K-pop idol Rosé of Blackpink fame grew up in Australia – but she could never have made it big here

In the past year, K-pop star Rosé has redefined the music genre known for its choreographed dance moves and global fan culture. Having followed Rosé since the 2016 arrival of Blackpink – one of the world’s most popular K-pop girl groups, of which she is one of four members – I am so excited about her debut full-length album, Rosie, released on Friday.

But I am also frustrated and disappointed, because in Australia (where Rosé grew up before heading to South Korea to become a K-pop idol) there has been relatively little coverage of her achievements.

It’s not that Australia doesn’t celebrate Australian artists’ overseas achievements: from Kylie Minogue to Margot Robbie, we cheer for them all the time. But let’s face it: we haven’t given Rosé’s musical breakthrough the attention it deserves.

Her first single, APT – a collaboration with Bruno Mars – broke into the Top 10 on the Billboard Hot 100. Her second single – Number One Girl – reached over 30m views on YouTube within four days. That video, which she directed, is nothing like a typical K-pop video: standing on a skate bowl, in a simple outfit of a black jacket and jeans, Rosé sings with vulnerability about the emotions behind her glamorous life as a member of Blackpink.

Rosé, who was born in New Zealand and later moved to Melbourne with her family at age eight, is one of the many Australia-raised artists of Asian heritage who are active overseas and have secured the kind of success that they could barely have dreamed of if they’d stayed at home. There’s Felix and Bang Chan, two members of the boy group Stray Kids, who were raised in Sydney, while Hanni Pham from the girl group NewJeans is a Vietnamese Australian hailing from Melbourne. Malaysian Australian Kimberley Chen wowed the world with her creative single Fragile, a collaboration with Malaysian rapper and activist Namewee, which satirises China’s nationalism.

The growing trend of Australian artists making it big in Asia doesn’t necessarily come as a surprise, given that the Asian Australian community constitutes 17.4% of the country’s total population. But would 27-year-old Rosé – who moved to Seoul at 15, after her successful audition for one of South Korea’s top entertainment companies – still have achieved the kind of global career she enjoys now if she had stayed in Australia?

A report commissioned by Creative Australia indicates it’s unlikely. The median age for Australian musicians is 42 and the profession is dominated by men, though the gender distribution of the overall creative sector has improved. The demographics of musicians also fail to reflect Australia’s cultural diversity; the 2021 census shows 22% of the Australian population speaks a language other than English at home, yet only 13% of musicians do so.

And being from a minority background means even greater barriers to building a career in Australia in a sector that already pays poorly. According to the report, the average annual income for musicians through their creative work in 2021-2022 was $22,200 – a drop from the 1986-1987 average pay of $24,600.

Recent research by the University of Technology Sydney found Australians are listening to more music from the US and UK, with a significant decline in Australian artists and artists from non-English speaking countries. Tim Kelly, a former music executive and one of the authors of the paper, suggests that is a result of the dominance of the big streaming platforms and their algorithms focused on US and UK artists.

Rosé (center), Jisoo (L) and Lisa (R) of Blackpink in 2022.

But it’s also possible that, in the eyes of many Australians, non-English music such as K-pop is not worth paying attention to, even when it has become a global phenomenon.

And sometimes when it does get attention, it becomes a form of exoticism. Last year, I wrote about a business dispute involving SM Entertainment, the South Korean agency that introduced K-pop to the rest of the world. It was the biggest business saga of the sector in 2023 – but on social media, I was asked why I would spend time writing a story that no one cares about.

But Australians should care about K-pop. It’s a US$3bn industry and a cornerstone of the economy of South Korea, one of Australia’s strategic partners in the Indo-Pacific region. Even King Charles – Australia’s head of state – awarded the Order of the British Empire to Blackpink’s members last year to recognise the group’s advocacy at Cop26.

It’s completely OK if you don’t like K-pop. But at least, when K-pop artists with connections to Australia make a career breakthrough, they are deserving of our attention.