ROSÉ’s Road to No. 1: From Beyoncé to Bruno Mars ‘APT.’ Friendship | Billboard Cover

Billboard cover star ROSÉ looks back at her journey from growing up in Australia and wanting to sing like Beyoncé to making history with her Grammy nominations for her Bruno Mars collaboration “APT.” Plus, she dives into the creation of her solo project ‘Rosie’ and what it was like jumping back into BLACKPINK following her solo success.

ROSÉ:

Never in a million years would I have thought that this would happen, to be nominated for a Grammy. It means a lot that “APT.” is the one that is being celebrated so much. I’m really, really grateful, and with it like shook don’t even know what to say. We were radio people. My dad would have the radio on all the time. And because Australia, like LA, everything’s far away — like, everything’s 30 minutes away. So we’d always have the radio on. And so I grew up listening to all of that. Britney Spears was on the radio all the time. Madonna was on the radio. I think I was definitely influenced by a lot of pop, I love pop music. When I grew up, YouTube was where I started to listen and watch all these musicians, and naturally, the very beginning of me like starting to sing and play instruments was after I watched ‘Dreamgirls.’ I remember watching Beyoncé sing “Listen” and being like, “Oh my God, I really want to be able to sing that.” I am. Yes, and I like printed it on, like, the chords on paper, and I would play it and sing at the top of my lungs. Simultaneously, my sister, because we are Korean, she was very interested in our culture. She had been consuming a lot of Korean music and musicians, and and that’s when K-pop was around as well. That’s how I got to absorb that thing. It all just was a mixture of things as I am and as I have always been.

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