tagged by dear friend sani (@baarish) go check out her list here! and also please feel free to tag me for your lists if you are doing something similar!!! love favorite/best of lists (prev lists from me: 2016, 2015)
pattern for this year would be that majority of these releases are from later in the year because i didn’t really listen to much korean music until few months ago outside of the usual girl group releases lol
from top left: in the endless zanhyang we are - inevitability under consecutive coincidence ; shin hae gyeong - my reversible reaction ; NCT 127 - cherry bomb ; uhm jung hwa - the cloud dreams of the nine ; red velvet - perfect velvet ; loona odd eye circle - mix & match ; jeon ki sung - tune in my frequency ; 75A - 75A ; dear cloud - my dear, my lover
all this is available on spotify because i’ve completely stopped downloading music in 2017 lmao so please go check it out if you use spotify! little blurbs about the albums below the cut
tagged by dear friend sani (@baarish) go check out her list here! and also please feel free to tag me for your lists if you are doing something similar!!! love favorite/best of lists (prev lists from me: 2016, 2015)
pattern for this year would be that majority of these releases are from later in the year because i didn’t really listen to much korean music until few months ago outside of the usual girl group releases lol
from top left: in the endless zanhyang we are - inevitability under consecutive coincidence ; shin hae gyeong - my reversible reaction ; NCT 127 - cherry bomb ; uhm jung hwa - the cloud dreams of the nine ; red velvet - perfect velvet ; loona odd eye circle - mix & match ; jeon ki sung - tune in my frequency ; 75A - 75A ; dear cloud - my dear, my lover
all this is available on spotify because i’ve completely stopped downloading music in 2017 lmao so please go check it out if you use spotify! little blurbs about the albums below the cut
in the endless zanhyang we are - inevitability under consecutive coincidence
ok pretentious af band name aside this album is so beautiful… really dreamy sounds and the vocalist has such a pretty airy voice that fits the atmosphere of the album so perfectly… the whole album flows really well from one song to another and the way the entire work progresses is so beautiful! “and so it goes” i’d say is my favorite song on this album and “home” is one of the best instrumentals i’ve heard in a while, so chilling. if you are into post rock / shoegaze this is definitely an album to check out.
shin hae gyeong - my reversible reaction
when you initially thought it would be another typical korean male singer-songwriter bullshit but it turns out to be something so fucking type??? this is so right up my alley!!! the way the songs on this album just suddenly HITS you (listen to “everything to me” and you will understand what i mean) is so refreshing. there’s nothing to throw away on this album, it’s fantastic.
NCT 127 - cherry bomb
lmao the SM ho in me got such a kick out of this album, no lie. but honestly i just love mark SO MUCH god he’s something else. “cherry bomb” has some of my favorite lyrics of the year (me, crying in the club: i’m the biggest hit, i’m the biggest hit on this stage…) and honestly “whiplash”.... the fucking… audacity… i still feel targeted
uhm jung hwa - the cloud dream of the nine
QUEEN! honestly i was kinda bummed that her initial mini (?) was released at the tail end of 2016 and it didn’t feel fair adding it to best of 2016 lists because it was released so late in the year, but lo and behold she dropped the full album in dec ‘17 which included all the gems from the previous pre-release, including the iconic diva song of the YEAR “dreamer”!!! the second half of this album slays though do not sleep on this one… “photographer” featuring actress jung ryeo won is phenom, as well as her latest title track “ending credit”. honestly such a solid album from the true icon of kpop… we are seriously blessed
red velvet - perfect velvet
not only is “peakaboo” the song and music video of the year this whole album is so wonderfully crafted!!! the way they placed “look”, another stellar track, right after “peakaboo” (the intro of the year y/y?) was so strategic, SM i applaud you once again and give you all my money… i also love “i just” and “perfect 10”, the latter which is like peak velvet song imo
loona odd eye circle - mix & match
i cannot believe loona hasn’t debuted yet but i also cannot wait until they debut with all the members and rewrite the history of kpop because damn they haven’t even officially debuted yet but this is the quality they’re bringing, wow! The two MV tracks are pretty af but my personal favorite is “loonatic” which is a dream of a song… it’s like listening to grimes but guilt-free… love it… kim lip is my girl tell her i love her
jeon ki sung - tune in my frequency
this is such a sweet throwback album and damn it’s so deadly catchy. it’s a perfect mix of 80’s electronic with old school korean sentimentality (“psychometry - o”). if there’s one song you NEED to listen to on this album though, it would be the collab with wedance, “turning faces”. JAM! a hundred clapping emojis! the mastermind behind jeon ki sung is jokkarlos - perhaps the most well known from fronting the iconic band bulnabang star sausage club, which i was OBSESSED with back in my early korean indie days, so although i wasn’t alive in the 80’s, this is still hella throwback… anyway it’s so good if you are into this kind of shit
75A - 75A
witchy album of the year!!! this album is mesmerizing… feminist ART… words cannot describe… how PHYSICAL this album is, it’s so great, so sensual!! honestly the way this album came to be and how vocally feminist the artist (oyo) is, it deserves all the praise. this album was also produced by graye (not to be confused with gray lmao) who brings it to this album, the sounds on this are so killer!!! “man ray system” is a jam but my ultimate favorite is “fake diamond” this is A+ shit
dear cloud - my dear, my lover
i’ve been a long-time fan of dear cloud so i was pleasantly surprised when i learned that they released an album in november. it immediately had me hooked, because it felt like coming home after years to something so intimately familiar. i also revisited this album quite a bit after jonghyun’s news, and found it really comforting while i was trying to cope with the news in my own way. beside the standout “beside you”, “sorry” and “bye dear bye” also get me really emotional. i think the magic of dear cloud’s music, which i’ve found with all their albums so far, including this one, is that it’s music that heals, no matter how sad the melodies and the lyrics might be.
a bunch of honorable mentions: taemin - move ; jonghyun - story op. 2 ; gonne choi - nomad syndrome ; we are the night - calm myself down ; sowall - favorite ; seventeen - AL1
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