The Best K-Pop Music Videos of 2025 (Part 2)

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!

#24: VVUP, “Super Model”
While the “House Party” music video introduces audiences to this era’s kitschy aesthetic hodgepodge, “Super Model” utilizes that look to clearer and more compelling ends. The relatively subdued pop song contrasts with larger-than-life adventures, as the VVUP members emulate the drag queens who hype them up and encourage them to live as loudly and proudly as possible. The song is suitable for a runway walk or photo shoot-based commercial, while the video is suitable for a mixed-media superhero show! As news chyrons celebrate VVUP conquering a “GIANT PURPLE MONSTER” and representing a “NEW MODEL OF JUSTICE - BEAUTY IN GRACE,” and as magazine covers tout what is more than “JUST A LOOK” but “A LEGACY,” the members move into and out of their 2D superhero forms. They conquer the enemy in their animated phases and resume conquering public attention in the live-action ones, alternating between emphasizing the “super” and “model” parts of the phrase “super model,” while mixing culture- and era-spanning visual styles.

#23: YUQI, “Gone”
“Gone” cleverly raises alternative interpretations of a seemingly cut-and-dry plot. 

Blonde YUQI prepares for showtime in her dressing room, her thoughts interrupted by flashbacks to days as a black-haired YUQI who was in love with a now-ex. She confronts and fights with her lover when she learns he’s cheating on her, and they almost get divorced over it (she leaves a conference room just as it looks like she is about to sign the paperwork on the dotted lines). YUQI’s hair is longer during the “impending divorce” scene than it is in the “fighting over cheating” scene, implying the passage of time is what has softened her stance. At the same time, some memories come back to her lover as staged performances; date scenes are reenacted under a spotlight. While YUQI reminiscences before taking to the stage for a headlining show, her lover reminiscences in the dark alone. YUQI is preparing for a literal show, while her ex is questioning how much of their romance was all an act. Both of them feel burned and betrayed; to what extent and to what degree each is owed forgiveness remain up to interpretation.

It is also up to viewers to determine whether or not YUQI’s music career’s success is thanks to his help. After all, one of their go-to activities in happier times was him giving her piano lessons; perhaps it is a good thing that tensions cooled and the divorce was seemingly never finalized. On the other hand, YUQI is a successful artist now, irrespective of who helped that happen; some will conclude she is better off without him. Maybe her music career is taking off now less because of years of training and more because her creative juices got flowing again once she stopped being blinded by love and thinking so highly of him. She stopped partaking in a manufactured romance story, so she now has the practical time and intellectual space to fully immerse herself in her music. Then again, it is possible that she has been one of the manufacturers of that former romance. Perhaps they were both fooling themselves and each other - and maybe still are. The video has a realistic ending because of its lack thereof; there is no clear resolution, and the only thing both parties can say for sure is that they are “gone” from each other’s lives.

#22: izna, “Mamma Mia”
The “izna World Takeover” theme of the Not Just Pretty era is maximized through a music video that turns the group’s outsider status into a badge of honor. The ways izna stay in control are countless but include the following: moving scenes around while pinching their fingers, as if adjusting a video on a phone screen; interacting with people backstage who remain frozen in time; facing arrest (for being norm-breakers) but maintaining unflinching postures and staying put; and making lots of strange things happen with mere hand gestures - no wands necessary for their magic spells to work! The music video is ambitious not only character-wise but format-wise. The camera seems allergic to static shots! It keeps panning as if required to film in just one take, yet this effect does not sacrifice the extent of the video’s extravagance. The “all one big scene” appearance suits izna’s message about shaking up the whole world in no time and, relatedly, going from grit to glam without a hair out of place! Furthermore, they make mimicking their moves difficult. Their powers’ origins remain shrouded in mystery; all that a newscaster reveals about izna’s backstory is that they come from a village “hidden from the map.” Plus, izna control the message and the medium; they mess with the antenna on a TV set that broadcasts a PSA about their presence, and they customize the hologram-like aspects of their environment.

“Mamma Mia” is not just fun and fast-paced for the heck of it. When taking into consideration the EP title, the broadcaster’s script (“Their light has begun to spread. And the world is no longer the same…”), and the fact there is a dance break in the video, izna send a message about letting the “normal,” by-the-book world neither dim their abnormal lights nor suppress their more spontaneous inclinations.

#21: Stray Kids, “DIVINE”
Stray Kids’ musical multiverse finds new material by going back to the past. “DIVINE” is heavily inspired by Korean folklore, and the cinematic story goes from dusk to dawn, implying an overnight adventure through time. That adventure is not only chock-full but agile. Rather than awkwardly insert animated scenes between live-action ones, Stray Kids’ behavior smoothly prompts the transitions. Ink on parchment suddenly becomes a member’s printed flying carpet, swirling smoke during panoramic shots replicates the look of those clouds’ ink-drawn version, and one member becomes a cartoon after turning his back to the camera and implying imminently growing wings and jumping. The mixed-format approach handily maintains the audience’s interest while filling in key narrative lines. 
Read more about this era here! 

#20: ITZY, “Girls Will Be Girls”
While an “enduring the apocalypse” plot is nothing new, ITZY’s version avoids being generic, thanks to its heartfelt sentiments about sisterhood. They show how navigating external chaos at even its most extreme is doable when surrounded by the right people, the ones who tame the inner chaos and keep one’s inner flame alive. 

The story starts with them holding hands and staring at a flock of crows. They have to deal with the ominous crows throughout the video and do so together. The final scene shows them back in the same spot, but staring up at a giant eye instead, ending the video in a “To be continued” way that speaks to the stamina their sisterhood allows them to sustain. Between the beginning and ending are dark and action-packed scenes that involve archery, training exercises, and turbulent jeep-driving.

Re-watches make viewers also appreciate the smaller details, like one member’s use of a switchblade as her eye makeup touch-up tool, and the ways the girls are so instinctively able to help each other that they do so accidentally in a scene involving a canteen. (One of them offers up her canteen of water to extinguish what’s smoking under their vehicle’s hood. She is able to help them out in a pinch without even planning it!)

“Girls Will Be Girls” is all about confidence from within, “within” referring to both inner beauty and in-group status. Overall, ITZY entertainingly embrace a “stronger together with chosen family” mentality. 

#19: tripleS, “Are You Alive”
In some ways, things seem more dire in “Girls Never Die” than they do in “Are You Alive,” like when girls play hand-clapping games and hold hands before jumping off a tall building in the former. But in other ways, “Are You Alive” seems to have the darker implications, like when a member angrily pushes the camera away from recording the girls’ time dancing and hanging out together. (A camera also films them dancing in “Girls Never Die,” but there is not the same angry pushback.) Both videos interrupt bleak scenes with bright spots, keeping viewers guessing as to which direction the mood heads next. The good and bad times alike have much to read into, both separately and when comparing and contrasting the videos.

Whether taking in and theorizing over <ASSEMBLE25> and “Are You Alive” separately from or alongside of <ASSEMBLE24> and “Girls Never Die,” the albums and videos contribute to one big picture: tripleS are both terrified about and enamored with the rush of being fully alive, and they frame each day as an adrenaline rush through sounds and high-stakes visuals alike. Read more about tripleS’s storytelling here! 

#18: KiiiKiii, “I DO ME”
“I DO ME” speaks to KiiiKiii’s role as a definitive next-generation K-pop girl group. Their appeal stems from an impressively streamlined combination of “Internet Era” and older aesthetics and interests. Bridging the gaps between styles are moments that are simultaneously literal and unserious. For example, the “I DO ME” lyrics compare a butterfly to a “living ring” and a ladybug to a “piercing,” and they do indeed treat insects like jewelry in the video! They are joking but also mean what they say. Capping off their representation of an irony-laced form of modern girlhood are their video actions: having a tea party, playing in a field together, jumping on a trampoline… They behave like they are younger than they are, but they dress their age, like people who grew up consuming social media; they follow “cottagecore” outfit trends, add to that aesthetic by spending time with livestock, and complete the outdoorsy photo ops with Pinterest-worthy poses. Read more about what makes KiiiKiii stand out here!

#17: JENNIE, “ZEN”
What the “ZEN” video lacks in plot it more than makes up for in visuals. The sheer quantity of scenes and transitions brings to mind a movie trailer, and the scenes involve mesmerizing showers of sparks, multiple personas with head-turning looks, sweeping mountain views, changes from black-and-white to colorized scenes and vice versa, and performance scenes where dancers appear to move as if under JENNIE’s spell. Read more about JENNIE’s Ruby era here and here!

#16: ZEROBASEONE, “BLUE”
As a BLUE PARADISE preview video puts it, “Blue shadows my face, but I let it in. Sad and beautiful, blue becomes a piece of life.” The BLUE PARADISE era dutifully channels this “beauty in blueness” theme. 

ZEROBASEONE add blue items to their world in forms including a furry monster mask, the glow from virtual reality headsets, and star-shaped twinkle lights akin to childhood bedroom decor. Adding literal blueness to their world is actually what adds more whimsy to it! Additionally, they jump in a swimming pool while wearing “grown-up clothes,” and one member leaves his blue outline on the ground as part of playground chalk art. While embracing the “blue” aspects of life can be an indicator of a matured mindset, ZEROBASEONE’s message is that embracing the “blue” parts of life does not require “aging out” of anything.

For a period of time during the “BLUE” video, a montage of memories plays across a nine-square grid. These snapshots encompass moments of sadness and joy alike, and when the question “CAN YOU REMEMBER DAYS” appears on top of the clips, it is a question that does not specify “Can you remember bad days?” or “Can you remember good days?” The question is simply, “Can you remember at all?,” the point being that memories ought to be made regardless of the risk that some end up “blue” - perhaps even because of the chance that some will. Whether lovesick or heartbroken, BLUE PARADISE reckons with the “BLUE” side to falling in love and how that side is inevitable in order to also feel the “PARADISE” side of it.

#15: KEY, “HUNTER”
In “HUNTER,” there are two KEYs, and both look culpable in their own ways. Both take turns looking like the likelier victim of the other, the bottom line being that KEY is both predator and prey; he is the monster. This is the message of the HUNTER era as a whole: society cannot conquer its beasts until realizing how much beasts have in common with humans - so much in common that they can sometimes be mistaken for humans. The songs on HUNTER treat humans and monsters as equally worthy of understanding because of this, and the era’s visual components demonstrate how much harder that task is than it first sounds. After all, seeing what’s “real” is mediated by technology in ways out of individualized control, something KEY alludes to via the music video’s changing screen ratio and the cracked phone on the ground at the end. Lots of other details in “HUNTER” compound the questionable status of “reality,” including what looks like a movie copyright “WARNING” message at the beginning, blink-and-miss-it horror-show snapshots, strange shadows behind a wall, zombie-like choreography, and scenes with inexplicable twists for endings. Read more about this era here!

#14: BIBI, “Apocalypse”
While many specifics are up to interpretation, this is the overall storyline of EVE: ROMANCE and its corresponding videos: Government-appointed mad scientists resurrect a man named Luca and a woman named Eve from the dead. Eve, played by BIBI, is now called “Eve-1.” It is notable that she is not described as a new Eve; she is not called “Eve-2.” If she were, that would imply that the first Eve differs from this one. The government does not want the old and new Eves to be their own women; they want a carbon copy of the money-making pop star who they were able to tout on a global platform prior to her death. The songs and music videos are about Eve-1 and Luca rediscovering and revisiting memories of their past lives, falling in love in the process… Read the rest here!

#13 & #12: CHAEYOUNG, “AVOCADO” (ft. Gliiico) & “SHOOT (Firecracker)” 
In “AVOCADO,” CHAEYOUNG takes a simple “music as fuel” premise in bizarre directions, to say the least! She “powers up” after being swallowed by an avocado monster, falling down a rabbit hole into a fantasy world, and playing with a band in a paper forest, complete with twinkle lights in place of a real waterfall! The music energizes CHAEYOUNG enough to blast off via her hand-made rocket/backpack and fly towards the “LIL FANTASY Castle” - a setting that, like her wardrobe, originated as her own sketches! 

“SHOOT (Firecracker)” is another upside-down and inside-out take on an oft-used premise: an homage to fairy tales and other classic stories. CHAEYOUNG’s version combines elements of The Princess and the Pea, Alice in Wonderland, the story of King Midas (her touch can make even flowers come alive!), and more. 

After journeying towards the “LIL FANTASY Castle” in “AVOCADO,” she spends “SHOOT (Firecracker)” exploring that castle. The castle layout and her wardrobe are once again products of her sketches, and combining that with the fact that the majority of props in both videos are homemade (in formats ranging from paper crafts to claymation) seals this package deal with the same one-of-a-kind wrapping.

“AVOCADO” and “SHOOT (Firecracker)” are a perfect pairing narratively, stylistically, and just broadly speaking. They both externalize CHAEYOUNG’s delightfully quirky and unique interior world!
Read all about the corresponding album here!

#11: MINNIE, “HER” 
The audience meets many MINNIEs in the “HER” music video, and their appearances and personalities vary widely. 

A sharply-dressed MINNIE with short, dark hair walks into a mansion, sees two other MINNIEs in a heated fight, and sighs as if to say, “Here we go again! I’ve seen this all before!” 

A MINNIE with long, dark hair plays the part of a resentful babysitter, having to clean up the messes of an immature MINNIE who prances around in a light pink dress and curly updo. This serious MINNIE has to clean the bedroom that this silly MINNIE makes a mess of while playing dress-up. The serious MINNIE then has the unenviable task of drawing the silly MINNIE’s picture, while the silly MINNIE refuses to sit still! 

Meanwhile, a MINNIE with a long ponytail fires shots inside the mansion. A curly-haired MINNIE, but one with no updo and a purple dress, falls over and poses, as if the fall was intentional. However, it is reasonable to interpret the fall as not a clumsy accident, but the result of being shot by the armed MINNIE. 

For those keeping track, there are at least half a dozen MINNIEs in “HER”!

She lets people believe that she is genuine and that she is just playing a role. Her tone stays playful, and she seems to get a kick out of teasing the audience and keeping them confused! Yet at the same time, the video’s more aggressive moments add a sense of deadly seriousness. The confluence of contrasts in the “HER” video keeps the story as complex as ever. Read more about this era here!

#10: MINNIE, “Blind Eyes Red” 
The visual choices throughout “Blind Eyes Red” both are eye-popping and carry deeper meaning when considering the context of the HER era as a whole.

“Blind Eyes Red” stars the platinum-blonde MINNIE from the “Commentary Film” poster. Much like that introduction to one version of MINNIE, this one evokes more questions than clarity. 

The video mixes “seeing red” and “seeing blind” symbolism repeatedly. A wall forms the shape of an eye with a red pupil; bursts of red fill the screen periodically, as if eye socket veins are exploding; and after staring into a pair of glowing eyes, MINNIE’s surroundings turn red.

It is possible that one MINNIE sees blind while another one sees red. After all, the last word of each sentence in the chorus gets carried away with a wave of autotune, as if a different voice entirely is finishing MINNIE’s thoughts for her. “I seem to forget where I am,” she says, which would make it unsurprising if she also said “I seem to forget who I am.” Indicating that one of the reasons the audience cannot be sure who “her” refers to is because MINNIE herself doesn’t even know! “Her” identity crisis is collectively experienced.

Just before the ending credits roll, it looks like red paint is pouring on top of MINNIE. This simultaneously reiterates MINNIE’s “true color” and anonymizes her identity more. The longer audiences watch MINNIE, the less they really know about her. Read more about this era here! 

#9: SUNMI, “CYNICAL”
Like how SUNMI played both the dominant and subordinate characters in STRANGER, in HEART MAID, she is both someone being possessed and someone doing the possessing. While her “assigned Grim Reaper” keeps tabs on her and chases after her when necessary in the “CYNICAL” music video, scenes where SUNMI is alone show her being quite capable of turning on herself! She becomes her own seance subject, and she masochistically brings her ghostly self back to the scene of her fatal accident. Obscuring the lines between characters further are the “CYNICAL” lyrics, which make it sound like SUNMI is the ghost who does the taunting and stalking, despite the music video showing her “assigned Reaper” doing those things to her. Regardless of the nature of SUNMI’s presences, likening them to a ghost’s proves to be effective at addressing yet another version of SUNMI: the celebrity. A long list of lyrics that can be interpreted as coming from the mind of a ghost can also be interpreted as coming from the mind of a celebrity, as both crave “normal” human interactions and endure a sense of “real world” detachment.

Part of the final text on the screen in the “CYNICAL” video reads as follows: “Life lasts longer in laughter than in cynicism.” Perhaps that is why the character in SUNMI’s musical world with the most dependable presence is the “HEART MAID,” the one tasked with emotional labor. Having to “clean up” other people’s emotions requires a thorough understanding of what it means to be human: how public perceptions form, how bonds tighten or loosen, and how to benefit from a subverted definition of “cynicism.” Read more about this era here!

#8: SEULGI, “Baby, Not Baby”
After SEULGI walks around the mall with a “Free Hugs” sign that draws criticism, mockery, and even physical aggression, she falls to the floor. A crowd swiftly surrounds her to leer and possibly post about her misfortune on social media. Elsewhere, her villain persona jumps on the front of a car and leaves scratches across its front window. That persona walks down the middle of the street with the “Free Hugs” sign, before destroying it. Text on the screen appears in pink cursive, just like during the initial “Free Hugs” incident, but now it says “Midnight snacking” and shows the evil SEULGI eating a bug that she has killed! After that are upside-down scenes, followed by SEULGI’s exit via turning into a bat and flying away! Amid all this are scenes where a version of SEULGI resembling the “Free Hugs” one more than the “Batgirl” one destroys a grocery store. 

There is meaning behind this madness! SEULGI’s emotional needs are never satisfied - worse, they are mocked. So she proceeds to rebel out of a need for validation, creating a villainous alter ego and thinking that if she can’t get good attention as herself, maybe she can get it by becoming someone else. But accidentally, her mask constantly slips, revealing how any “other SEULGI” is still very much SEULGI. The ties between SEULGIs include that “Free Hugs” sign, that pink cursive text, and the grocery store scenes where “Free Hugs” SEULGI acts like “Villain SEULGI.” 

Beneath her wild antics is a hurt person whose pursuit of validation leads to “the dark side,” and while Accidentally On Purpose explores the concept of duality, it also digs deeper and considers why people become compelled to differentiate parts of themselves in the first place. Read more about the corresponding album here!

#7: G-DRAGON & Anderson .Paak, “TOO BAD”
“You could not make heads or tails of me if you tried” seems to be a mantra of G-DRAGON’s, and this comes across strongly in the “TOO BAD” video. He and the dancers dress preppy while outside of a convenience store. Separately, he pairs a hat with a McDonald’s logo on it with a jacket that has cuffs featuring an iconic Versace print. He does not align dress codes with locations, and he combines “low-class” and “high-class” status markers. He also combines languages, via multilingual graffiti. He ignores norms around what is considered classy or corny, and he extends the “Human language can’t do this justice” concept inherent to the Übermensch to apply to his locations and outfits, not just to his personality.

At the risk of reductiveness, another way to describe an Übermensch is “everything at once,” and G-DRAGON’s distinguishable, definitive aesthetic makes the utility he finds in the concept obvious. He has always had a signature yet hard-to-pin-down style, and it is on full display as he plays characters in every type of show. In “TOO BAD,” these shows include an impromptu street performance in an androgynous outfit and a widescreen performance that resembles one from a live telethon. Read more about this era here! 

#6: Xdinary Heroes, “Beautiful Life”
Xdinary Heroes play dirty and bloody characters who are left for dead after chaotic fights against unknown enemies. At the end, they stand up and directly face their foes, who remove their disguises to reveal they are cleaned-up versions of themselves. As the bruised and beaten version of Jooyeon suggests it is time for the other side to surrender (“Why don’t you wave your flag… is it white?”), his face grows blurry. The cleaned-up Jooyeon sings the final lyric while staring right at the now-glitching version of Jooyeon: “No one’s here to love you.” Slowly, then all at once, the beaten-up members glitch into thin air. After the cleaned-up Jooyeon sneers and the screen goes black, a question appears on it: “What’s real in your reality?”

This ending is aptly ambiguous and anticlimactic. Xdinary Heroes are the winners and the losers, the aggressors and the victims, the “real” and the virtual ones, and the ones who are gone and the ones who are here to stay. They demoralize and destroy themselves and follow that up with a “This is just the beginning” message, and like their past eras, the irony is the point. In the world their songs and music videos exist in, illogic is logic and sense is nonsense. “Beautiful Life” and the corresponding album, Beautiful Mind, continue their traditions of inverting preconceived notions, exaggerating life’s absurdities, and sparking conversations as to what “real life” even is. Read more about the corresponding album here!  

#5: TEMPEST, “In The Dark”
The main characters besides TEMPEST are a strange man and woman, presumably headmasters of an orphanage or a military school. The couple are partners in crime, running the institution with an iron fist - at least, that’s how it appears to TEMPEST. The members always look on the verge of either tears or a full nervous breakdown, terrified of what will happen if they disobey. The woman relishes more than her partner in watching them sweat and suffer. She grins and claps from her lounge chair when they do outdoor manual labor, and her enthusiasm goes up ten notches once it starts to storm during forced outdoor wrestling matches. Whenever the stakes seem higher and less desirable, she beams even wider.

When the boys sit down for a fancy dinner, they tremble and hold back tears, yet the woman never reprimands their table manners, and she has a softer look, having removed her black lipstick. Her potential attempt to appear a bit more approachable does not cause the members to let their guards down in the slightest, which is apparent when she goes for a walk at night and sees crumbs on the road; they presumably feared what she would do were she to find those crumbs on her dining room floor. After the flashlight shines on the crumbs, text appears on top of her close-up: “The line was never meant to hold anyone.” 

The man frees the TEMPEST members in the middle of the night. They flee to the beach, where they have carefree fun in the sun in loose-fitting outfits. (TEMPEST have changed out of their gym-class-ready uniforms from the forced wrestling matches and manual labor, and the man now wears one of those uniforms, as if they have switched roles.) But this is not a story about someone who pretends to be in cahoots with the enemy before revealing he has been on TEMPEST’s side the entire time. The woman has also never actually been an enemy. At the video’s end, she joins her partner and the boys on the beach, smiling as she holds her partner’s hand and joins them on the shoreline. She seems glad the boys have found freedom, too. 

The woman doesn’t try as hard to relate to the boys - after all, she sticks to her all-black, formal attire instead of wearing their uniform -  but that does not mean she is her partner’s narrative foil. She is not evil and never actually harms anyone. She just makes living a rule-bound life so miserable that eventual resistance is inevitable. She gets the boys to recognize the agony and banality of living constrained lives, hoping that on their own time, they will free themselves. She eventually stops letting this happen on their own timeline, though, and she speeds things up by recruiting her partner to stage a middle-of-the-night escape. She gives TEMPEST a space to try being rebellious, to show them that messing up is not the end of the world, and when that is not enough to compel them to rebel, she has her partner give them an extra nudge. Once the boys get a taste of liberation, as planned, they crave more and more of it. 

The headmasters take different approaches to teaching the same lessons about people being their own harshest critics and about personal autonomy being closer to one’s grasp than assumed. Read about the corresponding album here! 

#4: ENHYPEN, “Bad Desire (With or Without You)”
ENHYPEN have truly outdone themselves, and every single frame is a cinematic one, from the blinding white light that leaves only a pair of eyes visible at the beginning to the up-to-interpretation moments when members are going towards or away from Heaven or Hell. They continue to play time-traveling vampires, but those characters take on new forms and challenges, from riding a dragon to dealing with cryptic clones. The rich visuals grow even more immersive thanks to frequent twists, like 2D animations coming alive in 4D, the camera wildly swinging between water- and fire-featuring scenes, and transitions occurring via the camera zooming quickly in and out through tattoos and flames. Read more about this era here!

#3: LEE CHANHYUK, “Vivid LaLa Love”
“Vivid LaLa Love” is a testament to what the best music videos do: open the door into the conceptual world of the song’s corresponding album. LEE CHANHYUK lets audiences witness the world of EROS in full; his creative vision is curated with care and depth. The world involves elements of mysteries, comedies, fables, and a sinister and subversive style of romance. From the mood-setting lighting; to CHANHYUK’s evolving status, in control leading a choreographed dance at times, helplessly dragged and yanked around at others; to maximalist costumes, CHANHYUK dressing like a bird or an angel before turning into a plot of land, as if reincarnated as a garden (adding credence to the reincarnation interpretation is the fact CHANHYUK leaps out of a window prior to changing costumes), ominous intrigue permeates the place. But this is not mutually exclusive from featuring easy laughs. A plate and animals sing along, and one of the dancing caterers has a cartoonish mustache! But like everything about EROS, the sense that something is amiss stays strong, and many questions remain unanswered. The fictional stories the audience hears and sees are designed to be experienced more than parsed, and “Vivid LaLa Love” is a successful way to pull people under EROS’s elusive spell. Read more about this era here!

#2: MIYEON & Colde, “Reno”
“Reno” tells a twisted and infinitely twisty tale that pulls out all the stops. 

MIYEON gives the opening monologue, in which she says in part, “I’m blocking my ears. Some moments remain vivid. I can’t forget him. When aiming with the gun -” The sentence is cut short by the sound of a shot, and the music video shows MIYEON pulling the trigger. However, despite an actual gun at her feet, the MIYEON in this black-and-white story simply makes finger gun gestures, which prove to be just as effective. The rippling consequences of the shooting unfold, and the camera backs up to reveal a wider scene of feuds and flying debris. Subsequent scenes recall what happened that night through a nebulous patchwork, with choreography, lighting, and acting sequences sometimes taking turns and sometimes working together to reenact that night’s events. 

The versions of MIYEON in different scenes and outfits can be interpreted as different attempts to create psychologically satisfying distance between herself and the “real” culprit. MIYEON, the girl in the casual clothes and messy updo, can calm down by convincing herself she didn’t do it; the girl who looks like her but is in a dress with her hair left down did. (After all, the MIYEON wearing a dress rises from the middle of a circle of dancers the second someone falls off of a balcony and hits the ground, implying her rise comes from his demise.) She can also justify what has happened by revising her memory to make herself the victim, hence a version of her panicking when a bloody, severed hand reaches towards her car window (never mind the fact that this car is the one she smashes with a hammer in another scene, presumably to destroy some crime scene evidence in it). In addition to convincing herself “I’m the victim” or “It wasn’t me,” a third argument MIYEON considers is, “It was me, but I’m just insane.” After all, she has sporadic fits of giggles, and part of the dance routine involves being escorted down from an elevated platform, a “stage” that is the roof of the crime scene car, now lined with lights and made a purposeful part of her act. With the “I’m insane” argument, she flaunts what she’s done, rather than conceal it. As she sings in “Reno,” “I’m the one who will be his last love,” “Finally, our relationship can last forever,” and “This feeling’s not a crime… I’m innocent, love’s like a venom.”

The songs after “Reno” describe the aftermath of the killing through lyrics about assessing the damage and reconciling her lover’s physical absence with his remaining and all-consuming presence in MIYEON’s mind.

Regardless of what MIYEON tells herself about what really happened and the myriad of visual formats she uses while doing so, at the end of the day, the key lines worth remembering are “I’m the one who will be his last love” and “I’m blocking my ears… Some moments remain vivid.” It’s up to the audience to decide which and how many of those vivid moments contain the truth. Read about the corresponding album here!

#1: TXT, “Beautiful Strangers” 
Cyclical yet subversive, cryptic yet comprehensive, The TXT Musical Universe is second to none. It is richly metaphorical, striking in its layered sentiments, and profound in its particular stylistic blends. What makes it so magical is exhibited excellently through the “Beautiful Strangers” video, which is analyzed at length here!

More of the Best of 2025

Top 100 Albums: No. 100-76, No. 75-51, No. 50-26, and No. 25-1

Top 150 Songs: Coming soon!

Best Remixes, Covers, Soundtracks, and SO Much More!: Coming soon!

Stay tuned!