Rosé, member of the global sensation BLACKPINK, recently got emotional in a podcast interview with The New York Times, discussing the challenges of being a K-pop idol and her fight to overcome loneliness. The interview coincides with her upcoming solo album rosie, set to release on December 6th.
Reflecting on her journey, Rosé shared, “I feel like I’ve been waiting to release this album my whole life.” She described the creative process behind the album as deeply personal, saying, “This album, which deals with my heartbreak, loss, and anger, means so much to me.”
Rosé’s story began in 2012, at the age of 15, when her father encouraged her to audition for YG Entertainment. She passed and moved from Australia to Korea to train as a trainee. The experience was grueling and isolating. “I didn’t understand the loneliness I would face back then. It was traumatizing, but I survived,” she said.
Rosé recounted her demanding daily schedule: “I would wake up at 9:30 a.m. and go to the shared dance studio. I had vocal, dance, and language lessons, and practice ended at 2 a.m. I only had one day off every two weeks.” Determined to succeed, she often stayed late to practice alone. “I think I worked so hard because I didn’t want to go back to Australia and explain my failure,” she admitted.
When asked what she found most challenging about her career, Rosé revealed it was “K-pop’s fan culture.” She explained, “We were trained to present ourselves perfectly at all times, even when interacting with fans online. We had to always appear as the perfect girl to everyone.”
She also reflected on the lack of emotional openness in K-pop. “I had a deep personal need to create music I could relate to, like the albums I grew up listening to. I think artists should be allowed to show their vulnerable sides, but we weren’t trained to talk about emotions, feelings, or experiences.”
Rosé described the process of creating her album as liberating. “It was like breathing. I did have fears like, ‘Can I show this side of me? Can I say this?’ But it was a necessary process.”
At one point in the interview, when asked about online harassment toward female artists, Rosé teared up. “I’m quite tough and don’t want to react emotionally, but when it actually happened, it was really, really bad,” she said. But writing songs became her way of coping. “Songwriting came to me like a blessing when I needed it the most. I could take a big problem, put it into a song, and feel like it left my heart.”
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