Rosé’s collaboration with Bruno Mars stayed on the Billboard Hot 100 for 45 weeks

Rosé’s collaboration with Bruno Mars stayed on the Billboard Hot 100 for 45 weeks. That’s not a K-pop story anymore — that’s just a pop story. And Rosé wrote it on her own terms.

I’ve been paying attention to Rosé differently since “APT.” came out in late 2024. Before that, I admired her — her voice is one of the most distinctive in K-pop, and her stage presence within BLACKPINK has always been a personal favorite of mine to watch. But “APT.” changed the framework. Hearing her on a Bruno Mars track, holding her own not as the Korean guest but as the creative equal, on a song that went on to spend 45 weeks on the Billboard Hot 100 — that was a different category of moment. From my commute in Gyeonggi-do, listening to that song on the subway and watching everyone around me either humming along or moving slightly — that’s when I knew the story had shifted. This is the story of how Rosé became one of the most significant solo artists to emerge from K-pop in the past decade.

📋 Quick Navigation

• Who Is Rosé? Background and Early Career
• The Rosie Album: A Breakthrough Explained
• APT.: How One Song Changed Everything
• The Rosé Voice: What Makes It Different
• Where to Start with Rosé’s Music

Who Is Rosé? Background and Early Career

Roseanne Park — known as Rosé (로제) — was born on February 11, 1997 in Auckland, New Zealand, and grew up in Melbourne, Australia. Her cultural identity is genuinely dual: she is ethnically Korean, raised in an Australian context that shaped her English fluency and her musical sensibility, trained for years in the highly specific Korean idol system that shaped her performance precision. That intersection — Australian emotional openness meeting Korean artistic discipline — is what makes her voice and stage presence feel different from any simple categorization. She auditioned for YG Entertainment in Australia, passed, moved to Korea as a teenager, and trained for approximately six years before BLACKPINK’s 2016 debut. During that training period, she developed the vocal technique that would eventually make “On the Ground” and “APT.” possible.

Her solo debut came in March 2021 with the single album R, featuring “On the Ground” and “Gone.” “On the Ground” debuted at No. 70 on the Billboard Hot 100 — the highest-charting debut for a Korean female solo artist at that time. The song’s emotional directness and vocal performance were immediately recognized as something distinct from the BLACKPINK collective sound. Rosé was clearly working through something personal in those songs, and audiences felt that authenticity.

💡 My Personal Experience: When “On the Ground” came out in 2021, I played it for a Korean colleague who didn’t follow K-pop and watched her reaction. She listened to the whole thing without speaking, then said “그 목소리가 진짜네” — “that voice is real.” That’s the Korean listener’s way of saying something isn’t manufactured. It’s one of the highest compliments in our musical culture, and Rosé earned it with her very first solo release.

The Rosie Album: A Breakthrough Explained

Rosé’s full-length debut album Rosie was released in December 2024. It featured 12 tracks and debuted at No. 3 on the Billboard 200 — the highest US chart position for any K-pop female solo artist at that point. The album is notably diverse: it moves through indie-pop, synth-pop, ballads, and dance tracks while maintaining a cohesive emotional through-line about self-discovery, relationships, and what it means to know yourself outside the structures that have always defined you. She received three Grammy nominations for the album cycle, including song and record of the year for “APT.” That’s not a milestone in K-pop terms. That’s a milestone in the history of popular music.

APT.: How One Song Changed Everything

“APT.” — released as a pre-album single in October 2024 — is a collaboration with Bruno Mars based on the Korean drinking game “apartment” (아파트), in which players tap their hands on the table in a specific rhythm. The concept sounds strange on paper and sounds irresistible on speakers. The production is minimal and infectious: Rosé and Bruno Mars trade verses over a deceptively simple beat, and the chemistry between them — two artists who are both technically precise and emotionally immediate — produces something that transcends genre entirely. It stayed on the Billboard Hot 100 for approximately 45 weeks. It was number one in Korea for months. It played in convenience stores, in taxis, in offices, in my own kitchen when my daughter discovered it and demanded to hear it on repeat for three consecutive days.

The Rosé Voice: What Makes It Different

Rosé’s voice is the most distinctive element of her artistry, and understanding what makes it work helps explain why she’s been able to cross markets in ways that many K-pop artists can’t. The tone is slightly husky in the lower register, which is unusual for K-pop where bright, high-pitched clarity is often the standard. When she reaches into her upper range, there’s a slight breathiness that adds vulnerability to technically demanding passages — the opposite of demonstrating difficulty, it makes hard things sound intimate. Her phrasing is Australian-inflected in its timing, which adds subtle rhythmic irregularity that makes her vocals feel spontaneous even in highly produced contexts. And she writes. The emotional specificity of her lyrics comes from the fact that she has a genuine perspective and a gift for finding images that make that perspective concrete.

Where to Start with Rosé’s Music

If you’ve never heard Rosé before, start with “APT.” — it’s the most immediately accessible entry point and will tell you immediately whether her vocal quality resonates with you. If it does, go back to “On the Ground” for the emotional baseline of her solo work. Then listen to the full Rosie album in order on a quiet evening. The album is sequenced thoughtfully, and going through it as a continuous listening experience rather than track by track reveals the arc the songs are building toward. Her live performances — particularly the acoustic versions of “Gone” she’s performed at various events — also demonstrate the raw vocal capacity beneath the production.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is Rosé Korean or Australian?

Both. Rosé — born Roseanne Park — is ethnically Korean and was born in New Zealand, then grew up in Melbourne, Australia. She moved to Korea as a teenager to train with YG Entertainment and debuted with BLACKPINK in 2016. She speaks both English and Korean fluently, and her dual cultural background significantly influences her musical style and the way her voice sounds.

How many weeks was “APT.” on the Billboard Hot 100?

Rosé’s “APT.” collaboration with Bruno Mars remained on the Billboard Hot 100 for approximately 45 weeks, making it one of the longest-charting K-pop adjacent singles in the chart’s history and significantly exceeding any previous K-pop female solo performance on the same chart.

Final Thoughts from a Korean Local

Rosé represents something genuinely new in Korean pop music: an artist whose Koreanness and whose global identity are equally present and neither apologizes for the other. She makes music that sounds like herself — which sounds obvious but is rarer than it should be. The Rosie album, for all its commercial achievement, is most impressive as an artistic statement: here is a person who knows who she is and makes art that reflects that person honestly. In Korean music culture, that kind of artistic authenticity is deeply respected. The fact that the rest of the world seems to agree is something I find quietly wonderful. Comments below — happy to answer questions about her music or about finding Rosé-related experiences in Seoul.

About the Author: Hellokoreaguide

A Korean local in Gyeonggi-do. 13+ years working in Korea, daily commuter, dad. Writing about the real Korean cultural landscape — from the subway to the music charts. Questions? Get in touch.

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For Rosé’s complete discography and latest updates, Billboard’s Rosé artist page tracks her chart history in detail.