At this rate, the ‘2024 Best Meme’ is already a given.

While BLACKPINK Rosé‘s new song ‘Apartment’ is sweeping domestic and international music charts, it is also showing undying heat by creating parody and cover trends online. Some fans are even welcoming the song, saying, “A true ‘popular song’ has been born”, given that it has achieved both chart success and general popularity on the fandom-centered K-pop stage.

○‘Construction’, ‘Jeonse’ are also popular

The perceived temperature of ‘Apartment’’s popularity is more clearly revealed on the ‘Karaoke charts’, where the public‘s preferences are intuitively reflected. ‘Apartment’ took first place on the Geumyoung Karaoke Female Idol Chart announced by Geumyoung Entertainment on the 6th.

The chorus, “A~part apartment, ah~part apartment”, is in English lyrics, but it is relatively easy to sing along to, and the friendly charm created by the ‘apartment game’ theme was found to have attracted many customers.

In line with this, with Rosé’s ‘Apartment’ craze, Yoon Soo-il‘s hit song of the same name, ‘Apartment’ (1982), gained a lot of attention to the point of earning the nickname ‘Building Apartment’, and made a surprising comeback by jumping 339 places to 11th place.

On social media such as YouTube, TikTok, and Instagram, ‘Apartment’ parodies are becoming established as a form of entertainment.

A representative example is the video by comedians Uhm Ji-yoon and Kwak Beom that parodied the ‘Apartment’ music video, which easily surpassed 3 million views. Uhm Ji-yoon and Kwak Beom imitated Rosé’s blonde hairstyle, Bruno Mars‘ mustache, and even the choreography, earning them the comical nickname ‘Jeonse Scam Apartment’ among users.

‘Remix videos’ that mix various materials are another thing to watch. The video on YouTube channel ‘JeffP’, which cleverly weaved lines from actor Hwang Jung-min’s works to create ‘Apartment’, surpassed a whopping 4 million views. A video on the YouTube channel ‘Professor Woot’ combining Yoon Soo-il and Rosé‘s ‘Apartment’ into one song is getting positive responses such as ‘I wish they would actually collaborate’ for its unexpectedly harmonious charm.

In addition, a video of actor Moon Sang-hoon disguised as a reporter and teaching ‘Apartment Game’ in a bar, and a video of singer Bae Ki-seong covering the song with his powerful voice are also adding fuel to the ‘Apartment craze’.

○US Billboard ‘Strong’Continuing

‘Apartment’, which has become a popular song overseas as well, is firmly maintaining its position at the top of the US Billboard as of the 6th.

Rosé, who recently achieved the highest ranking among female K-pop singers by ranking 8th on the main single chart ‘Hot 100’, also ranked 13th on the latest version (November 9th) released that day. She also swept the top spots on global charts such as the ‘Global 200’ and ‘Global (excluding US)’.

Billboard even predicted ‘long-term popularity’ due to this momentum. Billboard analyzed ‘Apartment’ as “one of the biggest streaming hits in the US and around the world” and “the number of US streaming and downloads remaining constant is a positive sign of continued momentum”.


Reporter Yoo Ji-hye yjh0304@donga.com