A humid Wednesday in Seoul, and Rosé is still stuck in a chair. For four hours, a rotating squad of stylists and handlers has been perfecting every strand of hair, every stitch of clothing, every angle of her look for The Hollywood Reporter's cover shoot. Even by pop-star standards, it's an extraordinary amount of preparation. But in K-pop, diligence is the rule, not the exception. And for Rosé - the Melbourne-raised teenager molded into Blackpink's powerhouse vocalist, now one of the most famous women in K-pop - this kind of discipline has defined her life since she was 15. Related Stories Movies P.T. Anderson Is Betting It All on Chase Infiniti. No Pressure Lifestyle Emmys Red Carpet Power Rankings: Lisa Manobal and Pedro Pascal Top the Style Conversation Photographed by Sinae Kim Not even a decade into her career, Rosé commands more than 34 million monthly Spotify listeners as a soloist and another 31.5 million with Blackpink. Her Instagram following tops 84 million, putting her in league with Taylor Swift and Ariana Grande. Her face is everywhere: on YSL handbags in Paris, Rimowa luggage in airports, Tiffany jewelry campaigns, Puma sneaker ads. In Seoul, she gazes down from towering digital screens in Myeong-dong; in New York, she beams from Times Square. She is, simply, one of the most visible women on the planet. Which - like all celebrities who reach this stratospheric level - also makes her one of the most carefully choreographed creatures on earth. Still, she insists that the one thing she yearns most for in the world is unscripted authenticity. Born Roseanne Park in Auckland, New Zealand, and raised in Melbourne, she grew up surrounded by music. She played piano, sang in church choirs, eventually picked up guitar. At 15, she auditioned for YG Entertainment and was invited to Seoul to enter its trainee system - a boot camp of endless singing, dancing, language study and evaluations. Days began at dawn and ended after midnight, leaving no room for dating and other typical teenage rites of passage. Most trainees never make it to the finish line. Her parents, back in Melbourne, watched from afar as she entered a system notorious for its intensity. By 19, she was the lead vocalist of Blackpink, the four-member girl group rounded out by Jennie, Jisoo and Lisa. Created by YG as its first girl group to debut in seven years, their popularity was instant: Blackpink's 2016 debut singles, "Whistle" and "Boombayah," not only topped Korean charts but also landed on Billboard's World Digital Songs chart, signaling the arrival of a group built for global domination. Within three years, they were playing Coachella, the first K-pop girl group to do so. Six years later, they were embarking on world tours that grossed more than $300 million. Blackpink members Jisoo, Lisa, Jennie and Rosé performed at Coachella in 2023. Emma McIntyre/Getty Images The festival in the desert was a turning point - the Indio heat, the sea of phones in the crowd, four young women from Seoul commanding one of the biggest stages in the world - and was captured by Netflix in the 2020 documentary Light Up the Sky, showing the relentless rehearsals and self-doubt behind the glamour. Rosé's distinctive voice lent a touch of vulnerability to the group's slick choreography. She laughs now when she thinks back to her teenage self. "When I was a trainee, I was badass," she says. "I don't know why I had this fire in me - I was just fueled. I look back at the trainee-days version of myself and I just admire it." She pauses. "But the older I get, I have more days where I don't understand anything. I don't know what I'm doing. [I'm] just fighting my demons a day at a time. Back then I was just so strong, and I don't know how I was like that." The Guinness Book of World Records took note when she released her first solo single, "On the Ground," in 2021: She became the first artist to top the global charts as both part of a group and as a soloist. But by 2023, uncertainty swirled about Blackpink's future. The members renewed with YG for group projects, but in 2024 each struck out on her own. Jennie, Jisoo and Lisa launched their own companies and signed with U.S. labels. Rosé took a different path, joining the Korean imprint The Black Label, co-founded in 2015 by longtime Blackpink producer Teddy Park, and signing a U.S. deal with Atlantic Records. "I don't know if I knew exactly what I wanted," she says, "but I knew I wanted a world that was unapologetically and purely me." Even her name reflects that ongoing negotiation of identity. Sitting in Seoul, she explains with a shrug: "If the name Rosie is something that makes you feel closer to me, then please call me Rosie. If Rosé seems cooler, go ahead and call me Rosé. My born name is Roseanne, so go ahead and call me Roseanne. Actually, sometimes that sounds like I'm being scolded by my mom, so it kind of scares me." It's that same instinct - to be all of those things at once, but still unmistakably herse