On December 1st, Melon, Korea's top music platform, published its long awaited list of the most popular songs of the 2010s decade in the streaming site. Some usual suspects were there, such as Busker Busker's "Cherry Blossom Ending", the only song to ever get a triple platinum download certification, scoring over 7.5 million downloads, and a song that has become associated with spring in Korea. Same for Ailee's "I Will Go To You Like the First Snow", the most downloaded song from a Korean original soundtrack. The country's most popular singer, IU, landed the most songs overall on the list with 11, including two top 10 solo entries in "Through The Night" and "Friday" and a feature in the also season-themed "Not Spring, Love or Cherry Blossoms" by one-hit wonder band High4. The importance of the list can be seen right there when checking the comments left by people on the music video of "Cherry Blossom Ending" talking about its coronation as the "song of the decade". Also, the list has been used to push many narrative about certain artists being the "nation's [insert term]": group, soloist, darling, first love, boy group, girl group, pride, you name it.
That being said, the list is quite bad and has some glaring omissions and suffers from some glaring recency bias to a point it feels like it only features Melon's best songs from only the 2nd half of the decade.. To start, here is a song that was left out of the list, some might argue it's not known enough to be part of a top 100 songs of the decade, so I'll leave it to the reader to decide.
Yes, that's right, the song in question is none other than Psy's smash hit "Gangnam Style". Contrary to the popular belief that this song was essentially a viral novelty song that only caught fire among international audiences and essentially turned into the Korean equivalent to "Macarena", it was actually quite popular domestically, scoring 816,868 downloads during its release week, the 2nd most of 2012, topped the charts for five straight weeks and won a grand total of a 20 music show trophies. It's particularly troublesome that Melon had such a big amnesia over it when the platform itself chose it as "song of the year" at their 2012 edition of their music awards. Psy actually had a song on the list, which was... a b-side from the album that contains "Gangnam Style".
Now what about the fact that your group was so dominant for such a long time it set the record for most consecutive #1 hits, three of them crossing the 3 million download mark, achieving it during a six-year span, showing how consistent your chart dominance was, to a point that when a certain season of the year arrived, it was expected for them to release a chart topping song, and they never failed. That was probably enough to land at least one of them in an all-decade top 100, right? Well, the answer is: wrong.
Exactly, despite being one of the most consistent idol groups of the decade, Sistar, the "Queens of the Summer", landed a grand total of zero songs on the list. Breakout hit that sold over 4 million downloads "So Cool"? No. 2012 chart toppers who were downloaded over 3 million times "Alone" and "Loving U" that made Melon itself gave the group a top 10 award and nominate the quartet for artist and song of the year awards? No. Follow-up summer hits "Touch My Body" and "Shake It"? Nope.
That being said, if you are the group who has the most songs over 3 million downloads with four, all of them in the 2010s, including the most downloaded idol song of the decade, at least one of them will make it, right? Nope. The group in question also got shut out.
Even though no idol song had as many people buying it in Korea than T-Ara's "Roly-Poly", and the fact that the song is still relevant to this day, as shown by the performance above, which marked the first reunion of the group since 2017, going viral, it was still not enough for Melon to make it one of the biggest 100 songs of the decade. Same for the group's other smashes such as "Cry Cry", "Lovey Dovey" and "I Go Crazy Because of You".
What about the "nation's girl group" itself, Girls' Generation? After all, Melon crowned their signature hit the song of the 2000s in Korea, despite it being released in 2009. Even follow-up single "Genie" made the list despite being a six-month-old song. They were also shut out, despite the success of songs such as "Oh!", "The Boys" and their first sub-unit song, all of them also among the best-selling songs of the decade, wasn't enough as well. The group who was voted for 10 straight years (7 of them in the 2010s) as one of the favorite artists by Koreans, apparently wasn't impactful enough during said decade.
What about other groups? Bigbang had so many hits, no way they forget songs such as "Fantastic Baby" and its 4 million downloads? Well, turns out Bigbang only managed to land one song on the list, its 2015 hit "Bang Bang Bang" and probably because the song had over 100 million streams, and Melon seemed to have over prioritized streams even though they only grew recently and can be manipulated by fandoms (pretty much all the songs pre-2016 that made to the list had a platinum stream certification). Miss A's "Bad Girl Good Girl" was a quite successful debut, it remains to this day the only debut song to win a "song of the year" award, also out. 2NE1 and their 9 number one hits? Also shut out. At this point you have got the drill, the first half of the decade essentially didn't exist to Melon on their list.
Overall, Melon's ranking seemed to have suffered from a quite blatant recency bias, rewarding any song who got a platinum download certification from 2016 onwards but ignoring many who did it earlier in the decade, especially the ones from 2010-13, where most of the examples mentioned on this article come from. As you see from this chart, two years by itself (2016 and 2017) comprise 43% of the list. Meanwhile, the first four year of the list only combined for 17 songs, fewer than both 2016 and 2017 by themselves. 2013, which was the year the price of downloads suffered a major increase in Korea, features only one song, proving Melon didn't adjust to the new conditions, while also punishing most of the songs with big downloads before that change. In 2014 they overcompensated and put nearly every big hit from that year on that list, after a decrease in 2015, 2016 and 2017 had nearly all their top hits make the ranking.
This looks particularly awful when compared to Melon's own 2000s list, which is quite evenly distributed throughout the decade. The year with the most songs on the list, 2003, had 13 entries. In the 2010s list, 3 different years had more and 2015 was just one song away from tying it. Meanwhile, the years with the fewest entries (2005 and 2007) had 8 songs, which was the same as 2010, 2011, 2013 and 2019 combined and just one below 2012. Melon even took the risk of having some recency bias on the list by including 10 songs from 2009, including the #1 (Girls' Generation's "Gee") but that actually proved to be a wise decision. Oddly, it seemed to have forgotten that the years it largely ignored in this decade's list were essentially a continuation of the trends started in 2009. Meanwhile, in the 2010s list the site didn't have the guts to include a single song from 2019, a massive u-turn.
Even compared to Billboard's own choices to their all-decade's Hot 100, Melon's chart still looks imbalanced. Billboard took an approach where the results pointed out to some great years such as 2011 and 2018 (albeit this one might have been aided by some recency bias) and some down years such as 2016. At the tails of the distribution it had four songs from 2009 that blew up during the 2010s and the same number for 2010. It had a slightly larger variance than Melon's 2000s top 100 even if you exclude the first and last years, but not even close to the travesty that was Melon's 2010s list.
Overall, this list confirms something I have been observing for a while in the Korean music industry: increasingly attempts to erase its past, especially when it comes to idols. Some might wonder why, given that they were more popular and had a larger reach with the public than today's personalities do. Is it because they are ashamed of them? Is it because the center of the industry has shifted from the old big 3 dominance to a growing monopoly? Because it reminds the industry of formerly people they now deem undesirable? The question remains unanswered. All I have to say is: if you are a fan of any group mentioned here, don't let their history be erased just because others want it to. Preserve legacies, preserve history from being rewritten by the winners of the present and revised to meet their interests, to a point certain history participants even cease to exist.
I bid farewell with one last forgotten song. One that also missed Melon's list despite selling over 4.4 million downloads. One that seems very alien to what Korean pop music has become these days, featuring a risky, provocative, sexy choreography, and two popular idols on the prime of their careers freely interacting, touching and playing the role of a couple. It's quite fitting that one of them later left the same company who released such song and video by disclosing her relationship to the public. They deliberately pushed a couple on the music video, but couldn't handle it in real life.
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