The three-way battle between the ‘K-pop Big Three’ has come to fruition.

The three groups BTS, TWICE, and BLACKPINK, who are considered ‘K-pop Top Tier’ while leading the popularity of K-pop on the global stage, have formed a competition structure as they all released new songs as solo or group songs on the 6th (Korean time).

In particular, the stage for their competition is expected to be the Billboard chart, which is considered an indicator of global pop music popularity beyond Korea, drawing the attention of K-pop fandom. Friday, the day they chose to release their new songs, is when Billboard resets its weekly music streaming counts.

TWICE will release their 14th mini album ‘STRATEGY’ at 2 PM on the 6th. They are determined to further increase their influence in the North American market with this album. They had already shown their expansion by taking 9th place on the US‘s ‘2024 first half best-selling albums list’ with their 13th mini-album, ‘With You’. TWICE was the only K-pop girl group to make it onto the chart, which compiles the best-selling albums in the US in the first half of this year.

To ride the momentum, they added a rap by famous American rapper Megan Thee Stallion to the title song ‘Strategy’. They had already worked with Megan Thee Stallion, who featured in the song, through the remix version of his hit song ‘Mamushi’. A portion of the new song’s choreography was also revealed for the first time on the US streaming concert ‘Amazon Music Live’ held on the 22nd of last month.

BTS and BLACKPINK members V and Rosé will each make solo debuts. V, who released a duet song with singer Park Hyo-shin called ‘Winter Ahead’ on the 29th of last month, will release a new song, ‘White Christmas’, exactly a week later on the 6th at 2 PM. The song is a representative carol by ‘pop legend’ Bing Crosby, and V has reconstructed part of the original song released in 1942 into a duet format.

This is the first time that the world-famous ‘White Christmas’ is being released as a duet with the original singer rather than a remake. It is also garnering extraordinary attention in the United States as the song of Bing Crosby, who passed away in 1977, is being reborn after 47 years.

Rosé released her first full-length solo album, ‘Rosie’, at midnight (0:00) on the 6th, one step ahead of them. The album contains a total of 12 tracks, including the new song ‘Toxic Till the End’.

She said of ‘Rosie’, “I honestly included stories that weren‘t necessarily pretty that I experienced while living in my 20s, which wasn’t always easy.”. As such, she participated in writing the lyrics and composition of all the songs on the album, showing off her capabilities as a singer-songwriter.

The green light has already been given for global success. The pre-released song ‘Apartment’ (APT.) is becoming a global hit, and is setting various records, such as the shortest period of time for a K-pop music video to reach 500 million views (47 days 22 hours).



Reporter Yoo Ji-hye yjh0304@donga.com