Clearing house time is here! Let’s look at some of the new releases and other songs that missed roundups over the course of 2025!
Here’s the most notable new stuff that came out since roundups finished earlier this month. Note that it’s FAR from a complete list and that’s deliberate, anything that was just stunningly mid in that usual boy/girl/other/prefer not to disclose pop way has been removed. I didn’t forget, I just didn’t care.
Oh my god this is pure balls.
Not terrible just as a collection of beats, but it’s not much of a song.
Remember how I said in my prediction post that Babymonster might finally start getting their shit together soon for 2026? Well, let’s hold our horses on that prediction for the time being.
Nobody is fooled by this transparent attempt to rebrand Yves as heterosexual.
“Go make me a song like the Saja Boys” and they can’t even climb above that low, low bar for this slop.
Pretty awful, and why does BM look like he’s struggling with mouth ulcers.
I really like Daesung’s reinvention as a trot singer, even if the songs themselves are just generic crap. There’s something about the fake-ass charisma that’s required for trot that just suits him.
The Deep knows how to make a good backing track. Cool synths and fast beats help this song out a lot.
Another song which is at least reasonable, The Deep has had a very good year. This isn’t one of her better songs but it’s still got enough style to get over the line.
A pretty horrible 80s mish-mash.
This song sounds as depressing as the boys in EXO look.
HYBE are trying really hard to get that Min Hee Jin style of video direction going for Illit with all the pastiche, retro elements and collage, and they’re not quite getting there. Not that it matters as this song is kind of dull anyway so nobody’s going to notice.
Holy shit this isn’t a song it’s a receipts list.
They’re drinking coffee, folks. It’s a skip.
A reasonable rock song but could they have dialed in a worse guitar distortion sound?
Illit switch gears and are now in early Le Sserafim mode, which is cool actually because I kind of miss this sound ever since Le Sserafim themselves stoppped doing it.
Did they mean “usual” or “unusual?” Anyway I thought this was a fake background until I saw all the idiot scooter riders nearly running over pedestrians and thought “actually yep that’s real”. Notice how only one person even stops walking long enough to give a fuck to look at these girls, that’s how over crappy music we are in 2025.
They’re drinking coffee, folks. It’s a skip.
Some boring crap, holy moly. So many people went out of their way to make sure I didn’t miss this and I guess you just want me to shit on Rachel Kim’s sister becauise this is not good at all.
Yeah this is nothing much.
Someone set the tempo for this at ‘mid’.
Oh dear. Okay maybe I was a little too nasty to everything else on this list.
Hey it’s Tia from Chocolat, remember them? If you didn’t, you probably won’t start now.
Actually really good, I liked this. Cutesy but not in that way that makes you want to bash bricks up your ass.
Agreeably upbeat and nice. Also good to see Gehlee isn’t wearing her patch anymore, looks like that black eye the staff gave her has healed up nicely. Stay strong, Gehlee!
Moe like eternal shite.
Siwan from Z:EA reminds us all why he’s better off playing crypto boy in the Squid Game series than trying to reboot his failed k-pop career.
Horrible disco poop. Yoyomi has been a disappointment this year and this is a new low for her.
mrds
What in the alphabet is this crap.
Isn’t it still a little too early for Zico to appear in videos with children? I hope there was some adult supervision happening just to make sure he wasn’t sharing around his very interesting phone address book.
I’ll leave the new stuff with this. Effie is one of those awful yolo trap rappers but she gets a free pass because she leans into it hard, making the tracks as fucked up and weird as possible. She explores shit music so well it wraps around the other side and starts to become cool again.
In the end of year survey (which is still open for just a couple more days) I asked readers to pick songs that I didn’t include in roundups for featuring here. I haven’t used all your suggestions (many songs were ineligible, too boring, from years previous to 2025, already in the “new stuff” above or, most commonly of all, already covered in other roundups and you just didn’t notice the first time) but here’s the pick of what was left.
I probably got asked to cover this song more than any other. It’s okay, but nothing that great, the main problem being that the entire track is being held up by that one sampled breakbeat that was used to absolute death in the 80s and 90s, and it’s not even a very interesting reinterpolation of that sample. Any other beat would have been preferable. It’s pretty good apart from this, but that’s one hell of a weakness.
An interesting Visual Kei/ska hybrid, it’s a neat idea and the transgender theme is bold and cool but I’m not wild about the actual songwriting once I get past the sound of it. Great sounds alone are not enough to make a great song.
This song didn’t have a video worth a damn so I had to make my own, stitching together the dance practice visual with the official audio. Worth the effort in this case as the song is decent. It’s not perfect, there’s too many beat dropouts and a very odd choice of fourth chord in some repetitions of the chorus that just sounds ugly, but overall, good stuff.
Terrible funk music, a definite skip.
Some really nice instrumental textures in places, but pretty dull otherwise, just a typical “woman in white dress singing by the water” type of song.
Nothing much interesting going on here, just the usual dance kinda stuff.
Light, fluffy and boring.
Funny but just too brainless for me to really connect with. The incredibly seasickening video definitely doesn’t help.
If only the song was as interesting as the graffiti art…. oh wait, the graffiti art isn’t that intersting either, oh well. Another post-Dreamcatcher failure. Help us Siyeon, you’re our only hope!
Truly boring.
Nothing all that special coming out of these vets, at this point they should rename themselves to “Middle-aged Mid” just to manage expectations.
One of the most interesting things about fail-pail AI project Eternity/Eterniti/Iiterniti/however they’re spelling it next week is how AI has learned the same incorrect vocal miming that k-pop singers actually do in reality, where they don’t make the correct mouth shape to actually get the vocal sound that you hear.
Another song I was glad I skipped the first time around.
The hair and the guitar choices are the only thing that kept me watching this video, the song is just bland all over.
Nice try but it’s clear that SM Entertainment will never understand metal by the way they mix the vocals relative to the instruments. It just sounds too polite.
Oh wow something of decent quality that I missed. Another decent addition to H1-key’s song catalog.
Decent song, what a shame about the dreadful AI slop video, no wonder I skipped it the first time, minus a thousand points for this.
See, this is better. Fuck AI slop just get your phone and your guitar out and go to your local school or something, it costs even less.
Not bad but lame verses seriously put the brakes on what could have been a banger all the way through.
I’ll leave you with this. It’s not bad but weirdly empty, and at times I was unsure where the song begins and ends. But the clearing house post certainly ends here!
Thanks for your support in 2025! Normal Kpopalypse roundups will begin again on January 5th, 2026, and any new songs released from now forward will count to 2026 lists instead of 2025. In the meantime there’ll be the 2025 honourable/dishonourable mentions, and the best and worst lists of 2025 coming soon after that! See you then, caonimas!
