top-rated k-pop songs on rym

[girlrock]

omg i was going to write another post and then remembered i never finished this draft from like 2 months ago 😭😭😭😭

basically rym updated their interface a while back to let you filter + search individual tracks instead of only albums/eps/singles which literally changed my life and then i saw this tweet and realized it would be fun to dive deeper into the stats and create my own writeup!

this is part One (1) of an unofficial k-pop stats project i'd like to finish so hopefully i'll do further analysis of these songs later (have things set up to scrape just need to get around to it) but for now i wanted a quick overview of the top-rated songs on rym, because a lot of them fit a very specific user taste (that matches mine 85% of the time) and i'm intrigued by the clear bias the site has against/for certain artists and labels... for ex. the overwhelming consensus is that rym k-pop fans really like girl groups, loona, sm groups, and then mostly dislike a lot of output from hybe in general and male idols LOL. and of course there's more, like... discernment for b-sides that you don't really see in "mainstream" k-pop fandom, so while rymers are obsessed with wuju pantomime you won't exactly see k-pop fans call it the song of the century on twitter!!!

anw to do this i webscraped the top k-pop songs between 2010 and 2024 in the rym charts and set the popularity weighting to the lowest setting possible... but then i exported it to csv and sorted by avg rating so it doesn't really have much of an impact on the results anyway whoops c__c i also capped it at 2010 for no particular reason, i just thought it'd be interesting to keep things a bit more recent and constrict the frame of reference somewhat.

basically:

n: 200
date range: 2010 - 2024
all of this data is from like september whoopsies... also songs are rated out of 5 on rym

YEARLY BREAKDOWN

v interesting data ! possible nostalgia factor? and the clear loona effect sways the average rating of earlier years much higher, but recent years suffer relatively. we also see a huge peak in # of songs in 2017 (12 are loona + subunits, 11 are sm songs), with the 2010-2014 range being unsurprisingly less popular. i also showed both average and median # ratings because loona skew the data massively

TYPE BREAKDOWN

girl group — 136 (68.0%)

boy group — 33 (16.5%)

female solo — 25 (12.5%)

male solo — 6 (3.0%)

COMPANY / GROUP

sm — 67 (33.5%) / 4.22 avg

loona & offshoots — 25 (12.5%) / 4.20 avg

jyp — 21 (10.5%) / 4.20 avg

hybe — 17 (8.5%) / 4.19 avg

starship — 9 (4.5%) / 4.25 avg

+
6. woollim: 6 (3.0%)
7. ist: 5 (2.5%)
8. kakao, high up, yukika, mystic: 4 (2.0%)
9. dsp, pledis, polaris, kiwi pop, dcc: 3 (1.5%)
10. fnc, star empire, modhaus: 2 (1%)
11. wm, yuehua, kq, yg, misc.: 1 (0.5%)

TOP 10 HIGHEST-RATED SONGS (min. 50 ratings)

1. shinee — sherlock — 4.6 / 81 ratings (2012)
2. fromis_9 — love bomb — 4.48 / 204 ratings (2018)
3. red velvet — russian roulette — 4.47 / 294 ratings (2016)
4. kwon eunbi — glitch — 4.46 / 217 ratings (2022)
5. wjsn — pantomime — 4.45 / 243 ratings (2020)
6. loona oec — girl front — 4.43 / 2k+ ratings (2017)
7. wjsn — secret — 4.43 / 118 ratings (2016)
8. snsd — karma butterfly — 4.39 / 77 ratings (2013)
9. iu — 23 — 4.38 / 110 ratings (2015)
10. twice — fancy — 4.37 / 424 ratings (2019)

+
11. april - oh! my mistake
12. loona oec - loonatic
13. loona - hi high
14. orange caramel - catallena
15. lovelyz - destiny
16. f(x) - 4 walls
17. shinee - view
18. exo-cbx - blooming day
19. snsd - gee
20. jonghyun - diphylleia grayi

as you can see, only 2 of the top 10 (underlined) were released in the 2020s... it's worth noting that the 50 ratings minimum is rather arbitrary but since early songs are so much more unpopular rating-volume wise this limit should in fact benefit more recent songs, so it's interesting to see!

TOP 10 MOST-RATED SONGS

1. loona oec — girl front — 2k+ ratings / 4.43
2. loona oec — loonatic — 2k+ ratings / 4.36
3. newjeans — super shy — 1k+ ratings / 4.09
4. newjeans — attention — 1k+ ratings / 4.09
5. loona — hi high — 924 ratings / 4.36
6. loona — butterfly — 742 ratings / 4.2
7. aespa — savage — 711 ratings / 4.07
8. aespa — lucid dream — 680 ratings / 4.06
9. odd eye circle — air force one — 661 ratings / 4.13
10. red velvet — peek-a-boo — 652 ratings / 4.07

other songs with over 500 ratings:
— oec - je ne sais quoi
— red velvet - kingdom come
— artms - virtual angel
— yukika - neon 1989
— le sserafim - antifragile
— yukika - seoul lady
— newjeans - ditto
— twice - feel special
— twice - love foolish
— yukika - shade
— red velvet - look

a fun fact about the most-rated songs is that this sort is heavily populated by girl groups and female singers — obviously a lot of loona, newjeans, twice, yukika, etc., but i mean this is literally the artist breakdown of the top 50 most-rated songs:

the only male groups in the top 100 are bts with 2 songs (run - 256 ratings, butterfly - 225) and shinee with 3 (1 of 1 - 271, prism - 268, shift - 253) 😭 lol

MOST-COMMON GROUPS

• twice — 13 songs
• red velvet, f(x) — 11 songs
• loona — 10 songs
• shinee, wjsn, snsd — 8 songs
• loona oec, exo - 6 songs
• wonder girls — 5 songs
• fromis_9, iu, stayc, bts, yukika, boa, billlie — 4 songs

HIGHEST-RATED GROUPS (min. 3 songs)

1. shinee - 4.27 (8 songs)
2. nct 127 - 4.27 (3 songs)
3. iu - 4.27 (4 songs)
4. loona oec - 4.27 (6 songs)
5. wjsn - 4.26 (8 songs)
6. lovelyz - 4.25 (3 songs)
7. fromis_9 - 4.25 (4 songs)
8. snsd - 4.24 (8 songs)
9. boa - 4.24 (4 songs)
10. ladies' code - 4.23 (3 songs)

NUGU GROUP REPRESENTATION aka top songs from artists with only 1 song:

1. sf9 — now or never (2018) — 4.53 / 17 ratings
2. knk — sunset (2019) — 4.51 / 19 ratings
3. infinite — the chaser (2012) — 4.44 / 39 ratings
4. april — oh! my mistake (2019) — 4.37 / 104 ratings
5. orange caramel — catallena (2014) — 4.36 / 125 ratings
6. onf — the realist (2021) — 4.32 / 32 ratings
7. exo-cbx — blooming day (2018) — 4.32 / 73 ratings
8. aoa — miniskirt (2014) — 4.31 / 70 ratings
9. everglow — la di da (2020) — 4.31 / 238 ratings
10. nct u — the 7th sense (2018) — 4.30 / 113 ratings

conclusion: rym is loonapilled

here's a spotify playlist with the top 100:

lmk if there's any other stats u would be interested in... hope this was fun to read :3c