It’s time for the top 10! (Hey, I know that’s what you’re all here for anyway.) If you’re just tuning in to the list now and missed the first two days of posts, you can click the links below to read more about the creation of this list and catch up on songs #11-20.
Intro and Honorable Mentions | 20-11 | 10-1 | Individual Ballots | Stats and Wrap-up
Spotify, Apple Music, and YouTube playlists for the full top 20 plus honorable mentions are linked at the bottom: click here to skip down to playlist links.
Many of the songs in the top 10 are not going to be a surprise, and the uncertainty about their results is really just a question of ranking and score. However, there are one or two tracks that, in my opinion, overperformed relative to their recognition elsewhere and that I was pleasantly surprised to see sneak into the top 10. Also, the men are about to completely disappear—sorry, men! You had a good run yesterday!—besides one notable exception.
I’m excited to say that I was able to collect at least three blurbs for almost every song today, so you can look forward to us giving our 2023 favorites the in-depth examinations they deserve. I will also have a more lengthy reflection on this year’s results at the end of the post, but I don’t have much else to say before we begin: the writing speaks for itself. Let’s just get started!
10. IVE – I Am (70 pts)
THAT’S MY—
Anna Katrina Lockwood (4): The girl group renaissance remained ongoing last year, and IVE’s delightful “I Am” is just some excellent fuckin’ K-pop, expertly performed and precision-composed to get lodged in your ear. I count no fewer than four melodic elements introduced by the 30-second mark, and the heat never lets up from there. There’s a stupidly huge synth bassline, a guitar compressed to within an inch of its life, a dolphin whistle of a vocal moment, and some excellent variations in dynamic range. The pre-choruses being as quiet as they are is a great decision that makes the choruses following really pop: there was no single better moment in K-pop last year than the triplet vocal transitioning from the bridge into the final chorus. “I Am” felt inescapable in 2023, but rightly so—it’s a must-listen for anyone who calls themself a pop music fan.
Kayla Beardslee (7): That moment in the music video during the final chorus when the beat slams back in and the whole group power walk forward while belting out their confidence in their own purpose? That’s the art of performing and presenting pop music in a nutshell right there. Compared to IVE’s previous singles, which honed in on specific aspects of a romance, “I Am”’s general statement of self is about very little in particular—yet in its ever-expanding grandiosity, it’s also about everything.
Mo Kim (2): The hardest part of being an It Girl is that everyone’s ready to tell you who you actually are: not graceful enough, not grateful enough, not even that talented anyway, and seriously, who even eats their strawberries like that. Maybe that’s why, more than any IVE song, “I Am” feels like it belongs to Wonyoung. For two full minutes, we get IVE at their most confident, all soaring melodies, stomping electronic beats, and declarations of being “sky-high” and taking up a “big, big stage”—but then there’s the bridge, an oasis in the storm and the song’s emotional core. Wonyoung stares into a starless sky and reflects: “On a deep, dark night / Even if I lose my way,” and her members, Leeseo and Yujin, complete her thought: “Then just fly high / Anywhere you go / Will become the way.” It’s a beautiful message about self-knowledge—trusting that you’re on the right path, even when the noise of critics threatens to drown it out—and I’m glad “I Am” packaged it into one of the year’s most powerful, sparkly bangers.
9. Fromis_9 – #menow (77 pts)
We loved Unlock My World, just wait until b-side day tomorrow—
Michelle Myers (12): In less-skilled hands, this brand of polished, mid-tempo disco-adjacent pop could be dull, but Fromis_9 have excellent attention to detail, and not a single line of “#menow” goes to waste. The hashtag #menow is one you see most often under selfies and yoga beach photos, but Fromis reinterpret it as a request to be known, to be understood by others the way you understand yourself. The girls’ performances are nuanced and precise: there’s a palpable sense of tension beneath the elegant surface that animates lyrics about being bright and shiny while yearning for something more real.
Rachel Saywitz (1): Fromis_9 once again captured my heart last year—“#menow” was in my top five most streamed songs on Apple Music, just under their equally excellent b-side from Unlock My World, “What I Want.” On its face, “#menow” is a retread of earlier fromis_9 material, with feathery voices, galloping electric guitars and synths, and a chorus that launches brightly into the stratosphere. It’d be close to a perfect pop song if it hadn’t already been done by them before. And yet. And yet! I can’t help but gravitate towards its infectious positivity, the way the bassline sounds like hopping up a cloud-covered staircase two at a time, how that aforementioned chorus is a slow-motion jump into the wind with a pillowy-soft landing. Maybe I just need one of these songs every year, something gentle enough to take me out of whatever dark place I’m in for a few minutes—something that can get me to shout with confidence, “I’m enough. I matter.”
8. TripleS LOVElution – Girls’ Capitalism (81 pts)
You’d better not be girlbossing when I get there—
Ryo Miyauchi (8): As a title, “Girls’ Capitalism” nicely sums up the kind of attention economy that, according to some of the girl groups dominating K-pop today, has overrun the world. But if Le Sserafim fight back against this constant push for model-perfect beauty by doubling down on their steeliness, and (G)-IDLE turn the whole farce into a campy circus, TripleS politely drop out of the race to instead invest their time on themselves and nobody else. The chorus is as didactic a statement about looks and standards as recent hits from the other two acts: “Call me beauty,” TripleS declare, “Gonna love myself in the mirror / I’m beautiful, love me better.” But paired with the nonchalant R&B production that resembles an indifferent sigh more than a call to arms, their seemingly declarative lyrics rather echo as resignation from this chase to be #flawless. The lack of showiness in “Girls’ Capitalism” becomes the point, with TripleS at their most natural and beautiful without any outside pressure to perform as someone they’re not.
Rachel Saywitz (5): Is “Girls’ Capitalism” a Marxist critique of how K-pop entertainment agencies profit off the labor, beauty, and perceived innocence of young idols? Well, no, but damn if it isn’t a great listen. TripleS’ guide to making money is almost majestic: their sprawling background vocals fade into airy echoes, while jangly guitars settle lightly below each verse. Each melody is its own honeyed groove, with so many phrases to love—the quippy scatting in each pre-chorus, the cute chirrups of “call me beauty,” that collective “la la la la la la heart” refrain. The girls sway like they are masters of their own lives, which could either be a feminist affirmation or a sinister deceit, depending on your reading. Honestly, I’m still trying to figure out the meaning myself, though I do think “Girls’ Capitalism” wouldn’t be out of place as the soundtrack to a dystopian cult. The song is just so pretty, the video so charming, and those rules for making money—“Don’t Cry, Be Rich”; “Just Be(Youtiful)”—don’t seem that difficult to follow, do they? Maybe we should give it a try…
Mo Kim (1): It’s worth asking, especially after watching the brilliant music video: where is the capitalism in Girls’ Capitalism? Is it in the bathroom mirror, where your classmates are poking and prodding at blemishes? The living room couch, where you lose hours catching glimpses of lives on Instagram that look more fun and glamorous than yours? Or maybe the matching outfits you and your besties spend an entire paycheck on for your last picture day together? In a precarious economy that demands most of us grind and hustle—but, like, in a relatable, down-to-earth way—is even our sense of self-worth safe from being commodified and stripped away, down to the eyes on a teddy bear? (Or the eyes watching us on a livestream?)
TripleS is in a unique position to answer that question, as an experimental group built around paid consumer participation and interaction: their model, even more than most K-pop groups, depends on the connection cultivated between its members and viewers. (Look no further than the first member, Yoon Seoyeon, literally plucked from high school and thrust into idol life without a single day of training, her entire day-to-day journey broadcast for the world to see.) Yet they’ve also proven themselves to be conceptual chameleons, with comebacks ranging from glitchy electropop and ethereal drum ‘n bass to the best GFriend tribute since, well, GFriend. “Girls’ Capitalism” smartly operates on two levels as both razor-sharp social commentary and a genuinely fantastic pop production, its sunny surf-rock sound (with reverb-soaked guitar chords and “la la la”s everywhere) acting as a Trojan Horse for lyrics that interrogate how much our vision of self-love is colored by social pressure to make that self-love marketable enough to sell. “I’ll love the me in the mirror more,” Seoyeon insists to herself on the chorus; “Call me beauty,” demands the chorus of voices around her. It’s a paradox for our times, and one I haven’t been able to stop listening to or thinking about all year.
6. (tie) Le Sserafim – Eve, Psyche & The Bluebeard’s Wife (93 pts)
Is this even a single? Sure, in the same way cornstarch and water is a solid—
Joshua Minsoo Kim (6): I’ve seen more fancams of random celebrities and television characters set to “Eve, Psyche & The Bluebeard’s Wife” than any other song in my life. Consider that ubiquity a sign of its undeniable runway-ready status: that deep Korg M1 synth positions the song as deliciously retro, its pulses hard enough to telegraph something adjacent to Ballroom, while the Baltimore club sample situates this in a post-NewJeans club-music milieu. Most crucial is the vocals: the austerity with which Le Sserafim recites “I wish for what’s forbidden” only makes the weightless bridge all the more lustrous and celestial. It’s a momentary reprieve that underscores all the hard work that goes into looking fab, an idea also telegraphed in the opening line’s gauntlet throw of a thesis: “I’m a mess in distress, but we’re still the best dressed.”
Ryo Miyauchi (2): Despite the oblique title, Le Sserafim is no less overt about their against-the-grain politics in “Eve, Psyche & The Bluebeard’s Wife” than they were in singles like “Fearless” and “Unforgiven,” saying the quiet part out loud with allusions to Eve and her appetite for the forbidden. All the lyrical pretensions, however, go out the window the moment those club drums kick in and Le Sserafim swiftly get into character. It’s one thing to feel the song’s booming production from your headphones, but it’s another experience to witness the idols mid-performance, transforming into imposing figures who move with as cold a precision as the relentlessly pounding drums. Even more than their vocal declarations to rewrite the rules in their own image, their icy demeanor stands out as their most rebellious act: “Smile, smile, be a doll more,” they sing sarcastically. Paraphrasing advice from the powers above, the group responds simply by doubling down on their steeliness out of spite.
Anjy Ou (4): I never really listened to the Charli XCX and SOPHIE (RIP) collabs when they came out, but “Eve Psyche” is what I imagine it would have sounded like if Charli had met SOPHIE in her “True Romance” era. It feels a little like jersey club gone goth: the heavy synths match the lyrical themes of breaking taboos and societal restrictions to live authentically, and the repetitive “boom boom boom” is the insistent banging of a drum that refuses to let up to soothe any delicate sensibilities. Rather than being an uplifting dance track, it pulls you deeper into the dark. Le Sserafim have stayed true to their image as fearless girls since debut, but aside from “Antifragile,” this is the only time their music itself has actually sounded dangerous, like there’s something to be risked just by being themselves. Idols face a constant risk of falling from the pedestal they’re put on, not unlike the women in the song’s title, but there’s still life to be had after you land face down in the dirt. Maybe surrendering to the fall and then getting back up and washing yourself clean is the only way to conquer your fear.
6. (tie) Onew – O (Circle) [93 pts]
Times when everyone seemed happy and I was the only one struggling / Times when I was happy and others were lonely in the long night—
Anna Katrina Lockwood (6): The trends have moved away from having dudes who sing as well as Onew in K-pop groups, and that’s a goddamn shame. Part of the reason “O (Circle)” hit so hard for me is because it’s so refreshing to hear all these vocal gears engaged in the year 2023. But this is also just a very good song, with lyrics so excellent they leave me awestruck. “O (Circle)” is balanced: there’s a sense of immenseness and grief to it, but also of the majesty of being alive, and it somehow avoids the mawkishness that often comes with this kind of abstract reflection. Onew is the only person who could have delivered this lovely, poignant track with any potency or pulled off its almost elegiac tone—you need a grown-ass man with some experience of the troubles of the world to sing a ballad like this, not to mention the all-time vocal talent required. This doesn’t sound like the “pop” part of K-pop at all, though as a song by a SHINee member, it surely qualifies nonetheless. Speaking of SHINee, they’ve got to be pretty close to being the K-pop group with the highest standard and greatest diversity of member solos, right?
Joshua Minsoo Kim (4): Listening to “O (Circle)” feels a lot like swimming in the ocean—when the chorus hits, Onew sounds like he’s being swept up in a sea of noise among the choir, the cycloning strings, and the bass synth that cuts through everything. It all keeps building until it feels impossibly big, and that’s the point: so much of these lyrics are about never-ending cycles, of taking part in a larger world that includes not just clouds and rain and sunshine but also people who imprint memories onto our very being. “O (Circle)” is a reminder that our lives are small, but the experiences we have are inexplicably grand; they’re the things that we treasure in our hearts forever, that make us want to fall in love, that convince us to keep on living. No other K-pop song in 2023 felt as monumental.
Michael Hong (4): “O (Circle)” opens with undulating strings, then Onew’s voice as he curls each word into the shape of a wave. No other single this year evoked such a deep sense of han: “Times when everyone seemed happy and I was the only one struggling / Times when I was happy and others were lonely in the night,” he sings, confronting the way loneliness can deepen your misery and let guilt take root inside of you. Onew reaches for gospel on the final chorus, constantly being swept towards a bigger picture, but is never fully subsumed by the choir; the call-and-response leaves space for the singer, but his voice falls into the gaps and his outstretched hand remains impossible to reach. Accepting the ensemble would render the song pointless, as “O (Circle)” is never meant to change. Round and round, it’s the same natural cycle, the same monotonous motions of greetings and farewells, the same unsympathetic “you” and exasperating “me,” again and again and again—that’s the unfortunate price of forever.
Kayla Beardslee (5): “O (Circle)” may be a story about eternity, but it’s an eternity created by an infinite amount of beginnings and endings. “The eternal cycle around the sun, the wind, the clouds, the rain, and the sea… On those waves, we drift together,” go the opening and closing lines of the chorus. Each beginning in this cycle is marked by loss, and each parting is sweetened with the promise of renewal: “Even though memories go away, something remains,” Onew reminds us. The puppet cat in the music video appears on Onew’s program Eight Stories of Eternity, presumably with just one of its nine lives left to live; this sense of age is contrasted with the muted green and blue of the artificial landscape around them (created just to be torn down again), representing the optimistic “childhood dreams of the emerald green world” that can only come from life in infancy. The song ends; your impressions of listening to it are created. You press repeat, and your previous thoughts are altered by the act of listening again. So it goes for everything we experience: one thing is destroyed, and another is created. This cycle persists in even the most intangible spaces, the world of “things you can’t hold in your hands but still have”—love, hate, hope, despair, persistence, imagination, our memories and emotions all shifting like restless waves flowing inseparably from and towards each other. Loss creates memories and influences actions. How can we be sure whether to call something an end or a beginning?
5. NewJeans – ETA (99 pts)
Everything is NewJeans—
Michael Hong (1): On “OMG,” NewJeans’ friends are there to question every new development with a crush: “They keep on asking me, ‘Who is he?’” the group cry out in breathless chorus. “ETA” again displays this camaraderie as they tell a friend to drop her good-for-nothing, cheating boyfriend, giving both advice and comfort in lines like Minji’s “I’ll give you a hand, He’s just playin’ / Boys be always lying.” The song’s specificity is what makes it such a convincing depiction of the teenage experience: Hyein, Minji, and Danielle rattle off the events in frantic fashion as if they’re piecing it all together in real-time—“The day you couldn’t come to my birthday party / The day Hyejin got in so much trouble / The day Jiwon broke up with his girlfriend”—before the chorus parrots back his pick-up lines with feigned sweetness. It’s songwriting more particular than K-pop’s used to, so illustrative that it feels like a thrilling countdown to the freedom they urge their friend toward. “What’s your ETA,” NewJeans sing-shout, written as if texted in as few characters as possible and made increasingly urgent by the boisterous horns of “Samir’s Theme.” “ETA” is a roaring call-out to your shitty soon-to-be-ex executed with effortless snap, and NewJeans let the track’s exuberance become the confidence you need to finally end things.
Kayla Beardslee (14): Last year’s list spent a lot of time unpacking the world of NewJeans’ sweet, heart-fluttering teenage crushes, but I’d like to introduce a different idea into the ring: maybe I like it when they’re a little obnoxious. “ETA” certainly stuck with me the most out of all their singles this year. “Super Shy” is a lovely song, but it’s constantly teetering on the edge of being just a little too slight—hey, if you self-proclaim yourself as super shy, then you can’t blame a listener if they glance past and don’t give you their full attention—whereas those shrill horns in “ETA” demand to be heard. The music pulses with a gleeful, untamed energy unlike anything else in their discography, yet even with the brass screeching at you and the members trading lines at a breakneck pace, it wouldn’t be a NewJeans song if they didn’t find time to slow down and glide through a perfectly smooth, casual melody along the way. In this case, that’s the prechorus where almost all the production cuts out, a much-needed space to catch your breath before you charge back into the fray (i.e. continue calling out a lame boy) with renewed vigor. Among all the excitement, Haerin’s simple entreaty in the second verse is the thesis statement: “You deserve better than that.”
4. (G)I-DLE – Queencard (138 pts)
Queencard! We’re fourth! We’re twerking on the runway!
Abby Webster (4): I went on a journey with “Queencard”—from rolling my eyes at its mind-numbing stupidity to bowing down to her as the uncontested people’s princess of 2023. I mean, what else is there to say about the boob and booty lyric heard ‘round the world? “Queencard” treats the English language with precisely the amount of respect it deserves, which is none. In the era of K-pop’s bid for global dominance, (G)I-DLE took the anti-Jungkook approach and made the least palatable song for people intolerant of K-pop’s magical nonsense. 퀸카 shit!
Ryo Miyauchi (4): Yuqi nods to Kim Kardashian as the modern icon of the cool and sexy, but the unnamed celebrity with the biggest influence on the unabashedly conceited tone of “Queencard” is Paris Hilton, eternal ambassador of hot. “My boob and booty is hot,” one of the most ridiculous hooks of the year, practically sounds like a catchphrase you’d hear from her with a pseudo-Valley girl drawl that’s so stoned, it blurs the line of irony. Especially coming from (G)I-DLE, a group who tend to emphasize cleverness and artfulness in their politically vocal singles, the hook injects “Queencard” with a satisfying shot of humor mostly unheard of in their prior songs. The whole affair might be shamelessly silly, yet their celebration of vanity is not at all insincere. Like their spiritual celebrity guide, the group get in on the joke, exuding a personality as bratty and obnoxious as the punk-rawk guitars. As (G)I-DLE commits deeply to the bit, they reveal a side of them that we’ve rarely seen.
Mo Kim (4): Last Monday, my partner and I had to pick-up some online orders from the mall. As soon as I parked, a wave of exhaustion washed over me: I’d only slept 5 hours the night before, and it took every ounce of willpower I had not to recline my seat and take a nap right then and there. Instead, I dragged myself out of my car and pulled up this song on my phone. As soon as that sleazy bassline hit, the spirit of (G)-IDLE possessed me—I whipped my head around, dodging Teslas and electric scooters, and began whispering the opening words of feminist iconoclast Minnie’s 2023 United Nations address: “Hey you / Mweol boni? / Naega jom sexy sexy banaenni?” By the time we crossed the parking lot and strutted through the automatic doors, my boob and booty was hot, all of my clothes were pink for some reason, and I was ready to shop ‘til I dropped. Such is the power of Soyeon and her disregard for the English language—whether I’m singing along, attempting to do the White Chicks dance, or rousing myself out of sleep deprivation, every line of this stupid, silly song is a direct hit of dopamine to my brain.
Many of our contributors also wrote about Queencard for The Singles Jukebox last December, including Anna (3), Michelle (4), Joshua (8), Kayla (10), and Crystal (19)!
3. Aespa – Spicy (142 pts)
On Wednesdays, the high scorers wear pink—
Abby Webster (7): Begone, vile lore! The Aespa girls are in the real world (California) now, stomping school halls as a clique rivaling the Plastics, and I couldn’t be more pleased. Don’t get me wrong: “Next Level” is a modern classic in my book, but pop acts really shouldn’t require a glossary to understand. Sometimes all you need are maxed-out synths that bang and hot girls rapping about how hot they are. This new chapter is confident and catty, but even as Aespa pose as untouchable queen bees, they’re far more relatable than they ever were as superpowered soldiers in the war against Black Mamba or whatever. With sass and swagger, they shout: “Don’t stop, be brave now / Next step, myself!” promising more real girl bops that go beyond the digital mask. I can’t wait to see it.
Joshua Minsoo Kim (7): In the span of a couple years, SM Entertainment turned from the greatest K-pop company—a title they’ve held onto for decades—into the most consistently disappointing. Aespa’s “Spicy” was one of the few exceptions to this in 2023, as it distilled SM’s characteristic clanging into an infectious party-starter. There’s a serpentine bass synth here that isn’t too far from what’s defined the group since “Black Mamba,” but everything around it is more elegantly arranged. The chorus is an alternate universe “Push It,” given an industrial bent in the way Death Grips approached “I’ve Seen Footage,” but it’s all decidedly SM: belted vocals, “Red Light”-esque builds, chromatic runs. Of all the songs SM released in 2023, “Spicy” was the only one that utilized a bevy of vocal deliveries as a multi-layered assault. Every line adds both textural and thematic heft, summarized neatly in the effortless cool of a single tossed-off line: “I’m a 10 out of 10, honestly.”
Kayla Beardslee (3): I can’t believe it took this long for Aespa to have a little fun. I’m a firm believer in the fact that most of the greatest K-pop songs—not all, but a very high percentage—are the ones that know how to have fun, rather than lean into darkness or coolness, and “Spicy” understands this better than anything else in their discography to date. It’s a wild celebration of showing off just because you can, and it’s also the song that finally made me get Aespa after two years of believing they couldn’t be my thing. Moonshine’s production veers between that deliciously abrasive grinding synth and bright, scintillating explosions of pop color as Aespa cheers, “Don’t stop, don’t be scared!” (Don’t stop doing what—being hot girls, I guess?) The rapid movement between these two modes blurs the aggressive metallic textures into something palatable, even pleasurable, and imbues the innocuous sparkly pop detours with danger and sass. But this intriguing contrast isn’t meant to be a contradiction—it’s just who they are, too complex and ambitious to be pinned down.
Last year, “Antifragile” and “Glitch” were our numbers 1 and 2, and “Spicy” channels the same energy that made us love those songs: a playful, imaginative approach to pop music unrestrained by rules or expectations, an unshakeable confidence that transfers selflessly onto the listener every time you throw it on, and—most importantly—the feeling of being just too cool (or hot) to give a damn. 10 out of 10, indeed.
2. NewJeans – Super Shy (159 pts)
Feels like we turned into NewJeans stans—
Ryo Miyauchi (1): NewJeans’ singles let you in on their crushes that no one else is allowed to know, so seeing the five of them act so obvious about their feelings in “Super Shy” seems out of character from the idols who sang a deeply private ballad like “Ditto.” Even if this honesty puts their dreamy fantasy in jeopardy, it’s tough to tell them to be more poised when you see how NewJeans revel in their infatuation, embracing the high that comes from holding on to a big secret. That tantalizing thrill in admiring a new crush from afar, unbeknownst to the other person, inspires the year’s best pop hook: “You don’t even know my name, do ya?” They sigh this line sweetly, resigned to the knowledge that they’ll never be in this person’s sights, but also deliver it like a playground taunt, teasing the info that their crush would kill to know. Enveloped in a weightless garage track that swoons like the idols at its core, “Super Shy” preserves a romance that feels too precious to grow into anything more.
Anjy Ou (8): Tag yourself: I’m the little swoon in the background after Minji sings, “When you say, I’m a dream” 🥰💖✨
Anna Katrina Lockwood (10): NewJeans’ austerity of sonic palette extends to their frequency range, which, in several songs I looked at, has an interestingly large gap in the upper-mid range. Listening to their music in between tracks from their K-pop peers makes the NewJeans songs feel almost like an anti-drop in comparison—simultaneously very distinctive and very subtle.
Joshua Minsoo Kim (2): The members of NewJeans don’t sing much above a whisper on “Super Shy,” forcing listeners to pay attention to the nuances in every line delivery. There is drama in these small moments, the best of which is the switch-up from pre-chorus to chorus: the softest Jersey club beat sits alongside forceful syllabic emphases, each phrase ending with an “ee,” before Minji breaks from the pattern to let out a sigh. “My eyes suddenly sparkle when you say I’m your dream,” she coos, before Hanni and Danielle deliver pillow-soft vocals. Their magnetic hook, “You don’t even know my name,” is sung like a curlicue. It’s a gentle sigh that’s also polysemic: wistful, comforting, and just hopeful enough.
Michelle Myers (13): For a brief time during the spring and summer of 2001, you could catch an hour of the girliest anime after school, assuming you went straight home and didn’t have orchestra or lacrosse practice. Between 4 and 5 pm, Cartoon Network would air a late-stage Sailor Moon episode followed by Gundam Wing, the greatest mecha show designed for weird eighth-grade girls. This was the first hour of Toonami, a block of action toons and shonen animes that had the same visual aesthetic as the Y2K-era toys marketed at tween boys. The commercials were all for Star Wars video games, Creepy Crawlers, and NERF guns, but the shows were surprisingly femme, and so were silky drum & bass interludes. That’s what “Super Shy” sounds like—the backtrack to a lost Toonami bumper, meant to be played over loops of magical girl transformations.
Michael Hong (8): That part in the outro where the triplet kicks overpower the steady flutter of the drum ‘n’ bass production is an age-old K-pop trick of letting the ending redefine the song. NewJeans’ shyness turns into nervousness in the face of an impending introduction: sliding closer towards you, they toss aside their jitters and daydreams and let chance take over.
A lot of us wrote about Super Shy for The Singles Jukebox, and so did Abby Webster (2) for NME!
1. NewJeans – OMG (173 pts)
This year, the NewJeans song with three #1 votes actually wins—
Anjy Ou (2): “OMG” is that first delulu stage of a relationship captured in song form. It’s addictive and adorable, like a best friend gushing to you in your bedroom about their new love, free to swoon without shyness. The best parts are obviously the chorus—Hanni sings “Oh my, oh my god” like she’s floating 20,000ft in the air—and the speedy second verse, where Minji and Danielle trip over their words to explain how their latest crush has taken over their world. Like any K-pop group, NewJeans may just be a vehicle to sell you things, but they are really good at making you feel their own teenage girl feelings along the way. You can’t go back to your teenage years (and you probably don’t want to), but you can put on NewJeans’ rose-colored glasses and sing along.
Rachel Saywitz (2): There was a point at the beginning of last year where the greatest joy in my day was seeing that a new NewJeans video had been uploaded to YouTube. I was trying to do a 30-day yoga challenge around the time “OMG” dropped, and after every session, there’d usually be a NewJeans dance practice or performance video or comeback stage in my recommendations, so I’d click on it, slump down on my yoga mat as my muscles burned, and watch with a smile that slowly grew over the course of three minutes.
There’s still something so arresting about NewJeans that worries me to an extent. As I noted in last year’s list, they catapulted to fame so quickly after their debut that I couldn’t help but wonder how much labor must be required from them—even now, Hyein and Haerin are still minors. I felt this again later in 2023, when “Super Shy” dropped and garnered not just massive success but critical acclaim across the globe. I think that’s why “OMG” is the track that ultimately made it on my ballot; it precludes all of that noise, particularly from non-K-pop fans, about how NewJeans were suddenly the K-pop crossover group because they were dancing to Erika de Casier-produced jersey club (which, to be clear, is something I also participated in). “OMG” is one of NewJeans’ oddest singles, sitting just under their bonkers Coca-Cola collaboration “Zero” (which honestly slaps a bit), but the members handle the whiplash of its structural changes like lovesick pros, hopping from cute trap verses to high-tempo garage in the chorus. There’s a soft lull in its intro and outro that plays out a bit like a fever dream, and I guess that’s why I kept gravitating towards it after a yoga session: I needed something to keep me in that euphoric post-fitness high.
Michelle Myers (2): In the strange politics of pop fandom, the fact that NewJeans have a distinct appeal among people who don’t normally like idols or K-Pop is sometimes wielded as an insult. But the best girl groups have always attracted attention from non-fans. It’s not a strike against them; it’s a manifestation of their success. Tracks like “Hype Boy” and “Super Shy” are great because they chart new ground, but “OMG” is even better because it elevates familiar territory. It is, in essence, an unpretentiously ordinary K-pop song executed to perfection. The lyrics describe a delusional crush—the most relatable subject matter if your target market is idol fans. The narrator of “OMG” lacks the resigned self-awareness found on “Super Shy,” but the unsteady combination of verb tenses in the chorus (“I was really hoping that he will come through”) belie the truth. “It’s okay to be alone, ‘cause I love someone,” Hanni sings: “OMG” is about knowing your affections won’t be returned, but believing they will anyway.
Mo Kim (3): I was obsessed with everything NewJeans did this year, from their clever blend of retro aesthetics and forward-thinking production to their trippy universe-building (and, of course, the members’ incredibly charming presence as musicians and performers). The group’s best single of 2023, “OMG,” plays perfectly to all of their strengths, with its bouncy production, frenetic sense of pace, and inventive phrasing (“he’stheonethat’slivinginmysystembaby” is a tongue-twister for sure) perfectly capturing the all-consuming giddiness of a crush. More importantly, it reminds us that these feelings of infatuation, even when they drive us up a wall, are best shared with others. Even in the video, where these five members are literally being evaluated for various delusions, they find company in each other’s flights of fancy, turning the walls of their mental ward into a dance hall for the lovesick. “I’m going crazy, right?” asks Hanni on the chorus. “OMG” responds with giddy abandon: Yes, but it’s not just you, so join the club and get this out of your system already!
For 2022’s list, I blurbed both number one and two and worked my concluding thoughts into those write-ups, since both songs were high up on my own ballot. However, neither of the top two were on my ballot this year (Team ETA), so I’m using this space to reflect on the results instead.
Of course we continue to adore NewJeans, and they continue to dominate K-pop both critically and commercially with songs that are sincere, polished, yet never overwrought depictions of the innocence and idealism of youth. NewJeans were in a very different position coming into last year’s list than this one, as evidenced by the mild vote-splitting that stopped them at #3 last year compared to the absolute blowout of the #1-2 win today. Their debut in 2022 was a surprise that we needed to take some time to catch up to and figure out how to define—and how to relate to—in the second half of the year, whereas by now we understand NewJeans’ position in K-pop very well and are happily following along as they iterate on greatness. As reflected in this year’s top two, their greatest strength remains as simple as ever: being unafraid to feel their feelings with honesty.
“O (Circle)” is the obvious outlier today, both because it is (checks note) by a man and because the depth and scale of its existential themes operate in a totally different space than the rest of the list. Any ballad is always going to have a tough time breaking into this kind of vote, and Onew making it all the way to the top 10 shows just how deeply his song moved us. I already put “O (Circle)” on my ballot at number 5, and yet as I was editing the excellent blurbs and rewatching the video many times while finalizing these posts, I kept regretting that I hadn’t somehow put it even higher. I expect it will become the most timeless song on the entire list.
Now, even though I started Day 1 by discussing the surprising lack of narrative to the year in K-pop, I came to a realization about the results while working on today’s post: Apart from the NewJeans and Onew exceptions discussed above, every single other song in the top 10 is, in some form, a girl group track about reclaiming your identity from an audience who observes and seeks to define you.
The K-pop industry is suffocating, even from the limited view of a total outsider, and so are the heavy physical and emotional expectations thrust upon globally famous pop stars who are constantly performing in every sense of the word. Not all of that may be relatable to us as everyday people watching from the sidelines, trying our best to reduce the weight of our gaze, but some of these anxieties are universal. Whether it’s on the scale of an international fandom or a colleague you just met, knowing yourself is already enough of a struggle before you add the constant fear of being judged by the people around you.
In response to these constantly present restrictions, most of the tracks in our top 10 pushed off expectations and sought to express their artists’ identities in all their facets, force, flaws, and uniqueness, without fear of what other people might think. “I Am,” “#menow,” “Girls’ Capitalism,” “Eve Psyche,” “Queencard,” “Spicy”: whether the women putting their all into these songs performed as defiant, silly, or sentimental, they fought for the right to be yourself, no matter what form it takes. Pop culture moves fast, and within a week or two we’ll all have moved on to fresh new comebacks and forgotten about the list—but this belief in your own self-worth is an idea that deserves to linger.
Playlist links available here (this includes the full top 20 as well as all honorable mentions): Youtube version, Spotify version, and Apple Music version.
The top 20 may be out, but we’re not done yet! Click here to browse our individual ballots, see answers to some bonus questions, and check out our b-side recommendations playlist.
I also posted my usual follow-up Twitter thread with commentary on the day’s results: link to that here.
Contributor credits
Kayla Beardslee has a radio show called Pop Excellence that airs weekly on WHCL.org. (Check the home page of this blog for the most up to date schedule: the current time slot is Wednesdays from 1-2 PM Eastern.) She is also on Twitter @kaylabeardslee.
Michael Hong runs a newsletter about Mandopop called Mando Gap and is on Twitter @michaelhongo.
Joshua Minsoo Kim is on Twitter @misterminsoo. He also runs the newsletter Tone Glow.
Mo Kim is on Twitter @loonacademia and @mokngpoetry. He also has a personal website, mokng.com.
Anna Katrina Lockwood is on Twitter @Anna_K_Lockwood.
Ryo Miyauchi runs a newsletter about Japanese music called This Side of Japan and is on Twitter @sneeek.
Michelle Myers runs a K-pop newsletter called RMXBB.
Anjy Ou is on Twitter @mellowyel.
Rachel Saywitz is on Twitter @thatchicksaywat. Last year, she also reviewed Y/N by Esther Yi, a book about falling in love with a K-pop star, for Electric Literature.
Abby Webster is on Twitter @absterwebby.
Also voting on the list were Juana Giaimo (@juanagiaimo), Crystal Leww (Twitter and Threads @crystalleww, Instagram @crystallnet), Jack Wannan (@jackwannan), and Iris Xie (@irisxie; Singles Jukebox writing here).
Individual ballots drop tomorrow!
Pop Excellence 