Less than a LoverA single Jennie released on 24 July 2026, which she co-wrote and whose video she directed. It was carried a month later on the digital EP Fallen Angel, and IZM and Idology both wrote about it.
‘Less than a Lover’ is a single Jennie released at 1 p.m. KST on 24 July 2026.
Its album introduction describes a song written with summer in mind, its title naming a relationship that is neither friendship nor romance. It became one of the three songs on the digital EP Fallen Angel on 28 August 2026.
Han Seong-hyeon reviewed the single for IZM in August 2026, reading what has followed the first album as an easy cruise and hearing a song that leans on no particular image. What fills it, the review says, is “nothing but a languid rhythm that is half bedroom pop and half holiday resort, and her voice, which makes a tangled place between lover and friend sound like romance”.
The same review places the song’s feel closer to the familiar than to change. There were plenty of easy-listening tracks on the first album too, Han Seong-hyeon wrote, and that is “the grounds for saying that the sway of ‘Less than a lover’ is nearer to familiarity than to change”. The difference he found is in the credits: unlike the earlier records, which brought in guests to fold the music into Western pop, “the microphone held alone and the name set squarely in the credits are what announce the song’s significance”. He closed on what the arrangement leaves out: “A pop star who has become a singer-songwriter, she has taken good care of the aesthetics of subtraction, which is what a familiar setting needs most.”
Idology (아이돌로지), a Korean webzine on idol pop whose writers sign their own notes, ran the song on 27 July 2026 in the column it gives to each week’s new releases. Quivi wrote the note: “What fills the easy-going humming is a pleasure that seems a little disreputable,” and “that this nonchalance can read as endearing is, in the end, the strength of Jennie as a character.”
Circle Chart placed the song at number 71 on its Digital Chart for week 30 of 2026 (19 to 25 July), the week of release. It was at number 17 the following week, week 31 (26 July to 1 August).
Claims in this story link to official or primary sources.
Jennie's digital EP Fallen Angel arrived on 28 August 2026, Lisa's 'SaWaDiKa' and Jisoo's 'CLICK' on 4 September. The four members renewed with YG Entertainment for group activities in December 2023, and each one's solo work is handled by a company of her own.
