BLACKPINK’s ROSÉ has achieved her first no.1 on the UK Big Top 40 with her single ‘APT’, a collaboration with Bruno Mars. The girl group member is no stranger to UK charts, as BLACKPINK are known for hit singles, such as ‘How You Like That’, ‘Shut Down’, and ‘Pink Venom’, all of which also charted. She has also become the highest charting female K-pop soloist on the Official Singles Chart Top 40 with the single, peaking at no.2. It’s by no means her first entry into the chart. The idol already has 8 UK top 40 singles with her group, BLACKPINK.
‘APT’ while different from the hard hitting, girl boss sound BLACKPINK are known for, still maintains the catchy chorus that is so integral to any k-pop song. The song is based on a Korean drinking game and ROSÉ wrote the lyrics herself. She later got Bruno Mars to collaborate as her solo work is in partnership with Atlantic Records, where Bruno Mars is also under contract.
BLACKPINK are a South Korean K-pop quartet that debuted in 2016. Since the popularity of Korean music has risen, BLACKPINK are probably one of the most well-known girl groups in the world. Since early in their career they have broken record after record, including the most viewed Korean music video in 2018 with ‘Ddu-Du Ddu-Du’, becoming the first K-pop girl group to perform at the popular US music festival Coachella in 2019, to becoming the first k-pop girl group to have a song reach 1 billion streams on Spotify in March of this year. They have visited the UK on multiple tours including three times for their ‘Born Pink’ world tour on November 30, and December 1 both in 2022 as well as performing at BST Hyde Park as headliners on July 3, 2023. They made history as the first K-pop act to headline a major UK festival and garnered a sold-out audience of 65,000. The members were also given honorary MBE’s by King Charles in 2023 during the President and First Lady of South Korea’s state visit to the UK.
The 27-year-old New Zealand-born singer is the only member of BLACKPINK to sign to an existing label for her solo career, THE BLACK LABEL, rather than creating her own company as fellow members JISOO, JENNIE and LISA did. JENNIE, 28, is also currently charting on the UK Top 40 with her single ‘Mantra’, which peaked at 37 after its release last month. Thai-born LISA, also 27, has released solo music this year too, charting in the top 75 on the UK charts. Eldest member JISOO, 29, has yet to release solo music since BLACKPINK separated from company YG Entertainment in December 2023. The group remains with YG Entertainment for their group activities and according to entertainment company, BLACKPINK will have a comeback in 2025 as well as embark on a world tour. Given that BLACKPINK has visited the UK on their previous two world tours, they are likely to be back next year.
They are no strangers to global success including in the UK music scene, and will likely continue to appear with subsequent releases as a group. ROSÉ is set to release her first full-length album, ‘Rosie’, on December 6th. It will be her first release since her single album ‘-R-‘ in 2021.
