Instead of chilling out at her apt. during the brief BlackPink hiatus before her group resumes their Deadline World Tour, Rosé has been a busy bee in the Big Apple.
Last Monday (9/22) she and her band performed a number of tunes on The Howard Stern Show that included covers of both Lana Del Rey and Paul Simon.
Then on Saturday (9/27) at the Great Lawn of Central Park she covered The Cranberries during the Global Citizen Festival.
The 28-year-old Kiwi began her week on the Stern Show where she performed five tunes starting off with her big solo hit "APT," which will celebrate it's first birthday in a few weeks.
The collab with Bruno Mars which Rosé told the radio host is essentially a drinking game, spent 34 weeks on the Billboard Hot 100, which is the longest run a song by a K-pop artist has ever had.
Rose told Stern that Mars did a whole bunch more than just sing on the smash hit, he helped her become more confident with it. She admitted she was nervous to even send it to him initially because it was an "unserious" drinking game song. But Bruno got it immediately.
“He took it, and then he just knew what to do with it,” she said. “I’m still in shock [about] what he’s done with it, and that collaboration process was just kind of like a movie and a dream," she gushed.
She then played "toxic till the end" and added some of Oasis' "Wonderwall" to the end of it.
Fans of Rosé no doubt remember a few years ago on her birthday she sang a few covers, karaoke style, on her YouTube page. One of them was "Don't Look Back In Anger" by the brothers Gallagher.
But the covers weren't over. To wrap up her set she performed live debuts of her covers of both Lana Del Rey's "Norman Fucking Rockwell" and Paul Simon's "50 Ways To Leave Your Lover."
Surely the first time those two bangers had ever sat together on a setlist.
"Goddamn, man child," Rosé began while covering Lana. "You loved me so well I almost said 'I love you,'" she sang, altering the verb from being profane.
Still it's a dark, sad song, and not really what one would expect from the blistering hot star from the wildly popular girl group. It also reminds everyone how hard that tune is to sing.
Then came her turn at Paul Simon's only #1 hit single as a solo artist, the beloved, "50 Ways To Leave Your Lover."
It's nice to know that as the song heads to its 50th birthday next month, a new, worldwide generation will get turned on to the star of Still Crazy After All These Years.
Best of all, maybe the TikTok generation can think of the 45 other ways to leave ones lover as Paul seemed to have left those on the cutting room floor.
Saturday she performed a short four-song set at the Global Citizen Festival where she led off with "APT" and ended with a cover of The Cranberries' "Linger" followed by "toxic / wonderwall."
Before getting into "Linger," Rosé told the 60,000 in Central Park it was one of her favorite songs. Perhaps she was limited for time because she didn't say anything else about it. You got the mic girl, fill us in!
The two NYC performances pulled back the curtain a tad from the megamachine that is BlackPink and allowed some pretty big audiences to hear what the group's best singer (in some people's minds) sounds like when there's not a lot of production and backing tracks.
It was wise to sing popular songs among different decades. It'll be interesting to see if any make it into her solo segment when BlackPink heads to your area.
Jisoo, Jennie, Lisa, and Rosé head to Asia next month for stadium shows in Taiwan, Thailand, Indonesia, the Philippines, Singapore, and then 2026 gigs in Japan and China.
Get your tickets on the BlackPink website.
Deadline World Tour 2025 remaining dates
10/18-10/19 Kaohsiung National Stadium, Kaohsiung, Taiwan
10/24-10/26 Rajamangala National Stadium, Bangkok, Thailand
11/1-11/2 Gelora Bung Karno Main Stadium, Jakarta, Indonesia
11/22-11/23 Philippine Arena, Bocaue, Philippines
11/28-11/30 Singapore National Stadium, Singapore, Singapore
1/16-1/18 Tokyo Dome, Tokyo, Japan
1/24-1/26 Kai Tak Stadium, Hong Kong, China
