Top Three K-Pop Songs of July 2016

At the end of each month, I’ll look back at my three favorite title tracks by k-pop artists. Unlike my end-of-year countdowns, jpop and Japanese releases by kpop artists are ineligible, though I will give the great ones a spotlight. For my top three tracks, I’ll take my own ratings into account, but there is a bit of wiggle room as songs tend to grow or fade. Most important of all, I want to give my readers a chance to vote on their favorites! (poll at bottom)

July 2016 Overall Thoughts

July is supposed to be ground zero for the biggest k-pop releases of the year, marking the high point of the summer rush. And although the month provided plenty of great songs, I couldn’t help but notice that it was almost entirely devoid of any comebacks by major artists — and kind of light on comebacks, period! YG sat the entire month out, while SM held back their heavy hitters as well. And what was up with July’s final week? It may have been the sparsest week of k-pop so far this year… in the middle of summer! Regardless, the month started out incredibly strong, with all of its best tracks and albums released days apart from each other. If that had kept up throughout the entire month, we’d have something epic on our hands. As is, it was more of a head-scratcher.

Month Cumulative Rating: 7.9

(compiled by averaging the scores of every kpop review from this month)

J-Pop Worth Your Time

Beast – Whole Lotta Lovin’ (review)

Da-iCE – Paradive (review)

FTIsland – Just Do It (review)

Junho – DSMN (review)

Taemin – Sayonara Hitori (review)

Honorable Mentions

Astro – Breathless (review)

Beat Win – Your Girl (review)

Eric Nam – Can’t Help Myself (ft. Loco) (review)