The 100 Greatest K-Pop Songs of All Time: Number 9

Readers, over the past two months, I have worked to create a list of my favorite K-Pop Songs of All Time. For over ten years, I have enjoyed K-Pop, seeing it blossom into a global genre with millions and millions of adoring fans. I have found K-Pop songs I love, made friends over the genre, and seen legacies built over the years. Some of the songs that have made me feel the most are from K-Pop. Given all I have felt and seen, I thought it was finally time to create a ranking of my favorite K-Pop songs of all time.

I don't claim this ranking is perfect, no ranking of this can be perfect. I can only claim that I did my best to provide my personal opinion, with my personal biases, from my years of enjoying Korean music. There are many more boy band songs than girl group (I just prefer their general soundscape), and many songs come from the second generation (2005-2013).

In a way, K-Pop is a bit of a misnomer here. I have included Korean songs outside of the idol sphere, and songs released nearly a century ago. The end result is a list full of songs that left their mark on me. I hope you, the reader, enjoy this list. You may (and almost certainly won't) agree with my ranking, but that is what makes a personal list like this so wonderful.

With that said, let us enter the rules and regulations for what has been qualified as K-Pop for this list.

• Any musical piece released in South Korea, or any of its direct predecessor states, AND/OR is predominantly in the Korean language, Jejuan, or any of their dialects.
• The musical piece must be lyrical in nature.
• Any song, single, or b-side, is eligible.
• This list is MY personal opinion.
• Song rankings may have changed since previous lists and/or reviews.
• The criterion for "the greatest" is a mix of my personal experience, the overall songwriting (lyrically, compositionally, and performance-wise), and the influence of the track in question.
• A song refers to a particular recording of the track and not the basic composition.
• Only one entry per composition.

With all this said. The list will begin tomorrow. For songs 100-11, they will be grouped into daily posts of 10 (100-91, 90-81, etc.). For the top 10, however, each song would get a post of its own.

I hope all of you enjoy this list over the days! Please give your thoughts in the comments, and I will gladly reply when free.

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Previously:

Honorable Mentions

100-91

90-81

80-71

70-61

60-51

50-41

40-31

30-21

20-11

Number 10

9. Shinhwa - Resolver (1998)

Lyrics: Yoo Young-Jin, Eric Mun

Composition: Yoo Young-Jin

In 2023, Shinhwa celebrated their twenty-fifth anniversary, becoming the first Korean idol group to reach this legendary milestone. Even more impressively, they did so with no lineup changes, and despite the group switching agencies several times. At this point, every member of Shinhwa can be considered a bona fide K-Pop legend. Their discography is much beloved, and they are the only artist on this list to have a song in the top 100 from three decades. Despite all that, their very best song is still their debut.

While Resolver is certainly a beloved classic, it is rarely mentioned as one of the best Korean songs of the late '90s. This has much more to do with its timing than its quality as a song. 1998 was simply an awful year for SM Entertainment to debut a new group. There was already a much-beloved generation of K-Pop acts with massive, rabid fanbases, and they were at their creative peaks. H.O.T. had just released Hope (#13), a seminal classic, their rival Sechskies released their biggest hits in Couple and Road Fighter, and S.E.S released Dreams Come True (#39). Additionally, Korea just entered a recession that killed album sales, making sure that not a single album would reach the million-sold marker until EXO's XOXO in 2013.

These issues compounded, combined with fandom fights, led to Resolver being a minor hit at the time, but nulled its chances to be regarded as an all-time classic. Nonetheless, it has slowly grown to be a much-respected track in Shinhwa's dense discography. Remove all the drama and legacy for Shinhwa, however, and you have one darn impressive debut track.

Resolver is a product of the mind of Yoo Young-Jin. The period of 1996-2006 can roughly be regarded as the SMP era, the era where SM entertainment's self-proclaimed blend of R&B, rock, and hip-hop with social commentary lyrics, known as the "SM Performance," or SMP, dominated the charts. The architect behind SMP, and the producer behind nearly all of its songs was K-Pop legend Yoo Young-Jin, and Resolver is one of the best songs he ever created. 1998 saw Young-Jin at a precipice between hard-rock and soft-rock influences. In a way, Resolver is one of the lightest SMP songs he created, almost weightless in composition. Even when an electric rock guitar takes over in the second half of the song, Resolver stays miles away from becoming a headache-inducing hard rock song.

The anchor at the heart of Resolver is the simple descending keyboard riff. The trick of a descending keyboard riff would later be expanded on in Girls' Generation's Into the New World (#10), but its use here has a soft, almost ethereal feel. The feather-light keyboard riff appears in full force in the chorus, and disappears at the beginning of every verse, before slowly building to full strength before the chorus returns. Having an integral element like this gives a beating heart to Resolver, as well as an atmosphere for it to build on.

With a central basis for the song already established, Resolver is more than free to play around with various genres without ever coming off as aimless. The song opens with gliding violins and a simple pop and R&B-infused melody but soon builds beyond that. Given that Shinhwa were intended as more of a rap-focused group than their peers, the hip-hop-heavy verses are a delight, and they never interrupt the basic song. Midway through the song, rock guitars come in, and they guide the rest of Resolver, becoming a crucial element through the third verse (added in instead of a bridge, a nice miniature subversion).

Resolver also features one of the best second-verse breakdowns. The sudden shift into eclectic hip-hop that sounds ripped straight from Seo Taiji and Boys IV is wild, and Minwoo provides an impish quality to the little moment. But then, the song provides what was expected in the second verse, with Hyesung providing the strongest melody in the song for one incredible blast of vocal-led pop.

The other anchor of Resolver is Eric Mun. Nowadays, Eric is commonly the butt of jokes over his inability to write English lyrics that make any sense, and this is true in Resolver as well (co-writer Yoo Young-Jin, who also is the main lyricist, is another frequent target for lyrical ridicule, with Resolver arguably being the start), but he performs every moment of Resolver with a determination that guides the entire song. While a deep-voiced rapper is now a must-have for any idol group, Eric was the start of the style garnering respect.

All of Resolver's quirks and acts serve its greater lyrical themes. While Yoo Young-Jin has been often questioned for his lyrical execution, he has historically been willing to tackle concepts rarely seen within contemporary K-Pop. Resolver almost acts as a nihilistic counterpart to Into the New World, moaning about the loss of innocence and peace in the modern world. The execution is performed with some endearing quirks, including its obsession with a "resolver" who would work to fix the world. But that simplistic vision is exactly what Resolver is arguing for, making the themes function surprisingly well.

All of this is combined with the best of Yoo Young-Jin's '90s melody. Resolver's chorus is the subject of dreams, lightweight and heavenly, it gains surprisingly heavy weight once the rock guitars appear in the second half amplifying every piece of contrast for maximum effect. The goal of Resolver was not for a weak melody, but one that felt universal, and spoke in tongues beyond those of the humans, but one they could understand.

Resolver is a rare song that is extremely a product of its times, but feels universal at the same time. Its '90s K-Pop elements are noticeable, but Shinhwa and Yoo Young-Jin build off of these elements for a dreamy track that has aged like fine wine, and is one of the greatest K-Pop songs of all time.

Next: Number 8

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