It’s nearly the end of the year, and the best and worst songs of 2023 will be released soon! In the meantime, welcome to the “honourable and dishonourable mentions” post – all the songs that weren’t quite good or bad enough to get into the Kpopalypse end of year lists for 2023!
The following are all songs that were very good, but not quite good enough to get into my 30 favourites list for 2023 (which will be published on 31st December). There is also, below this, an equal amount of “dishonourable mentions”, songs that were really quite bad, yet not bad enough to hit my worst 30 songs of the year. Please note:
- Songs are sorted alphabetically by artist, not by order of preference
- This list is feature tracks only, either with an MV, or that were promoted on music shows or released as a single
- OST songs, songs for sporting events, obvious AI bullshit and Christmas songs are not eligible
- This list is pure personal preference only, it does not factor in chart success, popularity, cultural relevance etc
- Your opinions may (and probably will) differ, and that’s okay – my opinion is not important
- If this post makes you mad, it’s working as intended, don’t forget to write about it somewhere so we can all pretend to care
HONOURBALE MENTIONS
*
Aespa – Drama
Aespa always has struck me as the result of someone looking at Blackpink and then rushing off to a committee meeting to try and brainstorm a competitior with a bunch of corporate hacks who only understand the appeal of what they’re copying on the thinnest, most superficial level. The result has never not been anything but ridiculous, with lyrics that make no sense in any language, idiotic high-note sections purely there to please the (puzzlingly large) “vocal-obsessed fuckwit” contingent of k-pop fandoms, fuck all melody apart from this, and of course the usual plodding slow “in your area” beats. Yet somehow “Drama” works, because like Aespa’s other better songs it goes convincingly all-in on one musical vision. The sonics are simply nuts and carry the song almost completely on their own, and despite having the stupidest lyrics this side of “Macaroni Cheese” the “dra-ma-ma-ma-ma” hook actually works because it’s been made to fit melodically properly over the backings. The breakdown section is basically just a bunch of masturbation and probably what stopped this song getting on my top 30 this year, but it has to be said that overall Aespa do stupid spectacle well enough to be entertaining, and sometimes that’s enough.
Cacophony – Draw The Bow Right Now
Why do most Korean ballads suck ass? Well a lot of it comes down to nobody wanting to take any chances and going for the same old generic same old, every fucking time. You always know when the strings will come in. You always know when the drums will pick up. You always know when you’re going to get the high-note. It’s a formula by unimaginative fuckheads, for unimaginative fuckheads, and it makes you wonder why there aren’t more of those stupid fake “plagiarism” controversies in the ballad realm given how similar they all are in form and structure. Cacophony are genuinely different, and in a genre so overrun with truckloads of boring soundalike shit, different just fucking works. They’re not ballad specialists and it shows because they come to the ballad format with completely new ideas and sounds. In a land full of boring assholes, the woman with an extra asshole in her elbow is queen.
82MAJOR – Sure Thing
Who are these guys, I have no idea, but damn their song is nice, just a cool, pleasant pop song with nothing to complain about. Well okay, I’m not sure about the grimy video aesthetic here, the production crew clearly didn’t get the memo from the creative director and must have thought they were going to a horror film shoot that day, but if you can ignore the fact that you can barely even see anything there’s nothing wrong with the music other than it’s some obscuros singing it and not your faves.
E SENS – What The Hell
Oh wow someone in Korean rap had a beat this year, incredible. That doesn’t happen very often so I’ve got to let you know when it does. E Sens is one of the many people in Korean hip-hop who knows how to be great but unlike most of his hip-hop peers he actually bothers to be great every so often instead of doing stinky R&B slop and rubbish Autotuned trap garbage 90% of the time, yay E Sens. Anyway the song rocks and you can check out a live version here which is just as good.
Filmsound, Ldy – Dizzy
There were quite a few synthwave-ish songs in Korean pop this year and it’s one of the better trends happening at the moment. This is simply because this style doesn’t gel very well with a lot of the other trends currently out there (song switch-ups, trap, stupid yelping, nursery rhymes, garage-lite) so any songwriter plumbing the 80s retro synth-happy thing has to go all-in on melody and harmony or their song won’t even get off the ground as being part of the trend in the first place. Anyway as a result this song is good with some nice Kate Bush vibes except Kate Bush didn’t really sound like this because the synths were a bit more average back then.
Girl Crush – Oppa, Do You Trust Me?
“Oppa, Do You Trust Me?” complies with the standard musical format for “k-pop dance group designed to do the rounds of adult venues and military stages” – a stomping four-on-the-floor dance beat, some rhythmic punctuation, a hook mainly carried by the instrumental, and vocal lines that aren’t too demanding so the girls can focus on the dances that everyone is really here for. It’s the same formula as Pocket Girls and it works. This is music designed for you to not think about too hard, and if there’s one thing k-pop fans don’t seem to like, it’s thinking very hard about anything at all, so it should suit them. If you have any questions about it being in this list, then you’re definitely doing it wrong. There are no questions here other than the one in the song title, and the answer is “yes of course, everything about this industry is inherently trustworthy, I know because I read all about it at kpopalypse.com”.
H1-KEY – SEOUL (Such a Beautiful City)
I fucking hate songs about cities and places. “First we take Manhattan, then we…” no sorry, first you fuck off, and then you fuck off again. One of the reasons I hate a lot of music from my own country, is that they’re always talking about what happened at a certain place, mentioning various Australian and other locations, tugging themselves relentlessly in some horrid travelogue dickwank like I give a fuck where they went last week and it sucks. So the fact that Hi-Key’s song is in here at all must mean that it’s good because I’m sure biased against it just from the theme. I mean I’m sure people who are actually from Seoul cringe hard at this shit, they’re probably as embarrassed for their country as I am for mine whenever I watch Steve Irwin breathe and take in air (you know, back when he used to do that kind of thing). But then again, ‘cultural cringe‘ is kind of a specifically Australian thing so maybe I’m wrong and the Koreans fucking love this pandering shit. Anyway whatever, whether the claims about Seoul are true or false (and I wouldn’t know any more than anyone else who hasn’t been there) the song is actually really damn good and now I’m going to stop thinking about it because I have shit Australian rock songs in my head and I didn’t spend a decade writing about k-pop just for that to keep happening.
INFINITE – New Emotions
I definitely felt a new emotion when listening to this, which is the emotion of liking something that I’m hearing from Infinite. It’s certainly been a while since I’ve felt that emotion. It’s definitely a cool fast-paced track and while it’s not exactly “The Chaser” (although rumours are they’re working on something that is, so bring on 2024) it’s still pretty solid and a welcome return to form. The sampled vocals are excellent and really help drive it along, and while it’s a shame that Infinite themselves aren’t singing those in real-time, that’s fine, I get it; this is k-pop where people don’t sing really. We still love you, pretty much, just give us The Chaser 2.0 next year and we’re good.
KOYOTE – Wish
Koyote are sometimes cool and sometimes just gimmicky, but rarely awful. At their best they’re like this, giving very “Absolute First Album” vibes with their modernised trot sound. If only all the k-pop fans supposedly oh-so-horrified about too many young people in k-pop would give Koyote more of a spin, they’d surely discover some great music, but they won’t ever, because k-pop fans talk the talk but don’t walk the walk, you can ask the ex-Gangkiz members about that one.
Monsta X – Beautiful Liar
“Beautiful Liar” isn’t the greatest song in the world or anything but it does get two very important things very very right, and those two things go a long way. The first one is it has a rhythm that is consistent and rocking. The song establishes a groove early (instead of waiting ten fucking years like a lot of songs these days, as if there’s all the time in the world for buildup in a short pop song) and sticks to it, never really letting the tempo go and that’s very much appreciated in these days of constant weak-ass change-ups for no reason. The second thing they do right is have a melody that sticks to the same mood as the backings, something which seems to be a real fucking challenge for pop songwriters this year, and yes you will hear me whine about this a lot over the next few posts. When the harmony changes, the melody alters to fit the context of the new chords – amazing! It ain’t that hard, people, if these boys can do it so can you.
NCT U – Baggy Jeans
Here’s the pick that’s going to probably upset everyone and completely divide my readership this year, and hey, just be glad it only got into the honourable mentions you pack of whiners. NCT continue their path as SM’s “high risk, high reward” group and honestly for me the various units miss a hell of a lot more than they hit. However “Baggy Jeans” gets it right because it’s all-in on one thing which is making that chorus sound as stupid as possible. It’s catchy stupid though, so it’s okay. Yeah I know, I hated it at first too, but then I was singing it to myself for the next goddamn week so I knew that by continuing to have reservations about it I was just lying to myself. And I mean sure, the lyrics are shit, but hey it’s k-pop, lyrics are rarely anything but shit here, most of k-pop’s classic songs have dogshit lyrics, if you’re after lyrical genius you’re in the wrong wrong genre just as much as the people who are interested in ‘vocal talent’ are in the wrong genre (seriously, anything but k-pop for those people). It’s great and I’m wearing baggy jeans right now in solidarity.
TRENDZ – New Dayz
It couldn’t be a list of any kind in 2023 without the Paradise Diner and here it is, fortunately someone must have fed Trendz’ songwriter because the track here is solid with everything fitting together nicely. Okay there’s a stupid trap break but it’s short enough to easily ignore and the song mainly just grooves along nicely. Also this is a good video for those of you who miss boy group violence, ever since the days of LC9’s “Mama Beat” we’ve all been waiting for another k-pop video where boy group members go hard at each other with melee weapons so thanks for catering to our fetish to see attractive people in lots of pain, good work team.
Alan Walker, Yuqi, JVKE – Fire!
It kind of pains me to have this here, because it looks so incredibly awful. Those weird guys with bobble-heads, the random ugly creature things (which have to be some kind of in-joke from the creator, there’s no other explanation), the way that oversized muscle-dude wanders and jumps around with inertia worse than the CGI anime porn my readers keep sending me on Retrospring, the fact that we barely even get to see the Yuqi avatar at all and when we do her face is always either obscured or distant as if they’re covering up the fact nobody had time to make a decent recreation of how she looked so the CGI creator just used “generic hot girl #652” from an asset library, it’s just pure ugliness across the board. The sonics are the same, it’s all the usual out-of-the-box keyboard patches that you’ve heard so many times in any keyboard workstation demo or gym or club environment full of drunk fuckwits. Even the idea of having Yuqi as the ‘token k-pop’ on this stinks because she’s barely utilised at all and she deserves better, she’s clearly here for name value only. So I have to throw a LOT aside here to say “actually this shit song has some of the best vocal and synth melodies this year and is so fucking catchy and it’s been in my head ever since I heard it”, so the final flaw of this song is that it’s way too short and that’s only a flaw of good songs because if it sucked I wouldn’t have minded it finishing early. I guess when I add it all up, that’s worth an honourable mention.
Yena – Wicked Love
Notwithstanding a few blink-and-you’ll-miss-them melody-writing fuckups (0:31, 1:17), Yena’s song is quality upbeat dancefloor business that takes me back to the golden age of T-ara copying Britney Spears. I could dig a bit more of this kind of moody electronic stomping, which doesn’t seem to be all that popular in Korea for some reason, perhaps being corporate slaves working themselves to death already makes the population moody enough over there and all these hard rhythms just make them think about wheels grinding on the subway. Anyway I like it so I guess I’ll just have to be the bad guy, someone’s got to do it.
Yerin – Bambambam
Yerin didn’t have the only “Mago” clone this year (foreshadowing alert), but she’s probably the person I’d like to see do a “Mago” clone more than anyone else. There’s something very odd about her vocal here, which has a very machine-strangled tone and a lot of the notes cutting short, as if Yerin had a cold during the recording and couldn’t re-book the studio date so they just did the best with what she was able to croak out on the day, but the raw material here is good enough that a bit of vocal shakiness really doesn’t matter that much in the grand scheme. At least she nails the visuals, seriously check out how pretty Yerin is with these weird bow designs and shit, nobody else except her (and maybe Adora) could pull off this look so well. Aside from that, well, it’s “Mago” and there’s not really too many ways to fuck up that sort of thing, except by maybe inserting a stupid change-up or trap breakdown which this song doesn’t do either of.
Yunsae – Stardust
Here’s someone who is super slept on. Yunsae had a great tune this year and of course not many people noticed, but Kpopalypse sure did. This song is really nice with a beautiful ambience, and her voice is pretty unique while also being not annoying and sits over it all nicely. Also she has a bass guitar leaning up against her bookcase just like I do. Clearly Yunsae is the hero we need to save 2024, she can do it, hopefully she feels like it but I wouldn’t blame her if she couldn’t be bothered.
BONUS SONGS THAT DIDN’T SUCK
A GOOD SONG REALLY CAN COME FROM ANYWHERE
Bryn – Fill Me Up
Bryn has been absolute shit year after year and has graced the worst lists more than once over the years so she was really the last person I would ever expect to find herself in the honourable mentions list but here we are. All it took to fix her shit was the inclusion of a solid rocking beat instead of that usual lazy sub-trap unlistenable fucking swill she usually churns out. Good work Bryn, I don’t know what changed and it’s probably none of my business anyway but welcome to the club.
LIVE IDOL OF THE YEAR
Ria – Honest Emotion
While there’s a lot of potential in Korea’s Japan-influenced ‘live idol’ scene, a lot of the groups are sadly as shit as their Japanese counterparts. Ria is an exception, with her brand of idol-metal being a bit more sophisticated and memorable than most, eschewing the usual Japan-style tweeness aimed at cuteness-fetishising weirdos in favour of a melodic approach and delivery that’s more muscular. Also I’m really waiting for this kind of fashion to take off in k-pop, or anywhere else for that matter, I want to see people in my area dressed like this, let’s make it happen.
BIGGEST BOY BAND POTENTIAL OF 2023
TRENDZ – My Way
Jesus holy shit listen to that chorus go! Why can’t more k-pop songs be like that? And why can’t this song be more like that all the way through? As it stands it’s still great, but wow, what a song we could have had if this thing just stuck to that ripping chorus beat and fucked off the rest of the bullshit that it does.
DISHONOURBALE MENTIONS
*
Agust D – Amygdala
Click on this on YouTube and you’ll get a quick warning saying “The following content may contain suicide or self-harm topics. Viewer discretion is advised.” Now that’s a warning that should be taken seriously, but what they don’t tell you is that the only self-harm here is you harming your own sanity by listening to another piece of generic Autotuned trap garbage. I thought BTS members were supposed to be some kind of massive revolution for pop music globally, instead of just dreary bullshit that sounds just like everyone else’s dreary bullshit.
BOL4 – Eternal Love
It’s sort of becoming tradition that BOL4 get somewhere on my shitlist each and every year. BOL4 literally never gets criticised by anyone else ever (at least not for their music), so their fans unaccustomed to negative feedback always go ultra-sour on me as soon as I say anything along the lines of “gosh this song really could have been better, couldn’t it”. And in this case it sure could’ve. You could settle an entire bitter band break-up argument in the time between notes in this sleepy-time nonsense. It’s been a long time and a lot of water under the bridge since that one decent mini-album of theirs and it shows.
Brave Girls – Goodbye
Brave Girls disbanded sometime earlier in 2023 and then reformed about three seconds later as BBGirls presumably when someone who didn’t get the memo about the breakup turned up to their office with a big cheque for some extra work. This was definitely a good thing because their comeback song “One More Time” is actually very decent and nearly scraped an honourable mention this year. It’s just a shame that we also had to put up with “Goodbye”, which is just the usual terrible montage “won’t you miss us” song that all these groups do and it’s so predictable and by-the-numbers that’s it not even worth talking about. It seems that nobody except Gfriend seems to understand the concept of “going out on a high note” (and if poor Gfriend didn’t get rugpulled by their company they probably would have one day given us a turkey like this too).
Cherry Bullet – P.O.W! (Play On the World)
We all got played by this limp Red Velvet-lite, but perhaps nobody more than Cherry Bullet themselves who took a massive hit to their song quality reputation. One of k-pop’s most consistent groups just got their first genuine turkey.
Chuu & Kim Yohan – Let’s Love
We all love Chuu being a Chuu and it’s good to watch her in this video with Kim Yohan being a Kim Yohan. Unfortunately we also have to put up with bossanova being a bossanova. Chuu deserves better than this coffee shop crap, it’s just as well that she also came out with some decent solo stuff recently because it really would be horrid if this was the only legacy she left us with this year.
ICU – Anti Hero
It’s impossible to watch this and not feel sorry for the girls, the sad victims of someone else’s hare-brained collision of every failed k-pop style ever. Imagine telling your parents that you were going to be a k-pop and then eventually showing them something like this. “That’s nice, honey, I’m so proud of you,” your mother would say after watching the video, while biting her tongue and desperately trying to contain the urge to scream “you are wasting your life, idiot”. Later on you hear her and your father arguing while you’re trying to sleep and it’s keeping you awake and making you cry because you don’t know exactly that they’re saying to each other because it’s coming through the walls muffled but you sure know that it’s about you and about your failure of a k-pop adventure. You think that there has to be a better way to waste your parents’ money. The next day you’re in the ICU for real after ingesting a bunch of hard drugs to try and block out the voices in your head. Don’t do it, kids. K-pop is no fun. K-pop endangers the life and happiness of millions. It must stop. We appeal in particular to the youth of today. Stop the madness! There are better things in life.
Jay Park – Why
Why, indeed.
(I know I said that last time, but I’m still waiting for my answer, Jay. All it would have taken for you to not be on this list was to get my girlfriend that soju you promised her. Always bragging about your goddamn money in your songs but you can’t spare a couple soju bottles? Come on, get your shit together, my P.O Box is right there, let’s go.)
Jisoo – Flower
One of the most popular songs from Teddy that has ever been popular in the realm of popular songs that are popular, “Flower” was very popular, or so I’m told (as I don’t really follow shit like what’s popular and only really know when my readers tell me). Not that I can really see why, with that hideously depressed-sounding synthesiser squirt in the chorus, and not a lot of actual song elsewhere. Of course like a lot of Teddy songs it improves somewhat right at the end, but I wish someone would tell him that there’s little point in improving a pop song after 80% of has already been sung. All I can think of is that people liked the video, and it does look good, in the same sterile kind of way that a travel catalogue looks good. Just like your favourite sweatshop-administered holiday destination, Jisoo’s song remains a nice place to visit, but you wouldn’t want to live there.
Jungkook – Hate You
Apparently “one of the greatest singers of all time” needs 57 layers of vocal smoothing and computer correction to sing this very vocally unchallenging ballad (not that Rolling Stone would know anything about who is good at what as they proved with their guitar list). Mind you if he really can sing and the sonic walking frame really is a “stylistic choice” as people insisted when I first pointed this out, then it was the wrong one; this type of theme is absolutely begging for a rawer, more powerful vocal approach that can actually do the narrative justice. Instead he’s going off the the army with this as his miserable swansong, but hey maybe the plan is to lull the North Koreans to sleep, in which case good luck with that, it’ll probably work.
Kid Milli – Bora
Just that loser style of rap that we all hate. When I make these lists I think I’m punishing the artists by putting them on here, but I’m actually really just punishing myself more because I have to listen to the fucking song again to write a review of it. Sucks to be me, I guess. Next.
NMIXX – Soñar (Breaker)
It’s not the worst NMIXX song ever, but that’s not much of a compliment because they have some pretty bad songs. It’s certainly right down there. To their credit at least they (kind of) stick to one thing (sort of), unfortunately that thing is the typical Red Velvet-lite that all the groups are doing and failing at now…
Red Velvet – Chill Kill
…and that includes Red Velvet themselves, who somehow got lumbered with the kind of messy sound collision that their B-tier and C-tier copycats routinely get stuck with. The backings and vocals are both quite good, but they don’t fit together and they sound like they belong to two completely different songs. The verses and choruses also have the same problem when contrasted with each other. There’s more than one good Red Velvet song here trying to get out, but all the musical elements here are working against each other, not in cooperation, like some massive bucket crab orgy.
Regen – My-oh, My-oh
I don’t know what this is trying to be, but it didn’t succeed. It’s pretty nugu with less than 2000 views at the time of writing, which feels like punishment enough, so maybe they’ve already learned their lesson and I should probably remove it from here just because I’m so nice. Therefore, I’ve now earmarked it for removal just in case some other total bullshit song crops up. If you’re reading this right now it means that nothing even more garbage than this got released in the dying days of 2023 after I wrote this review, which is a shame for Regen, I’m sorry, if you write something better next year I’ll make it up to you.
San E – September Chicada
Then there’s San E who is actually somewhat known, and he’s just bad at rap, which is a problem, if you’re a rapper, which he allegedly is. No matter where you live there’s probably three rappers on your block who could destroy San E at rap. I remember years ago watching some “worldwide rap collab” thing that made a big deal about collecting rappers from as many corners of the world as possible, and the Korean representation in that song was actually San E. Like, out of all the rappers they could have picked to fly the flag, why pick him. Every Korean rap fan cried at that point, I swear, thanks JYP for nothing I guess. Now of course it’s only us crying because we have to listen to this shit.
Toromillion/Lil Taeyoon – Skrr!
This song actually prompted me to look up the meaning of “skrr” and apparently it’s supposed to represent the sound of screeching car tyres when someone is making a quick getaway, like for example if someone played this song in your area and you had a sudden desire to be someone else, or if you had just pressed play on a song like this and were then taking off on your car or motorbike before a bunch of angry bystanders bashed your head in for subjecting them to shit music. I also found out that in South Africa, someone who is obsessed with American hip-hop to the point where it’s annoying and they look like a complete loser, is sometimes called a “skrr” or “skrr skrr”. So that’s nice, I guess that I just learned two things today, and you just learned between one and three, the third one being that this song is shit.
TWICE – Moonlight Sunrise
I think this song was supposed to be some kind of cautious re-test-the-waters into the English-speaking market after the horrid English version of “More & More” flopped, because JYP has probably learned his lesson that he doesn’t really understand western audiences and isn’t going to go all-in and screw the pooch like he did with Wonder Girls. I have no idea how well it did, but since it came out right at the start of the year and I pretty much forgot about its existence right up until when I had to draft this list, I’m going to go out on a limb and say it didn’t perform all that great by Twice standards. It’s little wonder as the English delivery is kind of botched although I’m pretty sure they pronounce their o’clocks right now incorrectly on purpose, because the narrative of the song doesn’t actually make much sense otherwise. JYP’s quite fluent at English so he knows what’s going on here. It’s the only interesting part of a song which is honestly pretty unexciting, if JYP wants the loudmouth apple-pie-eating market that badly “Fancy” has been right there for years, an English version of that would probably go gangbusters but it might be too late at this point for anyone to give a shit.
BONUS SONGS
CAN WE WRITE ONE FUCKING SONG AT A TIME INSTEAD OF THREE AT ONCE EXHIBIT 69237865:
Sunmi – Stranger
One question that many people had about NMIXX’s disastrous ménage à trois of shit that was “O.O” was “I wonder if this botched abortion of a song would actually be any good if all three sections were decent instead of just the middle part?” Sunmi has now helpfully provided the answer to that question and it’s “don’t be stupid, of course not”. That’s because a song is more than just the sum of its parts – also important is how those parts fit together, and the three parts of Sunmi’s song don’t fit together at all. We get a verse that’s pretty much just her usual thing that we’ve heard before on many of her other songs and of course it’s great. Then there’s the pre-chorus and it’s kind of a reggae-lite “Why So Lonely” type of thing, also quite decent. The chorus is the oddest part, something Sunmi has never done before, a weird horror-movie-theme vibe with cool keys and fretless bass, it actually really jams, and it also has absolutely fuck all musically to do with the rest of the song. Each one of these three ideas could have been extrapolated into a full song of their own and they would have all been awesome, but they haven’t, so they’re not. Instead they’re here, all squished up against each other, rotating around with no real sensible transition between any of them. The “mixx” trend in k-pop is actually the worst trend k-pop has ever seen, because not only does it make songs shit like every other trend, but by songwriters combining all their actual good ideas into packages that don’t fit, it’s robbing us all of multiple individual great songs that we would have probably had instead. Someone shed a tear for k-pop in 2023.
DON’T BORE US, GET TO THE CHORUS… OH WAIT, NEVER MIND…
TREASURE – Bona Bona
Hey we’re sounding pretty damn fine here, that is until the chorus hits and then it’s back to languid slow grooves ‘in our area’ in typical YG style, ugh. It’s that same bullshit that YG pulled a decade ago with BigBang, it sucked then and it still sucks now.
VIDEO OF THE YEAR
Huh Yunjin – #1 Doll
K-pop fans wasting time on social networking are quick to accuse others of not having moral values that they don’t even subscribe to themselves, and Yunjin deliciously calls out some of the worst tendencies of these fandoms and the media machine they inhabit on “#1 Doll” which has great lyrics and a great video to match. I’m not wild about the actual song itself which is pretty generic and dull but it’s a rare song where the theme alone is enough to keep me listening. I mean, to be quite honest even the lyrics fall apart a little bit once you really start thinking about them (it’s the non-opaque system obfuscating Yunjin’s personal qualities to the point they can’t be appreciated, the negative fan and media interaction is just a symptom of that problem) but obviously she has some limitations about what she can sing about and she’s probably already pushing up against the edge of those just by asking to be treated nicely by dickheads in a song, so let’s not be too fussy now or ask her to go too deep, you can leave the actually correct analysis for Kpopalypse. In the meantime, the shit people go through in the public eye is real and the fact she’s giving voice to it is a net positive that should be applauded and supported.
That’s all for this year’s honourable mentions! The top and bottom 30 are coming soon!
0 Comments