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The next few weeks on The Bias List will be stuffed with all manner of end-of-year countdowns. From K-pop to J-pop to global pop to dramas, it’ll all be covered. This is a fun way to tie a bow on the year and celebrate all the things I loved in 2024. These countdowns kick off tomorrow with my biggest one: The Top 50 K-Pop Songs of 2024.
Honestly, this has been a strange year for K-pop. The industry seemed more scandal-plagued than ever and ended its year with a flurry of disbandments and controversies. It’ll be interesting to see where we head going forward. As far as music is concerned, 2024 was split neatly in half. A vast percentage of my favorite music came from the first half of the year, leaving the second half quite underwhelming. Despite this, I’d consider 2024 stronger as a whole than 2023 (though for me this is thanks to the work of a relatively small group of artists).
There will be plenty of space to talk about musical trends later, but I am definitely in the mood for a change. I adopted the term “beige pop” to describe many of this year’s offerings. Subdued sounds seem to be in. Even when artists borrowed from traditionally bombastic genres, they often did so in a more nuanced way. I’ve never been the biggest fan of nuance in pop music, so that’s a bit of a problem when it comes to personal taste. For this reason, my list this year is especially short on girl groups. These trends seemed to affect them more than boy groups and I’m very eager for a return to a more forceful sound (think Kara, GFriend, T-ara, WJSN, Sistar, etc).
Of course, there were plenty of excellent songs released this year — from boy groups, girl groups and soloists. I’m excited to spotlight them over the next few days. Personally, I’m a bigger fan of my top ten than I have been in years. In the end, 2024 was more “quality” than “quantity,” with a handful of songs I adore cutting through the year’s many, many skips. On balance, it all works itself out. And for those interested in stats, there are also some new records within this year’s countdown that will become apparent once everything is revealed. It’s always interesting to see how things shake out.
This is also a great time to preface the countdown by reiterating how it is different from other year-end countdowns. This is not a list picked by consensus, nor is it one based upon any metric of success beyond how much I personally enjoyed a song. There will be hits, commercial flops and many under-the-radar picks. You probably won’t agree with everything, but just like The Bias List as a whole, you can be assured that it is 100% authentic to my taste.
Speaking of the blog, 2024 is on track to continue year-over-year growth in views and visitors. That’s nine straight years of improvement. As I do every year, I want to thank each and every reader — whether you’re in agreement with my reviews or not. Thanks for continuing to visit! Feedback and activity are the things that keep me posting on a daily basis.
This year-end feature is my 820th post of the year, which is up again from this time last year. That’s 260,000 words — or a couple novels’ worth of content, if you’d like to count it that way!
Eligibility criteria for my Top 50 Singles list hasn’t changed since last year, but for those who are new to the blog, here are the rules. This year, there was one song that didn’t quite fit the criteria but I just couldn’t justify counting it as a b-side.
Eligibility criteria:
- A song must have been released as a title, follow-up or promoted track between December 1, 2023 and November 30, 2024.
- A song must be paired with a full music video or big-budget performance video (the lines get more blurred each year).
- English-language singles are eligible. Japanese singles by K-pop artists will be part of the J-pop countdown.
Before kicking off the countdowns tomorrow, here are the ten songs that didn’t quite make the Top 50.
English (US) · 