With over 5,000 songs on my iPhone’s “Ok-Pop Singles” playlist, I believed it might be enjoyable so as to add a little bit of unpredictability to my track evaluate posts. So in consequence, we’ve the “Random Shuffle Evaluation” function.

The principles are easy. I hearth up my playlist, press “shuffle,” and no matter track performs first will get the total Bias Checklist remedy!

Yr Launched: 2012

Yesterday, I wrote about Boyfriend’s mega-classic I Yah and lamented that such a track merely doesn’t exist in Ok-pop anymore. My shuffle button appears to assume it’s time for “half two,” as a result of I might say the very same factor about U-KISS’s DoraDora.

It’s value taking a visit again to April of 2012. If DoraDora had been launched this 12 months, it might certainly be considered one of my prime songs of 2025. Nevertheless, it didn’t even crack the highest three of that single month. That’s how usually the trade was cranking out classics.

To me, a track like DoraDora is the sound of Ok-pop. It feels distinctive to this musical tradition, mixing style components right into a model new combine that may’t be discovered anyplace else. From the funky verses with their staccato hooks to that strong, rock-influenced refrain, the track unfolds in surprising methods. The sound of the Korean language has a pure rhythm inside tracks like these and DoraDora takes full benefit of that asset. I like how the listener has no concept how the track will unfold based mostly on its first verse alone. It weaves and builds till it’s reworked into one thing new, however all of the whereas its momentum and pleasure proceed to develop. There are not any jarring transitions or blustery shouting or tinny percussion. DoraDora is a daring musical assertion from begin to end and that ambition has stood the take a look at of time. That is legitimately fascinating pop music — the sort that Ok-pop used to ship on the common.

Grade: A