2022 Year-End K-Pop Recap (& Honorable Mentions)

The tip of the 12 months on The Bias Record at all times feels just like the Okay-pop Olympics. I spend 12 months writing about each main (and most minor) releases, and all of it culminates in a weeks-long celebration of nice music.

Sure, there was nice music in 2022. We additionally needed to wade by means of a boatload of not-so-great music to seek out the good things, and the ratio of those highs and lows wasn’t fairly the place I’d wish to be. However over the subsequent few weeks, I’ll be counting down the diamonds within the tough… the pearls amongst swine. You get it.

In comparison with previous years, 2022 was usually a irritating one for me. It jogged my memory a little bit of 2020 in the truth that it had huge stretches of time with out many highlights. However, the 12 months noticed some implausible debuts and lady teams made an enormous resurgence in reputation. We’re witnessing the arrival of a brand new vanguard and I’m excited for the shift in sound they appear to be ushering in. These rookie artists have been a spotlight of an in any other case underwhelming 12 months.

2022 was extra of a combined bag for boy teams. I can’t keep in mind one other interval the place boy group releases felt so cookie cutter, slavishly following the identical template time and again. I’m an enormous fan of boy group music, so my countdown could have loads of it. However, virtually all of those favorites pushed in opposition to the 12 months’s tendencies reasonably than embrace them.

It was a bit more durable to cobble collectively my listing this 12 months. As regular, it feels considerably top-heavy. There weren’t as many 10-out-of-10 legendary songs in 2022, however I’m happy with my high ten. Probably the most stunning factor about this 12 months’s listing is which acts didn’t make the lower. Many big-name artists who’ve positioned towards the highest of my countdown previously are nowhere to be present in 2022. I feel it was a weak 12 months for Okay-pop’s a-list – at the very least with regards to high quality of music.

Because the business started to claw itself out of the pandemic, excursions and dwell reveals resumed. Fan chants have been again at full power. Everybody appeared to be travelling and assembly their followers, together with newer acts who had by no means had an opportunity to carry out in entrance of a dwell viewers earlier than. I used to be capable of attend a number of concert events myself, and these are amongst my finest Okay-pop reminiscences of the 12 months.

For individuals who like statistics, The Bias Record revealed a complete of 702 posts this 12 months, which is barely down from the 762 from 2021. That’s nonetheless over two a day on common! These posts add as much as over 246,000 phrases, which is like… three novels. In 2022, you all commented over 12,500 occasions and I’m 95% positive I’ve learn all of them. Thanks once more for interacting with my posts. It’s considered one of issues that makes this weblog value writing!

Now, for the nitty gritty specifics for countdown eligibility. Nothing has modified since final 12 months, so that is largely cut-and-paste.

For tomorrow’s essential countdown, the eligibility guidelines stay the identical:

A music should have been launched as a title, follow-up or promoted observe between December 1, 2021 and November 30, 2022.
A music have to be paired with a full music video or big-budget efficiency video (the strains get extra blurred every year).
English-language singles are eligible. Japanese singles by Okay-pop artists will likely be a part of the J-pop countdown.

It’s at all times humorous to focus on “bias” within the context of a weblog known as “The Bias Record,” however I need readers to know that this listing is very a lot my very own. It’s not cobbled collectively by committee or attempting to be goal or cater to each style. I’m positive a few of you’ll agree with the majority of my selections and others will surprise what the hell I’m pondering. Both approach, I hope you uncover (or re-discover) a music or two that click on with you.

I’ll see you tomorrow for the kickoff of 2022’s Prime 50 listing, which opens the floodgates for a number of weeks of countdowns right here on The Bias Record! Earlier than that, listed below are the ten songs that narrowly missed this 12 months’s Prime 50.