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The top 150 songs released by Korean, Japanese, Chinese, and Thai artists! View the Substack version of this piece here! Note: For the sake of variety, each artist was only eligible for up to two spots on this list. However, songs by subunits and soloists were treated as songs by separate artists. For example, TAEMIN was eligible for up to two spots on the list as a soloist and two spots as a member of SHINee.
#150: SKY-HI, “Success is”: A compelling compendium of personal reflections and advice for next-generation artists. #149: PP KRIT, “Oopsy Daisy”: A charming faux-apology for people instantly falling in love with him! #148: Xdinary Heroes, “LOVE ME 2 DEATH”: An on-the-nose musical equivalent to the LXVE to DEATH album cover, concluding the album perfectly! #147: SCANDAL, “Doukashiterutte”: A pity party soundtrack full of offbeat twists! #146: TWICE, “Like 1”: A JIHYO-penned J-rock song that sounds as bittersweet as it feels. #145: Tabber, “Hysteric Glamour”: An eccentric thrill that handily achieves the difficult task of giving its title a sonic equivalent! #144: Jung Dakyung, “I’m coming to meet my love”: A well-structured story that dials its intensity up and down in relatively slight but substantial ways. #143: JENNIE, “with the IE (way up)”: An A+ when it comes to reviving early-aughts R&B/pop energy the right way.
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Handy guides to 17 Carat K-Pop all in one place! Complete 2025 Directory 2026 Directory SEVENTEEN Article Compilation Interviews/Press Coverage Best of the Blog Keeping Track of Release/Premiere Dates Keeping Track of Concerts and Live Events (spanning K-pop, J-pop, and more!) The Best New Music of Each Month The Best New Music of Each Year Content Sorted by Artist My Best Work: The best examples of my writing and podcasting across different categories A Summary of Scoops: Times when 17 Carat K-Pop was ahead of the curve! Best of the 17 Carat K-Pop Podcast Best of the Enthusiasts Podcast Citations/Reading List: My articles’ and podcast episodes’ corresponding books, poetry, and works of art Citations/Reading List (Part 2): My articles’ and podcast episodes’ corresponding research, data, and more Please help spread the word about my work, and please do not hesitate to reach out if interested in collaborating! Refresh the Substack version of this piece for the latest version of it!
It's your turn! Please… #1: Take this survey about the best K-pop of the year! The results will be revealed in an upcoming (free!) edition of this newsletter! #2: Catch up on MY picks for the best of 2025!
#3: Check out this directory if you’re new to 17 Carat K-Pop! #4: Spread the word about both my blog and the survey! It helps more than you know! #5: Have a great holiday break! New posts will resume next week! View the Substack version of this piece here!
A ranking and review of the top 50! View the Substack version of this piece here! Check out No. 50-26 here!
#25: ONEUS, “IKUK” With a black, white, and red color scheme and the pacing of a “walking theater” production, the mobile choreography takes the group and their backup dancers from place to place in a way that leaves no dull moments. One second, viewers are seeing what looks like a simple auditorium stage, and the next second, they are looking at deconstructed squares being wheeled in different directions, while the routine goes on unabated. The setting is reconfigured many more times, as are the group formations. They even perform part of the routine upside-down while on vine-covered bars! Read more about the corresponding album here! A ranking and review of the top 50! View the Substack version of this piece here! #50: Stray Kids, “Burnin’ Tires”
Out of several subunit videos corresponding with the release of Mixtape : dominATE, “Burnin’ Tires” does the best job encapsulating Stray Kids’ type of rabble-rousing! Changbin and I.N compete in various contests: a race (Changbin’s car versus I.N’s motorcycle), parkour (scenes that pull the audience into the action particularly well thanks to curved-lens shots), tests of physical strength, and a running race. They do so with funny plot twists, like interrupting the final race for a dance-off, and snatching a trophy at the same time a printer ejects a speeding ticket! Their mischievous and roundabout ways of winning do not necessarily break the rules, allowing their claims of victory to ring true! A ranking and review of the top 100! Read about No. 100-76 here, No. 75-51 here, and No. 50-26 here!
#25: ONE OK ROCK, DETOX ONE OK ROCK want people to make no mistake: they “want to scream like a banshee” (“NASTY”), they are “sick of rolling with the punches” (“Tropical Therapy”), and they are “losing faith in everyone” (“Puppets Can’t Control You”). In addition to being distraught, a recurring theme in DETOX is distrust of those in power. … ONE OK ROCK’s music remains a dependable outlet for pent-up angst, a call to be skeptical of authority, reassurance that it’s okay not to be okay, and an attempt to channel righteous anger into a united front for those who have less power. DETOX bluntly assesses the state of society without sacrificing empathy towards those who feel hopeless. Read more here! #24: JO YURI, Episode 25 Episode 25 has some of JO YURI’s strongest lyricism to date. Some of the best lines are in “Farewell for now!”: “Letting go of a hand I held so tight / Could be love’s quietest kind of cry,” and “It’s clear in your eyes / I’m nowhere to be found.” Inventive metaphors fill the B-sides: “Growls and Purrs” likens her behavior to that of a pet’s, feeling too flustered to know what to do around a crush is compared to getting a “HICCUP,” and “Overkill” includes lines like “you pulled the rug / And you ripped my world at the seams.” Then there is “Going Under,” which compares several experiences at once to being underwater: consuming negative social media content that makes her want to just throw her phone in the ocean (“Blankly scrolling… All the noise that feels like it’s stabbing me / Drop it all in with a splash”), being in a toxic relationship (“a dangerous water game”), and getting by but just barely (“I regain some energy and start flailing again”). Episode 25 also shows growth in terms of JO YURI’s genre exploration, with a rock-influenced beginning and end and dollops of jazz and synth-pop between them. Her maturity takes yet another form with the message of the “Farewell for now!” music video, which is ultimately about valuing a relationship but being content that it has ended. A ranking and review of the top 100! Read about No. 100-76 here and No. 75-51 here!
#50: Lexie Liu, TEENAGE RAMBLE Lexie Liu treats hyper-pop as an expansive playground, pairs nonchalance with a nagging sense that she actually does care, and sees flippancy as fertile ground for playing tricks on audiences. She revels in getting people to search for meaning where there is none, like when she coins a potential figure of speech in “TEENAGE RAMBLE”: “I got laundry in my basement”! She also enjoys leaving audiences in the dark as to how much of her persona is genuine and how much can be chalked up to melodrama or irony. She groans about feeling so embarrassed that it makes her want to “kill someone” in “ADRENALINE,” and she insists she’s ready to quit her job entirely over a stressful deadline in “TEENAGE RAMBLE”! The answer to “Is she for real?” seems less likely to be “Yes” when considering her most macabre moments. “FFFFF” pairs a song about lustful cravings with a vampiric music video, and “DEEPER & DEEPER” is a sensual song about an underground tryst that sounds like a choir performing at a haunted rave! Her “just messing with you” mannerism is most apparent on the last song, “CIGARETTE - DEMO.” The outro includes this telling statement: “I feel like I’m disappearing… keep talking like someone’s listening / But trust me, it’ll pass / It’s all just in our heads, right?” It’s as much a meta take on pop stardom as it is a nonsensical comment, and that mix of joking and not is what keeps Lexie Liu’s music so interesting. #49: ENHYPEN, DESIRE : UNLEASH As written about at length previously, ENHYPEN’s sprawling narrative is so much more than a vampire story. It uses vampires as a conduit for deep messages, and those messages remain relevant in DESIRE : UNLEASH, through the music videos, songs, and short film. Their vampire characters continue to raise questions regarding the following: what meaning life can have if it has no specific start or endpoint, what kind of legacy someone can leave if they never leave, what it truly means to be human, what immortals miss out on when they have no sense of space and time to firmly live within, and what it really means to have an insatiable craving. Read more here! A ranking and review of the top 100! Read about No. 100-76 here!
#75: Ryokuoushoku Shakai, Channel U Channel U is akin to a collection of motivational speeches, encouraging people to harness the power to change and brighten their own thoughts. … This album is not solely about seizing the day and living loud. “Magic Hour” compares loving partners to fireworks and the water’s surface; the water is ready to reflect the best of the fireworks, and the two sometimes appear as if “Flickering together [into] the same shape.” “Ienai” talks about a “monochrome” world that is present after a loved one leaves it. “Be a flower” describes people as beautiful simply as they are, so there is no point in acquiring “prettily garnished vases” or other cosmetic changes. Even when not at their most exuberant, Ryokuoushoku Shakai offer novel ideas for seeing things in new lights. Read more here! #74: TWICE, ENEMY It remains impressive that whenever TWICE use the element of surprise, they do so in ways that stay on-brand, and ENEMY is a great example. Their music stays sounding like their music, even when it spins 180 degrees, like in angsty J-rock songs. Those stay rooted in TWICE’s typical optimism and encouragement. For example, the title track implies people should fear TWICE’s rage (“Don’t try to test me… I’m so mad”) but goes on to characterize the “burning” in them as a soft glow, lighting their paths (“Deal with it my way and glow”) - after all, “Even a flower cannot bloom without swaying.” The other focus track, “Like 1,” has both strong positive and negative feelings, as they sing about the fleeting and uncontrollable passage of time (“Know there will come a time / For a bittersweet salute… Stay in this moment now / But we don’t get to choose…”). The music video, which bids farewell to an imaginary friend, shows the simultaneous desire to cling to someone or something and accept that one’s grip will inevitably loosen with time. The Korean alt-rock band’s massive 2025 is fueling their global rise.  Photo courtesy of Prescription Music PR Silica Gel, a Korean rock band with a distinguishable alternative sound, just released another boundary-pushing single, “BIG VOID”! While the song was teased previously during a headlining set, listeners can now enjoy the hopeful, guitar-led tune in its entirety! The track builds on bright piano motifs in ways that speak to the group’s organic, ongoing sonic evolution. It furthers the shift away from the industrial instincts of their earlier works, making it a suitable follow-up to another 2025 single, “南宮FEFERE” (featuring Japanese Breakfast).
“BIG VOID” proves this band understands the power of audiovisual storytelling. They have teamed up again with director Song Kiho (of the interdisciplinary collective Azikazin Magicworld) for the new music video. Song Kiho is uniquely positioned to executive the act’s creative visions, having brought them to life in the “Tik Tak Tok” video and the “Syn.THE.Size X” live show. A ranking and review of the top 100! A Few Clarifications
#100: COOING, DREAMER In DREAMER, reality checks and anecdotes from dreams commingle, as COOING sings mellifluously about someone she would be better off leaving in the past. “Even knowing it’s a lie, I fall for it again and again,” she admits in “half-moon,” a song about being blinded by the moon’s bright light and therefore not seeing a relationship clearly. Now that she is single again, she can see better but feels like a piece of her is gone. She sings about the same mix of relief and grief post-breakup in “PSYCHO,” admitting she “just call[ed] it ‘love’ to ease [her] mind.” She further recognizes that she has been “living the lies” in “Masquerade,” which is about her “entire life [having been] lost” behind veils of deception. The “PSYCHO” music video speaks to her ambivalence... Read more here! |
