Amid the non-stop countdowns and round-ups that mark the end of the year, THE BIAS LIST is celebrating an important milestone. Today is the blog’s tenth anniversary!
Jeez. Ten years. In theory, a decade doesn’t seem that long, but when you look at just how much changes in that time it’s pretty astounding. For the past few weeks, I’ve been trying to map out what this anniversary post would look like. Do I do some big, momentous countdown? (too much work) Something super personal? (not really my thing) Simply embed the YouTube video for The Chaser and call it a day? (tempting…)
When it comes down to it, anniversaries are a good opportunity to look back, and there’s a lot to look back at over these past ten years.
Actually, it’s been longer than ten years. I first started blogging about music nineteen years ago. When I first launched THE BIAS LIST, it was just as I was starting to feel left behind by the global pop music I had coveted for so long. K-pop had taken over my playlists for awhile and showed no sign of letting up, so I decided to make it my hobby to document, critique and celebrate the industry. I’ve since come back to global music in a big way, but those first couple years of the blog I was listened to K-pop almost exclusively. Of course, it helped that the industry was still at a very high point back then.
My first original post for THE BIAS LIST was ten years ago today, and it was a review of EXO’s Sing For You. If you scroll back to the beginning of the blog, you’ll see a few reviews dated earlier than that, but those were transitioned from my old blog and were backdated. So for the purposes of anniversaries, I consider December 27th to the be the official “start” of THE BIAS LIST.
In the time this blog has been around, we’ve seen a variety of trends come and go – musical and otherwise. In addition to K-pop’s usual sonic touchstones, we’ve been deluged with tropical pop, trap, noise music, teen crush, city pop, synthpop, future bass, “beigepop,” charismatic sing-talk and many other genres (some of which I’ve had to coin my own names for). Songs have dropped from four minutes to two minutes. Super producers were replaced by song camps. K-pop has exploded globally in ways we’d never seen before. It has transformed from a niche interest to something I regularly hear spoken about today. Produce 101 premiered and led to the glut of survival series we love and hate now. HYBE was established and quickly gobbled up many smaller agencies. We’ve moved from third gen to fourth gen and now fifth. Subtitled variety and dramas became easily accessible. Vlive came and went. The Universe app came and went (leaving many irreverent song reviews in its wake). K-pop artists went from barely touring the States to doing so regularly. You can buy K-pop in Target and Barnes and Noble today, which would have absolutely shocked my 2015 self.
Yet, around these parts of the internet not much has changed at all. Sure, my early reviews tended to be way more harsh than they are now (especially considering the wealth of great material I had to work with back in 2016), but my core style and ratings system has remained intact and I still continue to write about K-pop every damn day. In fact, as a testament to my own insanity, I’ve written about K-pop for 3,590 consecutive days without skipping a single one. Within those days I’ve published 7,345 posts with a total of over 2.6 million words. That makes me tired just reading it. Over the course of the decade, the blog has been visited over 36 million times and over 72,000 comments have been shared. A huge shout out to my top two commenters: mymagoogle and EijiDoesThings! You two must be just as crazy as I am.
My first ever comment came from a reader called nessi456 and my first negative comment came from a different visitor a month later. My prior blog only focused on music I liked and praised, so negative comments were nonexistent at the time. On that day, I still remember thinking “what have I gotten myself into?” (btw, that commenter had a great point and comes across as completely tame when compared to the unhinged stuff that goes around the internet these days).
Since its launch, THE BIAS LIST has been accessed from every country/territory in the world except Western Sahara and Svalbard (which are territories, I think?). I even managed one visit from North Korea. I’m so curious to know which post it was and the circumstances around the visit. My top “markets” are the United States, Philippines, United Kingdom, India and Canada. My top posts of all-time are:
1. Where To Buy K-pop Albums Online: The Best Stores Reviewed! (hopelessly outdated, btw)
2. The Top Ten Best Songs By SEVENTEEN
3. The Top Ten Best Songs By GOT7
4. The Top Ten Best Songs By NCT
5. The Top 40 Pop Songs of 2022 (20-1) (to this I say… WTF?)
6. Song Review: BLACKPINK – How You Like That
7. The 100 Best K-Pop Songs of All-Time: Number 1
8. Song Review: BLACKPINK – Pink Venom
9. Song Review: (G)I-DLE – Nxde
10. Grading The K-Pop Agencies 2020: BIG HIT LABELS
So, the most-viewed posts are either countdowns or reviews for songs I generally didn’t like. Great. I am happy about number seven being up there, though. Overall, my mammoth “100 Best K-pop Songs” countdown is one of my most read features. It’s also probably the most ambitious thing I’ve done on the blog over the past decade. I’m pretty proud of it, though I sometimes wonder if it needs an update.
The 100 Best K-Pop Songs of All-Time
For those who are newer to the blog, I want to link some other features and posts that I’m proud of or think would be worth your time. One of my favorite things to do on this blog is get a bit historical and look back at past decades of work. This isn’t always the most-viewed or trendiest type of project, but I’ve always thought it’s important to put music in context and learn the legacy of an industry. For this, I’d point you toward two nostalgic features:
Back To K-Pop’s First Generation
Both target the 90s and early-00s – a particular sweet spot for me and an era that doesn’t get discussed nearly enough in online K-pop/J-pop circles.
In addition to that, I wanted to link some miscellaneous features that probably won’t show up easily on a search but are fun to look back at anyway:
From Savage Garden to Golden Child: My Pop Music Timeline
Eight Lessons that 2019-era K-pop Could Learn from INFINITE’s The Chaser
Tracking K-Pop’s Trends from 2011-2017
A Love Letter to Japan’s Late-90’s Techno Trance Craze
How a Post-Produce 101 Industry is Stifling K-pop’s Creativity
K-Pop’s Top Songs of Summer (2012-2018)
R.I.P. K-Pop’s UNIVERSE App (2021-2023)
Mostly, I just want to say thanks to all of my readers — the old and the new. I really never anticipated this blog growing into what it is today and the fact that you all continue to visit is the biggest reason I continue to offer my thoughts every day. I may try to come up with a more momentous feature sometime next year to fully celebrate the blog’s decade of existence, so stay tuned for what will hopefully be a fruitful period for both K-pop and THE BIAS LIST.