Rosé Can’t Chill: Why K-Pop’s Biggest Star Is Everywhere Now

A humid Wednesday in Seoul, and Rosé is still stuck in a chair. For four hours, a rotating squad of stylists and handlers has been perfecting every strand of hair, every stitch of clothing, every angle of her look for The Hollywood Reporter‘s cover shoot.

Even by pop-star standards, it’s an extraordinary amount of preparation. But in K-pop, diligence is the rule, not the exception. And for Rosé — the Melbourne-raised teenager molded into Blackpink‘s powerhouse vocalist, now one of the most famous women in K-pop — this kind of discipline has defined her life since she was 15.

Not even a decade into her career, Rosé commands more than 34 million monthly Spotify listeners as a soloist and another 31.5 million with Blackpink. Her Instagram following tops 84 million, putting her in league with Taylor Swift and Ariana Grande. Her face is everywhere: on YSL handbags in Paris, Rimowa luggage in airports, Tiffany jewelry campaigns, Puma sneaker ads. In Seoul, she gazes down from towering digital screens in Myeong-dong; in New York, she beams from Times Square.

She is, simply, one of the most visible women on the planet. Which — like all celebrities who reach this stratospheric level — also makes her one of the most carefully choreographed creatures on earth. Still, she insists that the one thing she yearns most for in the world is unscripted authenticity.

Born Roseanne Park in Auckland, New Zealand, and raised in Melbourne, she grew up surrounded by music. She played piano, sang in church choirs, eventually picked up guitar. At 15, she auditioned for YG Entertainment and was invited to Seoul to enter its trainee system — a boot camp of endless singing, dancing, language study and evaluations. Days began at dawn and ended after midnight, leaving no room for dating and other typical teenage rites of passage. Most trainees never make it to the finish line. Her parents, back in Melbourne, watched from afar as she entered a system notorious for its intensity.

By 19, she was the lead vocalist of Blackpink, the four-member girl group rounded out by Jennie, Jisoo and Lisa. Created by YG as its first girl group to debut in seven years, their popularity was instant: Blackpink’s 2016 debut singles, “Whistle” and “Boombayah,” not only topped Korean charts but also landed on Billboard’s World Digital Songs chart, signaling the arrival of a group built for global domination. Within three years, they were playing Coachella, the first K-pop girl group to do so. Six years later, they were embarking on world tours that grossed more than $300 million.

The festival in the desert was a turning point — the Indio heat, the sea of phones in the crowd, four young women from Seoul commanding one of the biggest stages in the world — and was captured by Netflix in the 2020 documentary Light Up the Sky, showing the relentless rehearsals and self-doubt behind the glamour.

Rosé’s distinctive voice lent a touch of vulnerability to the group’s slick choreography. She laughs now when she thinks back to her teenage self. “When I was a trainee, I was badass,” she says. “I don’t know why I had this fire in me — I was just fueled. I look back at the trainee-days version of myself and I just admire it.” She pauses. “But the older I get, I have more days where I don’t understand anything. I don’t know what I’m doing. [I’m] just fighting my demons a day at a time. Back then I was just so strong, and I don’t know how I was like that.”

The Guinness Book of World Records took note when she released her first solo single, “On the Ground,” in 2021: She became the first artist to top the global charts as both part of a group and as a soloist. But by 2023, uncertainty swirled about Blackpink’s future. The members renewed with YG for group projects, but in 2024 each struck out on her own. Jennie, Jisoo and Lisa launched their own companies and signed with U.S. labels. Rosé took a different path, joining the Korean imprint The Black Label, co-founded in 2015 by longtime Blackpink producer Teddy Park, and signing a U.S. deal with Atlantic Records.

“I don’t know if I knew exactly what I wanted,” she says, “but I knew I wanted a world that was unapologetically and purely me.”

Even her name reflects that ongoing negotiation of identity. Sitting in Seoul, she explains with a shrug: “If the name Rosie is something that makes you feel closer to me, then please call me Rosie. If Rosé seems cooler, go ahead and call me Rosé. My born name is Roseanne, so go ahead and call me Roseanne. Actually, sometimes that sounds like I’m being scolded by my mom, so it kind of scares me.”

It’s that same instinct — to be all of those things at once, but still unmistakably herself — that fueled her first solo album, Rosie, released in December 2024. Unlike the edgy sound Blackpink became known for, it was startlingly personal. “At the time I was a 27-year-old girl and I wanted it to be purely, disgustingly me — whatever I come with,” she explains, speaking of the album she finished just months before turning 28. She says she wrote until she had nothing left to say on the subject. “There were days where I was just going through my own problems of being who I am and living in this world with social media, [of] wanting to be accepted and [that] feeling of needing to be loved and appreciated by everyone.”

Amy Allen, one of her main collaborators, recalls, “I just remember from day one being really taken aback at how excited she was about the songwriting process and how honest and vulnerable she was willing to be.”

The centerpiece of this new chapter wasn’t the album itself but the single that preceded it. “Apt.,” her duet with Bruno Mars, became a juggernaut — 2 billion streams on Spotify, 45 weeks on the Billboard Hot 100, peaking at No. 3. It was Rosé’s first U.S. top 10 hit as a soloist, and it has sparked a ton of Grammy speculation. Says Bruno Mars lovingly in an email to THR, “Big Bad Rosie was destined to do great things no matter what. I’m so proud of her, and thankful that I got to be a part of the conversation that led to APT and the birth of a brand new K-pop juggernaut named Bruno Mars.”

As for the Grammy buzz? Rosé raises an eyebrow when that possibility is raised. “Really? You believe that?” she says. “I’m getting chills right now. It’s still a dream for me. It’s still a fantasy. A moment that proves to myself so many things.”

Her schedule has remained merciless. In September, she jetted to Shanghai for a Puma launch, then flew to New York — spending less than 24 hours on the ground — to accept her VMA for song of the year. The next morning she was back on a plane to Seoul.

“Everything just feels like it’s not really real,” she admits during a Zoom call a week after the VMAs from the modest apartment where she tries to catch her breath. The wall behind her is painted jet black, she’s curled up on a chair with her hair in braids. She laughs as she confesses she’s still in her pajamas — chic ones, of course. “My life seems like these crazy episodes that I watch on TV. I’ve just turned it off and now I’m back home.”

Fashion houses, quick to spot a worldwide opportunity, have lined up. Saint Laurent put her in its front rows before naming her its global ambassador in 2020, a first step that soon led to campaigns with Tiffany & Co., Rimowa and Puma. What’s striking isn’t the list of contracts — those roll in for every big pop star — but that the K-pop star has managed to break through previously ironclad global barriers to anchor massive campaigns in the U.S. and Europe.

The attention, she admits, can sometimes feel overwhelming. She says she’s had to learn the importance of shutting off her phone, if only to remind herself that “there are so many distractions around life lately that you don’t have time to tune in to what your body needs in that moment.”

Still, the pressure doesn’t disappear so easily. “There are so many things I do get to experience, and I’m so privileged and grateful for it,” she says. “But then there are also some aspects that I don’t get to enjoy that others get to, so I don’t relate to some things. That’s why I think I end up being so harsh on myself — because I don’t think I have time to make mistakes.”

Her career is built on duality: She chases rest, but her schedule is full; she has doubts but won’t stop working; she’s a product of K-pop’s rigorous ecosystem and also one of the few idols to go against norms. She talks about wanting her music to be a “time capsule” of her real life in an industry where the surface and gloss are often valued over authenticity and rawness.

At last, she rises from the chair. The eclectic maroon bodysuit, the burnt orange leggings, the gold Maison Ernest heels — all perfectly in place. Stylists crouch just out of frame, tugging seams, swapping earrings, brushing stray hairs from her face, while publicists hover nearby. The air is thick with hairspray and heat.

Rosé gazes into the camera, her expression calm and professional. The girl from Melbourne is now a fully formed star. But behind all the glam and glitter, there’s a 28-year-old who is still trying to work out how to breathe inside a life that so rarely comes up for air.

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This story appeared in the Oct. 1 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. Click here to subscribe.