Posting Hole

pokecapn's top 30ish kpop of 2020

(the rules)

  1. anything goes. i listened to... maybe 1500 tracks to bring you these fine goods. over 460 "above the mendoza line"
  2. the song must Kick Ass per my exacting standards
  3. but first, some awards for songs that didn't make it!

previous years: 2017 | 2018 | 2019

2023 edit: I have tried to preserve as much of the original tweet thread as possible. Dead links have been fixed, images uploaded, formatting tweaked to work with cohost the blogosphere, but otherwise the order and descriptions are straight from December 31 2020, whatever that entails.

awards

The Most Mindblowing Chorus In A Song No One Will Remember Award: Berry Good - Accio

The Pryda Snare Award: ANS - Say My Name

The Literally Just "Take On Me" Award: Boyhood - Retro Love

The Every Single Song From This Group Misses The Mark, But In Really Interesting Ways, Also Whenever I See Their Name I Think About DJ Mehdi's Signatune Award: Cignature. let's go with Arisong for illustration purposes

The "No Really, The Song Is Good Too, Honest!" Award: Apink YOS - Love Is Blind

The You Can't Put A 15 Minute Long Mashup With Five Movements On The List Award: Red Velvet - 78 Tracks Full Mashup "Red Velvet Cake 2019"

The Most Likely To Be In This List If You Asked Me Again A Few Months From Now Award: (tie) LOONA - Voice, Verivery - Lay Back, IZ*ONE - Sequence

and now, the actual list!

the list

30) EXID - B.L.E.S.S.E.D

sometimes all you really need is drum and bass played completely straight

29) XUM - DDALALA

Shinsadong Tiger wakes up from over a year of hibernation and applies the formula: find a 2 year old song and take it Up to a new Level. cue the lawsuit in Five, Four, Three Two One

28) Yooa - Diver

the funk is strong with this one. the verses are... mostly just there, but this really shines in the chorus as the vocal syncopation plays off the instruments and the beat

27) Elris - This Is Me

maybe I'm just really weak to drumstep interludes, but I think this track fires on all cylinders. just the right fuel mixture of fartbass, uplifting synths, and canned samples

26) WJSN - Hola

This has the same composer/producer team as all of Cignature's songs, but somehow it's this B side where they manage to pull the reins in and completely nail the high pitched manic energy they've overshot 3-4 times with Cignature

25.5) I said Cignature too many times and now we have to watch Signatune.

25) Twice - Cry For Me

in typical JYP fashion we have a song that feels instantly familiar and fresh at the same time. the verses gradually build through a genre-blender before giving way to pounding beats and breaks, overlaid with euro-style melancholy

24) BVNDIT - Jungle

this track rides and dies on that nasty ass synth in the chorus. the fact that the beat can't make up its mind is somehow a plus

23) ONF - Sukhumvit Swimming

i believe this is best described as "coughing up into a super soaker and shooting it in people's mouths"

22) Lovelyz - Dream in a Dream

this has stuck with me because it's so out there. 140 BPM four on the floor with some freak ass cyber dollhouse thing going on. the high note run at the end is at the edge of mortal comprehension

21) Everglow - La Di Da

of all the Dua Lipa - Physical ripoffs that came out this fall, this one is bestest. it also actually fits in with Everglow's signature sound of "ridiculous brass stabs every goddamn measure" and "Yiren whispers at some point"

20) WJSN Chocome - Hmph!

it's so nice to see Orange Caramel are putting out songs again. wait, what do you mean i've got the script wrong?

19) Ryu Sujeong - Tiger Eyes

probably one of the last kind of sounds on your mind when you hear "lovelyz solo". relentless house with the female equivalent of the "horny on main" vibe that's in Taemin's lead singles. speaking of which,

18) Taemin - Criminal

definitely sends the message of "don't mess with the maestro" when it comes to riding the filth snake

17) Weeekly - Tag Me

you open a bag of "sugar in the raw" and this song falls out

16) Sunmi - pporappippam

feels almost like a "Heroine 2.0", trying to sand off what didn't work while sticking to a fusion of italo and bombastic brass

15) Cherry Bullet - Hands Up

this song is so dumb and uninspired it wraps all the way around into brilliance. all it's missing is the heys and gos

465) Cherry Bullet - Hands Up, but with the Heys and Gos

alright nevermind

14) fromis_9 - Feel Good (Secret Code)

Check out fromis_9's new single "Feel Good (Secret Code)" if you get the chance. Sound of the summer.

13) Red Velvet Irene & Seulgi - Naughty

insanely competent house, like, you could probably release it to the clubs without the vocals and it'd do just fine

12) Elris - No Big Deal

if you close your eyes, you can see the neon gridlines on this retro synth soundscape, at least until some weird ass sound effects take you out of it

11) Rocket Punch - Bouncy

scene: some music studio. the composers are fucking around with synths, and land on this song's lead. one turns to the other and says "wow, that synth sounds bouncy." and the world was never the same

10) STAYC - So Bad

this has gone from like 28 to 10 over the past month and there's a good chance it'd keep climbing if there was another month to go. impossibly pop-glossy drum and bass with a chorus that drills right into your hippocampus

9) Golden Child - One (Lucid Dream)

fart bass? funk? Daft Punk? it's yours, my friend, as long as you have enough attention span

8) April - Oops I'm Sorry

i swear this clown car trap reggae mess is just an incredibly clever re-interpretation of Take On Me, and this type of freakshow ingenuity is what you can't get anywhere outside of kpop

7) (G)I-dle - Maybe

total bass envelopment. the combination of epic and plodding gives off the aura of "closing out the set at 3am" as you stumble around, figuring out how much of a friend any nearby walls are

6) GFriend - Mago

evokes about 5 different italo/hi-nrg/eurobeat songs without really directly pointing at any of them. i went searching for about 2 hours. the closest i could find was D-Essex - Victim Of Love for the pre-chorus

5) JYP duet with Sunmi - When We Disco

aside from some filter and pad effects, JYP channels italo without a hint of irony and fuckin kills it. turns out ""half air half sound"" is a dead ringer for italo vocals. and who doesn't like a good key change?

4) Itzy - Wannabe

The Speed Garage Trap Hell Massive returns with a vengeance. this whole year i've been cursed with either Yeji's part at 1:38 or the dance break instrumental barging in whenever my train of thought goes silent for a few seconds

3) WJSN - Pantomime

this song is so fucked up buck wild i have no idea where to begin or end. i don't even want to spoil it for you by mentioning why it's so good. imagine getting on splash mountain with no idea you drop. i want you to experience that

2) Dreamcatcher - Scream

while we're on a disney kick, this is the shit Blackbeard uses to boost his pirate zombie army's morale. monstrously thick guitars and brass, but the real star of the show is the polyrhythm in the chorus

1) Yukika - Shade

it's so rare that a kpop album sticks to the same concept through its tracks, never mind actually tells a story. Shade is a break-up song that's the last "real" track of an album where every previous track has been cheery and upbeat. the song itself is an expert global fusion: a little bit new-wave, italo, and city pop. it hits you in the feels so hard that after it is the outro, a 90 second lo-fi track (that still fits in the story!), seemingly there for you to recover yourself in time for the bonus tracks

Thank You For Playing (PS the whole album is good)

cool album bro but are you using notepad++ to draft your posts???