I’m in a writing mood, it’s great, let’s talk about 2025 girl groups. This has been a weird year for me, as I really indexed hard onto specific groups instead of being very spread out like I have been in past years. So, I really strongly liked most of these groups this year, I just wish I had a longer personal list behind the scenes.
11. Le Sserafim
When I am sick I just watch Le Sserafim content constantly until I feel better. They are a comfort food when you’re hungry, an umbrella in the rain, a heater in the cold. Their music doesn’t always click with me, but they are some of my all time favorite idols. If you don’t like their content, well, try again, it’s awesome. I did enjoy Hot and it’s b-sides well enough, a number of them showed up on my top songs of the year list, but they musically just didn’t pick very highly for me.
10. IVE
I think IVE will go down as one of the greatest girl groups of all time, that’s their current trajectory and it would take a major collapse for that to change. That said, on a personal level, they’ve gone from one of the best groups for me musically speaking to much lower, and that is reflected here. I still love some of their songs, but not to the same degree and volume. They are still a group of very likable idols and I love consuming their content and cheering them on.
9. QWER
This group is so easy to root for, they have super fun and chill personalities. They are kind of non-idol idols if that makes sense. I also really liked seeing them live, they had a good energy and drew a pretty solid crowd. I would have liked an extra single I really loved from this year besides Dear, good quality, but could have been higher.
8. Ifeye
I don’t know anything about this group, in fact, I really only know 2 songs, and only really listened to one of them recently for real. But, I think that r u okay? is a crazy high quality song and enough to bring them all the way up here.
7. Irisé
Maybe this is recency bias from me diving into this group in the last month or so, but I really like them. I think there is a lot of talent and a number of great personalities here. It’s coupled with great music to boot. If you don’t like avatar based groups, you won’t like them, but if you’re willing to give the concept a shot, this would be a good place to start.
6. TripleS
This is a weird placement. I had a fantastic concert experience with TripleS this year, and they released maybe their best song ever, definitely top 3. On top of that, Badge War this year was a masterclass in good variety and fun storytelling. One of my favorite idols this year is from this group (probably 2 or 3 of my top 10 actually, that article to come later), and I liked a number of other videos they did too. I also enjoy collecting and trading objekts. So, why are they so low? Well, the groups above them just had an absurdly high music quality with some other benefits. Ultimately, music comes first for me, so TripleS is an amazing group that I love deeply and rate very highly all time, but they just got beat out musically for me.
5. KiiiKiii
Wow, their music is so good! It’s fresh and lively and energetic, while also being nostalgic and chill, the balance is impeccable. I also like what I’ve gotten personality wise from the members across some variety and the Starship Game Caterer episodes.
4. Hearts2Hearts
How is The Chase, which is one of the best debut songs ever, and one of the best songs this year, their worst title track? Music quality is insane across their title tracks. They feel SM in all the right ways musically, it’s so good. I also saw them at SMTown, they’re so cute and rookie, but they’re good performers for where they are in their career. I’m so excited to see what they put out next year, probably the group that I’m anticipating the most musically.
3. Illit
Illit is a great secondary “content while sick” group to Le Sserafim for me. But man, their music is consistently so good. I like that they manage to have a clear sound and direction while still experimenting within the bounds of that sound. They had a bunch of fantastic songs, similar to Hearts2Hearts, I just also connected with their variety content more this year, and I really like Minju, she’s great.
2. Babymonster
Spotify had this as my most listened to group, and that comes as no surprise. They have had an insane amount of good songs this year, so they make up a huge amount of my playlist for the year, 2-3 times the entries of the group with the next most amount of songs if I had to guess. That said, while their ability to put out good songs is mindblowing, they didn’t hit the top level peaks for me consistently. Tons of top 50 songs, not a huge top 10 presence. I also don’t know their personalities well, but they are a pretty talented group and I had a ton of fun at their concert.
1. Izna
I went from not knowing Izna to falling in love with Izna really really really fast. They had multiple incredible songs, multiple good songs, and one song that was a pretty decent miss for me. The peaks balance the one valley, considering the peak was the best song of the year. On top of that, I love their personalities, their variety content has been fantastic, the dating show parody that they just put out in the last week had me legitimately laughing out loud across almost all 2 hours of it. I also think this group rates highly in basically every category, they can sing, they can dance, they have fun rap sections, their visuals across the board are high even by modern kpop standards. This group has it all to me. At their current pace, they could be one of my favorite groups of all time. They could also lose me musically and fall down the rankings for me personally, it goes that way sometimes. Either way, for now, I see Izna as all upside, they ruled 2025 for me. How’s that sentence for giving Izna a sign?