The Top Three K-Pop Songs of September 2024

1 month ago 17

At the end of each month, I look back at my three favorite title tracks by K-pop artists. I take my own ratings into account, but there’s a bit of wiggle room as certain songs tend to grow or fade.

September 2024 Overall Thoughts

While the first half of 2024 was quite strong, these past few months have been a bit of a slog. It’s not that there haven’t been a number of solid songs released. In fact, I gave a bunch of September tracks a high “8.75” rating. However, until yesterday I hadn’t rated a title track above a “9” since June 24th (Taemin’s Horizon was recently downgraded). That’s a long stretch of time without the kind of knockout highlights that tend to fuel my excitement. Hopefully September’s last-minute standouts portend a stronger October to come.

Most of September’s releases reminded me of this past May. Like that month, there were a handful of very strong releases fighting for a spot in my top three. Many of these tracks could have made it in and will likely find a place on my year-end countdown. It was a pretty brutal match-up for my third spot, and I want to give big honorable mentions to tracks by Vahn, BOYNEXTDOOR, RIIZE and Vanner. Each one of these could have inched their way in, and things might still flip as the months go on. Further complicating things, some of September’s best releases arrived on the very last day of the month — without time to see how they rise or fall. Basically, I’m not overly confident in my ranking.

One interesting September pattern was the steady stream of SM (or ex-SM) solo projects. Three out of four SHINee members released something, while two EXO members also got in on the action. The quality of these releases varied, but I love seeing “older” artists continue to thrive.

There were a few good girl group releases (and some good b-sides) this month, but on the whole my concern with 2024’s girl group sound continues. Back in the day, my listening habits were much more evenly spread between girl and boy groups, but I feel like this year’s countdown will be even more boy group focused than ever. They’re just delivering more engaging, upbeat sounds right now (at least in my opinion). I really need a new girl group to debut and totally change the prevalent trends. Could SM’s upcoming rookies be the ones to do it? We’ll know soon enough.

Speaking of girl groups, I can’t help but wax nostalgic about some upcoming reunions. Both GFriend and Lovelyz are set to embark on new projects. Please let this usher in a renaissance of melodic, ornate GFriend/Lovelyz sounds! Oh, and I also want to give a shoutout to Dragon Pony, a newly debuted band that really impressed me. They join a year of strong rookies.

J-pop had a pretty solid month with a few big highlights. I’m impressed by new group Wild Blue, while old favorites like Queen Bee and Sakurazaka46 released very solid tracks (though the former is ineligible for the top three this month because there’s no mv… yet). There was even a pleasant surprise from an artist I’d never heard of before.

The past few months have suffered from large gaps of inactivity, making promotions feel quite fractured. I don’t think that will be the case for October and November, which are both typically very busy. There have already been a ton of announcements from high-profile acts and I expect (hope?) for that to continue. We need to close the year strong!

Month Cumulative Rating: 7.9

(compiled by averaging the scores of every K-pop review from this month)