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.
August 2025 Overall Thoughts
In the immortal words of BABYMONSTER: “Sheesh!”
Based on recent history, I’ve decided the month of August is either feast or famine for K-pop. If you were curious how the past few years have stacked up, here’s what I’ve got:
2020: Famine (ish)
2021: Feast!
2022: Major Feast!
2023: Feast!
2024: Famine
2025: Major Famine…
If my somewhat arbitrary pattern holds up, we’re due for another famine next year before three consecutive August feasts.
At the risk of mixing metaphors, this August felt like one big punt. Few interesting things happened and not one album stuck with me for more than a listen or two. There were a couple of good singles, a couple really bad ones and a lot of dull, forgettable releases. The most notable comebacks/debuts disappointed, with Stray Kids and IVE releasing clunkers and Big Hit’s new boy group CORTIS taking a marketing and musical approach I found very off-putting.
Compared to June and July, my honorable mentions list this month is very small. There just wasn’t much I enjoyed. And though I’m technically picking a top three, only the top two songs would have any chance of competing in a more stacked month. I’d say the same thing about my J-pop choices.
Overall, the summer of 2025 was reasonably solid for K-pop releases, though they all seemed to be packed into the last two weeks of June and the first two of July. This created a really fun stretch of new music, bookended by long periods of dullness. Maybe let’s try to spread out the goods more equitably next year?
More than anything, I’m very curious to see how my year-end countdown shapes up. I’ve heard a couple SOTY contenders so far in 2025 but it still feels like I’m waiting for that one song that indisputably takes the crown. If that song does emerge in the coming months, it will almost certainly be the “latest” number one song in the history of this blog. Until now, the latest-released SOTY is Taemin’s Criminal (released on Sept 7th, 2020) followed closely by G-Dragon’s Crooked (Sept 5th, 2013). No SOTY has ever emerged from October or November. In fact, no post-September track has even breached the top three since 2018 when Golden Child’s Genie took the runner-up spot. We still have comebacks scheduled/rumored from many of my favorite acts, so this record could certainly be broken this year. I hope it is!
On a side note, this year the Chuseok holiday is in early October so I anticipate that at least the first few weeks of September should be a bit busier than normal before we get that week or two of nothing when music shows are canceled.
Month Cumulative Rating: 7.6
(compiled by averaging the scores of every K-pop review from this month)
J-Pop Highlights
New & Noteworthy J-pop: Week One
New & Noteworthy J-pop: Week Two
New & Noteworthy J-pop: Week Three
New & Noteworthy J-pop: Week Four
New & Noteworthy J-pop: Week Five
TOP J-POP SONGS OF THE MONTH
3. Party Party – Knock Me On
2. One Love One Heart – Bagucchau Ne (review)
1. King & Prince – I Know
Honorable Mentions
AB6IX – Stupid (review)
BoA – Crazier (review)
idntt – You Never Met (review)
Jeon Somi – Closer (review)
Kep1er – Bubble Gum (review)
KiiiKiii – Dancing Alone (review)
RE:WIND – Little Too Late (review)
This Month’s Risers and Fallers
This Week In K-pop: Week 1 / Week 2 / Week 3 / Week 4 / Week 5
This Month’s Global Pop Round-Up
TOP THREE SONGS
3. 8TURN – Electric Heart (review)
2. NCT Wish – Surf (review)
1. Key – Hunter (review)
Top Three K-Pop Songs Of July 2025
Top Three K-Pop Songs Of June 2025
Top Three K-Pop Songs Of May 2025
Top Three K-Pop Songs Of April 2025
Top Three K-Pop Songs Of March 2025
Top Three K-Pop Songs Of February 2025
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