In March 2023, JISOO released her first solo single album, ME. Yet her name appeared nowhere in the writing or composition credits. The people listed as having made the songs were outside producers.
The album sold anyway. ME passed one million copies on April 4, 2023 — the fifth day after release, according to Hanteo Chart — and moved 1,172,351 copies in its first week. It was the first time a female solo artist had recorded a first-week million on Hanteo Chart.
So this piece is not about a scorecard. It asks what someone already at the top set out to change afterward, and where that change can actually be seen.
The First Direction She Chose Outside the Group
BLACKPINK was a group defined by hard beats and unwavering attitude. A sound built on hip-hop and EDM, performances that commanded the stage, and the density four people generated together — that was the group’s language.
In December 2023, the four members renewed only their group activity contracts with their agency. They did not renew their individual activity contracts. It was a choice to keep the group intact while each member decided what to do under her own name, and the four did in fact walk in different directions afterward.
The direction JISOO chose was not the one that turned up the volume. In her solo music she left her low register as it was and picked pop that puts the story in the lyrics first. Instead of foregrounding elaborate rap or explosive high notes, she chose melodies that linger. The title of her debut single album, ME, was not unrelated to that direction. The lead track “FLOWER” tells the story of someone walking away from a relationship on her own terms, and the B-side “All Eyes on Me” gives us a narrator who knows her worth and asks for exactly that much. She had carried the group’s shared defiance over to a place where she sings alone.
Where a Name Gets Placed
Table 1. Changes in JISOO’s songwriting credits across her solo work
| Release | Song | Writing credit |
|---|---|---|
| March 2023 | “FLOWER” | None |
| February 2025 | “earthquake” | Yes |
| October 2025 | “Eyes Closed” | Yes |
On February 21, 2024, JISOO founded BLISSOO, a label bearing her own name — a blend of bliss and Jisoo. In January of the following year she entered a global partnership with Warner Records, separating the planning and distribution of her solo music entirely from her group activity.
Then, with her first mini album AMORTAGE on February 14, 2025, the second row of that table came into being. Her name appeared on the writing credits of all four tracks, and she was also listed as executive producer overseeing the album’s direction. Credits are where it is officially recorded who took on what. Within two years her name reached that place for the first time — and not on one song, but across an entire album.
AMORTAGE was not a collection of songs but an album with an order. “earthquake” handles the tremor of love beginning, “Your Love” the stretch where it deepens, “TEARS” the parting, and “Hugs & Kisses” the release that follows. Four songs follow a single relationship from start to finish.
The results followed. AMORTAGE sold 385,501 copies on its first day per Hanteo Chart — the highest single-day figure for a Korean solo artist that year — and reached 520,318 copies in its first week. The lead track “earthquake” went to number one on Billboard’s World Digital Song Sales.
That October, “Eyes Closed,” a duet with British singer Zayn, entered the Billboard Hot 100 at number 72. It was the first time JISOO had placed on the Hot 100 under her own name, and it made BLACKPINK the first girl group whose every member had charted there as a soloist. The same month, her combined solo releases passed one billion streams on Spotify — reached in 925 days across eight songs, a first for a Korean female soloist.
What Remains Once You Take Things Away
On stage, JISOO is not one to move a great deal. Rather than pulling the eye with fierce group choreography, she puts her effort into the angle of a fingertip, an expression, and the composition of the stage as a whole. The point choreography for “FLOWER” spread widely on short-form platforms not because it was intricate but because it was clear enough to copy after a single viewing.
This approach comes out of how she picks songs. In an interview with NYLON, JISOO said that choosing every track by personal taste alone would narrow what she can show on stage. So she selects music where the choreography, the styling, and the concept can work together. Choosing a song and designing a stage are not separate tasks to her.
In March 2025 she set out on her first solo tour. Starting in Manila and continuing through Bangkok, Tokyo, Macau, Taipei, Hong Kong, and Hanoi, she played ten shows across seven cities. It was a run through Asia carried by her name alone, without the group’s. On stage she repeatedly chose arrangements that used a stand microphone or thinned the instrumentation so the voice came through as it was.
The same subtraction shows up away from the stage. What goes up on the personal YouTube channel she opened on her birthday in January 2023 is not polished editorial footage but time spent in a moving car or a waiting room.
Taking things away is not concealment but a decision about what you want people to look at. Erase the things that pull attention, one at a time, and what is left at the end is the song and the person singing it — and JISOO’s stage is arranged toward that place.
An Album With No Title Yet
On September 4, 2026, JISOO released a new single, “CLICK.” It is dance pop led by synths and bass, about the moment two people connect naturally even while knowing they shouldn’t. She sings it alone, without a featured artist. The music video was directed by Joseph Kahn and shot in northeastern Bangkok, Thailand.
The song does not stand complete on its own; it is a pre-release track from her first full-length album. What has been made public is the first line of the first chapter.
The concept has shifted, too. Where AMORTAGE handled the stages of love from the bright side, “CLICK” borrows the imagery of a darkened amusement park to draw a place where attraction and unease are mixed together.
And in this song’s credits, one more place has opened up. JISOO is listed for the lyrics, and this time she is listed for the arrangement as well. Arrangement is the work of deciding how a song’s sound is laid out. Where the record used to show what she would sing, it has begun to show how it would sound.
It took three years to get from “FLOWER” to “CLICK.” Over that stretch both the character of the music and the places her name sits have shifted little by little, and this song is the first result to come from where that shift has landed. Neither the darkened amusement park nor the name in the arrangement credits would be sitting where it is now without the three years before it.
But this song is only the beginning of an album. A full-length record with no title and no release date is set to arrive in pieces, song by song, and there is no telling yet whether the next one will carry this direction forward or turn it over. If the artist who started last and released the fewest songs has changed something with each of those few, then what shifts again across the remaining ones is worth watching for.