Rate Olympics: Artistic Gymnastics

Experts at the Popheads International Summit Puzzled, Worried By “Statistically Unreasonably Poor Performance” of Rhythm Ta

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Pop and rate experts alike held a special roundtable session at the recent annual Popheads International Summit (PIS) in Winnipeg, Canada in response to what many are calling a “shocking robbery” of the song Rhythm Ta in the 2010s K-pop Boy Group Rate.

Rhythm Ta was the debut song of vaguely unsuccessful boy group IKON. The song features seven Korean boys in barely-disguised knockoff Chicago Bulls basketball jerseys declaring their intention to “gon get it pop it” (sic) over a gentle chorus of three million horns. Rhythm Ta ended in 60th place out of 60 songs with a 5.28; the next lowest-scoring song was a 6.23.

While underperformance of a song in a rate is hardly a rarity or a concern, occasionally a song does so poorly that it raises eyebrows across the globe and demands action. Statisticians at the summit showed that a linear regression of quality versus score predicts that Rhythm Ta should sit somewhere around 48th place (95% CI: 45, 51). And yet Rhythm Ta falls in dead last place, even after controlling for common variables influencing popheads rate scores: problematicness, number of uses on TikTok, recency of release, and the amount of times that someone .np’s a song in the rates channel with the comment “bop”.

“It’s bad, for sure,” said John Chang (M.D., Harvard), rubbing his temples, “but is it THAT bad? I mean, it was outscored by an entire point by a ballad.”

A few may intimate that it was because, at the time of assessment (the so-called “rate” itself), YG, the parent company of IKON, was under much scrutiny for a culture of sexual harassment, bullying, and drugs. However, this has been determined to be unlikely, as the direct culprits of said harassment (Big Bang) did not appear to be equally punished.

It should be said that dissenters exists. One expert (name excluded for safety) timidly offered that they “just thought the song sucked”, causing the room to break out into a chorus of “YOU JUST HATE FUN” and “[tomato emote]” and “I THINK *YOU* SUCK”. Unfortunately, decorum was unable to be restored, as someone unfortunately mentioned an unrelated controversy about whether SHINee’s song “View” overperformed, which sparked age-old debates of 4Walls vs. View and resulted in the room’s descent into chaos until the session was ultimately dismissed with no conclusive decision on the cause of things.

When asked for comment, ex-member of IKON B.I. had this to say: “내 전화번호를 어떻게 알았는지는 모르겠지만 popheads이 미쳤다고 생각하고 곧 디스 트랙을 발표할 예정이야, trust”. He then made a few hand signs that may have been either gang signs or Naruto jutsu hand symbols and walked off saying “swag, swag”.

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