LEMONADEaespa's second full-length album, out on 29 May 2026 with eleven tracks. Idology's Mano and Kuibi both wrote about it.
LEMONADE is aespa’s second full-length album, released on 29 May 2026 with eleven tracks and two title tracks, the pre-released ‘WDA (Whole Different Animal) (Feat. G-DRAGON)’ and ‘LEMONADE’. It is the group’s first full-length since Armageddon in 2024.
SM Entertainment’s album introduction says the two songs were set as a double title track, and that G-Dragon, Becky G and Ty Dolla $ign feature on the record.
The music video went up on the official SMTOWN channel the same day. The video for ‘WDA (Whole Different Animal) (Feat. G-DRAGON)’ had gone up on the same channel earlier, on 11 May 2026.
Mano took the record for the monthly new-releases column of the Korean idol-pop webzine Idology (아이돌로지) on 15 June 2026. He called it a record that justifies at every turn the claim to be a full-length album announcing an entirely new season, ‘Complæxity’; measured against the previous full-length, he wrote, this one pulls its focus tight and brings both concentration and finish home. It is, he added, worthy of being called the summit of aespa’s discography.
The same piece walked the eleven tracks in order. It opens, Mano wrote, with ‘WDA’, which works a threateningly assured and self-directed image of a woman through the double meaning — awe and fear — of the words singularity and mutant; then the title track ‘LEMONADE’, an attitude that races along and breaks through the world’s rupture with a wit of its own, clears the air once, after which the rest of the songs follow, each of a decent standard.
Kuibi, writing for the same outlet’s weekly column on 2 June, had taken the record earlier. Of the title track he wrote that ‘LEMONADE’ sits on a track that sounds like a variation on ‘Whiplash’, keeps the sharpness of ‘SPICY’ without losing its good humour and seems to carry the performance of the ‘Supernova’ period — the Giselle and Ningning rap verse in the second half is formidable, he added — while songs such as the swaggering ‘Can’t Help Myself’ and the extremely delicate ‘My Plan’ show a new side of the members’ voices.
‘WDA (Whole Different Animal) (Feat. G-DRAGON)’ was released ahead of the record, on 11 May. Idology’s Mano treats it as the album’s starting point, and the album introduction credits G-Dragon as its featured artist.
‘SHAKIN’’ and ‘Switchblade (Feat. Ty Dolla $ign)’ are the two songs both writers singled out. Kuibi recommended in particular the tracks on which the group’s conceptual side and the members’ performance are both sharply honed — ‘Shakin’‘, where a limping track and the members’ bristling delivery tangle and fire off together, and ‘Switchblade’, which he called the most striking chemistry in any collaboration between a K-pop act and a Western pop star. Mano described ‘Shakin’’ as a song built on an ethnic, heavy beat and ‘Switchblade’ as a hybrid track engineered from the ground up as a bomb for the tour, adding that ‘Can’t Help Myself’ and ‘Switchblade’ — the two that made him give up entirely — are the record’s peaks and not to be missed.
Mano gave the remaining tracks a line each: ‘Can’t Help Myself’ is a pop-rock number carrying a self-regarding message in the line of ‘Rich Man’, ‘Camouflage’ a hyperpop cut whose metallic synth texture stands out, ‘Roll’ a song made cheerful by an innocent English nursery-rhyme sample, and ’‘Til We Die’ one that would serve perfectly as a concert finale.
The record’s chart run is covered in a separate story. The Korea Herald reported that LEMONADE entered Billboard’s main album chart, the Billboard 200, at number nine, with 41,000 album-equivalent units in the tracking week. Hankyung reported on 11 June that cumulative album sales on Circle Chart had passed 1,037,190 copies, making it aespa’s eighth million-seller.
Claims in this story link to official or primary sources.
aespa's second full-length album LEMONADE entered the US Billboard 200 at number nine. Two weeks after release its cumulative album sales were counted at 1,037,190 copies, making it the group's eighth million-seller. Here is what the record is.
aespa played Lollapalooza in Chicago for the first time on 2 August 2026, with a set of 14 songs. Two days later the music video for 'Switchblade', a B-side from the second full-length album, was released. Here are the stage and the video together.
aespa played the opening shows of their fourth world tour at Gocheok Sky Dome in Seoul on 7 and 8 August 2026. The two nights drew 35,000 people and the set ran to 27 songs. The tour visits 25 regions.
