LISA is a rapper, singer, dancer, and part of the South Korean girl group Blackpink. Her single “Rockstar,” which she released on July 13th, debuts at No. 1 on the Billboard Global Excl. U.S. chart. This makes BLACKPINK the first group with three members to top the list as soloists.
On June 28, Lisa released the song “Rockstar,” which has received over 100 million views on YouTube as of this writing. On the worldwide ranking, the song’s dramatic premiere also ends a protracted period of geographic monotony.
Starting at No. 4 on the Global 200, No. 2 on the Rap Digital single Sales list, No. 19 on the Hot Rap Songs chart, and No. 7 on the main Digital Song Sales chart, “ROCKSTAR” became the seventh best-selling single of the week in the United States.
Photo Credit: W Magazine
After surpassing her previous entries “LALISA” and “MONEY,” “ROCKSTAR” is now Lisa’s highest-charting solo single to date on the Hot 100.
Lisa became the first female singer to sell 736,000 copies of an album in its first week of release in South Korea when her first single album Lalisa was released in September 2021. In the first 24 hours on YouTube, the music video for the main song became the most watched music video by a solo artist. “Lalisa” and “Money,” the second single from the album that went viral, both peaked in the top ten of the Billboard Global 200. The latter song also broke the record for the longest-charting song by a female K-pop artist on the UK Singles Chart and the US Billboard Hot 100.
According to Billboard, the Global Excl. U.S. chart lists the top 200 songs of the week based on streaming and data from over 200 worldwide regions, omitting U.S. consumption, which is produced by data tracker Luminate. Consequently, since its debut in 2020, the Global Excl. U.S. chart has included musicians from Africa, Asia, South America, and other regions in its upper reaches, more so than the Billboard Global 200 and even more so than the Billboard Hot 100, which is headquartered on the United States.
According to Billboard, the methodology used to determine “chart rankings is weighted and takes into account official-only streams on both subscription and ad-supported tiers of audio and video music services. Download sales are also taken into account, reflecting purchases made from global full-service digital music retailers; sales from direct-to-consumer (D2C) websites are not included in the charts’ computations.”
Not only is LISA the first Thai artist to be at the top of the list in 2024, but she is also the only artist to reach the pinnacle all year who is not from one of the English-speaking countries—the United States, Canada, or the United Kingdom. “Yet, the song “Rockstar” is performed nearly entirely in English, with a single Japanese lyric repeated.