Best New Music, Part Four

The best new K-pop, J-pop, C-pop, and more!

View the Substack version of this piece here!

Catch up on the best of February here and here, and read about more of March’s best new music here!

#10: ORORA, On My Way
ORORA’s breathtaking voice glides across minimalist waves yet carries an unflinching honesty that cuts like glass. All of the attention is owed to her voice, as she sings about clinging to silver linings like life rafts. “Hold My Breath” puts it poetically: “They said I’ve done so many things / That my life is a work of art / But all I did was try to find / The pieces of me that fell apart.” She does not sing with the confidence of someone whose hardest days are past her, but someone who is still actively learning how to exist in choppy waters, and this allows the weight of her words to sink in deeper. To paraphrase, “I want people to love me for me” is her ultimate wish, and the “me” she refers to includes every piece of her, both now and from before the world told her how she should change. She is actively disentangling the positive and negative forces in her past and present to seek growth and inner peace. She sings about recovering her truth more than discovering it, grieving for her inner child in “Hold My Breath” and “Crying Child,” filing away some past memories for good in “Forever Yours” and “Save Your Tears,” and pondering whether learning from her past and starting anew are actually mutually exclusive (from “Save Your Tears”: “The pain once burned [but] now warms my core / I walk through shadows wanting more / Every scar I used to hide / Became the place where love’s alive”). ORORA’s revised inner monologue reminds her she is worthy of being loved and cared for, and that she always has been. Befitting that “back to who I used to be” theme is the fact that one of the wisest remarks comes from the first song, “Siren Song”: “Our time here is short / We’re born to flow, not to belong.”

On My Way is a moving message of self-love and the audacity of insisting one is worthy of it.

#9: FIRST CONTACT, Earth Nation
This J-rock group is for fans of BABYMETAL and PassCode sonically, but they take a different tack lyrically. Strong symphonic soundscapes define these odes to the Earth. Deep percussion, synth streaks, and screaming guitars are go-tos, and as-they-go technical tweaks add nuances to the instrumentation. For example, the guitars in the last few songs convey a heightened hopefulness, like their “superhero stewards of the planet” personas see now how everything will end peacefully, as they conclude their mission, go “Back to the Stars,” and land at the “Final Destination.” That “Final Destination” ends on a satisfying electronic note and bookends the clarion call that is “Prologue.” The other best parts: when a lovely flute steers the songs (“Bless the Nature,” “Back to the Stars”), and when they sound like the group Perfume went pop-rock (with the most pop-adjacent song, “Around the World”)! 

All comparisons aside, this band is commendable for their hands-on experience and effort. The unique team that brings these songs to life includes not one but two vocalists, MaoMao and TanTan; two members with prior band experience, Sawa and RYU; and a member pulling double-duty as an in-house producer, RYU. Contrary to a popular assumption, RYU spends 100+ hours producing each VFX-requiring music video herself; this group does NOT release AI-generated videos! Judging Earth Nation’s visual counterparts requires this context and an altered rubric. There is an established audience for this one-of-a-kind work.

#8: Kiro Akiyama, Magic if
This album is dismal yet defiant and, above all, distinguishable. It offers the “something different” that music enthusiasts are seeking, with auto-tune excessiveness (“DO NOT DISTURB”), anime OST-ready rock (“Quest” and “Wannabe”), a style not unlike a country jamboree (“Nagareboshi”), and much more. “INSOMNIA” is a particularly fun grab bag of instruments and sound effects, and “My pace is mine” takes second place. “Furin” comes across as “changing on a whim as we go along,” and “Magic if” also finds a groove all its own, from the guitar notes to the cymbal taps. 

Despite the album’s fast rate and wide instrumental breadth, its sentiment stays the same and is quite the contrast from the sound. He sulks a lot and seeks personal “redemption” in “DO NOT DISTURB” and “Furin.” He questions his belief in a higher power in “Magic if.” And he addresses the cognitive dissonance of lives lived online, being “cheerfully depressed,” in “INSOMNIA.” In that song, he compares an endless time spent scrolling on apps to getting lost, and he complains about presenting himself to the world via “The SNS Stage.” On the other hand, like many other songs, “INSOMNIA” plays devil’s advocate, contradicting its initial conclusions! He says, “We're going to die eventually anyway — but then again, we were born into this world anyway”! In other words, he goes from a “Why not just kill me now?” mindset to a “Why not just live now?” one! If he’s going to associate both life and death with meaningless voids, he might as well try changing life into something better! The desire to try to find meaning despite despair is clear in “Quest”: “Dark or light, I don’t care… simply, I want to;” “I search while living.” Both “Nagareboshi” (“being laughed at… It’s a price well worth paying”) and “Wannabe” ( “I’ll leave the ‘perfect way of living’ to someone else”) reiterate that stance. “My pace is mine” also sums up his flipped-over mindset: “It’s not just that going at your own pace is okay / It’s that going at your own pace is the best way to be.” Kiro Akiyama proves to be adept at channeling the moments when bleak thoughts and breakthroughs collide, and he deserves to be considered an alt-rockstar in the making for it!

#7: P1Harmony, UNIQUE
UNIQUE is a fun form of revenge for P1Harmony’s superhero characters! They seemed ready to hang up their capes in the DUH! era, but the UNIQUE era says, “Psych! You thought you’d seen the last of us?!” It is a comeback about a comeback, and their fictional characters boast about knowing they’ve been missed. They do so through songs that remind fans what made them fans in the first place: strong synergy yet plenty of solo spotlights, too (a mix that’s the smoothest on the B-side “Wednesday Girl”); team pride (“Everything we do, we do as one,” they repeat in “UNIQUE”); hands-on experimentation (four members have writing credits, and two of them do on every single track!); and a remixed take on EDM and hip-hop (“UNIQUE” was the right call for a title track, representing the sextet’s swagger and swerving the best, with trilingual lyrics and a new-to-them phonk foundation). While the “Told you you’d miss us when we were gone!” boasting is implicit and playful in the songs, it is dramatized and more overt in the corresponding videos. The trailer gives the audience the eyes and arms of the main character, piecing together clues to find the MIA icons. The audience eventually does find the group, gathered under a beam of light. That gathering is where the trailer ends and the “UNIQUE” music video begins, and the latter reinforces the “We could disappear at any time, with just a flash of light” message, as they teleport and appear to dimension-hop.

P1Harmony never do anything halfheartedly, and sure enough, “UNIQUE” lobs an excessive amount of imagery at viewers: barking dogs, gravestones, a motorcycle crash, speeding helicopters, mechanical wings, facial scars that mimic the sprawling appearance of twisted tree branches… The group can’t say “You want it? You got it!” fast enough!

By acting like their presence is a rare and elusive commodity, P1Harmony increase their value in the “real world” and enhance their mythological status in their fictional followers’ imaginations. They didn’t need a redemption arc, but giving themselves one shows the high stock they invest in themselves!

#6: SB19, Wakas At Simula
This comprehensive compendium is a great resource for long-time SB19 fans and a solid introduction for new ones. Wakas At Simula includes several old EPs in their entirety, remixed and remade versions of songs that are newly fully-owned by the SB19 members under their self-started agency, and six brand-new songs that epitomize the P-pop icons’ essence.

“Wakas” is Tagalog for “Finally,” and “Simula” means “Beginning.” A previous SB19 album was called Simula at Wakas, representing the beginning of the end. Now, vice versa is the case, which sums up the band’s stance well. They have treated the whole world as their sonic playground and have made a globe-circling return! They have completed an SB19 life cycle and have entered the next one without a break between them. The tracklist emphasizes this, with a beginning and ending that are explosive self-introductions. “VISA” shouts out fellow famous Filipinos and lightheartedly laments the comparative status of a Philippines passport’s strength. They end with “DUNGKA!,” another authoritative, assertive exclamation.

If one is not persuaded to be an SB19 fan after listening to this album, it is worth giving the songs’ corresponding music videos a chance. They capture more of the band’s many charms, from dance skills (“Emoji”), to a sense of humor (“VISA,” “DUNGKA!”), to dramatic acting chops (“DAM”), to model walks that eventually lead to a wild plot twist (“GENTO”)!

Because Wakas At Simula is largely a celebration of SB19 in isolation, the times they do collaborate are particularly notable. Teaming up with C-pop superstar JOLIN gives “Emoji” a more seasoned performance flavor, and partnering with Japanese boy band BE:FIRST on the funky “Toyfriend” proves they can excel just as much with closer-in-status industry peers.

The same portfolio that holds SB19’s music and messages affirming pride in their roots is the portfolio that holds the music and messages proving their collaborative openness and flexibility. Everybody wins as a result: fans get to remember why this group is worth keeping an eye on, and SB19 get to thrive as their multifaceted selves.

#5: WONPIL, Unpiltered
WONPIL’s mind is a vicious yet somewhat vexing place, and he plunges listeners straight into it with “Toxic Love” and “Highs and Lows.” Both represent internal conflicts through contrasts, the former with its clap-along nature and unison chants mixed with grieving lyrics about trying to “break free” and failing, and the latter through WONPIL constantly interrupting his own flow. When he seems to be restoring order to his thoughts, gathering them clearly enough to express “I’m not alright” and “I’m about to burst,” sonic and vocal-filter detours distract him before he can unpack why that is. The dark feelings remain as long as he cannot identify their root causes. He does in “Already Grown Up”: “[T]he child who longed to shine bright / To flaunt their light… Kept giving one wrong answer after another;” “cherished dreams… Weathered away.” WONPIL’s distress over a breakup is not just romantic; he is distraught over breaking up with his past dreams and imagination.

Now that WONPIL has identified the core of his pain - losing his childlike traits over time - he can take the first steps towards addressing it, and he stays “Up All Night” doing so, taking it “Step by Step.” These songs mark the start of a sunnier chapter - not to mention his best work from a vocal standpoint, especially in “Step by Step.” It is an extra-clear testament to his new “I must withstand instead of wither” mentality, with lyrics like “My scars pile up as experience points… Refusing to give up” and “I dreamed / For the sake of who I am today.”

The anticipatory, live-band-warranting “Hold My Love” narrates the moment WONPIL tells a crush how he feels and offers a rose, giving a real-world example of what a rekindled “Go for it!” mindset can look and sound like. But the album ends with “Piano” and WONPIL back down in the dumps: “Over the white keys / Tears begin to fall;” “The sound of this piano / Is calling out to you.” Recovering from any kind of internal, metaphorical breaking is not a linear project, and so while the album might not end on the hoped-for high note, it does end on a realistic one. WONPIL’s ability to move on wavers. 

Unpiltered refuses to stay neat and tidy; everything is a mess, as also represented through the “Highs and Lows” music video! If the purpose of it is to get audiences to feel WONPIL’s pain to an uncomfortable extent, mission accomplished! It is unsettling and unsettled, with emotions left as exposed as his demolished surroundings! He is beside himself, overcome by post-breakup pain and regret to the point that he gets so stuck in his head he’s hit by a car! Moments that resemble shaky amateur camera footage, incessantly flashing lights, and electrical spark eruptions all emphasize an unwillingness to sanitize his fullest feelings.

Unpiltered is not a feel-good listen, but it lives up to its (punny!) name as an honest, unfiltered recreation of agonizing memories. 

#4: YENA, LOVE CATCHER
A Looney Tunes streak runs through the “Catch Catch” music video, from the old-school fonts to the cartoonish hijinks to YENA’s bunny alter ego! It is best enjoyed without trying to read too much into anything; YENA is just having a blast causing havoc and staying confident that she’ll win over everyone eventually! As she calls herself “half teddy bear,” knowingly mentions making a scene (“lips pouting… you’ve noticed by now, right?”), and instructs her crush to “Pull that love arrow,” she taunts a fancy restaurant’s customers. The antics get more and more absurd, from using a shoe as a working phone to suddenly developing super-strength and physically fighting people! Her targets are as indiscriminate as her faux-innocent reactions are guaranteed! The “golly gee!” demeanor continues as she winks and smiles her way through setting, outfit, and scenario changes. Those include making faces at the players losing a Dance Dance Revolution-style arcade game and giving an “Oopsie!” expression to the camera after trying to wipe “crumbs” off of a customer that are actually his tattoo! Her persistence makes it seem like she knows she is pushing buttons and is truly curious how much further she can go!

While it is hard to top the quirkiness of “Catch Catch,” the B-sides give it their best shots! After listeners indulge in the electro-pop “Catch Catch” that brings to mind second-generation K-pop girl groups, their sugar high continues with the chipper and fast-paced “Spring Fever.” It likens fluttery feelings related to crushing on someone to the passing seasons. The next song is “Sticker,” which compares an ex’s impact to a sticker that leaves permanent residue! In “April’s Cat,” YENA compares herself to a pet who seeks but is scared to stick her neck out for reassurance that she is loved and not alone. Lastly, in “Question Mark,” YENA describes changing her belief that her love story is already over, as the period in her mind becomes a question mark. 

The featured artists help balance out what would otherwise be a cavity-inducing EP! The collaborative segments of “Spring Fever” offer a substantive perspective worth savoring: “If you fall in love even in winter / Then that moment becomes spring” (emphasis added). Plus, indie rockstar MRCH adds some spice to “Sticker”! And YENA herself does sound more grounded and introspective at times, especially on “April’s Cat.” YENA is “for real;” her preference is just to turn her real feelings into comedic and hyperactive presentations!

#3: WOODZ, Archive. 1
Archive. 1 is the musical equivalent of a stuffed and unsorted filing cabinet, and this comeback is WOODZ’s painstaking process of restoring order and context to its contents. The audience is right there with him organizing the “archives,” taking in chill grooves one moment and metal-adjacent anthems the next, his memories of the highest highs and lowest lows sans buffers between them - after all, real life doesn’t have smooth transitions!

The “Characters” filing cabinet includes files about WOODZ in different roles: an omniscient observer (in the “Human Extinction” music video), an average dazed and confused guy (in the first preview video), an idol (in the second preview), a protagonist (in the third preview as well as the “CINEMA” video), and a madman (in the fourth preview). 

The “Emotions” filing cabinet has even more categories: determination, pride, and hopefulness (“Dayfly,” “To My January,” “Bloodline,” “Stray”); fury and envy (“Struggle,” “STOP THAT”); sorrow and acute pain (“CINEMA,” “BEEP,” “GLASS”); fear and insecurity (“Plastic,” “SAMO”); contentment and the ability to relax (“Super Lazy,” “Downtown”); nihilism masquerading as something else (“Human Extinction,” “NA NA NA”); and “wild card” moments, when how WOODZ’s emotional volcano will explode remains unknown even to himself (“00:30,” “The Spark”)!

Lastly, there is the “Topics” filing cabinet, and picking which folders memories go into is more difficult, since there are overlapping categories. Many of the subjects appear in “Plastic,” for example, so it is worth quoting at length (boldness added for emphasis):

“I got the life I used to chase / But something's off, I feel outta place / The crowd gets loud, they call my name / But deep inside, it's not the same / Their love burns hot, I see the flame / Still, I shrink back, I feel the shame / It's weird, I should be feelin' lit / But I fold too easy, like plastic.”

“I'm stuck in this neon haze / Wait, this night feels too loud / Stray, I move through the crowd / Fade, eyes locked in, I'm gone / Haze, I've been here but feel withdrawn.”

“Moments too loud, and space too tight… Heat gets drastic / Will I fade away?”

“Running” and “Chasing” are mentioned in “00:30” (“The same old thoughts keep chasing”), “Dayfly” (“I feel like I can do anything… If I just run around like this and that”), “Downtown” (“But today, I just need to run / Chasing roads that don't care where I'm from”), and “To My January” (“I run this road to where I'm meant to be”). The noises of the crowd get to him in “NA NA NA”: “Moving with the noise, laughing like I know / Eyes are blank, heart is gone.” He mentions “laughing again” in “The Spark” and worries about that laughter being at him in “BEEP” (“You might just laugh and say my name”). He sings again about heat in “STOP THAT” (“All this fire in my chest got nowhere left to go”), “To My January” (“Let it burn”), “00:30” (“This moment’s burning up”), “Dayfly” (“Even if I burn…”), “The Spark” (“I don’t understand / How those cold words can make me burn inside”), and “NA NA NA” (“Make it hot, keep it tight”). (That tightness is mentioned again in “Downtown”: “Smoke and sound make the air feel tight.”) Other words and phrases in “Plastic” that carry over into other songs include neon lights (“Moving past the neon sign,” he sings in “Downtown;” “neon lights keep tracing her,” he sings in “NA NA NA”) and fading or fearing fading (“CINEMA” mentions a “long-faded romance;” “To My January” promises one’s light “will never fade;” “Super Lazy” includes the line “I fade like a summer;” “STOP THAT” is about worrying that he is “disappearing”). Perhaps most meaningful of all the recurring themes, though, is turning inwards. 

In many ways, WOODZ articulates the state of being stuck and trapped. He spends too much time in his self-proclaimed “crooked head” (“BEEP”), and he’s only retreating further into it: “Deep inside… filled with worries now” (“SAMO”); “Every turn takes me deeper” (“Downtown”); “I’m trapped inside myself” (“00:30”); “falling into that pit” (“Stray”). “GLASS” connects that feeling to yet another recurring topic: physical human experiences. He sings, “Living in my head, I'm stuck inside my flesh and bones / Searching to find something beautiful.” He expresses his primal human experiences with flesh-and-bones phrasing again and again: “This moment… running wild in my veins” (“00:30”); “I’ve got my backbone” (“Stray”); “It’s in my bloodline” (“Bloodline”); “I bite my tongue… taste of blood” (“STOP THAT”). 

There are many other topics and phrases that repeat in multiple tracks: “I guess I missed” (“CINEMA,” “SAMO”); “sick of it” (“00:30,” “Struggle”); “I hate” (“00:30,” “STOP THAT”); “frozen” (“To My January,” “CINEMA”); “lose control” (“NA NA NA,” “STOP THAT”); broken-down walls (“To My January,” “Dayfly”)... the list goes on! And they are not always negative: WOODZ repeatedly sings about flying (“00:30,” “The Spark,” “Stray”), as well as music’s healing power (“00:30,” “Struggle”).

By making music that covers so many markers on the extreme spectrum of human emotions, WOODZ proves two things. One is that the same person can feel and can be infinite things! It is normal to feel like a different person at different points in one’s life, to sometimes even be unrecognizable to one’s self when looking back, and to realize certain mental pictures have been smudged by fingerprints over time. This is represented in the last of the preview videos, when the photos that cover solid walls around WOODZ suddenly turn into piles of cloth, leaving pitch-blackness where they used to hang. This is not symbolizing a failure to accurately recall things; it is symbolizing how that initiative is always a work in progress. No memory stays pristine, untouched by time and distance.

The second thing that WOODZ proves by covering such a vast emotional spectrum is that the distances between feelings are often not as far as people assume they are. The “burning” feeling in him that stokes rage can just as easily stoke his passion. The sense of being alive can prompt euphoria as easily as mortality-related fear. Buzzy and bright surroundings can make him feel like an irreplaceable icon just as easily as they can leave him feeling numb. (This feeling of being very replaceable is made literal in a preview video that features clones. He is in a recording studio as the clones remain visible, since he leaves his “exit” door open while the clones run down the hallway. But given the crowdedness, the original WOODZ is prevented from leaving, stuck alone in a room as his copycats run forwards.) 

With a constant good-faith effort to organize his memories and moods, WOODZ shows that each one is a document worth preserving, which allows him to always forgive others and himself. After all, to be a light in a dark world, one must remember that “Light does not judge. It only casts shadows.” This text appears on the screen during the “Human Extinction” video, a video in which WOODZ observes others’ painful circumstances that range from a hoarding habit to interpersonal drama. He doesn’t interfere, which implies that he sees no need to; he just lets people’s natural “light” and “shadow” sides reveal themselves and get unpacked at individualized speeds. He can stay nonjudgemental and empathetic, since his own “archiving my life” exercise has taught him that everyone’s story is more than the sum of its parts.

#2: BTS, ARIRANG
Click here for a separate write-up analyzing this release’s layered meanings and countless strong suits!​

#1: Jay Chou, Children of the Sun
No succinct way of describing Children of the Sun does it justice. It is a sprawling, cinematic score with enviable penmanship, vivid depictions, and a corresponding short film with top-tier, IMAX-worthy production. It is one giant, epic saga, yet it is also a richly moving mosaic when each piece of it is seen and heard in isolation. Neither the grand scale and scope of the film nor the songs that are more fantastical come at the expense of addressing basic human instincts and impressions. In fact, many of the songs cover basic topics. They just do so in ways that provoke the audience into picturing those topics anew, akin to the feeling of seeing something that has been present for a while yet just suddenly noticing it. Jay Chou rekindles the feelings that come from seeing something with fresh eyes, reconnecting inner essences with external environments to form timeless and transcendent harmonies.

Inspiration comes from everywhere from his daily life (he hilariously describes how his daughter bosses him around in “My Daughter, Your Highness”!) to classic artists (many whose works appear in the short film and in song lyrics) to ancient legends (like “The Girl from Hunan”). Topics range from romance stories (“I Do,” “Aurora in July”) to a vampire-themed whodunit (“Children of the Sun”) to periods of pining for the past (“Christmas Star,” “Country Road,” “Aegean Sea,” “Who Cares,” “The Day It Rained”). This summary is just the tip of the iceberg; no song is just a generic love song or supernatural story. He goes the extra mile to get listeners to picture the sights, sounds, and even smells involved in settings like a mysterious bar and nearby church (“Children of the Sun”), a dark alley near a harbor (“Sicily”), a woman waiting by a window (“The Girl from Hunan”), a road trip (“Aurora in July,” “Country Road”), and more. He draws connections among the songs’ settings and characters often, sometimes seeming to tell the same story but from a new vantage point. For example, “Sicily” asks follow-up questions relevant to “Children of the Sun,” like “Whose hand is raising the glass?” and “Who leaves? Who returns?” Both “Country Road” and “Gold Rush Town” describe a time when a group made a toast and drank wine. “I Do” describes watching a loved one while sitting by the sea, thinking back to “The day [he] confessed” his feelings that is detailed in “The Day It Rained.” “I Do” also brings to mind “The Girl from Hunan,” with a shared mention of his “future wife” (not to mention the callback to Jay Chou’s 2000 song “Wife”). The list goes on and on, underscoring the theme of the past, present, and future all staying equally detailed in his mind. 

Even seemingly unrelated themes come together, like questioning truth and the blooming and spreading of flowers in the wind. He asks in “Children of the Sun,” “Daisies and violets scatter away in the wind / What emerges, is it truly the truth?” “Sicily” goes on to mention the “secrets [that] remain hidden” in a “windless afternoon.” “The Girl from Hunan” mentions waiting “for the wind to rise” and comments that “In her dreams, all her secrets grow rich and vivid,” and “Your sorrowful thoughts are brewing a secret.” 

Making Children of the Sun even more remarkable are the direct questions Jay Chou asks and some of the metaphor-centered advice he shares. Some examples: “How many mine shafts lie within Sovereign Hill? How many people carry lanterns in their hands? Souls yearning for achievement…” (“Gold Rush Town”), “Resilience is the radiance of stained glass” (“Saint”), and “Her tears fall like the notes of a zither. Shattered upon the ground, is there anyone to hear?” (“The Girl from Hunan”).

Each song is its own world and a corner of a larger shared one, familiar in some ways and new in others, making Children of the Sun a radiant and in-progress time capsule.

Catch up on previous “Best of” rankings and reviews for each month and year here!