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 ⚭ is about gaming, pop idols, record-breaking bollywood soundtracks and major label mandopop in Taiwan.

This playlist is dedicated to pop music with a particular focus on exports from the East Asian powerhouses. Next week, the grid ✚ highlights tracks from the booming LATAM and Southern European markets where funk and reggaeton dominate.

See you next week for the penultimate mailer of the year 💌

cherry soda ⚭

1. LE SSERAFIM — ‘Perfect Night’ (South Korea)

On November 1st, LE SSERAFIM — a k-pop group releasing under HYBE’s Source Music — announced a partnership with the online game Overwatch 2. It included a new playable game mode based on the group, a series of unlock-able character skins, a half-animated official music video for their new single and even an invite for LE SSERAFIM to perform at game developer Blizzard’s annual conference BlizzCon. Tickets started at $299 and the conference was attended by 40,000 people. Overwatch 2 itself has an estimated 24m active users.

This is the second major e-sports partnership of the season from HYBE, not long after their biggest girl group NewJeans soundtracked the League of Legends World tournament with their purpose-built single ‘GODS’ (which I wrote about two months ago). Although these forays into gaming are nothing new for major artists, it feels like there’s an increasing willingness to experiment across these two mediums to find mutually beneficial collabs.

Back in February, writer Andy Brown suggested in the NME that we’ve entered “a golden age for music collaborations in gaming”, citing game studios’ increasingly close partnership with their soundtrack artists to create memorable in-game moments. There are also structural reasons. Most of today’s biggest e-sports games are free-to-play, funded instead through in-game transactions and regular content patches, meaning artists can have their collab added into the game when it suits them best.

It also helps that LE SSERAFIM are from one of the world’s biggest e-sports markets. Today, ‘Perfect Night’ is #1 in the Top 100 on Melon, the country’s biggest music streaming service.

2. ATEEZ — ‘Crazy Form’ (South Korea)

ATEEZ are an 8-member boy band from South Korea whose new, confusingly-titled album THE WORLD EP.FIN : WILL just came out. The lead single ‘Crazy Form’ currently tops the biggest international k-pop playlist on Spotify, K-POP ON (5.2m followers).

ATEEZ are signed to KQ Entertainment, a k-pop management company set up in 2016 by executive Kim Gyu Uk, and they are the biggest act on the roster. As I covered a little bit last month, there has been a diversification among k-pop power players in recent years and there are now quite a lot of management agencies developing at least one big artist or group.

‘Crazy Form’ was selected last night as the “champion song” on the popular Korean music TV show Show Champion in their annual year-end episode. TV is an integral part of the k-pop release cycle where all new groups or soloists debut once their training is complete. I might go into more detail on that next month…

ATEEZ are currently embroiled in a UK chart battle for a #1 album against Peter Gabriel.

3. Patrick Brasca — ‘3am - Demo Ver.' (Taiwan)

Patrick Brasca is a Canadian-Taiwanese artist signed to JVR, the label that was in the news this week as it agreed a landmark deal with Universal Music China. The label is owned by veteran artist Jay Chou, AKA 'The King of Mandopop’, whose decades-long career has seen him sell 30 million records and counting. The deal will see UMG work his catalogue and future releases, as well as developing the new artists on JVR.

Bieber-esque Patrick Brasca is one of JVR’s star artists. He has a ton of earwormy pop-R&B tracks and a massive audience in Taiwan, which will hopefully be built out globally thanks to this deal. In a press release, JR Yang (CEO of JVR) says the agreement “marks a new chapter for Jay and JVR towards our vision of elevating Mandarin pop music globally.” This track is currently covering two of the biggest global playlists for mandopop on Spotify, Mandopop Hits (142k) and Top China Hits (455k).

It’s pretty plausible to imagine that mandopop will have a wave soon and track something like the trajectory of k-pop, which will be really exciting to watch.

4. ANIMAL: Abrar’s Entry — Jamal Kadu (India)

Animal is the new blockbuster bollywood film from director Ranbir Kapoor. It came out last week and has already made ₹ 300 crore (3bn rupees/36m USD) at the box office. The only Hindi film to cross this threshold faster this year was JAWAN, which wrote about here.

To continue this run, T-Series (India’s largest music label and film production company) rolled out a full DSP release for the film’s soundtrack yesterday. Like all successful bollywood soundtracks it has been streaming like crazy. This track in particular broke 9m views overnight, is currently the top track on iTunes India and most Shazammed track in the market too. Per the music data aggregator Kworb, the top 5 most-viewed YouTube videos in all of Asia for the last 24 hours are from the film.

Insiders anticipate Animal to become one of the top ten highest-grossing bollywood films of all time, four of which were released in 2023, marking an incredible year for the industry.

5. Nogizaka46 — ‘Monopoly’ (Japan)

Nogizaka46 are an idol group from Japan whose single ‘Monopoly’ is currently #1 in the daily Oricon singles chart.

Pop music in both South Korea and Japan revolves around idols, a term used to refer to young singers or actors who are trained to perform and release music. In Japan, idol groups have been having hits since the 60’s and these groups still dominate the charts today. Nogizaka46 have been releasing since 2011 and were initially created as the “official rival group” to AKB48, the highest selling female act in Japanese musical history.

Prior to 2010, Japan’s music market was more or less dominated by domestic music, until k-pop groups like Girls Generation and Big Bang began to make headway. Most earlier k-pop releases were paired with Japanese versions to specifically target the world’s second largest music market. Although the genre has made a significant dent in the Japanese industry, 90% of all the live and recorded revenue in the market today still comes from domestic artists.

+ Five More…

6. Lola Amour — ‘Huwag na Huwag Mong Sasabihin’ (The Philippines)

This new one from 7-piece Filipino boy band Lola Amour is actually a cover of a track by Kitchie Nadal, one of the biggest names in OPM (Original Pinoy Music) whose self-titled album, featuring this single, premiered at the top of the chart in 2004.

7. WeiBird, Oliver Heldens — ‘Out of Love’ (Taiwan/Netherlands)

This mandopop/eurohouse crossover event between Dutch DJ Oliver Heldens and Taiwanese star WeiBird came out a couple of weeks ago. It was released on Heldens’ imprint under Ministry of Sound, Kangarooli Tracks.

8. =LOVE — ‘ラストノートしか知らない’ (Japan)

=LOVE are another idol group from Japan, developed by a company called Yoyogi Animation Academy and released under Sony. This track is currently #1 in the weekly Oricon singles chart.

9. Keung To — ‘岩巉’ (Hong Kong)

Keung To is a member of the major cantopop boy band MIRROR, who formed in Hong Kong in 2018. He has been releasing solo material for a while and this latest track is currently the most-streamed track on Spotify in HK.

10. aespa — ‘Drama’ (South Korea)

Last month, South Korean girl group aespa released their 4th mini album Drama with a lead track of the same name that is still sitting high on most streaming and sales charts in the market. aespa are a group developed by one of the OG k-pop management companies SM Entertainment. They spoke about AI and music videos with Grimes for this Rolling Stone profile in October.

The Playlists