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.

December 2024 Overall Thoughts

Oh gosh, what a month for South Korea. December started with martial law and ended with a deadly plane crash. It’s just been an awful string of events for this country, making for a very fraught transition into the new year. I hope 2025 brings stability and safety.

Musically, December is never very noteworthy. There simply aren’t many new releases this month, and those that do emerge are minimally promoted as many music shows go on hiatus. I have a few decent songs in my top three but I don’t imagine any will challenge the upper half of next year’s Top 50 countdown.

Instead, December is all about the year-end music festivals and award shows. If I counted remixes, TWS’s excellent orchestral version of “hey! hey!“ would easily be my top song of the month. I’m utterly obsessed with it and have played it more than any new K-pop release this month. As Korea maintains its national mourning period, MBC’s year-end festival has been postponed and will air sometime in January. After nearly a decade of watching this event on New Year’s eve, it’s going to be weird not having K-pop usher in my new year. I’ll definitely be writing my usual recap when it does air.

On the blog, December is quite busy because it’s the month I unveil all of my many K-pop countdowns. During some years, the top honors are spread out among a wide variety of artists, but this was a year where a couple acts really dominated for me. I hope you enjoyed reading through the countdowns these past few weeks. The masterpost will be removed from the top of the blog tomorrow and shifted to the sidebar for easy access.

In contrast to K-pop, J-pop has a history of unveiling very strong material in December. All three releases highlighted in this post made my “Top 50 J-pop” countdown. Yukiakari has finally urged me to dive deeper into &TEAM’s discography and variety. I really like the song.

The transition into a new year is always exciting when I think about all the new music that awaits us. There were so many great songs in 2024 that have now become part of my life and history. I can’t help but wonder what music is lurking around the corner waiting to become part of that rich tapestry.

Month Cumulative Rating: 8.0

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