Best of 2015: Before We Begin …

Dear readers,

I’ll keep things brief.

For the newbies out there: My Top Korean Songs of 2015 is an end-of-year compilation of 50 of my favorite Korean songs I listened to in 2015 (uh, redundant much?). It’s an annual project I worked on for several years on my old blog, McRoth’s Residence, that grew to be one of my favorite things to put together for readers. As I begin to breathe life into Is This How You K-Pop?, I felt I owed it to myself to resurrect the tradition that brought me not only a lot of joy, but closer to the people who cared most about what I had to say about Korean music. (That’s you!) And so I am beyond excited to be sharing this thing with you again. And also stoked and thankful that old friend and longtime McRoth’s Residence writer Drowningn00b (who you can find writing for Korean Indie now) was down to pitch in. Before I have to cough up a tl;dr version of this intro, here are a few details to keep in mind as you speed scroll through my list to see how high I ranked your biases.

Wait, ranked? Yeah.

This year will be the first time I’m attempting to count down my Top 50 faves rather than listing them in alphabetical order (as I had done every year prior). I have always wanted to do it this way, but could never bring myself to do so for stupid integrity reasons. I guess times have changed??? In terms of ranking, it’s worth noting that I didn’t follow any particular rubric as to how high or how low each song landed in the master list this time, aside from pure preference. I mean, I titled this list my top Korean songs for a reason. You’ll find that some songs are clearly superior to others on a technical level, while some are far more compelling in completely different ways, all sorted (to the best of my ability) based on their greatness and meaning to me (and Drowningn00b). Mind you, this is nothing short of a list of feels that unravels from one song to the next quite crazily. And I love it.

I have also split the list in two. I know, how very Hollywood of me. The blog post following this intro will be Part 1, which contains songs #50 – #26. As you scroll along, you’ll come across a select handful of artists on the Top 50 labeled “Artist To Watch“. As you can guess, these are the gems that show a lot of promise right now and that we think are on a positive trajectory in their musical careers worth keeping track of. You should, too.

Lastly, songs #25 – #1 will be posted early next week – or as soon as I finish the damn thing – which should lead into my favorite albums and EPs of the year, wrapping up the most I’ve blogged in a very long time. Phew!

As you can see, I’ve got a lot of shit prepared to throw at you, so have thy bodies ready as we go live in T minus [insert however long it’s going to take me to finish eating dinner and editing before I publish …]

Yours truly,
Arnold