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‘Twas the year of lawsuits dominating the news feed: HYBE, BE:LIFT and ADOR locked in the mother of all slanging matches, civil and criminal complaints, Warner Music Korea and agency Attrakt in court over girl group Fifty-Fifty, idols suing the rumour mongering YouTuber Sojang, and SM Entertainment suing three EXO members, who, in turn, counter-sued.

Yet again this year highlighted the broken state of the global music industry, with too many artists seen as valuable yet entirely expendable, as cogs in the C-suite machine. But, as the adage goes, the show must go on and so it did with over a dozen K-pop acts in the US album Top 10, including #1’s for Ateez, Twice, and Stray Kids, and a bonafide global hit single for Blackpink’s Rosé with Bruno Mars, which hit #2 in the UK.

As 2025 beckons, already filling up with anticipation and apprehension, Dazed looks back at the last 12 hectic months of single releases and deep cuts, selecting 50 of K-pop’s best tracks to be added onto your playlists.

As drag lexicon fully dominated pop stan-dom, you couldn’t move in comment sections for all the ‘ate’s and ‘slay’s, so in that spirit let us say, unarguably, no one served cunt as hard as aespa this year. You’d struggle to pick a favourite from the holy trinity of “Whiplash”, “Armageddon” and “Supernova” but the latter hit hard with a wildly creative, ultra meme fodder video, Karina’s viral “Ah, body bang” (which turned up on every fan edit worth its salt), the brain-scratching synths that buzzed like killer hornets, the sampling of Afrika Bambaataa’s classic “Planet Rock”, and the switch in pace for a dance breakdown that dropped like gold bars into a stacked bridge. Absolutely flawless.

As their name suggests, BOYNEXTDOOR have spent much of their discography being cheeky scamps but when the sextet really blew off some youthful steam, they shrewdly keep it heavy on the bass and deadpan on the lyrics. “I’ve never touched my dad’s wallet but I’ve worn his designer clothes,” raps baby-faced Jaehyun, with Taesan and Leehan bringing a nasally humour to the chorus: “I could be playing or just lost, please don’t tell my mom and daddy, I’m just immature, pulled an all-nighter yet again”. Merely 18 months into their career, BOYNEXTDOOR, as songwriters and performers, are hitting well beyond their years.

Taking note of country music’s super surge in 2023, ‘Run For Roses’ canters briskly, resplendent with handclaps, fiddle, banjo, and a boot scootin’ rhythm. With only a handful of country-influenced K-pop songs in existence, NMIXX make ample use of the space to set a new benchmark, putting focus on their vocals over the genre’s hallmarks, and channelling the pain that comes with the determination to succeed – “Surrounded by thorns, our finish line, but I still go, scratched, hurt, doesn’t matter, put aside giving up”. When you consider NMIXX’s bumpy road since debuting, it makes sense that “Run For Roses” puts just a little extra crack in its whip.

After a lengthy absence, and as their first outing with eight members, fromis_9 turned up the temperature, dropping lines like “Drink and drink but still parched, at that time, call me, I’ll be right there from now” and “Hеat and sweat, in one breath, blow hard, we got that, let’s go with the flow”, all without ever being explicit about what getting ‘supersonic’ entails. But whether you hear those insistent, drawn out notes on the bursting chorus and the drawling second verse as horny or simply high-spirited, this summery power bop rightly put the group back into the public eye, and high on the charts. 

The sensible thing to do in a ‘Why is it what we want most hurts hardest?’ situation is retreat and recover. But when the blinkers of desire strap you in for a masochistic ‘Yeah, hurt me harder, why not?’ ride, you get “Pricey”, a seductive, funk-disco-pop strut through the emotional fire. Its laconic jauntiness is undercut with moments of glaring pain in the lyrics but so strong is the sense of fatalistic imperviousness that it almost celebrates making the same heartbreaking mistakes over and over. If you can afford to lose, such games can be oddly enticing.

From the pen of legendary Korean songwriter Kenzie comes one of the year’s big, uplifting tracks. It’s a sound ZEROBASEONE infuse with infectious joy, punching the chorus high with soaring notes and an echoing chant, making it feel like it’s soundtracking a movie meet-cute. Unsurprisingly, its video had the same idea, referencing classics like Love, Actually and Romeo & Juliet but, ultimately, “Good So Bad” is the best kind of giddy fuzziness. where you can’t help but be swept along by the unabashed, perfectly executed feelgood-ness of it all.

It thumped deep in the guts and, arguably, produced the year’s stickiest line – “All the girls are girling, girling, all the girly girls” – that tweaked the brain into believing there’d be no problem popping figure 8’s and death drops like we weren’t all about to break ribs trying. Racking up 100 million Spotify streams in two months, “Crazy” leaned into ballroom and its choreography (the video also featured dancers from the Iconic House of Juicy Couture) to produce a worthy addition to the band’s most fabulous category – songs that make you feel like the baddest bitch to ever exist.

Three years and one mandatory military service after his last release, EXO’s Baekhyun brought his star power and unmistakable voice to “Pineapple Slice”, elevating it from The Weeknd-influenced synth-pop to an inescapable serpentine groove. With twelve years in the spotlight, he’s perfected that oh-so hard to achieve mix of charisma, humour, charm and ego, where lines like “Anyone else will be boring, you’ll fall for my sweetness, go crazy” land likes facts rather than artistic licence, and every ad lib, piercing stare and water-kicking dance move is enviably effortless.

With 24 members, the average mic time per girl isn’t much more than a couple of seconds but what you might assume sounds choppy and disjointed is flowing, echo-y and dreamlike. Taking a less is more approach to such a big group seems counter-intuitive but the clean lines of “Girls Never Die” are pulled along by a robust, rubbery bass line that turns warm and funky on the chorus, where all two dozen voices find a heavenly blend on the simple hook. Jazzy trumpet and chimes are layered low in the mix, just enough to make it sound incredibly, for want of a better word, expensive.

It’s easy to laugh at the idea of an imaginary friend but, for a myriad of reasons, deep friendships seem harder to come by these days. ITZY captures the filling of our emotional gaps via artists (or whomever else) without judgement, and with reassurance: “My little lucky spark, I will give you strength.. I’ll keep you safe so you can dream, you know, I’m your imaginary friend… it’s you and I until the end”. As a stark contrast to their title single – the brash girl crush of “GOLD” – “Imaginary Friend” offered a brand new yet wholly formed facet of the band: darkly elegant and intimately empathetic.

With tootling brass, space-age synths and strutting percussion, this is 70s discotheque meets 2nd generation K-pop, super-produced into a whirl of glitz. So dazzling is the vocal performance that the foreboding in the lyrics – a besotted protagonist in limbo, questioning if it’s better to be trapped in a black mirror than in reality – goes almost unnoticed. The pairing of high gloss and dark underbelly pushes “Black MIRROR” away from most of their contemporaries’ releases but this classic sound, especially when bestowed with clear finesse and verve, bears no sign of fatigue.

Their lead single “Plot Twist” cleaned up on the Korean charts but, as a pre-debut track, “Oh Mymy: 7s” was equivalent of the youngest child, playfully testing boundaries with a lightness that has the intro’s plucking violins segue into a froth of eagerness and pure serotonin. It might not appear to take itself too seriously but it’s certainly considered, melding the time-centric concept to a sparse ticking cadence on the chorus and a clever, beautifully executed choreography that buffs what could have been merely a testing of the waters into a fast launch off the starting blocks.

“APT.” took 220 million YouTube plays in under two weeks, going Top 2 in the UK and Top 10 in the US, front loaded with the duo’s clear chemistry as collaborators and a wholesomely bratty hyperactiveness that felt transportative. But where Charli xcx’s green brat dripped in club sweat and feral insouciance, Rosé’s sports, unironically, rose-tinted nostalgia, interpolating Toni Basil’s fizzy 80s hit “Mickey” with nods to sarky 90s mall rats, to Avril Lavigne, to The Ting Tings, to a time when life felt less unencumbered by, well, everything. “Come give me something I can feel,” Rosé demands, even as she and Mars ignite joy in everyone else.

“Glow”, with zigzagging strings and a hook that peeled open like a smile, did what great pop should do – amplify insignificant life moments, like a late night walk or a train journey, into something more memorable. It uses disco’s keenest weapon – glittery melancholia – to be more than just twinkling effervescence; “From this despair as I escape, let me burn” they sing, the edges of their voices subtly breaking, and even if their way out was via the well-trodden path of following your dreams, the sense of perseverance captured in “Glow” felt jubilantly believable.

Rookie group RESCENE skillfully mines the classic K-pop sound where choruses float by like puffy clouds on a summer day but simultaneously dances around chunky beats with panache. They sing of the penny-drop moment when you realise just how much you like someone, the slight reeling sensation that comes with it captured by guitar riffs and percussion which flare like a pounding heart. Their voices switch between coquettish and angelic, making “Love Attack” sugary and transcendental but, really, that’s exactly what being in love feels like.

There’s something country-ish about “Somebody”, maybe it’s the twang of acoustic guitar throughout, but it moves like it’s riding bucking broncos at the dustiest heartland rodeo. And just like the hunky smalltown cowboy in a Hallmark movie, there’s not an awful lot this track wants to say. Instead, it aspires to provide a rollicking, big-hearted emotional moment, achieving it with a hollering, chanting firework-worthy chorus that pulls the wallflower type onto the dancefloor and shows ‘em how to cut loose. Sure it’s far-fetched but in the most fun way possible.

One of two members who went solo after LOONA extricated themselves from Blockberry Creative, Yves’s re-debut, as it were, is a minimalist and compact affair. It draws on multiple electronic dance inspirations which constantly push and pull against each other, the tetchy rhythms segueing into bouncy house beats and airy disco flourishes, while, similarly, Lil Cherry is the spicy to Yves’s sweet, coming in hot with lines like “Who the f* I pretty myself up for? Who the hell am I makin’ it rain for?”. It finds harmony on the chorus to form a little pop oasis, but its multifaceted restlessness is the real intrigue.

ILLIT’s “Magnetic” was a bubbly elixir, a TikTok-missile, two minutes and 40 gossamer seconds of winsome vocals, rubbery synths, video game-esque blips that somehow sounded pink as candy floss, and a stuttering chorus – “This time, I want, you, you, you, you like it’s magnetic” – that you’d catch circling in your head like a mad carousel. It could’ve all sounded like a crazed fever dream but for the light, deft production softly blurring every edge until it could wash over you a thousand times without wearing thin. Little wonder then it was a monster hit.

One of K-pop’s most distinctive voices, SHINee’s Onew combines gleaming funk bass and an effortless languidness to equate swimming in the deep ocean with the fluidity of music. So well executed is his vocal performance that even when purposely turned choppy, it moves with a well-oiled smoothness that wraps and unwraps around the ear like a friendly constrictor. He sings of the intoxicating immersiveness of water and sound and, as a master of the elements, Onew pulls you down deep.

Formerly of the lore-heavy LOONA, ARTMS make “Birth” – a pre-release with one of the most striking visuals in recent years – more than capable of standing on its own. It’s a haunted house of a song: feminine and delicately lethal, soaring and sawing with violins, with the breakbeat post-chorus dropping in like the snapping of bone. Many of this year’s songs have been sinfully short, and “Birth” is no exception: it’s one you desperately wish had continued to dig into itself but, as is, offers a gut-tingling experience that never gets any less beautiful or unsettling.

ALL(H)OURS’ first foray into drift phonk – the aptly named “Drift” on their 2024 debut EP – is dwarfed by this sophomore single, which reverberates with the momentum of a supertanker ploughing onto a beach. “Shock” finds longevity in the melodic verses, and there’s daft fun to be had in knitting of Korean mythology (the goblin figure known as a dokkaebi) with all things electric – “This moment right now, you feel that power rave” – but the chorus/post-chorus combo is the real high-octane superstar, knocking your head back so far you’ll see where you’ve come from. 

After a contentious run of singles following a 2023 debut, the pieces came together for BABYMONSTER on “Drip” in ballsy, ostentatious YG Entertainment fashion: rappers Asa and Ruka are as steely as the heavily encrusted accessories they wear, the chorus pops and sashays like rent is due, and Ahyeon’s high note on the bridge gets a heavy-duty 2000s vocal warp. You’ll find its fuschia-coloured heart in the pre-chorus, where the declaration of self-worth sounds less for us and more just for them, but “Drip” is, ultimately, slick and iridescent as petrol, with its accelerator firmly pushed to the floor.

At the centre of a funk, nu-jazz and pop Venn diagram is “trampoline”, which grooves and bounces as much as you’d expect of a track with a title referencing a giant, springy mat. In a gravity-less sense, it’s about jumping over life’s challenges and people’s toxicity (“No matter how much you stir up and torment, I’ll erase all the troubles”) but, more than anything, finding an unpolluted headspace in which to thrive. Its verses are the equivalent of the fresh, clear air it seeks but the choruses get earthy and dynamic – feet on the floor, head in the clouds – and, even better, feature scatting, rap and pop vocals on one deliciously satisfying bridge that makes “trampoline” a multi-textured gem.

IVE like to be up close and in control when they sing about relationships (see “Hypnosis”, “Blue Blood” or “Heroine”) but even as “Accendio” beckons, it places an impenetrable glass wall between them and their lover (or artist and fan, if you read between the lines). “Watch me, don’t touch me, love me, don’t hurt me”, they command, bass and hi-hats chopping at intimidating speeds. Its favourite trick is to keep you anticipating that the wall might soften or fall, but it never comes. The song strides to its end where a final breathy “accendio” lands like an icy, pitying smirk, leaving us agog, faces pushed up against the glass.

Renowned for feisty, fireball singles, it may surprise some that ATEEZ’s discography houses synthwave anthems like “Take Me Home”, “Silver Light”, and undisputed neon king, “Cyberpunk”. “Selfish Waltz” takes up position as their new, glimmering sibling, embodying the back and forth of both a waltz and the lyrics’ love/hate relationship, ebbing and surging across the entire arrangement. The sparseness beneath the pre-chorus and rappers’ verses is countered by a chorus layered so intricately with Daft Punk-esque synths, and Wooyoung and Jongho’s vocals, that it practically levitates, dancing alone across the clouds.

Whichever team you choose here – the original version of “Deja Vu” (the lead single off their sixth Korean EP) or the Anemoia Mix – will come down to your preference for icy synths and trap snares or scuzzier synths, acoustic and rock guitar. There’s absolutely a place for the former – its cooler tones complement the dreamlike, otherworldliness of the lyrics – but the Anemoia Mix, where the guitars and drums batter against the pleading, grasping chorus, is urgent and muscular, yet teetering on the edge of fragility: “Say my name”, they beg, and you can feel it seering through the speakers.

“Igloo” went viral for the group this year, but B-side “Back To Me” is gorgeous, like wildflowers blooming in spring after a winter of heartbreak. The band’s vocal tones are girlishly soft yet the instrumental barrels forward on pop-rock guitars and chants, the yin and yang of desiring love again but finding strength to seek it out – “The scratches you left will fade someday, the idea of eternal pain is just bullshit,” sings Belle, “I lost my heart but it’s coming back to me.” Rediscovering and loving oneself is best served with a solid ‘go fuck yourself’ to those who hurt you, and Kiss Of Life totally gets it.

The simple video for “Groin” fractures and distorts as if to illustrate how warped the perception of famous people can become. But however nonchalant BTS’s RM may look and sound, his lyrics – a reaction to the litany of stories and gossip about him – hold the heat of someone who has been riled to breaking point – “Not a fucking diplomat… They shove responsibilities onto me, what do I represent, I only represent myself”. You could argue that any celebrity rebuttal is a win only for the rumour mongers but, sometimes, proverbially kicking them in the nuts proves to be far more bloody satisfying.

Where lead single “Sexy In The Air” was vibey, suggestive, and sweaty, B-side “Deja Vu” is its poignant contrast. Here he is a man sliding across dimensions, staring through the darkness at flickering versions of himself, and thus Taemin makes “Deja Vu” beautiful and floating, almost ethereal with strings and falsetto yet pulsing with unease, the slow, thick bass pulling him further into the blackness of space. His is a timbre so suited to the intense – lust, fear, obsession – that when conflated with the esoteric and unknown, of dancing dangerously on the line between heaven and hell, Taemin is at his unbridled best.

With maximalism back on the agenda in the west, Nayeon’s sophomore solo itched the need for grandiose, hair-flinging, catwalk-strutting super pop. On paper this is a huge nod to Beyoncé’s “Crazy In Love” (as well as Amerie and Meghan Trainor) – the bold percussion and brass on an exploding chorus, right down to the video’s denim shorts and white singlet – but Nayeon isn’t settling for just homage, instead she treats “ABCD” (and it’s accompanying EP, NA) like a stamp on her pop passport, a solid showboat of a song that has her exploring the world beyond idol trappings.

Although a seven-member girl group, this pre-debut release from one of the year’s fastest rising rookies featured just four members (rappers YunSeo, Chloe Young, INA, and Emma), all in husky-voiced, don’t-fuck-with-me flow over hammering bass and synths. BADVILLAIN’s three singles would bring slick hip hop-pop to the table but there is something so invitingly off-the-cuff about “+82”, with its scrappy, contagious energy that of a random studio session turned lightning bolt throwdown. If the phrase “talk shit, get hit” had a theme song, it’d sound like this.

Although he’s been an idol since 2016, it was only this year, and shortly before he disappeared into the military, that Jaehyun released his solo debut album. “Roses” was just one of the tracks that made it worth the wait, a smouldering slice of old school R&B, complete with gospelly backing vocals, his own voice sweetly yearning and tinged in jealousy for a love lost. You certainly didn’t require plush pile carpets, a leather sofa, an open fireplace and a hundred altar candles to get deep into the vibe but close your eyes while listening and that’s exactly what this evokes.

When jostling for a standing in a crowded industry, rookie idol groups frequently dial through sounds, and MADEIN, on their debut four-track EP, shift through Afrobeats, balladry and glitchy pop. Jumbled as that may sound, a chilly airiness across its production forms a connective stylistic tissue, none more so than on “Dopamine” which shimmers and sighs over elastic beats as retro space-age synths rise and fall, a constant bundle of jitteriness held in check by vocals that run from angelic right through to satisfyingly throaty. Whatever MADEIN’s future holds, they’ll have at least gifted us this excellent shard of glacial pop.

You can hear NewJeans’s throwback influence across K-pop already but the band continued their own deep dive into atmospheric nostalgia with the City Pop meets R&B of “Bubble Gum”. It’s wisp-like – the flute is fleeting, synths hiss and fade – but it acts like a core memory, a comforting loop of sound and sight, here viewed through the graininess of a handheld camcorder. As the real world got progressively uglier and unsafe this year, we wanted escapism, to cast ourselves back to blowing dish soap bubbles under a summer sun and running barefoot with friends, and “Bubble Gum” was the perfect vehicle to take us there.

Tarot cards! Face jewels!! CGI backgrounds that look like a cross between Evian ads and the dolphin rainbow meme!!! This thoroughly glorious video perfectly showcases SEVENTEEN’s Performance team (Jun, The8, Dino, and Hoshi) who tap into the sensuality of Amapiano, make it hypnotic with a simple, looping hook and dial it down to the serenity levels of a tropical island holiday. It’s got seduction on its mind even if the lyrics are PG-rated – all breathy coyness and hip swivelling – but there’s just as much pleasurable to be had by wrapping yourself in its blissful warmth and completely drifting away.

TXT’s Yeonjun’s anticipated debut solo was one of 2024’s biggest love it or hate it releases, with many opining the song failed to showcase him as a vocalist. But what if the end game was to make a complete 180 turn on the turf where he made his name, to provoke, entertain, even startle, by thrusting and sneering over a piano line akin to the Jaws theme in gurn mode, while delivering lines like “Go hit that gum, chomp chomp” without batting an eyelid? “GGUM” may have been originally here for a good time and not a long time, but the bonkers magnetism of this track, and Yeonjun himself, more than stands its ground, demanding of your full attention.

The chest-thumping percussive rhythms of “Bittersweet” gives it a certain feral brawn even if xikers are more playful than posturing: “You should better run,” Seeun repeats, marshmallow-soft like a warning in a supernatural horror, and the band’s rappers – Minjae, Sumin and Yechan – pedal through their verses with a grinning, manic urgency. xikers have made rumbling instrumentals with springy vocals their signature, meshing genres indiscriminately within that framework, but it’s this rock-hip hop meld – guitars and backing chants cranked high – that’s particularly conducive to their brand of unhinged charm.

“Chk Chk Boom” adheres faithfully to Stray Kids’ hallmarks – beats chunkier than concrete pylons, kicky ad-libs, and a jerkily rhythmic chorus that gets all up in your face – but never underestimate the band’s willingness to play with their blueprint. Here, Bang Chan’s delivery becomes dryly laconic, Hyunjin and Felix turn their respective choruses into sonic sparring partners, and the pacey, snappy outro is like a taunt you don’t have a pithy enough reply for. Nearly seven years in, Stray Kids’ ability to drop Chicxulub-sized bangers on the pop landscape shows no sign of wane.

Not solely satisfied with a resounding chorus that’s then tweaked to stutter over thundering percussion, Dreamcatcher remove the vocal effect on the outro, allowing “Justice” to finally and completely ascend. But, diametrically, it’s the more sombre, troubled verses – “Take me into the beautiful starting point, in a tangle of loathsome hatred”, “Clean me up, clean me up, don’t let the stain swallow me” – which allow those key moments of flamboyant rock-pop to elevate into an undeniably Cinemascope-scale anthem, furthering Dreamcatcher’s status as one of K-pop’s greats.

The grumbly spoken hook of “Boom Boom Bass”, not to mention its iconic dance, was so prevalent on TikTok that it near-threatened to undercut the song as a complete piece of work, a dastardly thing considering the sheer amount of funk muscle being flexed across its run. It touches on ground laid by labelmates SHINee and, as so many SM Entertainment songs do, early solo Michael Jackson, but it’s ambitious alongside its reference points, layering vocoder, ad-libs and brass like it’s trying to outdo each moment preceding it. It’d be a crowd-pleaser in any discography but RIIZE make it a very hard act to follow.

These two very distinctive voices are mostly allowed their own space on “SPOT!” for the differences in tone and style to fully complement each other over bursts of cutting synths and heavy, bassy funk (if you think of Seinfeld, you’re not alone). It’s an instrumental that understands the best way to showcase big hitters is to take a back seat, so “SPOT!” is uncomplicated and gregarious, a party song made for basements, backyards and warehouses, brimming with a back-and-forth exchange of serious star power that makes it impossible not to wiggle along with.

Ten years in, Red Velvet still has the power to dazzle, and “Cosmic” contains megatons of pop stardust. As we veer towards most K-pop songs being merely two and a half minutes long, the near four-minute “Cosmic” is a blessing that seamlessly utilises every second, revelling in perfect lyric couplets (“I’m riding on your rhythm, Through the solar system, come with me”), disco strings, a chorus that’s as euphoric to the ear as love is to the heart, and a lush, maximalist bridge. It shoots for the stars and lands, as well it should, in heaven.

When it comes to serving piping hot club bangers for the gays and the girlies, CHUNG HA has more than solidified her status but, as the story goes, even she underestimated the demand for “I’m Ready”, having to pivot from a simple teaser to promo the song into an extended performance video. Both track and video follow simple commandments – be fierce, be proud, be fearless – and excel at them all. The bass is throbbing, synths squish like warm flesh, and CHUNG HA – absent from music for nearly two years prior to this release – unleashes a strident performance like she’s never even been away.

Arriving last December, thus too late for inclusion onto any ‘Best Of 2023’ list, “Down” nevertheless deserves its flowers as one of the most vocally impressive songs of the past twelve months. As twenty-year veteran idols, Changmin and Yunho can sell the hell out of a song, especially one where it’s all about the build – from creeping, lovelorn verses to a thirsty chorus that rolls forth like boulders down a mountain, and into a tag-team bridge of belting high notes and ad-libs. Essentially, “Down” comes stamped with a seal of gold-standard opulence.

Discharged from the military in June, BTS’s Jin wasted no time in getting back in the saddle, releasing his solo EP, Happy, five months later. He doubled down on the heartwarming, uplifting Coldplay-esque sound on his debut single “The Astronaut” for Happy’s two singles (this time bringing a full band) but it turns out the melodramatic suits him just as well. “Another Level”, a deep cut, melds the tremulous with tenacity, Jin’s voice surging like a battle charge, no less the beacon of light and comfort he’s always been, but here burning with a newfound intensity.

“Colors” never defines what it wants as a ‘black and white, pink or purple one’ but it very much sounds and looks like a queer anthem, welcoming all and any to its bass-heavy, self-affirmation marathon of a party. Solar, glossy hair extensions flying, not only has an absolute ball in its video – and it’s rare to see anything K-pop with this much diverse LGBTQ+ representation either – but throws herself into a new sound and tone that’s joyous and defiant: “Look in the mirror… And say it, I’m sick, so bad, louder, louder, I’m sick, I’m hot, I’m gorgeous”. Preach.

Memorabilia, a side project EP attached to their vampiric Dark Moon webtoon, had only the briefest of promotions but is, unarguably, one of ENHYPEN’s finest records, a six-track beast on which “Scream” is its engrossing closer. With all the propulsion of an EDM-tinged rock song, albeit one rattling down a dark country road in a pickup truck with blacked out windows, it’s fidgety and anxious with snares and handclaps, coyly buoyant on the chorus but gothically fraught across the bridge’s echoing ad-libs. It has zero qualms in being hard to pin down stylistically but ENHYPEN skillfully and smoothly bend it to wrap around their bloody, immortal lore.

Even if you’re not a die-hard ONCE (and this is, ostensibly, a fan song at its core), you cannot overlook the beautiful celebration of friendship contained here. “No, we’ll never fall apart, even million miles apart, we were lightning from the start, and it keeps me going to know that”, they sing as rivers of sparkly, hazy synth-pop flow behind them. There are none of the tricksy elements here that K-pop loves so much, not even a cheeky vocoder, but the straightforwardness of “I Got You” is bolstered by a full and rounded production that aims straight for the tear ducts.

In a bid to up their profile, Cravity appeared on, and won, this year’s idol group survival show Road To Kingdom 2. That’s not to say they haven’t had good moments in their back catalogue, merely lesser known ones, and “Love Or Die”, one of their best ever, has helped in turning that tide. A canny balance of rock and electronic pop with flawless pacing, its titular refrain is punchy and framed in falsetto and subtle guitars, Wonjin brings stature to a short bridge, and the rapped verses, with an impeccably aerodynamic flow, tighten the reins on a ride through bittersweet heartbreak.

Opening the DREAM()SCAPE EP, this scene-stealing moodmaker has verses and chorus draped in celestial layers of harmonies and ad-libs but, post-chorus, free falls into the doomiest beat ever to grace an NCT Dream record. Its desire is for total escape, to erase old fears and “fly high” but as the two disparate instrumentals layer into one, you can hear the struggle to break free, like a bird mired in an oil slick. Though barely over two minutes in length, this epically visceral track highlights how far the band have come creatively since debuting as fresh-faced teens in 2016.

‘Twas the year of lawsuits dominating the news feed: HYBE, BE:LIFT and ADOR locked in the mother of all slanging matches, civil and criminal complaints, Warner Music Korea and agency Attrakt in court over girl group Fifty-Fifty, idols suing the rumour mongering YouTuber Sojang, and SM Entertainment suing three EXO members, who, in turn, counter-sued.

Yet again this year highlighted the broken state of the global music industry, with too many artists seen as valuable yet entirely expendable, as cogs in the C-suite machine. But, as the adage goes, the show must go on and so it did with over a dozen K-pop acts in the US album Top 10, including #1’s for Ateez, Twice, and Stray Kids, and a bonafide global hit single for Blackpink’s Rosé with Bruno Mars, which hit #2 in the UK.

As 2025 beckons, already filling up with anticipation and apprehension, Dazed looks back at the last 12 hectic months of single releases and deep cuts, selecting 50 of K-pop’s best tracks to be added onto your playlists.

As drag lexicon fully dominated pop stan-dom, you couldn’t move in comment sections for all the ‘ate’s and ‘slay’s, so in that spirit let us say, unarguably, no one served cunt as hard as aespa this year. You’d struggle to pick a favourite from the holy trinity of “Whiplash”, “Armageddon” and “Supernova” but the latter hit hard with a wildly creative, ultra meme fodder video, Karina’s viral “Ah, body bang” (which turned up on every fan edit worth its salt), the brain-scratching synths that buzzed like killer hornets, the sampling of Afrika Bambaataa’s classic “Planet Rock”, and the switch in pace for a dance breakdown that dropped like gold bars into a stacked bridge. Absolutely flawless.

As their name suggests, BOYNEXTDOOR have spent much of their discography being cheeky scamps but when the sextet really blew off some youthful steam, they shrewdly keep it heavy on the bass and deadpan on the lyrics. “I’ve never touched my dad’s wallet but I’ve worn his designer clothes,” raps baby-faced Jaehyun, with Taesan and Leehan bringing a nasally humour to the chorus: “I could be playing or just lost, please don’t tell my mom and daddy, I’m just immature, pulled an all-nighter yet again”. Merely 18 months into their career, BOYNEXTDOOR, as songwriters and performers, are hitting well beyond their years.

Taking note of country music’s super surge in 2023, ‘Run For Roses’ canters briskly, resplendent with handclaps, fiddle, banjo, and a boot scootin’ rhythm. With only a handful of country-influenced K-pop songs in existence, NMIXX make ample use of the space to set a new benchmark, putting focus on their vocals over the genre’s hallmarks, and channelling the pain that comes with the determination to succeed – “Surrounded by thorns, our finish line, but I still go, scratched, hurt, doesn’t matter, put aside giving up”. When you consider NMIXX’s bumpy road since debuting, it makes sense that “Run For Roses” puts just a little extra crack in its whip.

After a lengthy absence, and as their first outing with eight members, fromis_9 turned up the temperature, dropping lines like “Drink and drink but still parched, at that time, call me, I’ll be right there from now” and “Hеat and sweat, in one breath, blow hard, we got that, let’s go with the flow”, all without ever being explicit about what getting ‘supersonic’ entails. But whether you hear those insistent, drawn out notes on the bursting chorus and the drawling second verse as horny or simply high-spirited, this summery power bop rightly put the group back into the public eye, and high on the charts. 

The sensible thing to do in a ‘Why is it what we want most hurts hardest?’ situation is retreat and recover. But when the blinkers of desire strap you in for a masochistic ‘Yeah, hurt me harder, why not?’ ride, you get “Pricey”, a seductive, funk-disco-pop strut through the emotional fire. Its laconic jauntiness is undercut with moments of glaring pain in the lyrics but so strong is the sense of fatalistic imperviousness that it almost celebrates making the same heartbreaking mistakes over and over. If you can afford to lose, such games can be oddly enticing.

From the pen of legendary Korean songwriter Kenzie comes one of the year’s big, uplifting tracks. It’s a sound ZEROBASEONE infuse with infectious joy, punching the chorus high with soaring notes and an echoing chant, making it feel like it’s soundtracking a movie meet-cute. Unsurprisingly, its video had the same idea, referencing classics like Love, Actually and Romeo & Juliet but, ultimately, “Good So Bad” is the best kind of giddy fuzziness. where you can’t help but be swept along by the unabashed, perfectly executed feelgood-ness of it all.

It thumped deep in the guts and, arguably, produced the year’s stickiest line – “All the girls are girling, girling, all the girly girls” – that tweaked the brain into believing there’d be no problem popping figure 8’s and death drops like we weren’t all about to break ribs trying. Racking up 100 million Spotify streams in two months, “Crazy” leaned into ballroom and its choreography (the video also featured dancers from the Iconic House of Juicy Couture) to produce a worthy addition to the band’s most fabulous category – songs that make you feel like the baddest bitch to ever exist.

Three years and one mandatory military service after his last release, EXO’s Baekhyun brought his star power and unmistakable voice to “Pineapple Slice”, elevating it from The Weeknd-influenced synth-pop to an inescapable serpentine groove. With twelve years in the spotlight, he’s perfected that oh-so hard to achieve mix of charisma, humour, charm and ego, where lines like “Anyone else will be boring, you’ll fall for my sweetness, go crazy” land likes facts rather than artistic licence, and every ad lib, piercing stare and water-kicking dance move is enviably effortless.

With 24 members, the average mic time per girl isn’t much more than a couple of seconds but what you might assume sounds choppy and disjointed is flowing, echo-y and dreamlike. Taking a less is more approach to such a big group seems counter-intuitive but the clean lines of “Girls Never Die” are pulled along by a robust, rubbery bass line that turns warm and funky on the chorus, where all two dozen voices find a heavenly blend on the simple hook. Jazzy trumpet and chimes are layered low in the mix, just enough to make it sound incredibly, for want of a better word, expensive.

It’s easy to laugh at the idea of an imaginary friend but, for a myriad of reasons, deep friendships seem harder to come by these days. ITZY captures the filling of our emotional gaps via artists (or whomever else) without judgement, and with reassurance: “My little lucky spark, I will give you strength.. I’ll keep you safe so you can dream, you know, I’m your imaginary friend… it’s you and I until the end”. As a stark contrast to their title single – the brash girl crush of “GOLD” – “Imaginary Friend” offered a brand new yet wholly formed facet of the band: darkly elegant and intimately empathetic.

With tootling brass, space-age synths and strutting percussion, this is 70s discotheque meets 2nd generation K-pop, super-produced into a whirl of glitz. So dazzling is the vocal performance that the foreboding in the lyrics – a besotted protagonist in limbo, questioning if it’s better to be trapped in a black mirror than in reality – goes almost unnoticed. The pairing of high gloss and dark underbelly pushes “Black MIRROR” away from most of their contemporaries’ releases but this classic sound, especially when bestowed with clear finesse and verve, bears no sign of fatigue.

Their lead single “Plot Twist” cleaned up on the Korean charts but, as a pre-debut track, “Oh Mymy: 7s” was equivalent of the youngest child, playfully testing boundaries with a lightness that has the intro’s plucking violins segue into a froth of eagerness and pure serotonin. It might not appear to take itself too seriously but it’s certainly considered, melding the time-centric concept to a sparse ticking cadence on the chorus and a clever, beautifully executed choreography that buffs what could have been merely a testing of the waters into a fast launch off the starting blocks.

“APT.” took 220 million YouTube plays in under two weeks, going Top 2 in the UK and Top 10 in the US, front loaded with the duo’s clear chemistry as collaborators and a wholesomely bratty hyperactiveness that felt transportative. But where Charli xcx’s green brat dripped in club sweat and feral insouciance, Rosé’s sports, unironically, rose-tinted nostalgia, interpolating Toni Basil’s fizzy 80s hit “Mickey” with nods to sarky 90s mall rats, to Avril Lavigne, to The Ting Tings, to a time when life felt less unencumbered by, well, everything. “Come give me something I can feel,” Rosé demands, even as she and Mars ignite joy in everyone else.

“Glow”, with zigzagging strings and a hook that peeled open like a smile, did what great pop should do – amplify insignificant life moments, like a late night walk or a train journey, into something more memorable. It uses disco’s keenest weapon – glittery melancholia – to be more than just twinkling effervescence; “From this despair as I escape, let me burn” they sing, the edges of their voices subtly breaking, and even if their way out was via the well-trodden path of following your dreams, the sense of perseverance captured in “Glow” felt jubilantly believable.

Rookie group RESCENE skillfully mines the classic K-pop sound where choruses float by like puffy clouds on a summer day but simultaneously dances around chunky beats with panache. They sing of the penny-drop moment when you realise just how much you like someone, the slight reeling sensation that comes with it captured by guitar riffs and percussion which flare like a pounding heart. Their voices switch between coquettish and angelic, making “Love Attack” sugary and transcendental but, really, that’s exactly what being in love feels like.

There’s something country-ish about “Somebody”, maybe it’s the twang of acoustic guitar throughout, but it moves like it’s riding bucking broncos at the dustiest heartland rodeo. And just like the hunky smalltown cowboy in a Hallmark movie, there’s not an awful lot this track wants to say. Instead, it aspires to provide a rollicking, big-hearted emotional moment, achieving it with a hollering, chanting firework-worthy chorus that pulls the wallflower type onto the dancefloor and shows ‘em how to cut loose. Sure it’s far-fetched but in the most fun way possible.

One of two members who went solo after LOONA extricated themselves from Blockberry Creative, Yves’s re-debut, as it were, is a minimalist and compact affair. It draws on multiple electronic dance inspirations which constantly push and pull against each other, the tetchy rhythms segueing into bouncy house beats and airy disco flourishes, while, similarly, Lil Cherry is the spicy to Yves’s sweet, coming in hot with lines like “Who the f* I pretty myself up for? Who the hell am I makin’ it rain for?”. It finds harmony on the chorus to form a little pop oasis, but its multifaceted restlessness is the real intrigue.

ILLIT’s “Magnetic” was a bubbly elixir, a TikTok-missile, two minutes and 40 gossamer seconds of winsome vocals, rubbery synths, video game-esque blips that somehow sounded pink as candy floss, and a stuttering chorus – “This time, I want, you, you, you, you like it’s magnetic” – that you’d catch circling in your head like a mad carousel. It could’ve all sounded like a crazed fever dream but for the light, deft production softly blurring every edge until it could wash over you a thousand times without wearing thin. Little wonder then it was a monster hit.

One of K-pop’s most distinctive voices, SHINee’s Onew combines gleaming funk bass and an effortless languidness to equate swimming in the deep ocean with the fluidity of music. So well executed is his vocal performance that even when purposely turned choppy, it moves with a well-oiled smoothness that wraps and unwraps around the ear like a friendly constrictor. He sings of the intoxicating immersiveness of water and sound and, as a master of the elements, Onew pulls you down deep.

Formerly of the lore-heavy LOONA, ARTMS make “Birth” – a pre-release with one of the most striking visuals in recent years – more than capable of standing on its own. It’s a haunted house of a song: feminine and delicately lethal, soaring and sawing with violins, with the breakbeat post-chorus dropping in like the snapping of bone. Many of this year’s songs have been sinfully short, and “Birth” is no exception: it’s one you desperately wish had continued to dig into itself but, as is, offers a gut-tingling experience that never gets any less beautiful or unsettling.

ALL(H)OURS’ first foray into drift phonk – the aptly named “Drift” on their 2024 debut EP – is dwarfed by this sophomore single, which reverberates with the momentum of a supertanker ploughing onto a beach. “Shock” finds longevity in the melodic verses, and there’s daft fun to be had in knitting of Korean mythology (the goblin figure known as a dokkaebi) with all things electric – “This moment right now, you feel that power rave” – but the chorus/post-chorus combo is the real high-octane superstar, knocking your head back so far you’ll see where you’ve come from. 

After a contentious run of singles following a 2023 debut, the pieces came together for BABYMONSTER on “Drip” in ballsy, ostentatious YG Entertainment fashion: rappers Asa and Ruka are as steely as the heavily encrusted accessories they wear, the chorus pops and sashays like rent is due, and Ahyeon’s high note on the bridge gets a heavy-duty 2000s vocal warp. You’ll find its fuschia-coloured heart in the pre-chorus, where the declaration of self-worth sounds less for us and more just for them, but “Drip” is, ultimately, slick and iridescent as petrol, with its accelerator firmly pushed to the floor.

At the centre of a funk, nu-jazz and pop Venn diagram is “trampoline”, which grooves and bounces as much as you’d expect of a track with a title referencing a giant, springy mat. In a gravity-less sense, it’s about jumping over life’s challenges and people’s toxicity (“No matter how much you stir up and torment, I’ll erase all the troubles”) but, more than anything, finding an unpolluted headspace in which to thrive. Its verses are the equivalent of the fresh, clear air it seeks but the choruses get earthy and dynamic – feet on the floor, head in the clouds – and, even better, feature scatting, rap and pop vocals on one deliciously satisfying bridge that makes “trampoline” a multi-textured gem.

IVE like to be up close and in control when they sing about relationships (see “Hypnosis”, “Blue Blood” or “Heroine”) but even as “Accendio” beckons, it places an impenetrable glass wall between them and their lover (or artist and fan, if you read between the lines). “Watch me, don’t touch me, love me, don’t hurt me”, they command, bass and hi-hats chopping at intimidating speeds. Its favourite trick is to keep you anticipating that the wall might soften or fall, but it never comes. The song strides to its end where a final breathy “accendio” lands like an icy, pitying smirk, leaving us agog, faces pushed up against the glass.

Renowned for feisty, fireball singles, it may surprise some that ATEEZ’s discography houses synthwave anthems like “Take Me Home”, “Silver Light”, and undisputed neon king, “Cyberpunk”. “Selfish Waltz” takes up position as their new, glimmering sibling, embodying the back and forth of both a waltz and the lyrics’ love/hate relationship, ebbing and surging across the entire arrangement. The sparseness beneath the pre-chorus and rappers’ verses is countered by a chorus layered so intricately with Daft Punk-esque synths, and Wooyoung and Jongho’s vocals, that it practically levitates, dancing alone across the clouds.

Whichever team you choose here – the original version of “Deja Vu” (the lead single off their sixth Korean EP) or the Anemoia Mix – will come down to your preference for icy synths and trap snares or scuzzier synths, acoustic and rock guitar. There’s absolutely a place for the former – its cooler tones complement the dreamlike, otherworldliness of the lyrics – but the Anemoia Mix, where the guitars and drums batter against the pleading, grasping chorus, is urgent and muscular, yet teetering on the edge of fragility: “Say my name”, they beg, and you can feel it seering through the speakers.

“Igloo” went viral for the group this year, but B-side “Back To Me” is gorgeous, like wildflowers blooming in spring after a winter of heartbreak. The band’s vocal tones are girlishly soft yet the instrumental barrels forward on pop-rock guitars and chants, the yin and yang of desiring love again but finding strength to seek it out – “The scratches you left will fade someday, the idea of eternal pain is just bullshit,” sings Belle, “I lost my heart but it’s coming back to me.” Rediscovering and loving oneself is best served with a solid ‘go fuck yourself’ to those who hurt you, and Kiss Of Life totally gets it.

The simple video for “Groin” fractures and distorts as if to illustrate how warped the perception of famous people can become. But however nonchalant BTS’s RM may look and sound, his lyrics – a reaction to the litany of stories and gossip about him – hold the heat of someone who has been riled to breaking point – “Not a fucking diplomat… They shove responsibilities onto me, what do I represent, I only represent myself”. You could argue that any celebrity rebuttal is a win only for the rumour mongers but, sometimes, proverbially kicking them in the nuts proves to be far more bloody satisfying.

Where lead single “Sexy In The Air” was vibey, suggestive, and sweaty, B-side “Deja Vu” is its poignant contrast. Here he is a man sliding across dimensions, staring through the darkness at flickering versions of himself, and thus Taemin makes “Deja Vu” beautiful and floating, almost ethereal with strings and falsetto yet pulsing with unease, the slow, thick bass pulling him further into the blackness of space. His is a timbre so suited to the intense – lust, fear, obsession – that when conflated with the esoteric and unknown, of dancing dangerously on the line between heaven and hell, Taemin is at his unbridled best.

With maximalism back on the agenda in the west, Nayeon’s sophomore solo itched the need for grandiose, hair-flinging, catwalk-strutting super pop. On paper this is a huge nod to Beyoncé’s “Crazy In Love” (as well as Amerie and Meghan Trainor) – the bold percussion and brass on an exploding chorus, right down to the video’s denim shorts and white singlet – but Nayeon isn’t settling for just homage, instead she treats “ABCD” (and it’s accompanying EP, NA) like a stamp on her pop passport, a solid showboat of a song that has her exploring the world beyond idol trappings.

Although a seven-member girl group, this pre-debut release from one of the year’s fastest rising rookies featured just four members (rappers YunSeo, Chloe Young, INA, and Emma), all in husky-voiced, don’t-fuck-with-me flow over hammering bass and synths. BADVILLAIN’s three singles would bring slick hip hop-pop to the table but there is something so invitingly off-the-cuff about “+82”, with its scrappy, contagious energy that of a random studio session turned lightning bolt throwdown. If the phrase “talk shit, get hit” had a theme song, it’d sound like this.

Although he’s been an idol since 2016, it was only this year, and shortly before he disappeared into the military, that Jaehyun released his solo debut album. “Roses” was just one of the tracks that made it worth the wait, a smouldering slice of old school R&B, complete with gospelly backing vocals, his own voice sweetly yearning and tinged in jealousy for a love lost. You certainly didn’t require plush pile carpets, a leather sofa, an open fireplace and a hundred altar candles to get deep into the vibe but close your eyes while listening and that’s exactly what this evokes.

When jostling for a standing in a crowded industry, rookie idol groups frequently dial through sounds, and MADEIN, on their debut four-track EP, shift through Afrobeats, balladry and glitchy pop. Jumbled as that may sound, a chilly airiness across its production forms a connective stylistic tissue, none more so than on “Dopamine” which shimmers and sighs over elastic beats as retro space-age synths rise and fall, a constant bundle of jitteriness held in check by vocals that run from angelic right through to satisfyingly throaty. Whatever MADEIN’s future holds, they’ll have at least gifted us this excellent shard of glacial pop.

You can hear NewJeans’s throwback influence across K-pop already but the band continued their own deep dive into atmospheric nostalgia with the City Pop meets R&B of “Bubble Gum”. It’s wisp-like – the flute is fleeting, synths hiss and fade – but it acts like a core memory, a comforting loop of sound and sight, here viewed through the graininess of a handheld camcorder. As the real world got progressively uglier and unsafe this year, we wanted escapism, to cast ourselves back to blowing dish soap bubbles under a summer sun and running barefoot with friends, and “Bubble Gum” was the perfect vehicle to take us there.

Tarot cards! Face jewels!! CGI backgrounds that look like a cross between Evian ads and the dolphin rainbow meme!!! This thoroughly glorious video perfectly showcases SEVENTEEN’s Performance team (Jun, The8, Dino, and Hoshi) who tap into the sensuality of Amapiano, make it hypnotic with a simple, looping hook and dial it down to the serenity levels of a tropical island holiday. It’s got seduction on its mind even if the lyrics are PG-rated – all breathy coyness and hip swivelling – but there’s just as much pleasurable to be had by wrapping yourself in its blissful warmth and completely drifting away.

TXT’s Yeonjun’s anticipated debut solo was one of 2024’s biggest love it or hate it releases, with many opining the song failed to showcase him as a vocalist. But what if the end game was to make a complete 180 turn on the turf where he made his name, to provoke, entertain, even startle, by thrusting and sneering over a piano line akin to the Jaws theme in gurn mode, while delivering lines like “Go hit that gum, chomp chomp” without batting an eyelid? “GGUM” may have been originally here for a good time and not a long time, but the bonkers magnetism of this track, and Yeonjun himself, more than stands its ground, demanding of your full attention.

The chest-thumping percussive rhythms of “Bittersweet” gives it a certain feral brawn even if xikers are more playful than posturing: “You should better run,” Seeun repeats, marshmallow-soft like a warning in a supernatural horror, and the band’s rappers – Minjae, Sumin and Yechan – pedal through their verses with a grinning, manic urgency. xikers have made rumbling instrumentals with springy vocals their signature, meshing genres indiscriminately within that framework, but it’s this rock-hip hop meld – guitars and backing chants cranked high – that’s particularly conducive to their brand of unhinged charm.

“Chk Chk Boom” adheres faithfully to Stray Kids’ hallmarks – beats chunkier than concrete pylons, kicky ad-libs, and a jerkily rhythmic chorus that gets all up in your face – but never underestimate the band’s willingness to play with their blueprint. Here, Bang Chan’s delivery becomes dryly laconic, Hyunjin and Felix turn their respective choruses into sonic sparring partners, and the pacey, snappy outro is like a taunt you don’t have a pithy enough reply for. Nearly seven years in, Stray Kids’ ability to drop Chicxulub-sized bangers on the pop landscape shows no sign of wane.

Not solely satisfied with a resounding chorus that’s then tweaked to stutter over thundering percussion, Dreamcatcher remove the vocal effect on the outro, allowing “Justice” to finally and completely ascend. But, diametrically, it’s the more sombre, troubled verses – “Take me into the beautiful starting point, in a tangle of loathsome hatred”, “Clean me up, clean me up, don’t let the stain swallow me” – which allow those key moments of flamboyant rock-pop to elevate into an undeniably Cinemascope-scale anthem, furthering Dreamcatcher’s status as one of K-pop’s greats.

The grumbly spoken hook of “Boom Boom Bass”, not to mention its iconic dance, was so prevalent on TikTok that it near-threatened to undercut the song as a complete piece of work, a dastardly thing considering the sheer amount of funk muscle being flexed across its run. It touches on ground laid by labelmates SHINee and, as so many SM Entertainment songs do, early solo Michael Jackson, but it’s ambitious alongside its reference points, layering vocoder, ad-libs and brass like it’s trying to outdo each moment preceding it. It’d be a crowd-pleaser in any discography but RIIZE make it a very hard act to follow.

These two very distinctive voices are mostly allowed their own space on “SPOT!” for the differences in tone and style to fully complement each other over bursts of cutting synths and heavy, bassy funk (if you think of Seinfeld, you’re not alone). It’s an instrumental that understands the best way to showcase big hitters is to take a back seat, so “SPOT!” is uncomplicated and gregarious, a party song made for basements, backyards and warehouses, brimming with a back-and-forth exchange of serious star power that makes it impossible not to wiggle along with.

Ten years in, Red Velvet still has the power to dazzle, and “Cosmic” contains megatons of pop stardust. As we veer towards most K-pop songs being merely two and a half minutes long, the near four-minute “Cosmic” is a blessing that seamlessly utilises every second, revelling in perfect lyric couplets (“I’m riding on your rhythm, Through the solar system, come with me”), disco strings, a chorus that’s as euphoric to the ear as love is to the heart, and a lush, maximalist bridge. It shoots for the stars and lands, as well it should, in heaven.

When it comes to serving piping hot club bangers for the gays and the girlies, CHUNG HA has more than solidified her status but, as the story goes, even she underestimated the demand for “I’m Ready”, having to pivot from a simple teaser to promo the song into an extended performance video. Both track and video follow simple commandments – be fierce, be proud, be fearless – and excel at them all. The bass is throbbing, synths squish like warm flesh, and CHUNG HA – absent from music for nearly two years prior to this release – unleashes a strident performance like she’s never even been away.

Arriving last December, thus too late for inclusion onto any ‘Best Of 2023’ list, “Down” nevertheless deserves its flowers as one of the most vocally impressive songs of the past twelve months. As twenty-year veteran idols, Changmin and Yunho can sell the hell out of a song, especially one where it’s all about the build – from creeping, lovelorn verses to a thirsty chorus that rolls forth like boulders down a mountain, and into a tag-team bridge of belting high notes and ad-libs. Essentially, “Down” comes stamped with a seal of gold-standard opulence.

Discharged from the military in June, BTS’s Jin wasted no time in getting back in the saddle, releasing his solo EP, Happy, five months later. He doubled down on the heartwarming, uplifting Coldplay-esque sound on his debut single “The Astronaut” for Happy’s two singles (this time bringing a full band) but it turns out the melodramatic suits him just as well. “Another Level”, a deep cut, melds the tremulous with tenacity, Jin’s voice surging like a battle charge, no less the beacon of light and comfort he’s always been, but here burning with a newfound intensity.

“Colors” never defines what it wants as a ‘black and white, pink or purple one’ but it very much sounds and looks like a queer anthem, welcoming all and any to its bass-heavy, self-affirmation marathon of a party. Solar, glossy hair extensions flying, not only has an absolute ball in its video – and it’s rare to see anything K-pop with this much diverse LGBTQ+ representation either – but throws herself into a new sound and tone that’s joyous and defiant: “Look in the mirror… And say it, I’m sick, so bad, louder, louder, I’m sick, I’m hot, I’m gorgeous”. Preach.

Memorabilia, a side project EP attached to their vampiric Dark Moon webtoon, had only the briefest of promotions but is, unarguably, one of ENHYPEN’s finest records, a six-track beast on which “Scream” is its engrossing closer. With all the propulsion of an EDM-tinged rock song, albeit one rattling down a dark country road in a pickup truck with blacked out windows, it’s fidgety and anxious with snares and handclaps, coyly buoyant on the chorus but gothically fraught across the bridge’s echoing ad-libs. It has zero qualms in being hard to pin down stylistically but ENHYPEN skillfully and smoothly bend it to wrap around their bloody, immortal lore.

Even if you’re not a die-hard ONCE (and this is, ostensibly, a fan song at its core), you cannot overlook the beautiful celebration of friendship contained here. “No, we’ll never fall apart, even million miles apart, we were lightning from the start, and it keeps me going to know that”, they sing as rivers of sparkly, hazy synth-pop flow behind them. There are none of the tricksy elements here that K-pop loves so much, not even a cheeky vocoder, but the straightforwardness of “I Got You” is bolstered by a full and rounded production that aims straight for the tear ducts.

In a bid to up their profile, Cravity appeared on, and won, this year’s idol group survival show Road To Kingdom 2. That’s not to say they haven’t had good moments in their back catalogue, merely lesser known ones, and “Love Or Die”, one of their best ever, has helped in turning that tide. A canny balance of rock and electronic pop with flawless pacing, its titular refrain is punchy and framed in falsetto and subtle guitars, Wonjin brings stature to a short bridge, and the rapped verses, with an impeccably aerodynamic flow, tighten the reins on a ride through bittersweet heartbreak.

Opening the DREAM()SCAPE EP, this scene-stealing moodmaker has verses and chorus draped in celestial layers of harmonies and ad-libs but, post-chorus, free falls into the doomiest beat ever to grace an NCT Dream record. Its desire is for total escape, to erase old fears and “fly high” but as the two disparate instrumentals layer into one, you can hear the struggle to break free, like a bird mired in an oil slick. Though barely over two minutes in length, this epically visceral track highlights how far the band have come creatively since debuting as fresh-faced teens in 2016.