I’ve made no secret of my guilty pleasure of listening to Korean pop music. One night, a couple of my friends and I were tossing around recommendations and we eventually started just posting a little bit of everything, just for exposure, so that people could find what they liked best. I’ve decided to aggregate the results of that discussion in a couple Youtube playlists for people who happen to be looking for something new or for people are just looking to go on a nostalgia trip.
I want to note that, while I tried to keep my personal biases out of the lists, they may still be present. I sought to assemble a small set (1-3) of songs for each artist that I deemed essential. However, as with all musicians, Korean artists adopt various styles and for some people it may seem as though I have glossed over styles they deem to be essential to a specific artist. I am sorry, but I personally feel that I reduced this list to the essentials to the best of my ability. There are some groups that I do not know that much about (DAY6, TVXQ, INFINITE, etc.), and in these cases, it is very likely I completely missed the mark. If a group has less songs in the playlist, it is either because they have a uniform style or I deemed them less essential within the scope of K-pop as a whole.
I would like to give an additional shoutout to the SM STATION program, which in my opinion features some of the most interesting songs in K-pop. This program started in 2016 and seems to be an effort by SM Entertainment (one of the biggest Korean labels) to get their artists on tracks collaborating with other artists and producers. There are some fantastic tracks, and many interesting tracks that probably never would have come together to fit onto an album.