The Top Three K-Pop Songs of September 2026

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 2026 Overall Thoughts I don’t usually have great expectations for September in K-pop. It tends to be a pretty dry month with the Chuseok holidays. I’m also super busy with back-to-school work and the whole month just feels very transitional. In all the years I’ve been keeping track, my top song of the year has only come from September twice (2013 and 2020), and that definitely won’t be happening again this year. With this said, September 2026 was actually a pretty sizable uptick from the past few months. Because of the holiday, releases were heavily front-loaded and back-loaded, with a wide swath of barren landscape in between. This made for some very busy blogging days, but it’s always fun to have an influx of new music. Very few of my personal faves returned this month. Instead, it was a series of pleasant surprises with strong albums from acts I’d never paid much attention to (or had been very hit or miss) in the past. One thing I really noticed this September was the gender...