BTS's 'SWIM,' Lim Yunchan and Jennie among Apple Music's songs that defined 2026

BTS's "SWIM" has been named to Apple Music editors' list of the 100 best songs of the year — the only K-pop group to make the cut. Also on the list are "Dracula" by Australian band Tame Impala featuring Jennie of Blackpink, and Variation No. 13 from pianist Lim Yunchan's live recording of Bach's Goldberg Variations at Carnegie Hall in New York. K-pop, psychedelic pop and 300-year-old Baroque keyboard music all found a place together on the year-end tally.

Apple Music recently unveiled its year-end playlist "Best Songs of 2026," describing the selections — including "SWIM" — as "songs Apple Music editors believe defined 2026," the company announced Wednesday. The list is compiled by editors looking back at the year in music. Apple Music named British singer-songwriter Olivia Dean its Artist of the Year.

The playlist's description of "SWIM" reads: "BTS returned to active duty with the commanding force of 'SWIM'" — a deliberate play on the phrase "active duty," nodding to the fact that all seven members completed their mandatory military service before releasing the album. "SWIM" also appeared on Apple Music's year-end editions of its A-List Pop, Viral Hits and KPOPWRLD playlists. According to Big Hit Music, Apple Music called BTS's Arirang comeback "a moment K-pop has long been waiting for" and said "they redefined the direction of K-pop in 2026."

"SWIM" is the title track of Arirang, BTS's fifth full-length studio album, released March 20. The song captures the group's resolve to keep swimming at their own pace through the rough currents of life; leader RM was involved throughout the songwriting process. Upon release, it debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100, and as of Oct. 24 had surpassed 1 billion streams on Spotify — the fastest any song released this year reached that milestone. The track won Song of the Summer at the American Music Awards in May and Song of the Year at the MTV Video Music Awards in September.

Nearly eight months after its release, "SWIM" continues to hold its own on the charts. In Billboard's Global 200 dated Nov. 14, the song climbed five spots from the previous week to No. 28, and ranked No. 14 on the Global Excl. US chart. BTS is set to kick off the Asian leg of their Arirang world tour Saturday at Kaohsiung National Stadium in Taiwan, with 15 shows across five cities — Kaohsiung, Bangkok, Kuala Lumpur, Singapore and Jakarta. A 16th date was added in Jakarta on Dec. 29 due to strong ticket demand.

"Dracula," which features Jennie, was originally a B-side on Tame Impala's fifth album Deadbeat, released in September last year. A disco-tinged electro-pop track, it became the first Tame Impala song to chart on the Billboard Hot 100, peaking at No. 30. When a remix featuring a new verse by Jennie dropped on Feb. 6 this year, the song shot into the top five of the Hot 100, becoming the biggest hit for both artists. Tame Impala's Kevin Parker brought Jennie out as a surprise guest at a concert at TD Garden in Boston on July 29, marking the first time the two performed the song together on stage.

Lim Yunchan's recording comes from a recital at Carnegie Hall on April 25, 2025. The performance had sold out months in advance, and the album — Bach: Goldberg Variations — was released Feb. 6 this year on Decca Classics. It is his fourth album since signing an exclusive deal with Decca in October 2023. Variation No. 13, the selection that made the list, is a slow variation written for two-manual keyboard, in which an ornamented right-hand melody sings over a tranquil accompaniment. The track runs 5 minutes and 19 seconds on the album. Apple Music Classical called the recording "perhaps the finest piano interpretation to emerge in recent years."

Lim first encountered the Goldberg Variations around age eight, through Glenn Gould's recording. Lim carried the work ever since, and finally committed it to record on the Carnegie Hall stage. At the time of the album's release, Lim said: "It begins with the Aria, followed by 30 human songs, and ends with the Aria returning. I felt this work as the life journey of a person who wrote it in music."