K-pop Report Card Bops, flops, way too much tropical pop

The official poster image for "WET," singer J.Y. Park's latest single released in July / Courtesy of JYP Entertainment

By Pyo Kyung-min

• Published Aug 28, 2026 8:01 PM KST

As hot as the season itself, July and August saw a relentless stream of K-pop releases all fighting for their own moment. Some delivered, but quite a few were just lukewarm.

One question kept coming to mind: How much longer is K-pop going to see something work and immediately decide everyone needs to do the same thing?

Taste in music is subjective, and one person's skip might be another's song of the year. These are my takes, not court rulings, so you're more than welcome to disagree.

i-dle, "We Made" EP — Track "Gimme Dat Love" released July 6

Verdict: Nearly there

Electronic had barely finished sweeping through K-pop when "Gimme Dat Love" showed up like an ominous message — Latin-tropical sounds and Afrobeats are next.

Genre-hopping is all fun and games until the song fits the beat better than it fits the people singing it. The production begs for some attitude, while a few of the vocals stay almost too clean and straight. The beat is sweating, but some of the vocals sound freshly showered.

Yeonjun, "NO LABELS: PART 02" EP — Track "Ice Cream" released July 10

Verdict: Worth replaying

Personally, the intro track "Vanilla" felt like the bigger treat. In its best moments, it faintly recalls DEAN, with an excellent sense of when to pull back and when to push.

Still, "Ice Cream" offers plenty to enjoy, with varied instruments and a lively beat, acting as a showcase for Yeonjun's broad vocal toolkit. Knowing exactly what makes you appealing and knowing how to weaponize it is a considerable advantage for a solo artist in K-pop.

But the whole "it boy" persona? We've gotten quite a lot of that from Yeonjun by now.

Hyolyn, "OriginaLyn" EP — Track "Check" released July 22

Verdict: Surprisingly good

There may still be only one artist in K-pop capable of convincingly taking on this kind of Beyonce-sized pop R&B performance, and that is Hyolyn.

Whether "Check" lets her really sink her teeth into genre is another question.

Hyolyn's voice naturally shines in lighter, breezier pop territory, and for all the song's ambition, it never quite lands with the sheer physical weight of the era it references.

J.Y. Park (Park Jin-young) — Single album "WET" released July 23

Verdict: Essential

I never thought I'd be saying this, but here we are: One of the least predictable and most entertaining K-pop releases of the summer came from an artist in his 50s.

Where did all this weirdness go? Summer K-pop used to have room for songs this quirky, ridiculous and genuinely fun.

If you're going to borrow Reggaeton and Latin pop colors, this is how you do it — make them ingredients rather than the entire meal, then fold them into an identity unmistakably your own.

Jennie — Digital single "Less Than a Lover" released July 4

Verdict: Worth replaying

There is something wonderfully soft and tactile about the way the lyrics roll off Jennie's tongue, while the echo-drenched topline makes the whole track feel like stepping into a cave in the middle of summer vacation.

There's nothing particularly wrong with this one — it's just effortless ear candy.

KARD, studio album "Where To Now? (Part.2) : NOWHERE" — Track "Back To Life" released July 28

Verdict: Surprisingly good

One of K-pop's original practitioners of blending tropical rhythms into idol pop delivers a surprisingly affecting goodbye song.

The members' voices come through remarkably clean, somehow making a song that isn't particularly sad on paper feel genuinely bittersweet. The bridge also does exactly what a good old-fashioned K-pop bridge should do, while the final chorus builds satisfyingly on everything before it.

The only problem is that the song is so short that the ending feels almost abrupt.

Red Velvet "Velvet Summer" EP — Track "Surfin' Boy" released Aug. 3

Verdict: Worth replaying

At this point, having all five members — some now signed to different agencies — come together and release music at all feels like a gift.

Even better, they return with a breezy bossa nova-inflected track and Korean lyrics that allow each member's vocal character to come through vividly. As ever, the Wendy-to-Seulgi bridge remains one of Red Velvet's finest attractions.

Some things simply don't need fixing.

KISS OF LIFE — Single album "SWEAT" released Aug. 4

Verdict: Surprisingly good

Listen to enough K-pop releases like this and eventually it starts to feel like you're taking a 101 course on "Who's Hot in Western Music Right Now?"

To be fair, KISS OF LIFE may be one of the K-pop groups best equipped to pull this particular sound off.

It just makes the lingering questions even harder to ignore. With this much talent at the four members' disposal, why not spend more of it developing something only KISS OF LIFE could do?

NOWZ — Digital single "Achilles" released Aug. 5

Verdict: Worth replaying

It has been a while since synth-disco sounded this fresh in K-pop, mostly because "Achilles" manages to embrace the genre without making it feel dated or painfully derivative.

The members can perform, several have obvious mainstream visual pull and most importantly, there is actual personality in the music.

So what exactly is going wrong with NOWZ? Why aren't they bigger?

Stray Kids "THIS & THAT" EP — Title track released Aug. 7

Verdict: Overhyped

Stray Kids' signature brand of "noise music" had been going through a rough patch. "CELEBRATION" landed almost too close to disaster territory.

The reatest pleasure of good noise music is the sense of mischief underneath it, rejoicing in how much trouble we can cause with a song. Stray Kids, however, have increasingly seemed determined to grip both fun and cool as tightly as possible, sometimes squeezing the life out of both.

Thankfully, "THIS & THAT" feels more disciplined. They seem to have chosen cool over sheer noise this time, keeping the track from spilling over into excess.

But that raises another question: Once Stray Kids trade some of their trademark chaos for cool, the line between them and K-pop's other resident noise boys gets awfully thin. Yes, the one you're thinking of.

KiiiKiii, "WhyKiiiKiii" EP— Track "Pop Off Pop Off" released Aug. 10

Verdict: Nearly there

When people say they want Y2K back, they generally don't mean they want to be transported wholesale back to the early 2000s.

Especially when the performers are young idols, nostalgia works best with some contemporary intervention. KiiiKiii understood that balance far better on "404 (New Era)."

In reaching for broader accessibility, "Pop Off Pop Off" ends up considerably less distinctive than expected.

KATSEYE, "WILD" EP — Tracks "PINKY UP," "Animal," "Hootie Frutti" released Aug. 14

Verdict: Surprisingly good

I've given global girl group KATSEYE plenty of grief for its TikTok-engineered "sounds-better-after-a-drink" strain of pop. Perhaps because I have a weakness for Brazilian funk or because this summer has been desperately short on fun K-pop, "Hootti Frutti" finally got me.

Of all the brainrot releases, this is one you can actually dance to. Had this arrived right after "Gnarly," it genuinely might have broken the internet.

"Animal," meanwhile, feels like the kind of record one might have expected from KATSEYE now that every member is an adult — confident and calibrated for a global audience, while borrowing enough musical elements familiar to Korean listeners to make the track feel surprisingly at home here as well.

BIGBANG — Prerelease single "BiiiG" released Aug. 19

Verdict: Surprisingly good

Considering BIGBANG's last group release was the wistful "Still Life," following it with a hip-hop track as different as "BiiiG" is another reminder of just how wide G-Dragon's creative range remains.

Each verse is shaped around the individual member's strengths, while the lyrics reward actually paying attention, which is always a welcome quality in a BIGBANG song.

What it does not provide is the cathartic rush of something like "Home Sweet Home." This is less a song to lose yourself in than one to casually bob your head to.

ENHYPEN, ‘THE SIN : BLISS’ EP — Track "Bloody Paradise" released Aug. 21

Verdict: Surprisingly good

Perhaps ENHYPEN got a taste for Brazilian funk after Sunghoon's version of "Knife," because here comes another serving.

The group's previous work was so flavorless that "Bloody Paradise" clears the bar without much effort, and the members themselves handle the genre remarkably well — almost enough to make you forget the major issues that have surrounded the group in recent months.

But this is K-pop, and following everyone else into the same genre automatically costs points here.

More importantly, ENHYPEN has spent years and years constructing K-pop's most elaborate vampire lore. Whether Brazilian funk belongs anywhere near that mythology is a whole other question.

NCT 127, studio album "BLINGY"— Title track released Aug. 24

Verdict: Worth replaying

One thing SM Entertainment still does better than almost anyone in the industry is assemble wildly different personalities, then build music that gives each of them room to remain distinct.

As the members themselves put it, "BLINGY" goes back to what NCT 127 does best — which is another way of saying that the new song is not dramatically different from the band's previous works.

But the real pleasure is hearing how clearly each member's character registers inside the song itself. With the group's active lineup nearly cut in half, "BLINGY" somehow feels crowded in the best way. Very few groups could lose this many pieces and still sound full.

TUIDE, "TUNE & PLAY" EP — Track "SUN KISS" released Aug. 24

Verdict: Essential

Debuting as a girl group under HYBE right now comes with unusual baggage, considering the controversies that haunt the company's existing girl groups.

TUIDE has already faced criticism that its aesthetic bears traces of a senior group's identity, but that comparison may say as much about that particular group's massive influence as it does about TUIDE. Their style became so iconic that K-pop has since chewed it up, pulled it apart and absorbed it into the genre's broader visual vocabulary.

If anything, KiiiKiii's debut concept with "I DO ME" offers a closer comparison.

The music, meanwhile, makes a much stronger case for TUIDE's individuality.

"SUN KISS" is one of the most immediately memorable debut tracks in recent memory. Its bouncing percussion and persistent "ba-ra-ba-ba-ba" hook lodge themselves in the brain almost instantly, while the production sits stylishly on that increasingly fertile border between Zara music and K-pop.

Derivative visuals can be debated but a hook this sticky is harder to argue with.

SF9, studio album "TENACITY" – Track "Without Wings" released Aug. 26

Verdict: Nearly there

Apparently, summer in K-pop now means Afrobeats-infusions.

Ten years in, SF9 calls itself "bird without wings," which is an intriguing idea that the song spends little time explaining. Instead, we get an awful lot of "W, W" that doesn't mean much.

The track knows its K-pop mechanics and borrows smartly from what is working overseas. But after a good decade together, you'd hope for something that tells us more about SF9 than what they've been listening to lately. This is what happens when creativity takes a back seat to trends.