On July 24, BLACKPINK's Jennie will release "Less Than A Lover" — a single on which she serves simultaneously as director, songwriter, and music producer. It is the first time she has taken complete creative ownership of a release in this way.
The song has already accumulated considerable live exposure before its official release. Jennie performed it at Governors Ball in New York in June, then at Roskilde Festival in Denmark, Open'er Festival in Poland, and Mad Cool Festival in Spain — four major international venues across more than a month. Building anticipation through festival performances ahead of a formal release date is a creative inversion of the conventional release sequence.
This release rests on a concrete commercial foundation. Her debut full-length album Ruby, released in March 2025, debuted at number seven on the Billboard 200 and number two on the Top Album Sales chart. First-week physical sales in South Korea reached 661,130 copies — the highest figure for a female K-pop solo artist that year. Ruby simultaneously debuted at number three on the UK Official Albums Chart, the highest placement ever achieved by a female K-pop solo artist on that ranking. At the time of the album's release, three tracks charted simultaneously on the Billboard Hot 100 — a first for any female K-pop solo artist. "Like Jennie" went on to become the most-streamed K-pop song on Spotify globally in the first half of 2025.
"Less Than A Lover" marks a deliberate shift in direction. Ruby was assembled with an extensive roster of outside collaborators — Dua Lipa, Doechii, Childish Gambino, and Diplo among them. This new single carries only Jennie's name across every creative role. The sound is lo-fi, built around guitar and vintage electric keyboard, and positioned by OA Entertainment as showing "a different side" of the artist. Moving from a production-heavy mainstream framework toward a more restrained, self-directed creative language is an active choice that trades commercial accessibility for authorial control — a reflection of creative confidence rather than commercial caution.
