cousin.world is a regular newsletter on global music.

Each week, I’ll update one of the following playlists with 10 ascendant tracks from global markets and provide analysis to explain how they’re breaking:

• run ⇡ — club tracks from euro & UK dancefloors

• cherry soda ⚭ — breaking k/c/p-pop, city pop and indie

• the grid ✚ — sounds of urbano, reggaeton, funk

• magnitude △ — afrobeat, dancehall and amapiano rising

This week, cherry soda ⚭ covers a Douyin-trending ballad from China, the latest hit from Lim Young Woong, a record-breaking bollywood OST and this year’s League of Legends World anthem. This playlist is all about pop exports from markets across Asia. Next week, the grid ✚ highlights tracks from LATAM and Southern Europe, where genres like funk and reggaeton dominate.

Please like, forward, share and reply if you have any thoughts on today’s mailer 💌

cherry soda ⚭

1. Lim Young Woong — ‘Do or Die’ (South Korea)

Lim Young Woong is a South Korean singer, YouTuber and winner of the 2020 reality TV singing competition Mr Trot. Trot — the genre that Young Woong performs — is a hugely popular, century-old style of pop music in South Korea that is experiencing something of a resurgence among younger listeners. Listen to this podcast on the genre from LA Times from back in April.

Mr Trot was not Lim Young Woong’s first foray into reality TV, having also competed on TV singing competitions like Korea Sings and on the state broadcaster’s morning show AM Plaza. He’s been publishing his own content on YouTube since 2016 where he now boasts over 2.2bn views and now also has his own episodic reality show on KBS2 (the state broadcaster’s entertainment channel). In 2020, he was the second most streamed artist in the country after BTS.

His latest single ‘Do or Die’ topped Melon’s — South Korea’s biggest music streaming service — realtime Top 100 chart just three hours after it was released on Monday. You can learn a lot more about Lim Young Woong via this handy bio on Koreaboo.

2. Jawan OST — ‘Chaleya’ (India)

In May of this year, Resso — the music streaming company owned by TikTok creator ByteDance — went premium only. Then, in September, it changed its name to TikTok Music in two of its three markets (Indonesia and Brazil). It now remains Resso in just one market, India, which banned TikTok in 2020.

The company has never really reported how many users they have, though numbers online cite over 250 million app downloads to date. Now that the other two markets operate under TikTok Music’s chart, the Resso Top 50 is majority bollywood. Here’s a very deep dive on the history of bollywood and its relationship to the Indian music industry via Splice, if you have time.

Reported in The Times of India on Monday, Jawan — the bollywood film featuring this track ‘Chaleya’ — has become the highest grossing film of 2023 and one of the top five grossing films of all time in India since releasing just last month. This single currently tops Resso’s Top 50 chart, Spotify’s Top 50 India and holds #1 on Billboard’s India Songs chart for a second week. The video stands at 138m views on YouTube.

This great explanation on how Resso courted its original three markets by focusing on local repertoire, via Rest of World, is super interesting.

3. 承桓 — ‘I Will Wait’ (China)

Spotify is not available in China. Instead, the audio streaming market is more or less dominated by four apps: three from telecom giant Tencent — QQ Music, KuGuo, Kuwo — and Cloud Music from NetEase. These apps are used by a combined 900m users, per this explainer on Marketing To China.

Spotify is however available in Taiwan and one service that is available in both markets is China’s TikTok equivalent Douyin (750m daily users). This article from The Guardian about Douyin’s presence in Taiwan explains a little more on how and why the app remains available outside of Mainland China.

When this track ‘I Will Wait’ was first released back in Spring, it trended heavily on Douyin across all manner of usages and cover performances, bringing it prominence across Mainland China and later in Hong Kong and Taiwan. YouTube channels and social pages that promote Douyin trends, like this one in Hong Kong, published the track in now-viral posts, bringing the song to audiences outside of Mainland China where YouTube is banned.

Today the track is trending on Chinese services like QQ Music and its Hot Songs chart as well as on Spotify, YouTube, TikTok and other global services. It’s a great example of how a track can transcend China-specific barriers via these outflows into connecting markets.

The song was released by a company called One Inch Lightyear and you can check out their feed on Weibo.

4. ONJUICY, なかむらみなみ, uyuni, SKOLOR, Masayoshi Iimori — ‘Cho-Chocolate Drip v2’ (Japan)

Trekkie Trax is still one of Japan’s most exciting independent record labels. Founded in 2012, it has served as an artist & DJ collective, management company and label for some of Tokyo’s most exciting underground artists. Per Worldwide FM, where they have a brilliant regular show, they are well over 100 releases and counting.

‘Cho-Chocolate Drip v2’ is a rework of a track released by the collective back in April, featuring new verses from rappers uyuni and SKOLOR. Check out both edits along with the rest of the Trekkie Trax catalogue on Bandcamp.

A couple of the collective’s most recent editorials are this Dublab guest mix from back in May and an interview on Block FM from last month.

5. NewJeans, League of Legends — ‘GODS’ (South Korea)

Yes, I am writing about NewJeans again. This time for their new track ‘GODS’, the official anthem of the upcoming League of Legends World tournaments in Seoul and Busan, South Korea.

As you will know if you read last month’s cherry soda ⚭, NewJeans are Big Hit’s new-ish girl group who represent probably the biggest group launch in the genre’s history. This year, the honour of releasing the League of Legends World Anthem has been bestowed upon them, following in the footsteps of Imagine Dragons, Lil Nas X and Ateez before them. A full list of everyone who has written for the slot is available here for the real heads. Last year’s League of Legends World stream hit 5.5m concurrent viewers at its peak and the prize pool was a cool $2.2m.

League is a 5v5 e-sports classic developed by Riot Games that to this day sees 151m users login to play each month globally, 14 years after it was first released. I think it’s fair to say that League, and e-sports more broadly, now represent a key piece of contemporary South Korean youth culture. There are so many documentaries you can watch about League and e-sports but I would say League of Legends: Origins (2019) is a good place to start since it is available in full on YouTube.

+ Five More…

6. Jung Kook, Jack Harlow — ‘3D’ (South Korea/US)

This month’s cut-and-paste collaboration between a k-pop star and US artist is between arguably the biggest solo star of BTS, Jung Kook, and American rapper/singer Jack Harlow. Of course, ‘3D’ has immediately gone to #1 on the Billboard Hot 100. More info here on Rolling Stone.

7. Anson Lo — ‘ON’ (Hong Kong)

This track is #1 on the daily streaming chart on KKBOX, a Taiwanese streaming service based primarily in Taiwan, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Singapore and Japan. Anson Lo is a member of the 12-piece boy band MIRROR which you can learn about here.

8. KARIK, GDUCKY — ‘BẠN ĐỜI’ (Vietnam)

Despite k-pop occupying a lot of the audio streaming market in Vietnam, this new track from local artists KARIK and GDUCKY is the top-streaming track by Vietnamese artists on Spotify’s Top 50 Vietnam. It was released last week via Warner Music Vietnam.

9. Sezairi — ‘Memory’ (Singapore)

Roommate Project is a live session channel based in Jakarta showcasing performances from some of the region’s most exciting rising artists. To date it has amassed over 43m views. This track from Singaporean artist Sezairi is taken from his new album Self Soothing, released last month on Sony Music Singapore.

10. JENNIE — ‘You & Me’ (South Korea)

JENNIE is the latest BLACKPINK member to release a solo single. ‘You & Me’ is out via YG Entertainment and their JV deal with Universal. Her solo career was announced in a cover interview with Harper’s Bazaar Korea, which I can’t find so here is a synopsis on allkpop.

The Playlists