of whoever is involved by association. It always sounds to me like the song was pre-written by one person and then the team for the other person just kind of fucked around with it, shoehorning their part in even if it didn’t fit, because “we have to make it work people, there’s money to be made”. Rose and Bruno’s song doesn’t feel that way, it actually feels like a proper collaboration that plays to the strengths of everyone involved, and as a result this thing became an absolute monster hit globally. Rose sits in the song perfectly, pushing her naturally expressive voice exactly as far as it needs to go to give the song the life it needs, and no further than that – there’s no showoffy vocal wank sections here, she serves the song, not her ego, something which of course bothered some people because k-pop fans have been brought up on showoffy egocentric TikTok junk culture and don’t even know what “serving a song” even is. Bruno’s input here clearly isn’t limited to just the few lines of solo singing he gets in the second verse, but he also plays his abilites down, not fucking around with any bullshit but just keeping the groove locked in. If you want to write a mega-hit, this is how you do it, you focus on what the majority of people actually give a fuck about – great melodies, memorable hooks, and selling the song’s message (in this case the fun “aparteu” party vibe). This song has all three in spades. Who knows if k-pop songwriters will learn the underlying lessons here about composition, or just copy it superficially while messing it up, I guess we’ll find out in 2025 because the song has had so much impact that there’s no way people aren’t going to try and copy it somehow. Prepare for the clone army, it’s coming.
2. Seo Eve – Malatanghulu
I’m sorry but if you’re one of those “underage people shouldn’t be allowed to debut in k-pop” people, you probably mean well, but you’re a fucking idiot. Try telling any actual 13 year old that they’re not allowed to sing and dance and pursue their k-pop dreams, they’ll rightly tell you to go and fuck yourself (or if they’re polite kids who were brought up right, they wont say it but they’ll definitely at least be thinking it). Singing and dancing isn’t the moral equivalent of being in a gangbang orgy for fuck’s sake. “But the industry…” so pressure the industry to reform, fuck-knuckle, don’t pressure the innocent kids with a dance and a dream. Seo Eve was only 13 years old when she did this and thank fuck she didn’t listen to any of you nay-saying finger-wagging “I must look moral online to my peers or I’ll get cancelled” oxygen-wasting dimwits because this song slaps even harder than I’d like to slap your stupid face. The surprisingly harsh-sounding electronic bass and drums is layered over with cool sax riffs (Seo Eve singlehandedly bringing non-annoying sax riffs back into k-pop in 2024, Orange Caramel are shook) and plenty of lyrical cheese and silliness to take the edge off, it’s a cool combination that can’t fail. No wonder that this song was so huge that it turned up literally everywhere. Even though “Malatanghulu” has the feel of a one-hit wonder, Seo Eve could seriously challenge all of your biases in years to come if she can maintain quality like this and build on it. Let’s hope the k-pop industry does in fact treat her right.
Okay, it’s time for the #1 song of the year and it’s….
Drumroll, please…
1. Chuu – Strawberry Rush
Last year Chuu would have nearly snagged the #1 spot on this list if only she properly released “Aliens” with a video, sonething which I made very clear in my best of 2023 list. I can’t fault Chuu’s agency for their ability to action feedback, as they seem to have heard the call and popped out a song which is very similar to “Aliens” but even better. While it was very difficult to decide a winner this year, I had to admit that Chuu had the edge. There’s not a single part of this song that isn’t insanely catchy, with Chuu handling melodic highs, bouncy rapping and big anthemic choruses without ever sounding awkward or like anything doesn’t fit. It’s also pacy and cool, with no stupid pre-chorus slowdowns or anything else dragging the Chuu energy down. It’s the perfect aspirational song for Chuu and just check out that shirt with the number 12 on it – she knows who’s paying attention. Chuu even flew to my country to film it which was pretty cool.
Let’s go with some bonus videos, here’s the “performance version” if you find the cartoon-assisted Chuu to be too much visual overload:
Here’s a live version on one of those sterile pitch-corrected live stages where the band sit waaaaaaay at the back and don’t interact, I was waiting for her to run up to each one of them and fuck with them a little but sadly it didn’t happen:
A random TV show appearance, there are a few of these:
Another pitch-corrected live, this time for the radio or something:
If you want Chuu in 8k resolution here you go:
Chuu full waterbomb performance, you know you want it:
And here she sings to a fan through a phone booth:
Enjoy!
Please now enjoy this video compilation of the top 30 songs!
Thanks so much for supporting me through the year – Kpopalypse will return in 2025 with more posts, more lists, more trufax, more books, more annoying people with my worthless opinions, and more of all the things that make Kpopalypse a thing! And don’t forget – if the great songs in this list made you feel too much joy and happiness, there is also the worst k-pop songs list 0f 2024, so check it out if you think you can handle it! Or better yet, don’t, and just listen to the songs on this favourites list again!
See you next year everyone!
