Welcome to Kpopalypse’s 100 worst songs of the 2010s! Read on to find out Kpopalypse’s favourite non-favourite songs from the previous decade!

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It’s February 2022 at the time of compiling this list and the k-pop songs have been mostly shit so far this year, haven’t they – yes they certainly have.  However it’s easy to forget that shit songs are nothing new, and we could all use a reminder that k-pop has in fact mostly sucked even back when it was supposedly “good”.  We all tend to look back at the past with rose-coloured glasses, and there’s always people saying things were better in “their day”, but the real reason why we think the past is better is because we prefer to remember the good stuff and don’t spend lots of time thinking about all the crap that also existed, so it fades from our memory.  Kpopalypse is happy to provide you with this list as a community service, to help you remember the trash from the past and help balance your overall mental state.  Or maybe it’ll just tip you over the edge into complete madness.  There’s only one way to know for sure.

Things to note:

• My opinions on songs may have changed (just slightly) back from when I first brought these songs to your attention in the yearly worst lists from 2010 to 2019, so don’t expect the same songs to be completely in the same order
• The same eligibility criteria applies as those in the yearly Kpopalypse best and worst lists (except where I fucked it up in those lists, in which case I probably fucked it up here too just to keep it consistent)
• [insert the usual disclaimer here about how it’s just my opinion and not really that important] eat shit fuckwad, if you hate this list it’s because you’re dumb, mind you most of the tadpoles who are into k-pop these days probably don’t even have a memory that stretches back to any of these songs
• This list has a companion list, The 100 Greatest K-Pop Songs of the 2010s according to Kpopalypse, weak fucks bitching about “why can’t you be more positive” might want to disregard this list here and go and read that one instead

Let’s get into it!  Bring your earplugs because it’s about to get ugly.

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The 100 Worst K-Pop Songs of the 2010s

by Kpopalypse

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100. EXO – Wolf

Originally released: 2013

Let’s kick off this with a well known anti-favourite.  While many of the songs in this list are almost instantly forgettable, most k-pop fans of a certain vintage will remember “Wolf” easily.  How could they forget?  The song was so notoriously bad that when a demo version of it leaked, many EXO fans couldn’t believe that it was real and thought that somebody was pranking them.  Not only was “Wolf” not a prank, but SM doubled down on this haphazard, disjointed, “melody as an afterthought” sound in future years, earning themselves many more places on this list.

99. Sixbomb – Chiki Chiki Bomb

Originally released: 2012

Before there was Oh My Girl chiki chika chu-ing up your eardrums and spitting them out, there was Sixbomb, who paved the way with “Chiki Chiki Bomb”.  Sixbomb’s song has more melody than Oh My Girl’s “Shark” but manages to be even less appealing, with everything sounding over-processed, plodding and dull, even the guitar solos can’t escape the overcooked digital blandifying.  

98. E.via – Chu~♡ (Pick Up! U!)

Originally released: 2010

I’ve used a live version of this song for this list, as only a shortened promo version of the official music video still exists online, not that anything much more happens in the full-length version other than even more cringe chanting and general stupidity.  The live version is notable not just for the shit music, but also E.via’s barely-concealed disgust at the concept – and you thought Loona’s Kim Lip had it tough.  E.via (now Tymee) ran a mile from this type of sound and image as soon as she was contractually able to do so, and I’m betting she would probably agree with this song’s inclusion in this list.

97. – A.KOR Black – How We Do

Originally released: 2015

A sub-unit featuring the two A.KOR rappers Kemy and Minju, who previously performed well on pre-debut mixtape releases, was a great idea in theory.  Pity that the execution was a bland p-funk style rap with overdone synthesisers flatlining the mix and a hook that wouldn’t even make the grade for a nursery rhyme.  Given the choice between going hard or going home, A.KOR went home and nobody’s seen them since.

96. Hinapia – Drip

Originally released: 2019

Formed from the ruins of the failed Pledis Entertainment group Pristin, the allegedly self-penned “Drip” was musically incoherent and screechy enough to suggest that the problems with that group may have had at least as much to do with member incompetence as they did with label mismanagement.  A weak clone of typical latter-2010’s SM style girl group material, but without SM’s production and marketing power to help it translate to a wider audience, Hinapia’s fortunes quickly dripped away.

95. Girls’ Generation – Holiday

Originally released: 2017

Of course SM themselves weren’t exempt from terrible girl group songs in the 2010s.  “Holiday” abounds with thoughtless blues-based melodies, but without any of the subtlety, passion or sincerity that makes blues-style content work in a pop song, in the very rare instances when it ever does.  Instead it’s big and brassy yet completely sterile SM sheen pounding your ears at digital zero all the way.

94. 5Dolls – Like This, Like That

Originally released: 2011

Not the worst clone of Beyonce’s “Crazy In Love” that k-pop has ever seen… or perhaps it is, I’ve lost track as there’s been so many of these.  5Dolls somehow managed to be even worse than all of Ailee and Secret’s many versions of the same thing, because in the absence of interesting melody they were at least able to inject some mild sense of character into their performances, 5Dolls unfortunately have neither.  I know I’m sounding a bit harsh here, but dogs only learn when they get hit!

93. Pungdeng-E – Ppippippappa

Originally released: 2015

One of the worst of many hideous failed Korean girl group attempts at recapturing the spark of Orange Caramel, Pungdeng-E always missed the mark with plodding tempos and juvenile melodies that sounded more like children’s TV music than Orange Caramel’s sophisticated reworkings of dance pop.  “Ppippippappa” is Pungdeng-E at their most blisteringly awful and nauseatingly childish.

92. Kim Sori – Bikini

Originally released: 2013

Kim Sori might steal some of the lyrics from Brian Hyland’s 1960 pop hit but she certainly doesn’t steal the melody, or in fact anything else about it at all.  Maybe that’s just as well because this grating electro-poop with its ear-syringing synth hook could have potentially been even worse.  Imagine how much more annoying “Bikini” could have been if it wasn’t instantly forgettable and actually got stuck in your head instead.

91. BM – Be Mine

Originally released: 2018

A song so devastatingly crap that KARD removed it completely from their own channel, presumably to prevent more reviews like this one, so you’re going to have to put up with this random “reaction video” from a fan instead as it’s the only trace of the original song anywhere that I can even find.  One day I might try to dig up the original audio and sync it to a video of my cat or something, just so you can truly hear how bad this Autotuned mess is, but I probably won’t bother, I don’t want the RSPCA on my case for animal cruelty.

90. EXP Edition – Feel Like This

Originally released: 2017

EXP Edition were some kind of western academia-borne “Korean wave study project group” that decided to put on their big boy boots and try their luck in Korea for real.  Full marks for effort and commitment but the total lack of melodic variety in their debut song killed their chances more firmly than anything else about them.

89. CL – Hello Bitches

Originally released: 2015

M.I.A’s “Bad Girls” without the dynamic shifts, the harmony changes, the production smarts, the clever lyrics, the rhythmic variety, the catchiness, or the cool concept.  I guess if you have low standards and can live without all of those things, it’s alright.

88. Teen Top – Supa Luv

Originally released: 2011

It’s all very well stealing a cool riff, and “Supa Luv” tries to do something a bit different with Super Junior’s “Sorry Sorry” synth line by adding a swing feel.  Unfortunately the vocals rub up against everything else the wrong way.  The octave hook in the chorus sounds like they’re hiccuping and the rest is just the usual electronic warbling nonsense that plagued a lot of boy group songs in the early 2010s, but worse.

87. T-ara ft. Electroboyz – Beautiful Girl

Originally released: 2011

Billed as T-ara but it’s really just T-ara’s Hyomin, mind you her voice is so heavily processed it could be literally anybody.  She’s here for name value only and her Autotuned-to-hell computerised whine adds nothing of worth.  Meanwhile Electroboyz puff their chests out and yell insipid MC cliches over a typical early Bravesound cast-off that’s devoid of all character.

86. Cocosori – Exquisite!

Originally released: 2016

Another group that rode the Orange Caramel bandwagon straight to nowhere, Cocosori at least hit the mark for speed here, drawing some heavy Japanese pop influence with the fast tempo and rapid genre shifts.  Like a lot of similarly schizophrenic J-pop, once you get over the “shock and awe” factor it becomes apparent that melody and riff writing was an afterthought, far more work seems to have been put into making the package as “random” and “virally appealing” as possible instead.  Of course it was wasted energy – trying to go viral never works, ask anyone who has ever had it happen to them if they saw it coming.

85. Jessica – Because It’s Spring

Originally released: 2017

It’s bad enough that “Because It’s Spring” is dull and ultra-conservative jazz-lite that nobody under the age of 70 should be listening to, much less performing, it’s worse that Jessica is the one performing it.  Even a skilled vocalist would have trouble making a song this bland into something more than a pedestrian snooze-along, much less a girl who has spent her entire singing career being electronically hand-held, double-tracked and aurally smoothed into oblivion. 

84. Jimin – Hey

Originally released: 2018

Writing a successful song for AOA’s Jimin called “Hey” should have been a no-brainer, given that single word comprises about 50% of all her syllables across her entire back catalogue.  The songwriters only needed to look at countless previous AOA and solo songs for a basic template of what to do.  Nevertheless, someone somehow still found a way to fuck this up, playing to none of her musical strengths, resulting in one of k-pop’s most puzzling failures.    

83. PSY ft. Snoop Dogg – Hangover

Originally released: 2014

Easily the worst of PSY’s post-“Gangnam Style” missteps, with a video that clearly took freakish amounts of hard work to put together, doing its best to distract from a shockingly lazy and puerile song.  I guess with Snoop Dogg as a collaborator PSY wasn’t about to do anything too uptempo or extraordinary, there’s rules against that kind of thing in American rap music these days.

82. Orange Caramel – Cookies, Cream And Mint

Originally released: 2013

Sometimes even Orange Caramel fail at being Orange Caramel.  “Cookies, Cream And Mint” substitutes their core sound for a haphazard J-electro-mess that would be rejected from a Perfume album for being too noisy and random. 

81. G-Dragon – Coup D’etat

Originally released: 2013

G-Dragon doesn’t fit doing this slow solo rap dirge because his whiny vocal tone rubs so heavily against the ominous atmosphere the backing track is shooting for.   Imagine your mother announcing the apocalypse in the same vocal tone she uses to call you to the dinner table when your food is getting cold.   

80. Girls’ Generation – All My Love Is For You

Originally released: 2012

The most insipid and bland song in Girls’ Generation’s catalog that somehow still made it to feature track status.  The purposelessly staged staring and standing around for no specified reason is the perfect visual accompaniment for this ploddingly generic ballad’s go-nowhere vibe.

79. TXT – Cat And Dog

Originally released: 2019

There were plenty of grinding, repetitive, pointless, sterile slow rap songs with idiotic lyrics for fuckheads in k-pop during the latter half of the 2010s, but only a few were worse than TXT’s stunningly awful “Cat And Dog”.  Even most of the group’s own fans see this song as little more than a novelty joke release to tide them over between far better tracks, and perhaps they’re right.  The fact that “feel like Cinderella naega byeonhae” is considered the lyrical highlight should tell you something about the kind of morons this track is aimed at.  Brrrrt brrrrt brrrrt!

78. S.E.S – Love [Story]

Originally released: 2016

In 2016 SM Entertainment decided to exhume veteran girl group S.E.S from the tomb, barely updating their sound in the process.  This was definitely the right move, because when S.E.S debuted the entire Korean pop scene had super-low standards for production and songwriting, so it made sense to cater to those same rock-bottom standards when bringing older groups back for the benefit of the people who actually cared about k-pop back then.  I’m sure they made at least three old deaf people really happy.

77. Girlkind – Broccoli

Originally released: 2018

Broccoli is what Korean pop performers sing about when they want to be “oh so random lol” but don’t have any actual ideas or a topic in mind.  If you dig being insulted while you listen to music, this one’s for you.

76. Luna, Hani, Solar – Honey Bee

Originally released: 2017

Lame blues-based warble where the singers just basically get a free pass to do whatever they want over a beat.  Luna and Solar happily trash the song to pieces by filling it with horrible improvisations that add nothing, only Hani actually sticks to the melody, but sadly there’s almost nothing for her to stick to.  Underwritten and oversung.

75. 2NE1 – Do You Love Me

Originally released: 2013

An attempt by 2NE1’s songwriters to recapture the group’s debut sound but the vocals sound like they were written with a completely different backing track in mind.  The detuned clashing in the choruses between the synths and the gang vocals is jarring and painful, it’s difficult to understand how it got through quality control at YG where they normally are at least good at keeping their music tonally consistent.  Maybe Teddy’s hoodie was on too tight when they were listening to final mixes and it cut off the blood supply to his ears.   

74. Jay Park – Sex Trip

Originally released: 2015

Jay Park in “sexy R&B” mode is truly a terrifying experience.  I’m yet to meet a single person in real life who finds his falsetto crooning over languid elevator music to be anything approaching sexy or even listenable, the people leaving thirst comments under his videos must surely be Russian bots sent to corrupt western democracies.

73. T-ara – Round And Round

Originally released: 2012

T-ara’s forgotten remake of Nami’s 1984 Korean hit doubled down on that song’s electro disco feel but botched everything else.  The songwriters stupidly rewrote all of harmony to be more major-chord based, breaking all of the subtlety and nuance of the original, and then as the icing on the turd added a bunch of the silly half-hearted “we’re really getting into this, honest” chanting that T-ara were also notorious for doing on live stages.  Not even the T-ara girls seem happy with it, you know the normally ultra-hard working ladies didn’t really give a shit when their actual choreographer appears in the official MV to help them get the dance right.

72. Heart Rabbit Girls – Round And Round

Originally released: 2013

The same name as the previous entry, but not the same song, “Round And Round” is just thuddingly bland all the way, with zero thought put into the melody or chord structure.  The group was an early attempt at linking each member with an “avatar”, a practice that would later be taken further by bigger k-pop agencies, pity that when stretched across those ill-fitting T-shirts the “heart rabbits” all look like Miffy with a brain tumor.  For their next comeback the group stuck to CGI, but that was equally impoverished and it was too late anyway, with the group disbanding shortly after.

71. Tiffany Young – Over My Skin

Originally released: 2018

Tiffany Hwang redefined her look (and her surname) quickly after leaving Girls’ Generation, gleefully jumping into the “sexy concepts” that were forbidden within the confines of SM Entertainment, and stamping out her name as a top-tier k-pop visual.  The music however didn’t match, and “Over My Skin” is driven by just one solitary sampled-and-looped brass and guitar interplay which can’t add enough context to Tiffany’s vocal warm-up exercises to turn them into something resembling an actual song.  She might as well have just sung over a click track and released that instead.

70. SM The Ballad – Breath

Originally released: 2014

As the original Korean idol pop agency, SM Entertainment have always been at the forefront of pushing the style and sound of the form into bold new directions, for better and worse.  However when it comes to ballads, SM play their cards as conservatively as humanly possible, creating the type of music that you came to k-pop specifically to get away from.  The gaping physical distance between Jonghyun and Taeyeon in this video is only beaten by the distance between the minds of SM’s ballad songwriters and music fans’ hearts.

69. EXO – Growl

Originally released: 2013

Someone decided that “one riff will do”, and I hope you like that riff because you’re going to hear it over 50 times during just one playthrough of “Growl”, a maddening amount of repetition that has probably only been topped in the commercial pop field by Daft Punk.  It’s good that SM Entertainment’s musicians are getting some instrument practice in but could they please run through their scale exercises in their own time.  

68. Alice Vicious – Watch And Learn

Originally released: 2015

Alice Vicious (formerly Livii) can rap anything she wants, she can barely cut through the mix at all here, where she remains a mere shadow behind the gaudy Fisher-Price tier amateur electronics.  Listening to “baby’s first phrygian riffs” loses its novelty way before the song finishes, fortunately there’s a big red power button provided at the bottom center of the screen which isn’t just decoration – it works just fine and clicking it will stop the song dead in its tracks.  Thoughtful.

67. SM The Ballad – Hot Times

Originally released: 2010

Another worthless, lazily written SM ballad collaboration, nothing more than dull rambling R&B improvisations over four endlessly cycling chords.  Rookie singer Jino, who this trash was presumably created specifically to showcase, never did another song for SM and went on to work behind the scenes at Cube Entertainment (EDIT: and is also in Pentagon apparently, which a nice reader reminded me of, which just goes to show how forgettable he is here).  Singing “Hot Times” must have really traumatised him deeply if the notoriously unhinged business practices at Cube actually started to look like the better place to stake his career path.

66. Bikiny – Dance Party

Originally released: 2012

Possibly one of the most web search-unfriendly k-pop projects in existence, good luck even finding Bikiny’s “Dance Party” let alone listening to it.  Fortunately I’ve saved you the trouble in this list, so now you can experience this Z-grade 2NE1 clone and party like it’s 2009. 

65. Fromis_9 – Fun!

Originally released: 2019

A relentless ear-smashing serve of braindead rhythms and nursery rhyme cheese, topped off with a chromatic descending chorus that even John Cage probably wouldn’t have liked.  Too abrasive and irritating to be a pop song but too timid to convincingly be anything else.

64. 2NE1 – Gotta Be You

Originally released: 2014

2NE1’s “Gotta Be You” is a long, long way down from the group’s peak, and changes tempos with all the grace of your first time driving a stick-shift, the only unifying element hanging together the messy mood and timing changes being some horrible sawtooth synthesiser noise cutting through the mix like a cheese grater across the jawbone.  

63. MOA – I’ll Call Ya

Originally released: 2014

Even the worst of k-pop songs usually get the sonic production right, but not this time, with painfully dry and reedy vocals dominating the mix, but only when the lack of compression allows them to.  The hip-grinding techno segues when the girls aren’t singing are relatively acceptable, and it says all you need to know about the quality here when the best parts of the song are the sections where there’s no actual song.

62. Girl’s Day – Kyawooddung (Tilt Your Head)

Originally released: 2010

A notoriously sterile and over-Autotuned turkey that comes up often in “worst k-pop song ever” discussions, it’s hard to believe when watching this brazenly incompetent trash that the girls from Girl’s Day would become, a few short years later, some of k-pop’s most iconic celebrities.  A neat visual touch is the “rubbing sticks to make fire” dance move which probably broke quite a few microphones during rehearsal, and maybe it’s better for all concerned that they remain unrepaired, they’ve paid their dues.

61. Honey Finger 6 – Different Positions

Originally released: 2014

You know that annoying mental jolting sensation you experience whenever your phone alerts go off, like someone applied a small burst of static electricity just behind your forehead?  Enjoy experiencing that same feeling at regular intervals throughout this supposedly “relaxing” acoustic pop song.

60. Coco Avenue – Eottae

Originally released: 2017

Whether slapping Korean lyrics onto a typical western R&B style jam and marketing it as “k-pop” is actually something that could be considered “k-pop” in reality is a subject that could be debated, and when “Eottae” came out, many tried.  What’s less uncertain is that the musical result is maudlin and funeral-paced even by “k-pop in 2021” standards, and regardless of what your favourite style of k-pop might be, this definitely isn’t it.

59. Luhan – Lu

Originally released: 2015

Luhan is “just tryna get us in the mood”, but the mood for what is the question.  Luhan’s laughably constipated moaning and incoherent mumbling turns a backing track with a reasonable amount of promise into a complete joke.  The track gets significantly musically better at the very end when Luhan finally shuts up (I can only presume he managed to empty his bowels by that point), proving that there was a kernel of a decent pop song here that could have been saved if the application of the musical ideas wasn’t so ridiculous.

58. Minty – You Do

Originally released: 2018

Minty hoaxed the k-pop world by hiding her face and making people believe it was some kind of bold feminist statement when it was in fact the exact opposite – Minty simply lied about her age to assist her fame, and would have been found out easily had she showed her facial features.  In a way she made her point indirectly, her eventual exposing proved the lengths to which women in the sexist and ageist Korean system have to “play the game” just to get anywhere.  The saddest part about it all is that there was some reasonable rap talent there, but the pissfartingly annoying high-pitched fake-girly whine that she adopted in order to complete the deception also ruined every single track she was ever part of.

57. 4Minute – What’s Your Name?

Originally released: 2013

Bravesound were notorious in the early 2010s for recycling their musical ideas and selling them off to different competing groups, they’d often give two different idol teams from two different companies nearly the exact same song with minor adjustments, just the bare minimum of changes to get over the line with k-pop fans as “different”.  So it was pretty telling that after giving 4Minute this terrifying amalgam of hard Autotune, unlistenable sonar pings and hook-deprived chanting, they didn’t see fit to try the same type of track again with anybody else.  Even k-pop agencies sometimes have standards. 

56. Busker Busker – Love, At First

Originally released: 2013

Busker Busker were huge in Korea when they were active, but there’s nothing that warrants their high status in this limp acoustic-strumming ballad.  Apart from the odd choice of falsetto chorus vocals (which pretty much guarantee that nobody can sing along to this) musically it’s just the “I’m a sensitive guy, really” song on any 90s American post-grunge snooze-rock album that you pray you don’t land on when you put the album on shuffle. 

55. Kim Tae Woo, JYP & Rain – Brothers & Me

Originally released: 2011

You can always tell when people in musical groups really don’t get along all that well, there’s all this self-conscious public closeness and unnecessary touching of each other that they do in their performances to try and force the impression of a bond that they don’t actually have in reality.  While I could of course be very wrong in this instance, and probably am, it’s hard not to read every hand on the shoulder, every embrace here as a secret power play, just because the music is so utterly lifeless that the alternative, that there’s any actual positive human emotions here at all between the three of them, seems impossible to contemplate.   

54. I.O.I – Whatta Man (Good Man)

Originally released: 2016

The team behind I.O.I’s baffling choice to cover the absolute lowest creative point of Salt N Pepa’s multi-decade long career would have resulted in disaster anyway even if they didn’t quantize the groove to a crawl and rewrite all the mediocre rapping into even more mediocre rapping. 

53. Keith Ape ft. Bryan Cha$e – Let Us Prey

Originally released: 2016

Don’t let Keith Ape fool you into thinking he knows anything about music just because he knows how to hold down one chord on a keyboard for three minutes.

52. B1A4 – A Day Of Love

Originally released: 2019

The type of ballad that is created for hardcore fans of a k-pop group only and has zero currency outside of the context of reinforcing the emotional needs of the cult, every k-pop idol group has these kind of songs but few of them make it to feature track status.  It doesn’t matter that the melody is insipid, the bass drum and snare drum are just differently-pitched versions of each other and the vocal improvisations are all random melodic cliff-drops into nowhere, because nobody is even listening, especially not the people it was designed for.

51. A-Prince – Hello

Originally released: 2012

Another bland major-scale singalong of the type that only the very lowest-tier k-pop groups ever entertain the possibility of performing.  The Jason Vorhees jumper is nice aegyo touch which demonstrates pretty aptly how the agency here didn’t really have much of a clue what was needed to make a successful boy group.  Needless to say, A-Prince didn’t last long in the cutthroat k-pop business.

50. Killagramz ft. Hash Swan – Coloring

Originally released: 2017

One of the consistently worst rappers in Korea, Killagramz is like many others of his ilk in that he’s even worse still when he decides he wants to switch gears into R&B mode and be some sort of love song crooner.  The only positive quality that R&B has (a showcase for vocal talent) is the one area where rappers (who generally aren’t schooled in singing whatsoever) are the least qualified.  A good singer couldn’t have saved this song either, but a robot voice certainly adds another layer of insincerity and laziness.

49. Red Velvet – Zimzalabim

Originally released: 2019

So brazenly awful that its low quality has become an ironic joke among the group’s fandom, “Zimzalabim” was a recycled offcut from Girls’ Generation’s “we’re so big we can just shit out any old garbage and people will lap it up like dogs” period that didn’t clear the very low bar with SM the first time around, and it shows.  The style-switching is even more confusing and poorly-executed than Girls’ Generation’s “I Got A Boy“, but at least that song was good in isolated sections.  “Zimzalabim” flip-flops all over the place, never sticking to any one of its lousy musical ideas long enough for you to even care, and the result is a song that sounds like it was pieced together by an algorithm, a confused mess as random as the girls’ clothing in the video, both seemingly designed with a similar sense of “fuck it, I suppose this’ll do, our fans will accept anything, right?”

48. C-Real – Joma Joma

Originally released: 2012

A real snoozer from the appropriately-named NAP Entertainment, C-Real brought out a leaden and simplistic old-time tap-dancing concept a full year before IU showed people how to do it properly.  Judging from the promo blurb about this group, the agency actually thought this music would appeal to teenagers, but even your grandmother probably wishes this song would go harder.

47. Piggy Dolls – Trend

Originally released: 2011

A group of girls unapologetically physically heavier than the average idol, at least until their agency had other ideas and demanded that they slim down anyway, eventually replacing them with a completely different group of girls under the same name, Piggy Dolls did their best during their tiny window of opportunity to smash some Korean beauty standards.  It’s just a shame that they also didn’t have any musical standards, releasing a boring R&B song that just grinds out the same few notes over and over.  It’s a bit hard to play the “music and talent is more important than looks, damn this superficial industry” card when your song is mindlessly repetitive musical shit and so smothered in vocal processing that nobody can determine if any “talent” was actually used or not.

46. Aoora ft. Will – Slay

Originally released: 2017

Endless washes of overbearing synth are simultaneously too loud to be anything other than completely artless and ham-fisted, and not loud enough because unfortunately some of the awful singing and rapping is still slightly audible behind it.  A whiny monologue by noted misogynist fat-shaming asshole and generally incompetent Korean media douchenozzle Edward Avila provides the crowning turd on this flatulent mistake of a song.

45. Jessica – Love Me The Same

Originally released: 2016

“Love Me The Same” doesn’t sound too horrible until the instruments start arriving, appearing one by one in a chaotic rhythmic jumble that makes no sense, either with or without the context of the vocals to guide the listener.  There’s plenty of k-pop songs that are ruined by the singers doing too much random nonsense on the track, but in “Love Me The Same” the vocal lines are fairly restrained and sensible – they have to be for Jessica’s modest voice to be able to stand a chance of singing them.  Meanwhile literally every instrument that is audible sounds like it’s going on some kind of horrible arhythmic “Spinal Tap Mk II” free jazz excursion.

44. Girlkind XJR – Money Talk

Originally released: 2019

The verses with their 1970s computer game noises are annoying as fuck, the chorus with the girls dancing to those awful synthesised farts is even worse, and none of it matches or even seemingly has anything remotely to do with any of the vocal parts.  The producers of this aimless crud should have made their money talk and bought themselves a clue.

43. BigBang – Bang Bang Bang

Originally released: 2015

Crazy Frog really got ripped off on the line distribution in his k-pop debut, even the group’s token rapist was given more to do.  I guess YG decided that just three syllables in the chorus was enough, but of course it was three syllables too many.  Notwithstanding that, this failed attempt to modernise “Fantastic Baby” for some non-existent hypothetical trap-loving k-pop audience has aged like fine milk.

42. Jay Park – Welcome

Originally released: 2013

Right near the peak of all the conservative pearl-clutching and fake-woke concern over the supposed harmfulness of k-pop’s extremely tame “sexy concepts”, k-pop fans were quick to give Jay Park a free pass to sexualise himself plus whoever else he wanted to.  The accompanying music is just “Sex Trip” but even worse, so like most pornography this video is best enjoyed with the sound down.

41. April Kiss – Hello Bus

Originally released: 2011

A music video never existed for “Hello Bus“, with the impoverished group moving straight to live TV show debuts, a strategy doomed to failure in such a visual-centric style.  Due to this cost-cutting measure, few k-pop fans were made to experience the sheer annoyance and repetition of the song’s vocal lines, a bad situation for the agency but most likely a beneficial one for k-pop lovers as a whole.  Inevitably April Kiss never received a second chance and vanished from the k-pop scene as quickly as they appeared.  

40. JYJ – In Heaven

Originally released: 2011

K-pop is a style/genre/whatever-you-want-to-call-it that mostly doesn’t require raw vocal skill due to the abundance of electronic corrective mechanisms in frequent use, and where almost nobody can sing much beyond a purely functional level anyway, but where the performers tend to double-down on the vocals at every opportunity regardless just because someone feels they have something to prove.  JYJ, the group spawned from SM’s notoriously messy TVXQ breakup, probably felt like they had more to prove than most, and their persecution complex fueled this terminally egocentric wank of a ballad.  The near-acapella ending of this song is one of the greatest mistakes in k-pop ballad history.

39. Masstige – Dama

Originally released: 2017

The paradox of k-pop’s vocal skill fetish is the frequent amount of hard Autotune that was still in use at a time when hard Autotune was absolutely out of fashion globally, and k-pop producers applied it everywhere they could, including the most inappropriate of all places, such as this soft piano music.  The combination of subtle ivory-tinkling and that familiar compressed electronic buzzing vocal sound is the vegemite chocolate of sonic blends, so it’s little wonder that “Dama” fell flat in every aspect.  Of course, the girl in the video isn’t really even playing the piano, which is appropriate because the guy she’s accompanying isn’t really singing either.

38. Don Mills ft. Dbo – Yonge & Finch

Originally released: 2018

Artificial pitch correction really was everywhere over the last decade, and the trend of supposed “rappers” using it hasn’t died because far be it for any of these lazy oxygen-wasting musical thieves to resist a cheap shitty-sounding shortcut and take a singing lesson or two.  Don Mills doesn’t come away with more than a slight bruising after his duel with the robot voice, but as soon as guest Dbo takes the mic proceedings drastically veer south into the realms of pure comedy.

37. Hwang Minwoo (Little PSY) – KaTalk Song

Originally released: 2017

Hwang Minwoo AKA “Little PSY” was the kid who danced on the beach in PSY’s “Gangnam Style” video for literally three seconds, and has been using that brief moment in time as a base for trying to launch a k-pop career of his own ever since.  So far it’s gone about as well as expected, but he did manage to pick up this endorsement song for mobile messaging app KakaoTalk, which actually seems like a good fit, because when you think of annoying things on your phone that you’d rather ignore, you might potentially think of Little PSY.  Of course the window of opportunity for child stars in k-pop is quite small and he’s looking more like “Medium PSY” five years after his taste of fleeting viral fame, which is to our benefit as his voice has now matured to the point where he’s actually not as grating on the ears as the awful synthesised brass lines.

36. New.F.O – Bounce

Originally released: 2011

6Theory, the company behind a certain well-known revenge-porn spreading fake k-pop news website that nobody who calls themselves a k-pop fan or even a decent human being should ever visit, decided amidst the early 2010s Hallyu wave that they would dip their own toe into the k-pop game and launch their own group.  Of course it was a girl group because we all know what their CEO is like, and of course it was a disaster that quickly disbanded after debut because we all know what their CEO is like.  With a juvenile “UFO” concept (“New.F.O” – get it?) that could only have been thought up by someone losing at Asteroids, it’s quite clear that the music here is a total afterthought, full of lame chanting, stupid semi-dubstep noises and some of the most annoying hooks girl group music has ever seen.

35. Zan Zan – Chicken Feet

Originally released: 2014

Did you know that Crayon Pop’s agency also had a male balladerring duo on their roster called Zan Zan?  I guess this type of music must seem like a license to print money in Korea given how much shit ballads clog up the charts over there, but I’m sure it’s an even more hyper-competitive field than idol pop.  The video for “Chicken Feet” features Crayon Pop’s Choa on barbecue duties and the guys from Zan Zan who look like they were told prior to the video shoot that they were doing a RUN-DMC rap remake instead of this typically overwrought balladeering trash.  No wonder they’re crying all the way through the music video, who wouldn’t be.

34. B-Free ft. Play$tar & Sway D – Kawasaki

Originally released: 2015

The sonic similarity between this song and Throbbing Gristle’s equal parts iconic and disturbing “Hamburger Lady” is uncanny, and demonstrates just how far ahead of their time the British 1970s industrial group really were.  However Throbbing Gristle weren’t specifically trying to make music that a person might actually enjoy, so their success is certainly B-Free’s failure, as I can only presume B-Free made “Kawasaki” in the possible hope that somebody might give a shit, or at least be tempted to buy a motorcycle.  Those noting my criticisms of Autotune earlier in this list may also wish to be made aware that this is what your favourite R&B/rappers all sound like when it’s switched off.  Whether it would have been better to leave it off or turn the Autotune all the way up is a topic that could be debated, but it’s not like there was any serious prospect of rescuing this song anyway.

33. First Bite – Move Over

Originally released: 2018

Another “western k-pop” mistake – a beat, some malformed noise loops and a bunch of budget-Hyuna chanting does not make a song worth listening to.  The usual cringe pop music braggadocio that k-pop groups seem to love when they’re doing their more hard-hitting-yet-still-disappointingly-downtempo “we wish we were Blackpink” numbers sounds even more pathetic than usual when it’s mixed so amateurishly and sung by a bunch of kids who look super uncomfortable (but then who wouldn’t, with Edward Avila bossing them around from behind the camera lens, eww gross).

32. Swings – Your Soul

Originally released: 2016

Why do the biggest pieces of shit in hip-hop always feel like they’re the most qualified to dispense quasi-spiritual life advice via useless R&B ballads?  This isn’t just a problem in Korea – every useless fuckwitted USA west coast rapper in the 90s had more songs like this than brain cells.  Where does this endless well of sheer arrogance come from?  Swings, you are a fuckwit and your limp beat sounds like ass, just go back to rapping about some girl’s titties, as least we know you’re probably sincere about that much.

31. P.O.P Con – Nol Ja Go

Originally released: 2012

Apologies for the low visual quality here – only this cruddy ultra-low resolution version still exists online of P.O.P Con’s awful “Nol Ja Go” music video, but if it makes you feel any better you’re really not missing much except a bunch of gaudy colour-clashing outfits and shit dancing.  Thankfully (or maybe not so thankfully) there’s still (just) enough musical fidelity present to be able to gauge just how terrible the vocal hooks are.

30. EXO – What Is Love

Originally released: 2012

I’m not sure what that endlessly repetitious burping out-of-phase guitar riff is supposed to add to the song, but the fact that it fits perfectly over the entire running length with no changes applied to it at all just shows the total lack of musical variety on offer here.  What’s worse than EXO’s “Growl”?  EXO’s “Growl” at half speed.

29. Coin Jackson – Feedback

Originally released: 2011

Another dose of rambling girl group garbage where they just get the girls to sing any old sloppily-written bullshit, complete with a video that won’t play in an acceptable resolution, because anyone with enough brains to know how to actually upload a video in high definition is also smart enough to disregard music this whiny and shit.

28. Young Stone ft. Bloody Web – In Your Eyes

Originally released: 2018

We’re really getting into the dregs now.  There’s barely enough sound here behind the hideous hard Autotune (again) to even qualify as a backing track.  Who hurt these people to the point where they felt like they had to make music like this.

27. Brooklyn – Go Brooklyn

Originally released: 2015

At the start of this song Jay Park says “y’all ain’t ready” and he’s certainly not kidding – I wasn’t ready for this back when it came out, and I’m still not ready now.  “Brooklyn” here clearly has no idea how to rap in time and his irritating voice has been quite obviously rhythmically stitched together and shifted around after he recorded it to fit properly under the beat (like that time someone tried to get Mark “Chopper” Read to rap), but I’ll cut him some slack since he’s minus 46 years old and probably has no idea that he’s being lied to with all the adults around him puffing his ego up every second.  It’s not his fault that he’s surrounded by delusional idiots.  I certainly have a lot less sympathy for whoever recorded this trash, and even less still for the kid’s amoral parents pimping out their own kid’s aegyo for a dollar.  Mums and dads, don’t let your tadpoles debut in k-pop, they just wind up in one of these lists, and then there’ll be tears.

26. Switch – 39°C

Originally released: 2014

Lions don’t need to tell you that they’re lions, and actually sexy songs don’t need to groan “sexy” in a “sexy” voice to convince you how sexy they are.  The song starts off cringe and the feeling of secondhand embarrasment only increases as the song progresses and the ladies gyrate uncomfortably in a way that someone, somewhere evidently though was atttractive rather than just stupid-looking.  The ridiculousness peaks with a chorus that comprises at least 75% “sexy” moaning porn fake-orgasm noises instead of actual singing, which sounds good in theory until you actually hear how they’ve done it.  It’s hard to justify this song on any level when any random pervert’s Japanese adult video collection has better music, better visuals, more authentic sexiness, and without a doubt more money given to the long-suffering performers.

25. Super Junior – Spy

Originally released: 2012

Every SM Entertainment group that lasts long enough gets lumbered with a stupid “detective” concept eventually, but why Super Junior’s version has a wacky major scale mariachi band chorus to completely destroy the sleuthing mood, and then actually leads with that chorus, like they’re proud of that shit, is beyond my understanding.  

24. Turboy – Bean Bean Bean

Originally released: 2019

Barely even a video, barely even a song.  Certainly not even worth spending any energy writing about, seeing as how Turboy didn’t spend any making it.  Next.

23. Dok2 – Riatch

Originally released: 2015

Illionaire Records have certainly been responsible for some crap over the years, and Dok2’s “Riatch” is certainly some of that crap.  Funnily enough, it’s also the only song from anyone on that label that I can actually remember.  It’s got all the usual cliches, like the bit where it’s only sub-bass, the bit where it’s only handclaps, the bit where it’s only some high-pitched synth pinging around and so on, because heaven forbid someone actually writes a proper hip-hop beat for any of these people.  Most notable of course is the idiotic chorus which doesn’t do much except call out Dok2 (pronounced “dokki”) as a materialistic idiot.  It’s fine to have money, and it’s fine to want to have money, but to sing about these things constantly just makes you sound like you’re secretly up to your eyeballs in debts you can’t pay.  Again, lions don’t need to tell you that they’re lions.

22. miss A – Breathe

Originally released: 2010

A fact that I didn’t know until researching for this list – one of the songwriters for the cacophonous mess that is “Breathe” was Australian singer and ex-TV soap-opera star Kylie Minogue, and it figures that this is a bucket of yelpy shit given that it came from the pen of someone who has been creatively involved in about three good songs over the course of 74 albums over five decades.  Let’s keep the Australians right the fuck away from k-pop, thanks – we’ve already established quite well that we can’t write pop songs even for our own country’s artists so let’s not go panhandling our knockoff wares overseas.  I’m including myself here – I solemly promise to fulfil my patriotic duty as an Australian, a citizen of the country with the confirmed worst pop songs in the globe, and never write a pop song for an artist outside my own country.  Let’s not spread the disease.  Thanks, cunts.

21. Hyomin – Mango

Originally released: 2018

Presumably trying to cash in on the late 2010’s “tropical house” trend in k-pop, “Mango” sounds more like what tropical house would sound like if you went to Mars, found an alien who had never heard music before, tried to explain what tropical house was without actually playing them any, and then fucked off out of their planet, leaving behind a xylophone and a bass drum.  The result is sparse, strange and certainly lacking any of the qualities that made the better T-ara tracks so popular… or any other songs popular, for that matter.

20. Kris Wu ft. Travis Scott – Deserve

Originally released: 2017

Sounding much creepier now than when it was released due to Kris Wu’s current incarceration for various sex crimes, there’s no bias here because I already had this song pegged as complete shit on my yearly lists long before any of Kris’ international misdeeds became known to the public.  It’s pretty easy to imagine him texting any of these creepy lyrics to his victims and I’m sure he did in fact do just that.  Of course the real problem here is the music and it’s just the same old crap as all the other hard Autotuned R&B disasters on this list, but even worse, but at least he won’t be making any more songs like this for a while.  “Deserve”, I guess.

19. Noh Sabong – Woo Ah Song

Originally released: 2019

Hey, she’s cool, okay?  No giving her shit – not allowed here, thanks.  I’m an old fuck myself so I 100% fully support anybody of her vintage trying to be a k-pop.  She just needed someone to tap her on the shoulder and tell her that the world of pop music has changed significantly since her youth and that nobody likes shit like this anymore.  Maybe play her Seo Taiji & The Boys or something, and get her up to speed a little on what’s hip these days (no NCT, let’s not rush into anything too modern now… and please don’t tell her about that group called woo!ah, you’ll just confuse the crap out of her).

18. J.Y. Park – This Small Hand

Originally released: 2019

This religious cult leader and sometimes k-pop CEO says in the intro to “This Small Hand” the following: “My dad said: the more you become successful, take more care of the people around you”.  Guess what, JYP – he wasn’t talking about your family, dumbass, of course you’re going to take care of them.  He was talking about your employees.  Get your shit together and stop jerking off in our face with these ballads nobody wants to hear, and instead try to look after your idols’ physical and mental health more.  No wonder half of them have anxiety and are collapsing on stage.  Aren’t you supposed to be a professional?  Look after your investments.  I know Korean society is superficial bullshit but you’re in a position of power where you don’t have to always play the game.  Maybe use that power to rewrite the rules a little bit more in favour of artists and people won’t keep secretly emailing me about you.  And stop signing people up to shitty NDAs, why not be the first company to abolish that borderline-illegal crap.  If you’re doing all the right things, you should have nothing to hide.  Why not actually be better than YG and SM instead of only slightly less shit?  You’re my age, grow up and take some responsibility for this idol mess.  Fuck.

17. Skrillex, Diplo, G-Dragon & CL – Dirty Vibe

Originally released: 2014

In 2014 dubstep wasn’t trendy anymore and since Skrillex only knew how to make dubstep and had no idea what else to do with a bunch of random guest artists, he just went through his sample library and spat out random nonsense noises for three minutes, hoping he might accidentally stumble on a new genre in the process.  No such luck.

16. SHINee – Everybody

Originally released: 2013

Did someone say dubstep?  By 2013 most sensible artists around the world had gotten over their personal case of the wubwubwubs, but in Korea this particular musical pandemic was still in full swing.  Enter SHINee who decided to make a dubstep song that had one very major, very obvious problem with it – the song itself couldn’t decide if it was dubstep or not.  Other SM forays into dubstep were either at least consistently all-in on the idea (like Maxstep), or saved the wub noises for the breakdown (like all the other ones), but “Everybody” changed its mind about how dubstep it wanted to be multiple times per minute, sometimes multiple times per bar of music.  If that wasn’t bad enough, the chorus was Daft Punk levels of repetitive. 

15. CL – The Baddest Female

Originally released: 2013

Not the biggest musical mistake of CL’s career (that’s further down), but perhaps the biggest mistake of YG Entertainment as a whole, the ridiculousness of “The Baddest Female” haunted everyone involved for at least a good half a decade after release.  G-Dragon said that he liked the song and didn’t understand the extreme negative reaction, which is what I would expect someone with his cloth-ears to say as his own solo songs at the time weren’t much better, but everyone else outside of the 2NE1 fandom cult knew this was absolute trash.  With just one languid, boring, noisy, lifeless, trend-riding and laughably inane song CL managed to collect all the stock invested in her as 2NE1’s charismatic leader and throw it in the bin, and her public profile arguably never recovered.  When the track was trotted out years later for the Seoul Olympics opening ceremony CL became not just a national but an international embarrassment as the entire world reeled back and exclaimed “what the FUCK was THAT?”.  Whatever it was, it was certainly bad meaning bad.

14. Artists For One Korea – Korean Dream

Originally released: 2017

Korea still isn’t united so I guess this cheesy song did jack shit in the end, didn’t it.  Did they think Kim Jong Un was going to listen to this and say “gosh I’ve had enough of being the supreme leader now”?  Maybe next time they should include some actual instructions on how to do the uniting of the two Koreas thing instead of just sloganeering, but of course they won’t do that because nobody has any real idea about how it’s going to work, and there’s even quite a lot of debate about if it’s something that should happen at all.  In the meantime nobody needs another “We Are The World” style ballad, so next time let’s save the shit singalong for until we actually have a concrete plan.

13. Henry Bloomfield – Kiss A Kumiho

Originally released: 2015

Henry Bloomfield obviously played Ahri in League Of Legends one too many times, did five minutes of reading online and decided to write a song about what a gumiho is, clearly unaware that the ultimate song on this topic had already been written.  The problem with the song is immediately hit-you-like-a-brick obvious – Henry’s horrible “soulful” vocal delivery just comes off as excessively cloying and insincere, wrecking any possible chance of the song having any appeal.  I don’t really care if this type of content is considered some kind of cultural sin by either Koreans (for wanting to fuck a nine-tailed fox, hey don’t we all), or black Americans (for expressing this desire via a shit, sanitised baby’s-first-gospel, as if that particular horse didn’t already bolt across the paddock in the 1940s), maybe it is or maybe it isn’t.  I would have been just fine with it if the music was better, but it’s not.  At least Henry paid the required sum to make the video look the part, and it’s great that he is obviously having some fun here, but I’m pretty sure he’s the only one who did.

12. g.o.d – Wind

Originally released: 2014

All k-pop groups above a certain fame level have this type of worthless “for the fans” content, designed to tug at the heartstrings specifically of those who have already fully invested in the fandom.  “Look at how big our stages are, look at how our fans love us, look how we get along behind the scenes, aren’t we all a big happy family, thank you for staying with us, don’t you want to continue to be part of this journey.”  This type of mental fairy floss is built for consumption by the cult, and the cult only, to make sure that you stay in the cult, and don’t migrate across to some other pesky upstart group or discover a better use for your time.  The music is surely garbage but it doesn’t even matter – if you don’t have g.o.d tattooed on the inside of your eyelids so you can subliminally think of the boys every time you blink, this song has nothing to do with you.

11. Hwang Minwoo (Little PSY) – Okey Dokey

Originally released: 2016

Definitely a worse song than his KakaoTalk advert (see above), the structure and vocal meter of Little PSY’s “Okey Dokey” mimicks PSY’s “Gangnam Style” fairly closely – but since it’s an unfunny balls-removed version, it only really has the effect of making you wish you were listening to that song instead of this one.

10. Sistar – Tic Toc

Originally released: 2010

Nearly impossible to find online and it’s easy to see why their agency would have been so keen to bury it, Sistar’s early promotional song for Samsung’s YEPP MP3 players (now discontinued everywhere except Africa) should theoretically be good as it uses the same chords as “Roly Poly” and a million other much better songs, but the song ended up being a classic example of how a song is much more than its harmony choices.  The Autotune here is some of the thinnest and reediest I’ve ever heard, barely even cutting through the mix at all, let alone sounding any good, and in a scene notorious for thin, reedy Autotune, that’s saying a lot.  I’m convinced that a much better audio fidelity version must surely exist that doesn’t sound like it was recorded on a ghetto blaster in the corner of a dance studio, but if there is I can’t find it, nor am I especially motivated to look for it.  EDIT: a reader actually found some better quality audio, click here if you’re curious, but be warned that high-definition shit is still shit.

9. D.G.N.A – Lucky Man

Originally released: 2017

D.G.N.A (formerly The Boss) try to convince you that they’re actually sweet, lovely, talented young men who had nothing to do with that nasty gang-rape thing over at their old agency, with a tune that sounds just like R.Kelly at his absolute worst.  Are you convinced yet?

8. Dana & Sunday – One More Chance

Originally released: 2011

If you’ve ever wondered why k-pop blew up internationally from about 2008 onward and not many years before that, it’s partly because the biggest label in k-pop SM Entertainment were funneling most of their promotional energies until that point into gospel-themed vocal-focused pop group CSJH The Grace.  Such a team was obviously never going to pass muster with international audiences (because k-pop fans say they care about vocals but they actually don’t give a shit and never have – also see Spica), yet SM did decide to give two of the group’s members “one more chance” in 2011, with this somewhat modernised comeback that uncomfortably straddled the line between the group’s usual sound and more recent comebacks by Girls’ Generation and f(x).  Needless to say, they blew it – the song was too simplistic to appeal to the few remaining CSJH fans left, and far too sterile and flat to make much of a dent with anybody else.

7. Dongkiz – Blockbuster

Originally released: 2019

Take Ray Parker Jr’s iconic theme from the film “Ghostbusters“, remove everything catchy and appealing about it that made that song a massive hit back in the 1980s, replace it with a bunch of juvenile shouting bollocks and silly major scale riffs, and you’ve got Dongkiz’ litigation-friendly “Blockbuster”.  At 2:05 the song temporarily stops and one of the group members asks “is it over?” – I don’t think I’ve ever related to a k-pop star more than at that moment.

6. Highteen – Timing

Originally released: 2018

A poverty-stricken agency aims their group for a Red Velvet style debut, but without Red Velvet’s songwriting, engineering, production style, creative direction, narrative cohesion, lyrical concepts, set design, lighting, styling, editing, costumes, makeup or choreography.  What could go wrong?  As it happens, just about everything.  At least the girls here look fairly relaxed and healthy plus the cakes look nice, I hope they got to try some.  Not going to lie – if I was in a group like this working hard on my debut production and I had to choose just one thing for the agency to get right, catering would probably be it.

5. Busker Busker – Cherry Blossom Ending

Originally released: 2012

A massively huge hit in Korea upon release, and still very popular today among not just pop music and idol fans but the general Korean population – this song still charts regularly in Korea each spring due to the entire country’s extreme case of seasonal affective disorder.  The popularity and iconic status of “Cherry Blossom Ending” simply cannot be understated.  So why is it so high in this list?  Because it’s a fucking musical dog turd, that’s why.  Clearly this awful harmonica-driven elevator music is just what the doctor ordered for a country where people work 18 hours per day at school, then 18 hours per day in the military, then 18 hours per day 7 days a week at their jobs until they fucking drop dead from exhaustion, but for people who are actually enjoying their lives and don’t burst into tears when the first spring flowers bloom because it reminds them about how they’re gradually wasting their existence in hypercapitalist slavery, you’re going to want something with a bit more pep.  

4. Keith Ape ft. JayAllDay, Loota, Okasian & Kohh – It G Ma

Originally released: 2015

More proof that music quality and popularity are not always related, I can only assume “It G Ma” became popular due to the “random” meme value of shouting nonsense phrases like “underwater squad” and “orca ninjas go rambo” to friends, which probably sounds cool in the chat or on livestream when playing computer games, but I’m not sure of its value in an actual song.  Taken as an actual piece of music rather than an excuse to spam memes in a chatroom, the lyrics of “It G Ma” are gobsmackingly juvenile, artless and stupid even by modern rap standards, and delivered over a beat that plods along with all the gusto of a Whitney Houston ballad.  I’ve watched people dance to this in real life and to get any action happening on the dance floor they actually have to pretend that the occasional hi-hat is marking the pulse of the song and dance to a beat that isn’t there, that’s how musically fucking empty this is.  At least “It G Ma” stands as proof that despite the various political and societal tensions between the two countries, Koreans and Japanese can get along just fine when they have a greater enemy to unite against and fight, it’s just a pity that the enemy in this case is our eardrums.  

3. CL – Lifted

Originally released: 2016

Don’t give me that racist crap about “cultural appropriation” – American rappers have been exporting their hip-hop culture all over the world for decades now, of course people from other countries are going to reflect their own inaccurate reinterpreted/misinterpreted versions back, why wouldn’t they, that’s just how culture works.  Method Man is in the video anyway getting due credit, that means he probably got paid a pretty penny for this, and let’s be honest that’s what really matters so this is good to see from CL – credit where it’s due, CL may have some awful music and struggles to be coherent in interviews but she’s consistently shown a clean bill of health for musician ethics where it really counts so I honestly have a lot of time and admiration for her.  If you’re going to hate on CL’s rejigged, nursery-rhymed, lyrically semi-sanitised, electronically homogenised take on Wu-Tang’s “Method Man“, don’t hate it for bullshit made-up racist Internet-hipster reasons, just hate it because it’s a stupid song that sucks and CL can’t rap (or at least simply chose not to).

2. Rui – I Don’t Care

Originally released: 2018

Absolutely fucking painful beyond belief, “I Don’t Care” is a song where literally every single element is wrong.  From the vocals to the riffs to the instrument choice, to the mixing, to the melodic writing, to the harmony, not a single sensible decision was made when creating any aspect of the track.  I actually started making a dot point list with more detail but I had to eventually stop because I ran out of dots, you can read an abridged version here or you could just listen to about ten seconds of the song if you think you can handle it.  This is entirely at your own risk, Kpopalypse.com is not liable for any ill health effects you might experience.

1. Hwang Minwoo (Little PSY) – Show Time

Originally released: 2013

Unlike the other Little PSY songs in this list, “Show Time” was recorded back when PSY’s “Gangnam Style” was very much still riding the viral wave.  This just means more pain for the listener as we’re forced to endure Hwang Minwoo’s intolerable baby-squaking, which alone would be enough to negate any and all positive qualities of the actual music if there were in fact any.  The kid barely has teeth at this point let alone balls so he has all the vocal grace of your friend when he scraped his knee during a bicycle accident when he was nine, and his screams are so front-and-center in the mix that you can almost feel the drops of spit landing on your face.  Of course this didn’t stop his agency from putting him in a totally age-inappropriate concept anyway (because that’s the “joke”, I guess) so if you’re the kind of person who enjoys seeing a pre-pubescent child ogling women and gyrating his crotch at the camera then this video is for you (also consider turning yourself in).  The rest of us will just sit back and scratch our heads wondering how something like this was ever made, and if anyone in the world of k-pop will ever dare to make something this tragic ever again.

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That’s all caonimas!  Hopefully you enjoyed this list, but if not, sucks to be you for having wasted your time reading this trash!  Kpopalypse will return!