Yes it’s the list that hate-readers have been waiting for all year – the list of the worst k-pop songs of 2025 according to Kpopalypse! Read on and enjoy!
Welcome to the worst k-pop songs of 2025 according to Kpopalypse! So what was 2025 like for k-pop? Well, according to reader polling, the entire year fucking sucked! Let’s now explore the full depths of 2025’s suckitude with this collection of the worst 30 k-pop songs this year!
Most people will probably skip straight to the list part and then check with shaking hands and sweaty palms if their favourite artists’ favourite songs are included here so they can then go and complain about it somewhere (spoiler: probably), but if you’re a new reader and/or reasonably intelligent you may wish to read the below dot points before you dive in. These points explain this list’s criteria and general aims.
Songs are from 1st January 2025 to 31st December 2025, however the time window for this list actually extends a little bit before both of these dates to catch any steaming turds that may have missed making it into previous year’s lists, as the lists do take multiple days to prepare. This list was published on 31st December 2025 but may appear earlier for some readers due to timezones.
Feature tracks only – songs released with a music video, or as a single, or featured on live stages.
OST songs are not eligible, because they’re almost always such complete crap that they would dominate this list and make it a very correct but very boring read.
Songs for sporting events are not eligible, these are ignored for the good of humankind, as Kpopalypse does not do the sport ball shape.
Christmas songs are not eligible as they are of such consistently low quality that they have their own special list of shittiness just for them.
“K-pop” is deliberately defined a little loosely for this list as music coming from the Korean industry – songs that aren’t strictly “pop” are eligible. Songs from Koreans or backed by Korean labels trying to break into non-Korean markets are eligible. Non-Korean attempts at trying to exist inside the Korean pop scene and “be a k-pop” are also eligible.
This list is 100% subjective, it’s all about what I think of the music. Sure, often I’ll discuss other aspects too, but that’s mainly just for entertainment, as most bad Korean pop songs actually have similar flaws and repeating myself a whole ton does not make for a very fun list. The other factors don’t really have any bearing on which songs made it into here. Yes this list is biased – as it should be, because what is the point of a personal list with no bias in it – but it’s musically biased.
The opinions expressed here are not important and do not represent any kind of “authority”. This list proves nothing except what my own subjective opinions are. Your own opinions will most likely differ. If you managed to extract any actual enjoyment out of these terrible songs, then good for you.
If you are upset by this list, good. Maybe go and complain about it somewhere, I’m sure that will work out just fine for you.
On the other hand if you’re thinking I’m just someone who hates k-pop in general, on statistical averages that’s actually very true (Sturgeon’s Law applies to k-pop as it apples to everything else), but know that the Kpopalypse favourites list for 2025 is also a thing so maybe go and check that out to hear some much better songs, I highly recommend it. Also you may wish to check the honourable and dishonourable mentions post for 2023 for more good AND shit songs you may have missed.
Now that you know what potential horrors you’re dealing with, let’s now get on with the list!
KPOPALYPSE’S 30 WORST K-POP SONGS OF 2025
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30. Baekhyun – Elevator
Even though song quality definitely was bad this year, it’s always really hard making this worst of k-pop list and 2025 was surely no exception, in fact it was one of the toughest years ever. The reason why is that the ratio of “songs that absolutely suck a skyscraper’s worth of cock” vs “songs too boring to make an impression of any kind whatsoever” is always pretty heavily skewed toward the latter. Enter Baekhyun, here to kick off this list with a song daringly called “Elevator” like he’s challenging me to ignore it for being the most boring thing in existence. However by having an elevator music song actually called “Elevator” and even setting the video inside an elevator, I feel like he’s really gone the extra mile to harness the powers of pure undiluted boredom and thus I feel that he deserves a place here, so I’m going to reward him. Truly this “trapanova” poop is forgettable, but it’s a special kind of forgettable, so committed to its own irrelevance that it’s actually admirable. It’s also the best song on this list. Buckle up, it’s all downhill from here.
29. TWS – Heads Shoulders Knees Toes
This is what Pledis are doing instead of reviving your favourite legacy girl groups, just in case you were wondering. For the record I don’t think it’s misogyny (or at least not any more misogyny than what is present at any other k-pop agency), I just think they have no idea what the people want. It’s not the worst song ever mind you, that is, until it gets to the chorus and they break out the nursery rhyme and then it gets substantially closer to the worst song ever. Somehow this musical monstrosity is a nursery rhyme inspired song and a melody-less chant chorus song at the same time, I’m not sure what creative mind came up with that particular combo but the melodyless chanting certainly defeats the whole purpose of stealing a nursey rhyme in the first place. It’s like the song had two stools of total shit prepared for it to sit on and still managed to fall between them and land on an even lower stool. Or maybe it just is a lower stool.
28. Jennie – Seoul City
Did you know that all four members of Blackpink released solo albums this year? I sure didn’t until someone pointed it out, or maybe I was told before and I just forgot about it, but in any event I feel like anyone could be easily forgiven for not even noticing. Jennie in particular is someone I thought would have exploded all over the charts worldwide this year given her star power as Blackpink’s “it girl”, but while I don’t follow or care about chart performance I still couldn’t help but notice that her songs seemed to pass by with barely a whimper. I sure wasn’t spammed any Jennie songs (other than the much older “Solo“) while in Korean restuarants or shopping malls, but if I was I sure didn’t notice. Like a video of Jennie taking a walk with some guy down by the river, “Seoul City” is blurry, indistinct, and finishes quickly, leaving no real impression. You’d think that Jennie would be pulling out all the stops to blow our minds for her global takeover of the k-pops but I guess she thought swanning around various bland locations mumbling something or other and playing with her hair while a crappy beat plays and the cameraperson tries to figure out where the focus control is, was what we wanted. It’s a sad year in k-pop when Blackpink was in our area and we mostly didn’t even notice.
27. KickFlip – Mama Said…
If you’re a regular reader of Kpopalypse.com, then you’ll know that this site tends to favour girl groups. That’s not because of the gender, at least not directly, but because the more interesting musical ventures tend to be fronted by women. If you’re a regular reader you might therefore be expecting to see this worst of 2025 list loaded with boy groups, but a quick skim of this post will tell you that this isn’t the case – female representation is very high in both the favourites list and the worst list this year, and men are very thin on the ground on both lists. Why is that? I think it’s because people writing for boy groups tend to aim for mediocrity more often. A boy group is a pretty safe reliable bet, they last longer, they tend to attract more fans, and while the girl groups tend to take more chances to grab attention, I think agencies know that if they write the boy group songs “just good enough” to get over the line with the fans, that’s all they need to do. But then maybe I’m wrong, and if I am then KickFlip is here to prove it with this disastrous slice of nursery rhyme shit-cake that proves that boy groups can be just as crap as anybody. I guess that’s a win for men’s rights activists or something, but it’s not a win for anybody else.
26. TWICE – This Is For
Twice have been responsible for some great songs over the years. They’re also responsible for “This Is For”, one of the most horrible songs ever to exist in the k-pop pantheon, which just goes to show that songwriting consistency and k-pop really just don’t mix. Right down there with the worst of Twice, it’s not overly clear who this song is actually for, certainly not “all the ladies” as I don’t think I know a single “lady” alive who would find this patronising junk anything other than completely insulting, and that’s before I even get started on what it sounds like. Of couse it sounds like trash too, with the entire track leaning on that completely melody-less chant chorus and it just can’t take the weight. In fact “This Is For” is so notoriously terrible in its execution and such an antithesis of what Twice fans actually want from their favourite group, that it’s probably singlehandedly responsible for killing the “shouty chorus” trend among A-list girl groups, something I should probably be grateful for. However I can’t be too happy about it because it’s also responsible for AI-filter-slimmed Jeongyeon, I guess JYP don’t want too much female empowerment or girls auditioning for the company in the future might do a VCHA and start trying to demand some of those pesky human rights. Truly a song “for all the ladies, who abide by the strict terms and conditions, subject to management, marketing and PR approval”, it’s not the worst song this year, but certainly the most ideologically fraudulent.
25. Corbyn Besson & Tzuyu – Blink
There were a lot of tragic duets this year between A-list Korean celebs and western nobodies, or maybe they’re not nobodies but if they’re making this kind of pop music and they’re not from Korea, they’re nobodies to me. Like I keep telling people, I’m not “westernpopalypse” so please don’t ever assume I give a single fuck about whoever Corbyn Besson is or indeed anybody else in this entire genre if they do most of their work outside the k-pop system. Anyway apart from being cringeworthy shit on a musical level, and even more disgusting lyrically, this song is mainly notable for merging the k-pop/western pop collaboration and the ever popular Korean “street harassment” video narrative format. It’s good to see that western pop stars are learning from Korea about how to stalk women in music videos, maybe if they can get more of their creepy tendencies out vicariously through a bit of thespian singalong roleplay we’ll have less R. Kellys in the world. But failing that, I’d settle for less songs like this in the world.
24. BABYMONSTER – Really Like You
People wondering why I glaze XG’s raps so hard only need to look at BabyMonster right here to see how low the bar for rapping in Korean pop actually is. From 0:24 in “Really Like You” we truly have probably the worst ten seconds of rapping that has ever happened in a Korean pop song. The “ding diggy ding like a liggy ding ding” thing reminds me of the troubled path of DAS EFX. For those who don’t know, DAS EFX were an American rap group that emerged in the early 1990s and their gimmick was that they did very fast freestyle (i.e made up on the spot – well, supposedly) rap. They sort of cheated a bit because rather than thinking up raps at a quick speed, they’d just add extra nonsense syllables and weird Saturday morning cartoon gibberish that didn’t make sense in order to pad out their lyrical ideas. The result was songs that had pretty decent beats (this was the early 90s before weak rap beats had been invented) but the lyrics were silly and seen as gimmicky (even by DAS EFX themselves, in the end). One of the rappers in Fu-Schnickens was similar back then and even faster, but the overall trend wasn’t going to last because it was seen by many as a “cheat mode” that rubbed up against one of hip-hop’s core values which is witty lyricism. With the emergence of many rappers since who can flow just as quickly without the padding, the “diggety” style of rap now has no chance of a revival. Unless the raps in this song by BabyMonster get popular globally of course, but even society in 2025 isn’t at such a low ebb just yet. I realise I didn’t talk about any of the song’s other three minutes here but there’s no need, everyone stopped listening after that rap anyway, including me.
23. Chaeyoung – Girl
Cast your mind over to popular girl group Twice (if you can still do so without PTSD at this point), and think for a moment about who in that group would make the best ballad singer, given the right material. You probably didn’t think of Chaeyoung, and that’s probably because you’re a normal, smart person with ears who knows that Chaeyoung can’t sing her way out of a wet paper bag. Comments on this song from fans praise Chaeyoung for her “unique voice”, yes that’s the unique voice of a girl being pushed way out of her comfort zone who both looks and sounds like a deer in headlights. You can see it even in this video, even though she’s obviously miming it she looks deeply uncomfortable even pretending to know what she’s doing, that’s how much this kind of thing doesn’t suit her. This lazy, empty backing track really needed someone better than her to inject some life into it, and I’m not asking for mega high-notes or other vocal wank (god spare us) but just some passionate delivery in the absence of any skill would have done fine. She really should have learned the lessons from stanning Sex Pistols bass player Sid Vicious, and come out with a ballad comeback something like his, that wouldn’t have required her to actually sing. Forget Son Chaeyoung, or Park Chaeyoung, I think the world is being robbed of Punk Chaeyoung. Somebody make it happen before Twice enters their “sitting on wooden chairs in a white room with a floral background singing ballads” phase and is lost to all of us.
22. KIIRAS – Kill Ma Boss
Do you remember the last time k-pop flirted seriously with country line-dancing music? If your k-pop listening habits go back far enough you’ve probably erased the trauma from your memory, but this is the Kpopalypse worst list so if your’e reading this I figure you probably enjoy being traumatised so I’ll quickly remind you about 2Yoon. A dreadful 4minute subunit that briefly surfaced in 2013 and vanished almost instantly afterward, 2yoon gave us “24/7“, a song so fucking bad that it’s taken a whole twelve years for anyone in the hypercompetitive k-pop world to even dare to attempt this style again. Unfortunately for Kiiras they are the ones who have been selected by k-pop’s musical torture machine to break the hiatus, and so now we get “Kill Ma Boss”, truly a devastatingly bad song. While “24/7” was total garbage, if it had one silver lining, it’s that it was at least a little pacy, and you could probably actually dance to it if you put in earplugs to block the banjo frequencies and turned your brain onto standby mode. “Kill Ma Boss” doesn’t even have that much going for it, grinding along at a sub-Blackpinkian pace that is obviously not suited to this faux-country-music treatment, or any other type of treatment for that matter except being shot by six-guns at dawn. Where’s Wyatt Earp when you need him.
21. Kiiikiii – Groundwork
When KiiiKiii’s awful “Debut Song” came out (and yes, it’s on this list) fans excused it by saying it was a joke song and not a big deal and don’t worry the real debut song is coming and it will be really good I promise pinky swear cross my heart and hope to be stuck in a room with Jay Park for ten minutes. “Groundwork” is that supposed “better song” that we apparently should have been holding onto our pitchforks for, and since it’s also total garbage, I guess KiiiKiii’s fans won’t mind if I take a big fat dump on it seeing that they practically begged me to spare “Debut Song” and shit on this instead. Not that I really even need to, the song itself does a pretty good job of not selling itself without me really having to say much about it at all. Just press play and you can hear it for yourself and you’ll understand exactly why it sucks if you have any ears left. It’s funny to me that at one point the song stops and the girls sing “all you need’s a beat”, and therein lies the problem, this is clearly what the producers of “Groundwork” actually thought. This song is literally just a beat and a whole bunch of nothing while the listener waits for an actual song to appear that never comes. To make matters worse, while you’re waiting you get served one of the most unintentionally terrifying AI slop videos I’ve ever seen, or maybe it isn’t AI slop, but the visuals are so thoughtless and random that if it isn’t AI slop it’s just proof that AI has indeed surpassed human intelligence, or at least the human intelligence of whoever made this video. Somewhere right now a psychologist is talking to a poor KiiiKiii fan who just wanted to enjoy their new song but is now emotionally traumatised by nightmares of being chased by disembodied pants. Let’s bury this video as quickly as we can, let’s not give JYP any ideas.
20. Yoyomi – Zum Zum Zum
In the 1970s and 1980s there was a musical style popular all around the world and it was called disco. It was called disco. It wasn’t called anything else besides disco. It was just called disco. The disco sound got very popular, in fact so popular that there was significant cultural backlash and by around the mid-1980s disco became like dubstep in 2020 or “stomp-clap-hey” folk music in 2025 – exceptionally dated-sounding and untrendy, the subject of much derision. However some people missed the disco sound, and in the mid-1990s it was brought back by people who either wanted to fight against the disco backlash, didn’t care about it, or were just too young to remember it. However “disco” was still a dirty word to many, and record labels were nervous about possible lingering disco hate, so the music was rebranded and sold to the public as “acid jazz”. Same sound, same style, but a new trend sells better than an old trend and makes young people feel trendy and cool instead of like they’re copying their parents (who wants to copy their parents, eww). The acid jazz trend eventually died as well, as all musical trends eventually do, but the rebranding evaded the ultra-strong hate that was associated with disco and the record labels had a good few years selling “acid jazz” to the masses. Then in about 2015 music scholars, writers and marketers interested in 1970s and 1980s Japanese disco sought to deepen interest in the style, and started writing about it. Realising that disco was again a dirty word, they remembered the “acid jazz” rebranding and how that basically worked out more or less okay for a while, and learned the lesson. They rebranded disco again, this time to “city pop”, and by avoiding the d-word they successfully spearheaded a renewed interest in this style of music. Same sound, same style, but a new trend sells better than an old trend and makes young people feel trendy and cool instead of like they’re copying their grandparents (who wants to copy their grandparents, eww). This all probably has something to do with this shit song by Yoyomi here or maybe it doesn’t, I just wanted to write a big thing here about how city pop isn’t a genre to annoy Japanese disco I mean “city pop” fans, you’re welcome.
19. dearAlice – Sweet
You could definitely be forgiven for forgetting that dearAlice even existed, but what’s really wild about SM Entertainment’s “we have EXP Edition at home” group, is how SM themselves seem to want to deny any association. You have to do a YG shredding truck worth of research to even discover that SM is connected with this group in any way. It’s understandable too, because the experiment clearly failed… but hey, they’re the ones who paid for this thing, you’d think they’d want to at least attempt some return on their investment. Actually “Drums” was reasonably good (and nearly scraped the honourable mentions list, would you believe) but it was too little too late, everything else has just been a disaster, and I think SM are going to forget about this group about as quickly as you probably did before I put this review here just now. So that means I can write anything I want here and nobody will even rememeber it. When I was a child I really wished that I was a girl instead because I hated outdoor sports (girls were forced to do less of it, and were more broadly forgiven for being as bad at it as I was), getting beaten up (girls fought too but less physically and less often) and I was scared of being drafted one day when I grew up (this was 80s cold war era and we all thought the big US/Russia war complete with nuclear armageddon was coming any minute), and if someone told me back then that transitioning was a thing I totally would have asked mother Boram if I could, just because I hated “boy stuff” and male expectations as a child that much. My parents would have just said “fuck off, we’re poor” though and when puberty hit I forgot all about it anyway so I guess it wouldn’t have mattered, but in another life where my parents were born into a rich family and I actually knew about stuff like transitioning you might have Kpopalypse.com with a pink border and tons of queer content including LGBT games and an entire LGBT novel series… oh wait, you already do, never mind.
18. ALL DAY PROJECT – Look At Me
One of my favourite funny moments where sex, music and Internet culture combine is the story of the poor guy who posted on Reddit’s relationaship advise board that thought that Hudson Mohawke’s “CBAT” was good sex music material (clearly someone needs to introduce him to Portishead) but his girlfriend didn’t agree. For those not in the loop, the poor long-suffering girl who was going out with this dude could tell when he was humping in time to “CBAT” even when no music was playing at all in the bedroom thanks to the song’s unique melody rhythm, however it’s the weedy synth line of that song which really screams out “not the sex music, anything but this my god no”. The identity of the guy was never found out, but I’m thinking that maybe it was Tarzzan from All Day Project and I don’t know why I picked him specifically but hey at least someone’s talking about him in some other context besides cultural appropriation for once. I can hear the faintest version of the CBAT synth in this track and it’s enough to be disturbing, certainly enough to make me say “can you please stop doing that” like that guy’s girlfriend did. It doesn’t help that the shitty synth melody is then adopted by all the vocals in this song and actually becomes the hook. It’s enough fuel for a thousand relationship breakups so if you’re an Allday Project fan (and I understand why you’d not want to admit to that, but you’re secret’s safe with me) you might love this group but I strongly advise you not to take this song into your bedroom, or we might be reading about you on r/relationshipadvice next.
17. IITERNITI – Luv Or Dare
Everyone’s favourite AI slop concept group didn’t shy away from 2025 because why would they, and “Luv Or Dare” is uniquely terrifying in that uncanny-valley way that only shitty AI prompts can be. The video is definitely worth a look just to see how far AI has come in your face lately, you can marvel at the boy dance ensemble with weird extra shadowy limbs, the super stilted girl-group dancing, the girl who takes a drink from a glass bottle but the liquid doesn’t actually reach her lips, those underwater Linda Blair moves at 3:08, and how there are about 57 clocks in this thing but not a single one has the clock face drawn correctly. (I really don’t understand the fascination that AI slop “prompt engineers” have with clocks given that it’s literally putting AI’s worst six-toed foot forward.) Even the group name has “AI lunacy” stamped on it now because “IITERNITI” actually does look like an AI-misspelled version of “Eternity”, it wouldn’t even surprise me if that’s how they came up with the name. However what really strikes me about “Luv Or Dare” is the music, which doesn’t sound like an AI wrote it at all, it sounds like some failure Z-tier production company wrote it, the kind that floats generic girl groups that are just a money-laundering side-hustle for whatever tier of organised crime their company needs to cover up. It’s definitely been a bad year in k-pop when the main thing wrong with this group’s horrible song is that they didn’t rely on AI slop enough.
16. UAU – Attitude
Dreamcatcher company really fucked up when for some reason they took a look at Viviz and decided to themselves “I’ll have one of those”. I guess their heart was never really in a heavy metal concept group, which was completely fucking obvious to absolutely everybody, because while Dreamcatcher were great at their very best they never really shook the pop concessions that held them back from the Babymetal-tier levels of fame that were waiting for them. UAU is Dreamcatcher company running scared from what they once created and the results have been varying shades of mess, with “Attitude” by far being the worst. The melodies and beats are just generic but what really kills this song is the other backing track choices. Whoever decided on that horrible low-attack zylo-marimba-whatsit in the verse truly needed to get a clue, but the chorus gets even worse because the fartuzela that drives the main hook isn’t even in tune with the vocals. Never mind Autotuning the singers, someone needed to Autotune the damn instruments. It’s enough to give me an “attitude” of never listening to anything Dreamcatcher-related ever again, let’s hope Siyeon’s upcoming metal-thingy is okay because it appears she’s the Dreamcatcher legacy’s last hope for redemption.
15. THE BOYZ – Stylish
When I originally listened to this song while I was writing roundup, I complained about the awful high-pitched noise somewhere in the chorus that sounded like Whitehouse but without the random guy yelling about getting his dick sucked (so in other words, pointless). However listening back to it now for end-of-year assessment, I can’t even remember which random whiny noise I was talking about. Perhaps it was that weird whistle thing, or maybe the other toot toot thing, or perhaps it was the whiny noises of the group’s fans complaining about how I don’t like anything this group ever does (like it’s my fault that they suck). The other possibility is that maybe listening to too much shit music this year has lopped a few extra hertz off the upper range of my hearing and now I’m not physically capable of hearing that noise at all anymore. I guess there has to be a silver lining to putting up with hundreds of garbage k-pop songs every year, maybe The Boyz did this deliberately in order to put me out of my misery. If so, thank you boys, I salute you, now that my hearing is destroyed to the point where I can’t even hear this shit music feel free to disband anytime.
14. Naevis – Sensitive
Like scam emails, menstrual cramps and Jehovas Witnesses doorknockers, the minds behind Naevis just don’t know when to quit. “Sensitive” is somewhat better than last year’s “Done“, because it resembles a song at least in theory, but then the turd I cleaned out of my cat’s litter tray this afternoon that was for some reason in the shape of a perfect pretzel was also significantly better than “Done”. (It was also more “done” than “Done”.) SM Entertainment’s painfully awkward attempt to try and create an AI-themed Hatsune Miku for Korea is just never going to bear any fruit no matter how good the technology behind it gets, simply because this type of computerised conceptual bullshit only appeals to ultra-nerds, and ultra-nerds like better music than this. No amount of trying to combine Karina and Winter into a virtual avatar is going to squeeze enough nutjuice out of SM stans to counter the horrible seasickening, hiccuping verse synthesiser, or that chorus which is nothing much either other than a bunch of staccato jabbering. Worst of all, Naevis doesn’t even look any good, you’d think that’d be at least one thing that SM could get right given the amount of ludicrously robotically attractive people they’ve had on their roster over the years to use as source material but the results are stilted and bland, I’ve seen AI-generated porn that looks significantly more convincing than this. It had better music than this, too.
13. Rosy Barbie – Kung Fu
The first time I ever heard a “music sample” was a snatch of Carl Douglas’ “Kung Fu Fighting” that my brother had on a floppy disc back in our 80s Commodore 64 gaming days. The sample was only ten seconds long and was just of the start of the piece where the drums come in, it was super scratchy sounding because it was 8-bit and ultra-low sample rate, but I was just blown away that a computer could sample anything at all, these were the mid-80s when sampling was a brand new thing that only the absolute newest groups at the time were doing. I’d play the thing over and over, fascinated by how my shitty computer could actually play music, and wondering how this technological feat was even possible and if the chips inside the machine would melt at any second. What I didn’t think to myself is “wow this would sound so much better with a shitty trap beat and some awful chripy rapping”. That’s partly because trap beats hadn’t actually been invented yet (ah, those were the days, back when real hip-hop was the only hip-hop) and partly because even back then I wasn’t a total fucking masochist. I can’t speak for anyone else though, maybe you enjoy this aural punishment, but if anyone threatens to break out Rosy Barbie’s “Kung Fu” near you I suggest that you at least prepare a safeword.
12. GRANADA – Mubong
I’m not one of those people who got involved in Korean pop music writing because I love Korean culture and have dreams of moving over there and teaching English with an Australian accent to high school kids and visiting the island full of dongs or whatever. In fact if anything I find Korean culture very out of step with my own cultural values, and while I do like some aspects of what Koreans produce (pop music obviously, also food, horror films, gooner computer games) it’s really more in spite of the overarching culture, rather than because of it. However even I have enough minimal care factor about Korean cultural matters to think that Granada’s lame “sexy hanbok” or whatever the fuck it is, is a bit fucking shit, so I can only imagine what someone who actually gives a fuck about the cultural significance of outfits might think. Mind you even if you’re okay with watching these women wander around in their trad-diapers, there’s still the shit song to contend with, which sounds like what the more Z-grade groups were pumping out in around 2015 combined with random plink-plonks on your favourite traditional Korean instruments that you can’t remember the names of and had to secretly go and look up just now. It’s enough to make you go to a Korean culture convention and steal all the pamphlets and shove them up your ass so nobody else reads them and gets any ideas about encouraging these people.
11. Dok2 – Umma
If there’s one thing worse than rap guys, it’s rap guys trying to be nice guys. I’m not talking about your Public Enemy or KRS-ONE type people who built up their entire reputations from the very beginning on actually giving a fuck about social issues, I’m talking about your average douchebag rapper who has “get money” tattooed on his hand and gold teeth even though nothing was wrong with his real teeth and raps about being rich, and… rich, suddenly doing a switcheroo and pretending to give a fuck about something or other that the other 90% of his career was devoted to disowning. So someone just like Dok2 in other words. If your entire brand is “I’m a materialist douchebag and all I care about is money and bitches and drinking some overrated liquor nobody drinks while I drive my rented sports car that I’m trying to fool you into thinking I own and rap over pussified shit beats” and then someone close to you dies and you feel like switching gears and doing something kind of heartfelt or whatever, here’s what you need to do. Call your next song something like “Twerk On My Face Bitch Money Bitch Drugs Also Suck My Dick Smeg” and turn the 808 bass drum up so the speaker flaps like a fart and add some annoying screechy noises and shoot the video on top of a giant inflatable asscrack that you snort cocaine off with hookers. Don’t buckle to social pressure and put out some dreary bullshit like “Umma”, because nobody will take you seriously about that shit when your previous nine songs were all called “Your Mum’s Box Stinks Like Prawn Crackers After I Fucked It Also Did I Mention I Like Money”. Eric Reprid could teach Dok2 a thing or two, he used to sound this terrible before “Suki” went viral and he realised what side his bread was buttered on and just embraced his inner caonima from then on. Nobody wants to be friends with half a douchebag.
10. SUNNYKEY – Sweet Hello
Here’s a horrid Korean attempt at some kind of soul-R&B and I promise you it won’t be the last one on this list. I’ve always found the term “soul” to be a somewhat subjective and hazily-defined concept with constantly moving goalposts, much like “feel” for guitar players or “style” for fashionistas or “common sense” for politicians, but I’m pretty sure that whatever “soul” actually means, this song doesn’t have any. “Sweet Hello” just sounds too confused to have a soul. Firstly, is this a song about the singer having broken up with someone, or is she really into the other person and frustrated with them not wanting to progress the relationship quicker? I’ve read through these lyrics a bunch of times and I can’t tell, and let me tell you it was tough to read them given how bizarrely cringe they are. However if you can get over the second-hand embarassment of lines like “watching them twinkle”, you’ve still got the music to contend with. It’s all pretty bland and gutless to begin with but takes a sharp turn from boring into the realms of unlistenable from 1:08 when the keyboardist starts adding some spicy wrong notes sorry I mean “jazz chords”. She’s great because she doesn’t give a fuck, she even sounds like she’s deliberately sabotaging the song, especially at 2:32 where it sounds like she just lifted her foot off the floor and karate-kicked the keyboard in the low notes so she could make an insurance claim. I feel like she’s on my side, trying to prevent this mess from even coming out at all, and while she may have failed, at least… actually there’s no silver lining here, this song just sucks and don’t listen to it, that’s all.
9. KIIRAS – Bang Bang
Truly one of the songs of all time, “Bang Bang” is what happens when you give a songwriting task to some soul/R&B singers and say to them “just go your hardest, do whatever, we trust you completely”. You can immediately tell from listening to this mess that it’s written by some western R&B writers who think they know what’s best for k-pop, because that’s exactly what it sounds like. The result is a total fucking disaster – constant screechy blues-scale warbles throughout the entire song, annoying brassiness that will piss you right off, and every single instrument in the backing track constantly throwing little soloettes out into the mix. Pity the poor girls of Kiiras if they ever have to recreate this mess live (and I mean live without pitch-correction, not live on Korean TV competition shows or those “it’s live for realsies, pinky swear” shows where they pitch-correct everything). It’s like every single part of this song both vocally and instrumentally is constantly fighting for space, saying to the listener “listen to me first!” but a good arrangement needs stuff in the foreground and the background. “Bang Bang” is a song at war with itself, and I can’t work out who’s winning, but I do know that we’re all losing.
8. CORTIS – Go!
At the start of this video there’s a popup which lets you know that this video is “directed by IDIOTS and CORTIS” and if I were you, I’d take that as a warning sign about the complete package because it’s not just the video where idiots were seemingly involved. I always misread “cortis” as “coitus” whenever I see this group doing anything at all, and I guess it’s apt in this case because I definitely feel like I’m getting fucked by this horrible trap rhythm with its mindless repetition and those awful synth stabs. It’s not all bad though. In a year of extreme mediocrity for boy groups where hardly anyone is taking chances across the board, I have to hand it to Cortis though for at least standing out enough to make something this stunningly bad. It takes courage to suck this badly.
7. SM Jazz Trio – Only One
A song originally by SM Entertainment soloist BoA, released back in the company’s “let’s ruin all our music videos for all of history with hard-embedded popup ads for our new smartphone app” era, “Only One” was already pretty laid back for a dance track and was bordering on a slightly lounge-jazzy vibe thanks to the song’s general mood and harmony choices, despite not actually being jazz at all. So of course that makes it a perfect fit for SM’s new jazz trio project where three musicians (who are here smart enough to not show their dirty faces) get to ruin all your favourite tracks from the company’s history by accentuating the parts of them which were the least interesing in their original incarnation, dulling them down to department store foyer piano player intensity and then peppering them with endless instrumental semi-improvised jazz-wank excursions. Honestly every single song by SM Jazz Trio is probably bad enough to make this list at about this position, but I’m only including this one because otherwise this list will become a very accurate but very boring read, as pretty much the exact same thing is wrong with everything this group does. This is music for people who unironically use words like “jungle rhythms” to describe any rock music from the 1950s onward and wash their faces with Evian water. Avoid.
6. X:IN – Attention seeker
I’d do a long review for this but the song is called “attention seeker” and I feel like I shouldn’t encourage them. Let’s move on quickly. Heaven forbid we get more trash like this in our future.
5. KiiiKiii – Debut Song
You all knew that this much-loathed song was going to be on this list somewhere, and I’ll enjoy all the KiiiKii fans getting all upset a second time over me shitting on it, meanwhile everyone else will ask me why it isn’t even higher on this list. “Debut Song” has seen KiiiKiii fans contrort themselves into all sorts of weird logic conundrums in order to justify the public release of this trash: “It’s not supposed to be good!”, “It’s only meant as a joke song!” they say in the song’s defence, as if it being a horrid-sounding joke is somehow news, or some kind of valid justification, or not exactly what everyone else was already pointing out. “Debut Song”s childish melodies (you know you’re in a musical no-man’s land when a segue into “Happy Birthday” is actually the melodic highlight) and weird awful trap rhythms (complete with a mid-song tempo change for no reason other than it’s what all the cool kids are doing in 2025) definitely wears the influence of BabyMonster’s awful “Woke Up In Tokyo” on its sleeve, another notoriously trash song that that group’s fans cape for in similar fashion by saying the low quality of it is “irony” or something. Don’t worry KiiiKiii fans, Kpopalypse believes you! You’re absolutely right, the song is absolutely fine as a private joke between friends and the groups’ most deludu fans, and that’s where it should have stayed. Unfortunately for general music fans who aren’t drinking the fandom Kool-Aid, it’s been let out into the wild for public consumption like some kind of rogue mutated virus, and now we all suffer. Let’s do our part and allow the authorities to lock this song down in order to contain the infection, in the meantime I suggest that for your own safety you stay at least 1.5 metres away from “Debut Song” at all times (but further than that would be safer, different countries to minimise exposure risk is probably ideal).
4. Sweety Squad – Make You Dance
Yes yes yes, mean old Kpopalypse picking on the kids, but remember that Seo Eve was eleven years old when she did “Malatanghulu” and that song’s a fucking banger, so age is no excuse. Also Little Psy was minus two years old or some shit when he popped out “Show Time” and that’s still the worst k-pop song ever, so there’ll be no straggling here. The biggest problem with “Make You Dance” isn’t the young performers, who honestly do about as well as one could reasonably expect for their age so let’s not punish these poor kids – it’s the adults who greenlit this poop who really need to go and stand in the corner until recess. I have to make this distinction clear because otherwise there’s a risk that the adults will find and show the kids this review as some kind of weird “you must do better” coaching. We all know how psychotic “stage parents” can be, so I don’t want to enable child abuse given that these poor children have already suffered enough at the hands of adults by being dragged into singing this awful nonsense. Of course the music is the usual slow, dragging, trap meets Blackpinkian thing that all the A-list groups stopped doing three years ago, because shit trends tend to take a while to filter down to the nugus, and no singer could have really saved this, and it shouldn’t be these kids’ responsibilty to. At least it’s very short, so you can get through it quickly and go back to being traumatised by responsible adults in k-pop who should know better.
3. Jennie – Zen
And now onto the people who are old enough to know better. I have to hand it to whoever is handling Jennie’s creative direction for coming up with this bullcrap. It’s certainly ambitious and it could have worked. There’s even a part of the song where it kind of does work, which is from 2:45 once Jennie herself has more or less bowed out of the song completely and you get to hear some pretty neat synthesiser stuff, someone could have potentially made a decent song out of that. However everything else here is such funeral tempo dogshit that it’s far too little too late by that point. The entire first two and a half minutes of the track is filled with nonsense rhyhms and awkward pregnant pauses, like it’s more concerned about making some kind of art statement nobody understands or gives a shit about instead of actually being a song someone might potentially want to hear. The whole thing reminds me of any one of Lim Kim’s post-idol soundscape abortions, except instead of Lim Kim yapping about how she’s an “Asian queen” (because no way would anyone know that if she didn’t say it 26 times per song), it’s Jennie yapping about… well, I’ll get back to you on that, or maybe I won’t because I really couldn’t give a shit, but Jennie won’t be the queen of k-pop or anything else for long with nonsense like this. Jennie converting her Blackpink fame into a string of unmitigated solo disasters has certainly been one of the most bizarre it-girl dethronings I’ve ever seen in k-pop, she had everything she needed to dominate 2025 except the music.
2. ODD YOUTH – I Like You
In medieval England, there existed a man called Roland de Afleton, colloquially known as “Roland the Farter”, who was a flautist and jester to the king’s court during the reign of Henry II in the twelfth century. His job was to, once a year, attend the court’s Christmas festivities, whereupon he would perform a jump, a whistle and a fart all at the same time. For this acrobatic (gastrobatic?) feat, he was given a manor house and 100 acres of land north of London by the king. No, I’m not making this up, you can go and look it up, and I haven’t put a link here because I just enjoy the thought of you all typing “was Roland the Farter actually real or is Kpopalypse just being a cunt as usual” into a browser. I think that Odd Youth’s management certainly looked it up too, and then hoped that if they made a song with a backing track that sounded more or less exactly like that, perhaps some wealthy current monarch might slip them a free Dubai penthouse and a few dozen complimentary human-trafficked slaves to say “thanks for the lulz”. Unfortunately they would be the only ones laughing, as the integration of all these deliberately out of tune and out of time noises into the song really doesn’t work. Not that there was any saving it anyway as the melody all these bubbly pisses and farts are semi-obscuring is just as pissfartingly annoying. It’s definitely a case of “two wrongs make two wrongs”. Don’t commit a third wrong by pressing play on this track, you have been warned.
And the worst song of 2025 is…
1. ALLDAY PROJECT – Wicked
A lot of people don’t like Allday Project, but not for the right reasons. Discussions so far about the group have focused mainly on male rapper Tarzzan and his “cultural appropriation” (what do you expect was coming really, with a name like “Tarzzan”?) but if I made a list of hundred reasons to dislike “Wicked” I’m not even sure if his lame hip-hop style imitations would even make the list. Let’s find out:
1. Beat sounds like absolute shit
2. Stupid change-up when the girl raps for no reason other than it’s trendy to have stupid change-ups right now
3. and that other beat it changes to sounds like even more shit
4. “Gonna do some damage”… you right there, Tarzzan, King of the Jungle? Can I get you anything? Like a clue?
5. Shitty grey building interior music video (thanks EXO for nothing)
6. Lame “wicked” chants… how wicked are you really if you gotta keep saying it every ten seconds
7. Losers doing dumb stunts in cars and motorcycles, I hate people who drive like dickheads on the roads while I’m just cruising and I hate them even more now… I’m already going at 5km above the speed limit and you’re beeping at me because you’re stuck behind me? Fuck off, I’m not getting a speeding ticket just to please you you fucking cunt
8. Car that crashes misses all the performers
9. Puke-inducing camera movement, why is it upside-down half the time, I hate it when they turn the camera upside-down in JAV and I hate it here too, don’t make me tilt my head like Girl’s Day or then I’ll have two awful songs playing in my head at once
10. That annoying thing where there’s a small sample of a voice making some yelp thing and it constantly repeats sixteen times a bar like that’s really necessary
11. Swing-feel rap from 1:24 sounds so fucking stupid I can’t believe it, who the fuck let this nonsense through quality control
12. I was going to hang out with my girlfriend tonight but I had to finish writing this dumb review first and now she’s fallen asleep probably thanks to listening to this crap song through the ultra-thin walls of our house
13. Silver room at 1:40 doesn’t suddenly collapse in on them and crush them all
14. AI slop buggy vaporises the dancers at 2:07 but spares the rapper
15: Stupid filter at 2:19 like I poured water on my phone screen actually made me think that I did pour water on my phone screen so I took it in for repairs but the repair guy just told me I had shit music taste, I explained that I was writing a review for the worst list but he wasn’t having it, he told me to put this at #1 or he wasn’t giving me my phone back
16. They set the dancers on fire instead of the studio control room, the dancers really cop a raw deal in this video while the people responsible for how this shit sounds still walk around to this day with no jail time
17. Stupid camera falling on the floor thing like Rain’s “Gang” but in first-person, that’s a much better song than this by the way, justice for Rain
18. Because we don’t have enough grey drab rooms in the first video, they did a second video in a fucking basement good work you fucking wankers
19. Okay I was wrong the cornrows fucking suck and I’ve got nothing against cornrows on non-black people in general I mean I like corn it’s tasty in a soup or something and I like rows too like the rows that the people responsible for Allday Project are making in the dole queue in my dreams
That about covers it.
That’s the end of this list! Thanks for reading, and if you haven’t been reduced to a quivering wreck with no hearing or sanity left from these shit songs, please proceed directly to the Kpopalypse favourites list for 2025 in order to restore your faith in k-pop and your mental health! Kpopalypse will return in 2026!
