Twenty months after her last solo release, Lisa came back loud. The BLACKPINK member’s first solo EP, Press Play, landed October 23 via LLOUD and RCA Records — and by the end of its first week, it had out-charted everything she’s released on her own before it.
Six Tracks, Built Like a Movie
Press Play runs six songs deep: “SaWaDiKa,” “V12,” “Cobra,” “Tarantino,” “Cut U Off,” and “Sweat,” with Lisa credited as the sole artist across the entire tracklist. The EP’s lead single, “Tarantino,” arrived with an action-movie-styled music video that leans directly into its namesake’s genre of stylized violence and sharp cuts between scenes. “SaWaDiKa” — titled after the Thai greeting for “hello,” a nod to Lisa’s own Thai heritage — had already been released as a preview single ahead of the full project.
The Numbers Behind the Headlines
“SaWaDiKa” debuted at No. 69 on the Billboard Hot 100 — Lisa’s seventh total entry on the chart, tying her former groupmate Jennie for the most Hot 100 appearances among female K-pop soloists. The same track opened at No. 23 on the Billboard Global 200 and No. 13 on the Global Excl. U.S. chart. The EP itself debuted at No. 3 on the Billboard 200 with roughly 100,000 equivalent album units in its first week, while also topping Billboard’s Top Album Sales chart outright — the strongest first-week showing of Lisa’s solo career to date, ahead of both her 2021 single “Lalisa” era and her 2025 debut album Alter Ego.
Coming Off a Historic VMA Win
Press Play arrives less than a month after Lisa made MTV VMA history. On September 27 at the Peacock Theater in Los Angeles, she won Best Pop for “Dream,” a track off Alter Ego featuring Japanese actor Kentaro Sakaguchi — her fourth VMA overall, and the first time a solo K-pop or Asian artist has won that specific category outright (BTS won Best K-Pop in 2020, a different award). It followed three previous Best K-Pop wins for Lisa since 2022, including one for “Rockstar,” also off Alter Ego, in 2024. The win wasn’t universally cheered — some fans and commentators online criticized the Best Pop category itself as more of an attendance prize than a reflection of chart dominance — but it set up exactly the kind of momentum a new release benefits from.
Why This Comeback Lands Differently
Lisa’s path since BLACKPINK’s 2024 hiatus has been the most actively solo of any member’s: beyond her screen work, she’s built an independent discography through LLOUD, the label she co-founded, rather than leaning only on YG Entertainment’s machinery. Press Play is the clearest evidence yet that the strategy is paying off commercially, not just critically — a No. 3 Billboard 200 debut and a Hot 100 tie with Jennie both land as concrete, chart-verified wins rather than vague “global icon” framing. For a solo K-pop act without a groupmate’s built-in audience to lean on in the U.S. market specifically, that’s the number that matters.
What to Watch Next
Lisa has not announced a tour or further single rollout from Press Play as of this week, though “Tarantino” is the track currently positioned as the project’s main promotional single going forward. With BLACKPINK’s group schedule still paused and Jisoo and other members pursuing their own solo projects in parallel this fall, Lisa’s numbers from this release are likely to become the benchmark the rest of the group’s individual eras get measured against.
