70 out of 100 best songs in Korea’s noraebang are ballads

Singer Yoon Jong-shin. Kyunghyang Newspaper material photo

"Are you happy because you are in love? You don't know how pretty you are when you start to love. I still can’t forget how you look, I can't get over it, I can't get out of you even more when I heard about you."

The most played song in noraebang in Korea over the past decade has been Yoon Jong-shin's ballad song ,"Like it," which was released in 2017. Kim Jin-woo, a senior researcher at Circle Chart, an authorized pop music chart run by the Korea Music Content Association, analyzed the music charts from 2014 to this year.

It was followed by MC The Max's "Wherever," Lim Chang-jung's "A Cup of Soju," izi’s "Emergency Room," Ailee's "I'll Go to You Like the First Snow," MAKTUB and Gu Yoon-hoe's "Marry Me,” Han Dong-geun's "Amazing You," Big Mama's "Resignation,” So Chan-whee's "Tears,” and Buzz's "Thorn.” Nine of the top 10 favorite songs in noraebang were ballads. The only dance song was "Tears."

The dominance of ballads continued when analyzing the top 100 favorite songs. There were an overwhelming number of ballads with 70 songs. There were 10 rock and metal songs, 7 R&B and soul songs, 5 dance songs, and 4 folk and blues songs. Rap, Hip-Hop, Pop, trot music, and Electronica had one song each. By gender of the singers, 75 songs were sung by males, 22 by females, and 3 by mixed voices.

Since the coronavirus pandemic, the number of people visiting noraebang has decreased. Looking at the total number of the top 400 songs on the music charts in noraebang being sung by visitors by year, it peaked in 2019 and plummeted after the pandemic in 2020. It rebounded briefly in 2022, when the pandemic ended in 2022 but dropped again last year. Kim analyzed that this is because the current popular music market is centered on K-pop, which mainly consists of dance songs, and not many new ballad songs that are often sung in noraebang have been released.

※This article has undergone review by a professional translator after being translated by an AI translation tool.