number one girl

The song

‘number one girl’ is a single Rosé released on 22 November 2024. The album introduction states that it was the second song shared from her first full-length album, rosie, after ‘APT.’, and that it began on a lonely night. Two weeks later the album placed it first in the running order.

NME described it as “a piano ballad born from sleepless nights spent doomscrolling through social media comments”. No outlet reviewed the song on its own; every review below reaches it through a review of rosie.

Reviews

IZM’s Han Seong-hyun named it the song on the album that goes deepest into her interior. He called it a meta account of the disillusion and the fixation felt by a perfectly manufactured product, and asked whether this is not exactly the kind of story only K-pop can hold.

Clash’s Robin Murray introduced it as the record’s opener: “Introductory song ‘number one girl’ lingers on her incredible chops, a bravura vocal performance from a true talent. A tender piece of songwriting, she pivots into the rousing ‘3am’ before embracing disco-fied electronics on dancefloor burner ‘two years’.”

NME’s Crystal Bell wrote that the album’s transformation “begins with the album’s opener, ‘Number One Girl’”, and that “the song captures her insecurities in vivid detail: the longing to feel special, the pressure to meet fan expectations, and the ache of wondering if she ever truly measures up. It’s a striking introduction to an album that largely trades K-pop’s grandeur for intimate songwriting and emotional candour.” Of its first line she wrote: “‘Tell me that I’m special,’ she sings in the first lines of ‘Number One Girl’. It’s a desperate plea from one of the world’s biggest pop stars, and yet, it’s such a human request.”

Rolling Stone’s Maura Johnston opened her review on the same line. “‘Tell me that I’m special/ Tell me I look pretty,’ the Blackpink member asks as the piano chords that open ‘Number One Girl’ rise and fall, fueling the intensity of her request,” she wrote.

Around it

The song was carried as the first track of rosie when the album arrived on 6 December 2024. Idology (아이돌로지) wrote in its 2024 albums of the year that the single cuts — this song, ‘toxic till the end’ and ‘APT.’ — are set at the right points so that the pacing and the breathing of the record are controlled around them.