Boy Group Songs and MVs I enjoyed 2025
I love A.B.C-Z and I think I love them even more since Kawai left the group. Despite never being anywhere near the top of the popularity charts, they’ve kept slowly plugging along putting out innovative songs. Although the acrobat boys are now too old for the flips they used to do, the choreography for “Just Romantic!” shows that they still have that visual flair that makes them so fun to watch and proves you don’t need a lot of money and special effects to make a good music video--just talent and imagination. The song itself is a super fun earworm. While I do also love the retro stylings of a song like “Cocktail” (also released this year) or a “Jigsaw” (released last year), I like that they aren’t just stuck in the 80s. “Just Romantic!” feels both timeless and very fresh which is why it’s my favorite song year.
Psychic Fever had been on my radar for a while but after seeing them perform live earlier this year, I’ve definitely been converted into a fan. “What’s Happenin’” was written and produced by Japanese rapper JP the Wavy and (at least to this old hag’s eyes and ears) marries hip-hop and idol pop in a way we haven’t really seen and heard since the heyday of the 2010s K-Pop boom. If you’ve been missing the Block B and BAPs of it all, you need to check out Psychic Fever. I’m also huge into their other singles from this year: the smooth, shirtless retro R&B of “Paradise” (which I had on repeat for weeks), “Gelato”, “Swish Dat,” and “Reflection”.
And look, there are things that one goes to a STARTO group for and for better or worse WEST (née Johnny’s WEST) continue to deliver. “A.H.O.” is a classic Oskaka-group don’t worry be happy vaguely surf themed bop and I am here for it. The song is peppy, the video is loud and bright, and the whole thing is just a lot of fun. Is it high art? No. Do I care? Also, no. WEST delivers the goods song after song, year after year. Honestly, you can’t go wrong following WEST. Will you get some clunkers? Sure. But you’ll also get “West Side Soul” (and check out early 2026 entry 愛執).
Naniwa Danshi, WEST’s younger brother Osaka group, also came through this year with the peppy “Gira Gira Summer” but I had to hand the Idolcast Osaka trophy to A.H.O.
SixTones come through again in 2025 with “Barrier.” What I love about this song and about SixTones’s music in general is that they’ve figured out how to take the normie Japanese MOR rock music taste and make it sparkle. We’ve seen it from them time after time--look no further than something like “Mascara,” which is straight up a King Gnu song. “Barrier” shares musical DNA with something more like a “Mela” but just… sparklier. Songs like this are why I’ll always recommend SixTones as an idol group for regular music listeners. They’re just good!
(Bonus shout out here for SixTones’s debut buddies Snow Man who do not share the normie adjacent vibe of SixTones and instead release songs all over the musical map of varying degrees of quality—to include this bonkers collab with Deco*27 that if it had been about 25% more bonkers would have made my list for reals.)
EbiDan’s MiLK, who have been having a moment this year--to include a performance at Kouhaku Utagassen—do some classic Johnny’s & Associates idoling with “好きすぎて滅” written by industry stalwart Asano Takashi. As STARTO has been (understandably) running from their roots, it’s refreshing to see that the old “Johnny’s” style still has strong appeal minus Johnny. The color coded costumes, the choreography, everything is just A+ J-Pop Idol. And as a bonus, see SnowMan’s Sakuma do the choreography on それスノ. There’s everything to love and nothing to hate. 10/10 no notes!
Honorable mentions for BUDDiis sugary sweet “LOVE ME” and the equally sugary “Caramel Heart” from 超特急, both of which are bonbons of pure joy!
Unfortunately we now have to leave the bountiful J-Pop fields and board the struggle bus to head over across the East Sea/Sea of Japan to check on what K-Pop was up to last year. (Gnarly.)
I have to throw in for Allday Project here because until the next group on my liste popped up, “Famous,” was by far and away my favorite song of the year in K-Pop.
ADP have performance chops like we haven’t seen for a hot minute in K-Pop and I was actually looking up performances.
But oversaturation thy name is Hybe Labels. Flooding the market with heavily promoted boy groups we get an unremarkable debut from Cortis (who are making what appears to be a very successful play to siphon off BTS fans by re-using their underdog narrative), to add to their unremarkable 5th gen groups &Team, TWS and BoyNextDoor. JYP contributed the unremarkable KickFlip, SM has the unremarkable RiiZE, and unremarkable MNET reality boys ZB1 add to the undistinguishable mass of boy groups competing for an increasingly small slice of the Obsessive K-Pop Boy Group Fan economy where the currency is streams and planted Koreaboo articles about what a flop the other boy groups are.
It’s into this sludge of sameness that we got Jay Park’s 4 member LNGSHOT just under the 2025 wire with “Saucin’”.
Is it the best song on Earth? No. But it’s fun, it’s refreshing, and—most importantly—it sounds good. Jay Park seems to be aiming for the same audience that EXILE TRIBE is aiming at with Psychic Fever by providing solid global R&B and hip-hop via an idol package. It’s an audience that K-Pop has ignored for far too long and I am here for the return!
LNGSHOT have released some 2026 bangers already but I’ll save those for next year’s list.
There are midtier boy groups still hustling out there and while none of these blew my socks off, there were some fun releases if you dug for them.
“SKIID” from ARcC is the only one worth highlighting but I also enjoyed “Nu Kidz” and “Awesome.”
Bonus mentions include 8TURN’s “Leggo,” POW’s “Wall Flowers,” and LUN8’s “Lost.”
N.SSign only had one release in 2025 (“Itty Bitty”) but I liked it and 2026 sounds promising. I’ll also add in here as a bonus, Alpha Drive One’s pre-release in 2025 didn’t do much for me but “Freak Alarm” is extremely catchy and I look forward to seeing what they do next.
More bonus mentions include two of my favorite K-Pop hags: SHINee’s Onew with “Animals.”
And the one and only G-DRAGON whose Übermensch I had on repeat for much of 2025. “Gyro-Drop” might be my favorite from the album but enjoy the video for “Too Bad”!
Hopefully we’ll be seeing even more of GD in 2026!