I'm Back!!!

Yep, just like a bad penny, I keep turning up (eventually). And now it’s a new year (again), I thought I ought to stop in and say hi (and link the first of this year’s playlists).

I did sneak in a couple of times towards the end of the year to change the playlist and update the links, although I clearly forgot in December 🙈 - it's okay, though, it was mainly Christmas songs, and I made this playlist for them (there was more than that really and you can find the December playlist in the links for a while) - but I’ve honestly been crazy busy and had zero time for actually blogging. I did mean to make a post when Spotify Wrapped and all those other end-of-year league tables started dropping, but again, no time.

For anyone keeping up, the outcome probably wasn’t too much of a surprise (apart from EXO losing their first-place crown and dropping all the way to 4th place for the first time ever 😱 – I know, how???)

So, for those interested in these things, these were my top 5 bands and songs in 2025, according to Spotify.

You know nothing, Spotify! Actually, it knows quite a lot

Look at all those minutes of listening time – it’s almost equivalent to 46 days! (And no, that’s not why I couldn’t blog because I was too busy listening to music, not completely anyway.)

Now, I need to point out here that the Spotify algorithm isn’t the nice (and very useful) round calendar year that I like to use when doing my end of year stats (which is why they publish before Christmas and I don’t until end of January), it’s from whenever the last one ended to whenever they decided to cut off this year (around the first week of November it seems as they confirmed it wasn’t 31 October, but it definitely wasn’t long after), so it’s not really the true picture of my listening for 2025. Except it sort of is.

Being serious, WayV have more than fully justified themselves as my #1 band this year. After the cut-off point for Spotify, they released a fantastic new album 白色定格 (Eternal White) (on 8 December) and, according to the just as unreliable (but at least you can filter by calendar years) last.fm, this album is my #2 most listened to album of the year (not a bad spot to hit within 15 days of release – it was actually at #6 within 3 days 🙈). It was unable to hit the top place in the remaining time as the #1 album has been out since June and even now has almost double the listens, and I still listen to that regularly too. It is the excellent Wonderland by B.I, which explains his #2 place on this year’s list.

This is the second time WayV have hijacked my end-of-year lists with late releases. In 2022, they effortlessly made my top 10 albums of the year with Phantom, despite the album not being released until 28 December (yep, you read that right). At least this time they gave me a bit longer to fall in love with the album, although I think it may well be their best release to date, and that’s saying something, as I was convinced it was their July mini album Big Bands, which helped to take them to the top spot (and kept me alive during all those awful tests in hospital).

Slightly more surprising was Xiumin at #3, but then he is my EXO bias, and him releasing any music is always going to have me streaming like crazy. This year saw not only his second mini album, Interview X, but also several singles, both alone and in collaboration with other artists (very exciting), so maybe I just didn’t notice all those minutes I spent on him, especially earlier in the year.

So, what happened to EXO, I hear you ask? Did you get fed up with all the shenanigans and give up on them, you awful pseudo-fan?

The answer is, of course not. They are still the #1 Korean band (WayV are Chinese) and always will be. They do hold the record for the day I listened to the most K-pop in one day – 8 April 2025 – better known as EXO’s anniversary (their 13th). I listened to pretty much every release by the band, including some solo stuff too, which was an eye-watering 538 minutes of songs, equalling 155 tracks. I think that still qualifies me as a fan, but they just weren’t able to stand the onslaught of some amazing releases, when they themselves didn’t release anything*

*This is not quite true, but there was nothing new on Spotify. 

I doubt the #5 entry was much of a surprise either, considering Onew is my ult, ult bias, and one of those things that kept me too busy to blog was finally getting to see him live in concert 😭. He was every bit as amazing as I’d expected him to be – honestly, 2 weeks after the concert I was still getting over the fact that I’d seen him in real life. 

In fact, the only reason I got over it at all was that I went to see Oneus in December, and got to not only see up close, but touch hands with (for a second), my bias Hwanwoong, who had made the journey upstairs to meet fans 💖. They were amazing, and I really hope this isn't going to be the last time I get to see them.

And yes, I have been ignoring

I will just say that I support all 9 members, so I support a group comeback with however many members are available at the time – it’s not like we haven’t been missing some for many years now. Is it my ideal choice when all members are available and could be involved? No, absolutely not. But while I fully support EXO-CBX in what they are going through, it’s not fair to the others to ignore their efforts. So, yes, I watched both fan meetings, have pre-ordered the new album, and will be watching every bit of new EXO content I can get my hands on, be it from the group, units, or solos – and I want more of all of them now that Sehun has finally left the post office and made his way home to us.

I mean . . . look . . . there is so much lore going on

 

How can you be a fan of the group and not be excited? Yes, it's sad that it isn't going to be all of them as we'd all been praying for, but it was sad that Xiumin never got to be on Obsession, cos he would have 100% slayed (and he's still salty about it 🤣).

Anyway, enough about that. Today (well, in my timezone still, at least) is the first anniversary of one of the best debut bands of last year (and it was a tough year, believe me), the wonderful XLOV. They celebrated with a livestream fan meeting, where they sang lots of songs (alas, I was too busy with work to tune in, but I will catch up later). I'm seeing them in February, and I'm very much looking forward to it.

Happy anniversary cuties!

I will be back, but I've got several thousand songs to listen to while working out my end-of-year lists - you think I'm kidding, I've already listened to 843 songs this year (and counting).