Just a bunch of hootin’ and hollerin’. Kind of a High School Musical tea, except they didn't get their proverbial Zac Efron a vocal double. Can't you just imagine all the kids doing choreographed dances around the lunch tables? It's basically unlistenable except as a joke, but it's only number 10 because it makes me smile rather than frown. This is the exact sort of song where it drops and you're like YESSSS (<--sickos). We all love putting this shit on our worst lists. The way that one kid goes “OOOOOOH yeah” is Jonas Brothers-esque in its constipation. There's some guy-shaped Chipmunk that they're like, torturing these sounds out of. By slowly moving a cement rolling pin up his body.

I sorta want to root for Le Sserafim, but I think that Yunjin, their loudest creative voice, sees herself as “the Michelle Visage of Kpop”, which is a) an insane title to have and b) a title already held by Mamamoo’s Solar and/or Chung Ha. Regardless, I can't hate on them for bold creative decisions influenced by Queer artists they admire. I can definitely hate on them for chewing up this admiration and regurgitating it back out onto the audience’s plates in slimy, sour lumps. That “eat, it, up, eat it, eat it” refrain is actually disgusting, especially with the retching(???) sounds in the background. Like what were they thinking?! The chorus is delivered in this bizarre monotone, and I do not know what they mean by “bad bitch in between your teeth”. The second half of J-hope’s verse is almost comically revolting. I shouldn't be this grossed out by a K-pop song, and I doubt this is a John Waters situation where disgust was the reaction they were going for. Maybe Yunjin is actually the Divine of Kpop.

This is just a disaster from the very beginning, and if I was judging purely based on “least competent song construction and/or songwriting”, this would be at the top. The reason it's not higher is because it's such a fucking mess that it makes me laugh every time I hear it. Hoshi is just so fucking psychotic, you almost get a secondhand meth high just from hearing this. “Go scream when you see my face” well YEAH, you're literally trembling with stimulant-induced rage. Whoever produced this is absolutely off their rocker. Hoshi compares himself to Michael Jackson, drops a “winner winner chicken dinner” reference, claims to be stacking bills in Beverly hills (with enough whips that he can switch them, mind you), and tells the listener not to fuck with him, verbatim. Listening to this just reminds me of the story Hoshi's schoolteacher recalled, wherein Hoshi claimed that he’d be fine to die right now as long as he was dying on stage. It's too late for an intervention.

Another heater from camp SEVENTEEN, wherein they've interpolated Roy Orbison's classic “Pretty Woman” so liberally that it borders on parody. Guest rapper Lay Bankz takes up so much of the song that you barely notice the presence of Mingyu and Scoups, who seem like an afterthought. The song largely consists of that iconic riff, chanting, and Lay Bankz. There are a few bars here and there from Mingyu and Scoups, but you almost wish there weren't, because holy CHOP. I don't know what the point of this was, I don't know who the audience is, I don't know what feelings this track is supposed to evoke. At least with Hoshi's rant I understood that the message was “Hoshi is rich, as good at dancing as Michael Jackson, and will kill anyone who says otherwise”. This nothingburger of a track makes me feel like Mingyu and Scoups wouldn't even be interested in the titular babe, they'd just grunt in her general direction and then go back to fondling each other.

For a long time, I couldn't decide if this deserved to be here. It clearly has thought put into it, Jennie’s a good rapper compared to most of her peers, the production is exciting…but I just hate it. I hate it so much, and I hate that it was so impactful. It feels like an album intro moreso than anything else, and that'd be fine, but seeing it treated like an actual hit single is making me slowly go insane. Sure, Jennie delivers her two verses competently and with sufficient flow and attitude, but they are very short verses. The first one is 15 seconds, the second one is 20 seconds. I counted. This song is two minutes long. So….how does she use the rest of her time? Well, the bulk of the song is just JENNIE, JENNIE, JENNIE, JENNIE, I REALLY WANNA BE JENNIE JENNIE JENNIE JENNIE JENNIE I literally feel like the Grinch with all the noise, noise, NOISE! Just repeating her own name over and over to really make sure we don't forget her! This is marketing, not music. Jennie is McDonald's, she is Apple, she is Nike, she is Coca-Cola. She is everywhere. And she's influencing YOUR faves to employ this tactic. EVERY DAY UNTIL YOU LIKE IT!!!

Self-important drivel from a man showing clear signs of religious psychosis. Mark Lee, rap wunderkind of NCT fame, positions himself as a prophet on his debut solo album “The Firstfruit”. Kpop and Christianity have flirted with one another before, though rarely does the Lord make his presence known through music. Well, Mark is here to change that! As the song begins with a flourish of strings, Mark demands you listen to him before the floor falls out and drops us through a skittering beat onto a greasy cushion of nearly unlistenable breathy falsetto. This is the refrain, so get used to it. Despite acting like there’s some grand message to be delivered, the lyrics largely consist of “I’m great, I have something to say…” and then never saying anything besides NINETY NINE YEAH NINETY NINE. NINETY NINE YEAH NINETY NINE. NINETY NINE YEAH NINETY NINE. ONE NINE NINE NINE.

I used to root for aespa as the harbringers of hyper-kpop, but that was years ago, and they’ve had huge ups (Supernova, Armageddon, Whiplash) and downs (Spicy, Better Things, Life’s Too Short) since then. Since 2024 was such a great year for them, I had been hoping for something a lot better than “Rich Man”. Preceded by the bizarre “Dirty Work” and its seemingly coprophilic MV, nobody was sure what to expect from this. “Rich Man” is a stale, tinny, cheap-sounding rock-tinged pop throwaway disguised as a feminist anthem, which proves to be its downfall. Not only does the song sound like absolute shit (listen to that ‘la la la la la la’ refrain and the muddy guitars) but the aespa girls are absolutely unconvincing in their roles here. The original demo for ‘Rich Man’ quotes Cher’s rebuttal to her mother when the latter implored her to marry rich. Aespa’s version removes all mentions of marriage in order to avoid provoking their fanbase. Doesn’t that just tell you everything you need to know?

Much to my chagrin, Bang Chan has discovered that he can pretty much put out anything and Stray Kids will continue to grow because of their current momentum. Most people would take this moment to enjoy being at the peak, but since Bang Chan is a chronically online BPD twittercel, he instead chose to create a track that amounts to a ‘neener-neener’ taunt aimed at his haters. Stray Kids post-God’s Menu have been releasing music with something to prove, and thus this theme of ‘rebuttal’ crops up a lot in their music, even going so far as to name one of their albums after a common insult made towards their music. This should really be nothing new…I should be used to this…and yet. Opening with Bang Chan’s nasally ass going “Hip hip!” to which a crowd of backing vocals responds “Hooray!!”...ooh he’s trying to piss me off. The chorus of this song is just a chant of ‘ceremony!’ followed by WorstDropEver.mp3 and some more hip hip hoorays. The rest of the song serves as a vehicle to repeatedly drop you back into the vat of Bang Chan’s smug, shit-eating gloating and jeers.

Oops, you broke it! Right away, you dropped the song on the floor, the song is malfunctioning, the song is actively having a stroke on the ground right now. What do you mean it's “supposed to do that”?

This song is so butt-bustingly godawful that you almost have to respect it. The opening gurgles are a warning signal that soon gives way to a thick, shocking jet stream of pure shit. This is the audio equivalent of having norovirus in a shopping mall on December 23rd. I.N. trades nasal bars with Changbin, who rhymes “FIRE FIRE FIRE” with “TIRE TIRE TIRE”...and we barely have time to process how idiotic that is before we're launched into the chorus, which is just a brown, soggy explosion that blinds you with pure fecal matter before dropping the bar of the year - “the burnin’ tires keep rolling like a stage e-ffect!” Your jaw will be comfortably seated on the floor by this point in the track, meaning that Changbin takes the opportunity to shove a feeding tube of his slop into your gaping maw - the refrain. A diabolically, devilishly catchy little hook that will rattle around in your brain long after this torture is over. The vocal color of Changbin is BROWN. It takes serious skill and talent to make something this aurally stinkful. This song is the equivalent of lighting a plastic bag of dog shit on fire, leaving it on your neighbor's doorstep, and ding-dong-ditching them.