10 Incredible K-Pop Songs (That Aren’t Gangnam Style)

We’ve already encountered HyunA in this list, as part of 4Minute, but that’s not where her career started. She was actually an original member of Wonder Girls, but left in 2007 shortly before their first album was released. In 2009 she was announced as a member of the newly-formed 4Minute, a band in which she was styled as the leader. In fact, before their official launch they were simply referred to as the “Hyuna group”.

In keeping with the popular K-pop trope of pursuing a solo career outside of your day-job (like BigBang who we saw earlier), HyunA has branched out on her own. As well as 4Minute, she is a part of the duo Trouble Maker (with Jang Hyun-seung of Beast), but it’s her solo work that has made her one of K-pop’s most bankable stars. Her forthcoming new album is one of the most anticipated K-pop comebacks in years and her solo career continues to go from strength to strength.

The video for this song, Red, made number five in Rolling Stone’s list of the 10 Best Music Videos of 2014, and the magazine called it a “schizophrenic mess”. This description is entirely accurate, but in the best possible way. In short, Red is a stone-cold banger. Its provocative video was unsurprisingly banned by Korean TV station KBS, but that didn’t stop it becoming a massive and completely deserved hit.