Following Lady Gaga and The Weeknd, the BLACKPINK singer traded introspection for garage-funk swagger with a Dave Meyers video shot entirely on Apple’s newest phone.
Here’s a sentence that would have sounded impossible a few years ago: a soloist from a K-pop group is now the centerpiece of Apple’s global iPhone launch. Not a background feature. Not a licensed song. The face of it. On September 18 (KST), ROSÉ dropped “new trick” a standalone single whose music video was shot entirely on the just-released iPhone 18 Pro as the flagship entry in Apple’s storied Shot on iPhone campaign. To grasp the altitude here, consider the company she’s keeping: previous artists tapped for the series include Lady Gaga, The Weeknd, and Olivia Rodrigo. ROSÉ didn’t join that list. She’s headlining it.
A deliberate turn toward lightness
The Black Label announced the release with obvious pride, and the song itself is a statement of tone. Where ROSÉ’s 2024 solo work leaned introspective and heartbroken, “new trick” trades all of that for something scrappier a bright, uptempo garage-funk romp built on rough, exhilarating energy.
The theme is resilience with a wink: no matter what wounds life or love deals out, you pull out your own “new trick,” shake it off, and move forward. It’s heartbreak music you can bounce to. ROSÉ herself, speaking to Vogue, called it “possibly the cutest thing” she and her collaborator have ever made and that self-aware playfulness is the whole point. This isn’t a woman processing pain; it’s a woman who’s already past it and having fun.
The creative firepower behind it
“new trick” isn’t a casual one-off the credits read like a who’s-who of contemporary pop. The video was directed by Dave Meyers, one of the most decorated music-video filmmakers alive, whose résumé includes Taylor Swift, Kendrick Lamar, Ariana Grande, SZA, and Harry Styles. His signature clean, wide, energetic visuals pairs naturally with ROSÉ’s aura, dropping her into free, sun-drenched settings that amplify the song’s buoyant mood.
On the music side, ROSÉ co-wrote the track with Amy Allen, the Grammy-winning songwriter who helped build her global mega-hit “APT.” Allen co-produced alongside Andrew Wells, who worked with ROSÉ on “stay a little longer.” In other words, this is the same brain trust that turned a Korean drinking game into a worldwide phenomenon, reassembled for a new experiment.
Why the Apple partnership matters
It’s tempting to file “corporate collaboration” under marketing and move on. That would miss the significance. Apple’s Shot on iPhone campaign is one of the most visible advertising franchises on the planet, and the company is famously selective about who fronts it. Timing the release to land the same day as the iPhone 18 showcasing the phone’s new variable-aperture camera through her video positions ROSÉ not as a regional star Apple licensed, but as a global cultural symbol Apple chose.
For a K-pop artist, that’s a meaningful threshold. Korean acts have long dominated streaming and touring; being handed the keys to a Western tech giant’s biggest yearly campaign is a different kind of arrival the kind that says the industry’s biggest players now see her as a name that sells hardware to the whole world.
From “APT.” to icon status
None of this happened in a vacuum. ROSÉ spent 2024 rewriting the record books. After departing YG Entertainment in 2023 and signing with The Black Label and Atlantic Records, she released “APT.” with Bruno Mars a track that shattered multiple Guinness World Records and made her the highest-charting female K-pop soloist in U.S. history. Her debut album rosie followed, cementing her as a solo force independent of BLACKPINK’s group identity.
“new trick” is the natural next chapter: proof that “APT.” wasn’t a fluke, and that ROSÉ can pivot moods from wistful to weightless without losing her audience. She’s demonstrating range, not just repeating a formula.
The takeaway
Strip away the brand names and the star-studded credits, and what “new trick” really signals is a shift in status. ROSÉ is no longer a K-pop star crossing over into the West; she’s a global pop icon who happens to have come from K-pop. When Apple wants a face for its most important product of the year, and one of the world’s top directors signs on to shoot it, the “crossover” conversation is officially over. The only question left is what trick she pulls out next.