SaWaDiKaA single Lisa released at 9 a.m. KST on 4 September 2026. It is the first pre-release track from the mini album PRESS PLAY, out on 23 October 2026, and it carries one song, the title track 'SaWaDiKa'.
‘SaWaDiKa’ is a single Lisa released at 9 a.m. KST on 4 September 2026. Sports Kyunghyang and TenAsia both reported that the song went up on streaming platforms worldwide at that hour, Korean time. The album information page at Bugs gives the kind as a single, with one song on it, the title track ‘SaWaDiKa’, and a running time of three minutes and eight seconds. The same page names Lloud Co./RCA Records as the label and Sony Music as the distributor.
The song is the first pre-release track from the mini album PRESS PLAY, out on 23 October 2026. Its title comes from the Thai greeting meaning “hello”. TenAsia reported that it is built on a hip-hop sound with Lisa’s rap at the centre, and Rolling Stone wrote that it “finds Lisa returning to her rap roots”.
On NBC’s The Tonight Show, Lisa said of the mini album: “This EP is about my journey from my roots to where I am right now today.” She added that there are a lot of Thai elements in the songs as well (Billboard).
Japan’s Real Sound picked the song out and reviewed it on 16 September 2026 in ‘MV Chart Focus’, its column on new music videos. The writer imdkm put it this way: the song “raises a phrase that shows her own roots as its hook, and the music video, too, has become a work that sets out to represent Thai culture, from fashion to setting to choreography”. The lyrics are mostly in English, imdkm noted, but the second verse piles up the capital Bangkok, the Thai currency baht and a Thai expression meaning “great”, and the three-wheeled tuk-tuk of Thai streets is used in a rhyme. Of the beat, the piece wrote that it moves from an opening pulled along by a dark bassline through a lo-fi, mellow texture that recalls screw, and in the closing stretch enters a Jersey club rhythm pattern for its climax.
According to the track page on Bugs, the lyrics and music are by Lisa with Thom Bridges, Mark Williams, Raul Cubina, Rachel West and Danny Chung. Rolling Stone reported that Thom Bridges and the songwriting duo Ojivolta produced it.
The music video came out the same day as the song. It was directed by Bang Jae Yeob and shot in Lisa’s hometown of Bangkok, Thailand. Real Sound wrote that the video, filmed across Bangkok from landmarks to streets, shows Muay Thai fighters and brightly decorated tuk-tuks, and that the star-shaped kite that appears several times at scene changes is a traditional Thai kite called a chula kite. Gulf News reported on 8 October that the video had passed 200 million YouTube views, and that it was the first K-pop music video released in 2026 to pass that number.
The song entered the Billboard Hot 100 dated 19 September at 69th. Segye Ilbo reported that it was Lisa’s seventh Hot 100 entry, and Billboard wrote that it is her highest-charting single without another artist. It also reached seventh on Digital Song Sales, her fourth top-ten entry on that chart. It placed 23rd on the Global 200 and 13th on the Global Excl. U.S.
It stayed on the Hot 100 the following week, at 93rd. Soompi reported that it became Lisa’s third solo song to chart for more than one week on the Hot 100. On the UK’s Official Singles Chart it reached 66th. New Daily, citing the chart-tracking site Kworb, reported that the song entered Spotify’s global daily chart at 13th on its release day. On YouTube Music’s Japan chart of new music videos for the week of 4 to 10 September, as Real Sound set it out, it was first.
On 27 September, US time, Lisa performed the song at an awards show for the first time, at the 2026 MTV Video Music Awards. Billboard reported that she performed the second verse on a life-sized tuk-tuk. On 14 October she announced ‘Tarantino’, the mini album’s second single, and shared its cover art (Billboard Canada).
How the release came about is in the story on the pre-release single ‘SaWaDiKa’. Jisoo’s single ‘CLICK’ came out the same afternoon, and the solo releases by BLACKPINK’s members and the companies behind each are set out in the story on the three releases. Lisa’s previous record was her first full-length album, Alter Ego, in February 2025.
Claims in this story link to official or primary sources.
Lisa released the pre-release single 'SaWaDiKa' at 9 a.m. KST on 4 September 2026, the first pre-release track from her mini album PRESS PLAY, out on 23 October. The title comes from the Thai greeting that means hello, and the music video was directed by Bang Jae Yeob and shot in Bangkok, where Lisa is from.
Translated from the Korean original.
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