The 100 Greatest K-Pop Songs of All Time: Number 5

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

Number 9

Number 8

Number 7

Number 6

5. Yun Sim-Deok - Hymn of Death (2016)

Lyrics: Yun Sim-Deok

Composition: Ion Ivanovici

Trigger Warning: This post mentions suicide.

These days, contemporary Korean songs use "darkness" as a vibe, almost a feeling. A tragic emotional performance, with a few twisted and angst-ridden lyrics, and some dark moments. It is manufactured, trite, and emotionally uninspiring. Almost all of it, however, is trying to emulate the success of Hymn of Death, the first true Korean pop song, and one of the darkest records ever.

I will once again interject this post to mention that it is about an emotionally and mentally tortured artist, who in real life, ended up with a dark fate. If this will greatly disturb you, I would not suggest reading it.

Yun Sim-Deok was a Korean singer in Japanese-controlled Korea in the early 20th century. In the late 1910s and early 1920s, she went to Tokyo Music School, becoming the nation's first professionally trained soprano. Additionally, she there met literature student Kim U-Jin. Despite U-Jin being married and already having a child, they had an affair that would destine the fate of their lives.

Sim-Deok never found much success as a singer in her life. In 1926, the U-Jin and Sim-Deok were on a boat back to Korea, where, realizing that their affair would not be supported or accepted, they jumped off the ship and drowned.

Both U-Jin and Sim-Deok were artists first and foremost, and they left their suicide notes through their art. U-Jin pinned his final thoughts in his Theory of Life and Death, stating:

"Are you truly living?

No, I am yearning for death to truly live."

Sim-Deok, as a singer, recorded one last track to justify her death. And that song, that suicide note, was the Hymn of Death. The melody of Hymn of Death is a copy of Ion Ivanovici's Waves of the Danube, one of the darkest and most memorable pieces of late 19th-century classical music. Its dramatic and tragic instrumental is replaced in Hymn of Death by a sole piano, played by Sim-Deok's sister.

Sim-Deok wrote lyrics for the instrumental piece. I won't explain them, I will provide an excerpt.

"On this vast and wild plain,

you running beings,

where is it you are heading for?

In this lonesome world,

harsh and bitter seas,

what is it you are looking for?

Those smiling flowers,

and those singing birds,

their fates are all the same.

Absorbed in living life,

you poor beings,

who are dancing on the edge of a sword."

Those are the words of a woman choosing, knowing that she, at twenty-nine, wouldn't live till thirty. There is pain in her voice, immense pain. No dated recording technology can hide the immense pain in Sim-Deok's words as she writes an epitaph of her own choosing.

I normally end each of these posts with a note on why this song is one of the best in K-Pop, but that doesn't feel right here. Sim-Deok's life was an unfortunate story, with choices that led to a tragic end. Hymn of Death is an expression of true pain, a truly cathartic expression of true pain, and it feels like it.

Next: Number 4

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