The first 6 months of 2025 were even busier than 2024, with the monthly playlists totalling 8,859 songs, an increase of 1,778 songs on last year.
My ever-trusty Last.fm stats tell me that I listened to 12,059 songs between 1 January and 30 June, covering 2,161 artists, which is 4,056 different albums, EPs and singles.
Like last year, I did a spreadsheet which shows the breakdown per month of the various types of music I logged. There are still too many OSTs, although this year I am trying to pick a top 3 for each country every month in hopes this will make it easier at the end of the year 😂.
There was a large increase in singles compared to last year. I think most of this was probably due to discovering more artists from Thailand, Indonesia, Vietnam and the Philippines.
According to Receiptify, my top 10 artists for January-June were:
B.I
EXO
Stray Kids
Xiumin
WayV
BII
Ryosuke Yamada
ALEPH
TEN
THE ROSE
I will admit to being slightly in shock that my beloved EXO lost the top spot, but given how often I listened to B.I, especially in June, it's not much of a surprise he beat them. I haven't spent much time with the group as a whole apart from on EXO day, when I listened to their entire discography (and loved every minute).
Interestingly, only 4 of the artists in this year's list appeared in last year's too. I'm sad to see Pentagon and The KingDom disappearing from the list, but as they're both on the verge of disbanding* 😭, there hasn't been anything new from them as groups for a long time now and with everything else I needed to listen to, there wasn't that much time to revisit their old work.
*The KingDom just announced they will be releasing a new album soon (finally!), but without leader, Dann, who was suddenly packed off to the military at short notice (he enlisted today😭). At this point, I've given up hope of ever hearing anything from Pentagon as a group again, although maybe Shinwon's return on 20 September might spur them into action 🤞🏻 (EXO's Sehun is back then too - we also need him to get the group back together - we need an OT9 comeback).
So, onto the lists.
Before we start, just a quick reminder that as always, they are split into the 3 categories that Spotify uses - albums, EPs, and singles - I may not always agree with the categorisation, but it's not me that decides where they sit.
Once again, OSTs got lost along the way, but Liu Yuningwill probably win everything this year anyway (including best actor in at least 2 C-dramas!). They also cover all Asian music. I haven't split it down into the different countries.
I'm going to reveal my Top 3 in each category; otherwise this post will go on for far too long and get boring, but the playlists have the full top 20 for each category.
As always, I'll be really interested to see which entries remain at the end of the year, especially with a lot of good stuff released post-June and with a lot still to come (*cough* EXO *cough* 👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻😭😭😭)
It's been a really strong year for albums, with at least the top 5 or 6 grabbing me hard and refusing to let go. But, as always, there have to be winners, and at the halfway point of the year, they are the following:
I've always had a soft spot for B.I, even before he left iKON, and especially with his growth since debuting as a soloist. But since we saw him in concert last year, my appreciation for his work has continued to expand.
Fortunately, he gave us a brand-new full-length album at the beginning of June, ruminating on the end of childhood and the onset of adulthood, the artist effortlessly capturing both elements, particularly in the MV for the lead track Ferris wheel (withHeize). I heard the album, I fell deeply in love (it spent 5 weeks at #1 in my top 5 most-listened-to albums), and I'm still listening to it now.
He also got bonus points (as he always does) for innovative album packaging, which this time included a pop-up book with a Ferris wheel, a magic card version with a pop-up fairground theatre and 2 fairytale storybooks, one each for child and adult.
Considering this album wasn't released until 23 June (yes, really!), it did a fantastic job of taking hold of my heart and not letting go. I'm not sure whether it's their best album, but it is bloody brilliant, and my love hasn't diminished in the following months. CRAVITY are a fantastic band, but are also sadly, still largely underrated despite their win on Road to Kingdom: Ace of Ace last year (which featured a whole host of underrated bands and you should definitely watch the show if you haven't seen it).
Led by the super fun lead track SET NET GO?!, this is the perfect summer boy band album.
I already knew Ryosuke Yamada, as both an actor (he is absolutely amazing in 親愛なる僕へ殺意をこめて (The Killer Inside) and as a member of J-pop band Hey! Say! JUMP, but this album surprised me, with its catchy tunes and an underlying sultriness that had me relistening again and again, and the title track RED is a banger. This is another one that's not leaving my playlist anytime soon - both this and the albums above were still in my top 5 most-listened-to albums for August, which shows how strong they all are.
If anything, there were more excellent EPs than there were albums (as is always the case - there are just more released), so it was even harder to choose a top 20, but these 3 EPs really were the cream of the crop for me in the first 6 months.
YUTA (from NCT 127) absolutely blew me away last year with his first album, Depth, and then he came back with this, and rocked my world even harder than before. It was a close toss-up between this EP and the next one as to which would make #1, but this just about won out as it has a particularly eye-catching MV for the title track.
He is releasing a full-length album in October, so it will be interesting to see where this and his new release land in the end-of-year lists, as I'm sure he'll be there.
Not content with releasing a full-length album, Stunner (which made #5 in my album list), and his work with WAYV (who will definitely be in my end-of-year list), TEN decided to release a Japanese EP too, and it's excellent. Silence, the lead track, is just about perfect.
Ah, GOT7. Our favourite mischief makers had been missing for a while, with the dreaded enlistment that curses all boy bands eventually. But with Jinyoung's release from the Army (and a spoiler given by him on discharge day 🤭), the 7 were soon back in action with this excellent EP, and the superb Python as the lead track. Really, given its length, it should have been an album, but Spotify classified it as an EP, so here it is - and very good it is too.
This is always the hardest category for me, as there are so many good songs released each month, some of which you don't fully appreciate until much later.
Unlike last year, where a couple of real favourites emerged quite early on and stayed with me (even until now, they're still regular playlist favourites), there hasn't been a track I have to listen to at least once daily in the first 6 months. But while this list is very much an 'on the day it was made' list, as songs could easily go up or down, and others, as of now missing, could have made the list at another time, all 20 are great songs and fully deserve their place, and none more so than those that made my top 3.
Sadly, no MV exists for this, so you can only hear it on streaming sites. I honestly don't know much about it or the singer, except that it's great. According to Spotify, it's Leeon's debut release, so it's likely to feature in my end-of-year list there.
BIG Naughty is one of those artists whose work and collaborations I always really enjoy and will always playlist at the end of the month for top 3, but often don't quite make it into the lists. LEE CHANYUK (AKMU), is someone I have something of a secret crush on, as he is so unapologetically weird but also a musical prodigy of the highest calibre. Putting them together was a genius idea, and this wonderful single came out of the collaboration. More, please 🙏🏻
Once again, I know absolutely nothing about REIKO, except that I love his voice and I always enjoy listening to his songs. He too, didn't produce a MV for this song, but he does have this live version from his tour, and it showcases his vocals perfectly.
AND THAT'S IT, FOLKS!
Thank you if you've stuck with the post this far. I honestly appreciate it. I'd also be really interested to know any songs, EPs or Albums that are in your lists for the first half of the year. Please feel free to share.
I'm not sure whether I'll post again this month. I'm aware that I promised a drama catch-up quite some time back, and since then I have watched a lot more dramas, some of which were actually pretty good.
I am supposed to be recuperating, but as that basically involves sitting around all day (watching other people play Hogwarts Legacy), I might get around to doing something. To be honest, sitting around all day isn't much different to being at work, except there's no stress from ridiculous deadlines and stuff, I don't need to set an alarm to get up, and best of all, I can legitimately go and have a nap whenever I want one.
Until next time, stay healthy and safe, and enjoy all the upcoming releases this month will bring.
SEPTEMBER RELEASES (I know about)
10 - 찬민 (Chanmin) - Aftereffect
10 - Yeonsoo (Alphabat) - This is How I Disappear
10 - MA55IVE THE RAMPAGE - Empire Code
10 - SixTONES - Stargaze
10 - Cody.Lee - Silver
10 - AxMxP - AxMxP
12 - BamBam (GOT7) - Dancing By Myself
12 - Junhee (A.C.E) - The First Day & Night
13 - Taemin (SHINee) - Veil
15 - Jang Wooyoung (2PM) - I'm Into
15 - IDID - I Did It
16 - D.O (EXO) & Penomeco - Dumb
17 - FTISLAND - Instinct
17 - LUN8 - Lost
17 - ORβIT - Roar
20 - Sehun (EXO) & Shinwon (Pentagon) are discharged from the military 🎉
The eagle-eyed amongst you may have noticed that I once again went missing in action and didn't post anything, even the playlist, in August. Unfortunately, this was due to ill health.
It started with me thinking that the heatwave and humidity were causing problems with my asthma, exacerbated by panic attacks (not being able to breathe does that to me), which, of course, made breathing even harder. But when a change to my medicine didn't have the hoped-for effect, and even walking about 20 feet was causing me to wheeze like a 90-year-old, I finally did the sensible thing and went to the hospital, where I ended up spending the next 8 days hooked up to an ECG monitor and an oxygen machine, while they did various tests on me.
TBH, I hadn't gone to the hospital to get help. I went to get a blood test and a chest X-ray, which the doctor had requested I do to rule out a chest infection. As I expected to feel better and have a pathological fear of both needles and hospitals, I had no intention of doing either, until I got to the stage where I really thought I was going to die (and I almost did, but that's another story).
So after 9 days in hospital, where I pretty much only listened to WayV (they became my saviours every time blood needed to be drawn, which was far more regularly than I was happy with) and the Harry Potter audiobooks (Stephen Fry version, obviously) as I kept drifting in and out of consciousness and couldn't focus on anything I didn't know well enough to pick up anywhere in the story, I finally came off the oxygen and was allowed to go home on massive sick leave, ordered to rest, and with not only July's top 3s still to sort, but the whole of August's playlist to listen to.
This was too much for me to even consider at the time, and almost 2 weeks later, I still haven't gone anywhere near it - in fact, in the week following my release, for the first time ever, my Last.fm stats couldn't provide a top 5 overview as I only listened to 18 songs all week - Chanyeol's (EXO) Upside Down and Stray Kids'KARMA (both of which are great).
I am slowly listening to the September playlist, though, and as my health improves, hopefully I should be able to catch up a bit.
On the bright side, I did get my 6-month lists done before I fell ill, so I'll post them later (no, I really will this time, I promise).
Stay safe, and look after your health - don't be like me.
Yes, I know I've been missing in action since April, but I've been really busy (no, I really have) . . . and I have a really crap memory too, so I kept forgetting to post because I only remembered I hadn't done it at a time when I couldn't. I also kept forgetting to take an electricity meter reading, but that's of slightly less interest here 😂.
Anyway, I'm here finally, only to update the July playlist and add the May and June ones, but it's a start.
Hopefully, I will post again before the end of the month giving a bit of an update of what I've been up to, but I'm still working on May's Top 3s, I've listened to less than a quarter of June's playlist and there are already 47 songs on the July one 😭 - I am sinking badly, especially as I wanted to publish a review of my top songs for the first 6 months. I will get there, but no promises when.
So the clocks went forward, and the sun came out. Now days are longer, but still, I seem to have no time.
First things first - today is EXO's 13th anniversary. These 9 guys captured my heart and show no sign of giving it back. Despite all the hard times, and we (both EXO-L's and the band members themselves are going through some right now) I love and support them all and look forward to many more years of music and fun.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY MY EXO CUTIES
I celebrated by watching their livestream during my lunch break and listening to every studio album they've released over the last 13 years (20 in total). What a great day. I'm currently feeling very content.
Last month I really slacked on the music front, as I ended March having listened to less than a quarter of the monthly playlist, which was particularly difficult as it was a huge month for music. This was mainly because I was hooked on dramas - I suddenly had a need to watch WayV's Winwin in his drama Perfect Match- which I thoroughly enjoyed, even though I had to subscribe to Netflix to watch it (thank heavens for gift cards). But having subscribed, I then felt duty-bound to catch up with as many things I've wanted to see on there as possible to make the most of the sub, so music drifted into the background.
To give this some context, I listened to 997 songs in total in March, a shockingly low number I'm sure you'll agree, when the monthly playlist alone had over 1,400 tracks, and especially when you realise that with my marathon EXO session today, I've already listened to 902 tracks in April.
Amazingly I am though, somehow, three-quarters of the way through my top 3 lists, with just the singles left to sort, and I've listened to everything on the April playlist too.
We did find time to go to a concert, seeing TOMORROW X TOGETHER, who were playing in London. It was enjoyable enough, although very loud and there was a lot of screaming; so much so that I had a headache by the time it finished.
We're doing quite well for concerts over the next few months, with Kang Daniel in May, The Rose in June and Stray Kids in July. CIX are coming to Europe in June, but alas we're unable to make it on the day they're playing London.
That's about it from me for today. I need an early night as I have 2 deliveries coming tomorrow (some food and a new vacuum cleaner (exciting, I know!)) and they both stated delivery could be from 7am onwards, which is 2 hours before I normally get up. As I've been caught out by early deliveries before, I'd best make sure I'm awake. There's plenty for me to do to fill the time. Maybe I could even start work earlier and hope I can finish early too.
I know I promised a drama review but that's still in the works. Maybe later this month? I wouldn't hold your breath waiting for it, though.
I just remembered that I was so engrossed in drama that I completely forgot to do my Receiptify for March (I know, I can't believe it), so I used the info from Lastfm instead. To be honest, 6 of the entries were always going to be Xiumin (EXO's) fantastic new album Interview X anyway.
. . . getting a post in before halfway through the month.
I'd like to say I'm getting better at posting, but we all know that's not true 😂. However, it is time for a new playlist, so here I am.
My new logging system is working brilliantly so far. Taking the time to note when I love songs at the time I play them rather than relying on my memory at the end of the month, is really paying dividends. It means that as of now, all Top 3 choices for the month are done (and yes, that includes the Chinese releases and, amazingly, OSTs). The only things outstanding are the album and EP A and B sides, which should be completed tomorrow.
This is actually even more incredible as recently I have been neglecting music for a catch-up with drama, and believe me I've watched loads this month, although I did still manage to listen to 2,172 songs.
I've just realised that I forgot to do my Receiptify stats on Friday, but I'm not sure it will make much difference and may even give some new songs for a change.
Imagine, 3 days into the month and I'm ready to focus fully on March's releases (of which there are going to be a shedload). Some of the highlights for the month are Xiumin (EXO), BTOB, SF9, Baekhyun (EXO), 8TURN, Onewe, INFINITE, Treasure, W24, Wolf Howl Harmony, Aeonit, The Boyz, Dragon Pony, One or Eight, Newbeat and Cravity.
But before we move on to March, I want to share some videos for releases that made the top spot in my lists this month. First up, is PLAVE with the lead track Dash from their excellent new EP Caligo Pt. 1.
I've always been impressed with their work since pre-debut, but this really is on another level and is propelling them up the K-pop ranks, as they totally deserve. Don't be fooled that PLAVE are some fake AI/VCR band, they're definitely not. All 5 members are real idols, who wear sophisticated mocap equipment to track all their movements for the avatars. They are all extremely talented and write and produce all their own songs and also arrange all the choreography. If this doesn't convince you, they even made it onto Killing Voice, which is well worth checking out. The link takes you to a version with English subtitles, which I didn't have the first ten or so times I watched it.
Secondly, and unlikely to be a surprise to anyone even vaguely interested in music, as it's taken the whole world by storm is the absolutely fantastic Übermensch by G-Dragon. There was never going to be any doubt that it would be a stonker of an album, but I think he managed to outdo expectations. The lead track is TOO BAD, but I absolutely adore DRAMA, and as he provided an MV for it, it would be a crime not to include it.
Kerry and Simon fromAlong For The Ride Reacts, who I've mentioned before listened to the full album on Twitch last Friday, and it was lots of fun. You can find the full stream here.
One final MV I want to share is by a Vietnamese artist, ERIK, with Dù Cho Tận Thế. Not only is the song great, but the MV is a blockbuster.
He's just released an acoustic version of the song, so I look forward to checking it out.
I'm going to leave it here as it's getting pretty late, and I think the post is long enough. I will be back soon (hopefully), with a post about all the drama I've been watching this year.
So as I said yesterday, I've finally completed my 2024 Asian Music top 20 lists. There are a lot more lists than last year, so here's the link to the Excelworkbook that has everything as well as links to the relevant playlists. As previously, I shall be listing the 2024 monthly and Top 3 playlists at the bottom of this post, as I'm deleting them from the sidebar to make way for this year's ones.
Using a single playlist each month was a good change last year and made the process much easier to keep track of, so I'm doing it again this year. I am also trying to take a bit more time to flag up the entries that I really love in an attempt to make it quicker for year-end, and also so I don't have to play through something like 3,000 songs on top of those in the January and February playlists, trying to sort out my lists.
This is already paying dividends as I sorted out all my January picks within a couple of days of the end of the month rather than a month or longer, even while I was still trying to sort the 2024 music. As long as I have time to keep my records up to date, it should be really helpful.
As a reminder, all releases are based on Spotify categorisation. I may think a 9-track release is an album, but if Spotify/the artist list it as an EP (or worse still as a single 😭) I have no choice but to accept it, as heartbreaking as that can be sometimes when tough choices have to be made at the end of the month.
I have also put all collaborations (and those with featuring artists) under the group category, and as always, these lists only relate to male artists as I rarely listen to female ones.
There are no OSTs this year as I'd lost the will to listen to the 200+ songs in that list by the time I'd finished the rest, and none stood out as obvious contenders. I may do them later, but it's unlikely.
One year I will manage to do top 20 lists that actually contain only 20 songs, but this year is not that year 😂 - although I did do better than last year.
So let's get into the details:
OVERALL STATS
According to Spotify, I listened to 98,072 minutes of music, an increase from 2023 of 28,731 minutes. Last.fm tells me that this equals 31,813 songs (an average of 86 songs a day). That's 3,167 different artists, with 7,268 unique releases.
There are also individual playlists for the top 20 Albums, EPs and Singles in each separate language, but I'm not going to list them here as this post will be long enough already. You can find them on the relevant tabs in the workbook if you're interested.
This is a playlist of all the bands (that I know of) who debuted in 2024 (48 of them) and their debut track as they all deserve their moment of glory. They are listed in favourite order.
A lot of idols from well-established bands had their solo debuts in 2024. It seemed unfair to rank them against previously unknown debut soloists so I created two separate lists.
These are my top 3 albums, EPs and Singles for 2024 sorted by month. They are listed by language as follows: Chinese, English, Korean, Japanese (by non-Japanese artists), Japanese and Other, which covers all other Asian languages.
Each month, I somehow get the full list of singles down to 8 (in each language), from which I then have to choose the top 3. It really is extremely tough, which is why this year I'm trying to mark up the songs I enjoy the most to make this process easier. This list contains the 8 singles from each month that I considered for the top 3 because I couldn't bear to lose any of them.
This is a playlist of the songs the Receiptify app tells me are my top 10 most listened-to songs of the month. For 2024 I decided to add all 10 each month regardless of whether they had been on the list before or not. There were actually only 60 unique songs in the playlist last year as I spent a lot of time listening to certain playlists, which meant the same songs were in the top 10 each month.
These are the monthly playlists. I do remove instrumental tracks as my time is short enough already without having to trawl through them too. If the whole EP or album is instrumental I will have listened to enough of each track to count as listening to it. Fortunately, these don't happen often.
I'm not sure how interesting it would be to others, but posting here for completeness. It does show what I actually listened to most over the year, which isn't always what is shown in any of the other lists.
Yes, I know I said it would hopefully be done by the end of January, but better late than never.
To be fair, the spreadsheet is much bigger than last year, so I'm impressed that I actually got it finished at all, but I did (including the Chinese section) and the results are to come shortly.
I just realised the whole month and more whizzed past while I was buried in sorting out the 2024 lists and I didn't even notice for long enough to post the February playlist. This has now been rectified ➡️.
I did raise my head long enough to celebrate my birthday (although I didn't end up opening my advent calendar to count down to it), and to go and see ATEEZ (part of my birthday celebrations, which also included a cinema showing of Baekhyun's concert and a rather nice meal at Browns with Quincy). ATEEZ were incredible as usual and I always wish I could spend more time with them.
As you can see we had a pretty good view. We also got to meet up with Kerry and Simon, the very lovely reactors from Along For The Ride (you should check them out) and some other K-pop fans from their Discord server. It was great to finally meet up after chatting with everyone for a year.
These guys really are incredible live
Thankfully, they did not put Yunho in a frock coat so I survived the concert
I've also seen several other online concerts recently, including EXO-CBX (finally), who had a fan meet in Japan and GOT7, who had a comeback with the excellent EP, Winter Heptagon, only a few weeks ago. Check out the lead track, Python below.
BEWARE IT IS HIDEOUSLY CATCHY!
I'll be back soon with the lists (no, really, I will now I've done them). It's gonna be a long, but hopefully interesting post.
The time since the last post has gone by in a blur. I never did get to open my advent calendar in the end. As the days went by the idea of so many doors to open became overwhelming. However, I've decided to use it as a countdown to my birthday and will definitely be opening a door a day (until I forget).
Apart from dealing with all the horrid real life stuff, I've been working hard on my music - no Christmas films and mince pies for me, I was hard at work on catching up on the music I was so behind on. The good news is that it paid off. Once I decided to ignore Chinese music (for the second year), the task became far less daunting (relatively speaking).
So going into the first weekend of the new year I have completed rating all the English and Other (Thai, Vietnamese, Filipino etc.) music for the year. I have finished all but the last 3 months of singles for Korea (although even they are down to top 10 and just need to be refined to find the top 3). I've also completed all the albums and EPs for Japan.
Although I have things to do this weekend (like go to the launderette before the bad weather hits - my weather app just sent me a message to say we're expecting 'significant' amounts of snow tomorrow night - in case you didn't know, snow is the worst weather in the world for me, I absolutely hate it), I am determined to get the Japanese lists out of the way. Then it's just 5 months of Chinese music to trawl through 🙈. I'm sure it will be fine.
Then it will be time to decant it all into the End of Year lists and playlists and post up all the facts and figures - Last.fm has given me all sorts of interesting infographics some of which might end up in my post. I'm not going to give a deadline for getting it done otherwise it will all go wrong but I'm hoping to have everything sorted and posted before the end of the month.
The January playlist is starting slow, but only because Spotify hasn't been updating their playlists since before Christmas and I've only been able to add stuff released by my favs that shows up in my library as if by magic.
That did include a new OST by my beloved Chinese actor/singer Zhang Binbin, but it disappeared a couple of days later, presumably because of licensing issues. Hopefully, it will be back soon - and I also need to track down time to watch his new drama The Blossoming Love (looks like a fun time).
The person who takes first place on the playlist, and was indeed the first song I listened to on New Year's Day is EXO's Lay with his new single 开天(Kai Tian). It also has an amazing (and I mean LIT-level amazing) MV. Check it out.
Lay also got the whole fandom clowning today, as he mentioned in an interview that he's hoping to get together with the rest of the band in September or October. He said they're currently talking about it. Normally, this would have been exciting enough as OT9 crumbs are so very rare these days that they're always welcome, but only last week Suho mentioned that EXO will be releasing a new album following the conclusion of Sehun's military service (which ends in September). I and millions of others are praying hard that an OT9 EXO album (and please gods, a world tour) will be heading our way - we deserve it, we've done our waiting and we need them back to heal the world.
So, I think that'll do for now. Time to get back to Korea's December singles. It's tough, there were a lot of bangers (and a lot of Christmas songs).
