K-pop star G-Dragon’s first solo song in seven years posts strong numbers

The King of K-pop is back. South Korean star G-Dragon, leader of the popular boy band BigBang, has released a new solo song after seven years.

The hip-hop number, Power, was previewed in an Instagram live stream by the 36-year-old in the early hours of Oct 31. Later that day, it was released on streaming platforms and its music video was uploaded onto YouTube and Instagram.

In less than 24 hours, the video, which is just under three minutes long, garnered over 8.7 million views. The song did well on South Korean music streaming platform Melon. It had more than 83,000 unique listeners in the first hour of its release, the most in 2024.

G-Dragon, whose real name is Kwon Ji-yong, had shared a shorter edit of the song on an Oct 30 episode of the South Korean variety talk show You Quiz On The Block (2018 to present), hosted by emcees Yoo Jae-suk and Cho Sae-ho.

G-Dragon is a close friend of Cho’s and was one of the celebrity guests at Cho’s October wedding.

Power is expected to be on G-Dragon’s upcoming album, though a release date for that has yet to be announced.

The song’s music video included scenes of the star walking through a train carriage. A metro map in the background looked like a tracklist, with eight titles, including Home Sweet Home and I Belong To You.

G-Dragon said during his appearance on You Quiz On The Block that he was depressed during his busiest idol days. As a child singer who became a trainee at the age of six, he struggled to know who he was outside his stage persona as G-Dragon.

“Because my career was going so well, I couldn’t really share how I was feeling because it would have seemed like I didn’t appreciate how blessed I was,” he said.

After his long break and reclaiming his own time as Kwon Ji-yong, he was ready to make music as G-Dragon again. He also said he was much happier now, and that his downtime activities included exercising, meditating and spending time with his cat.

G-Dragon is one of K-pop’s most influential stars. He paved the way for more idols to self-produce instead of relying on songs companies pick for them. And he led BigBang to become the first K-pop act to land a Korean-language album on the Billboard 200 in 2012.

The artiste released his first solo album Heartbreaker in 2009 and his last solo release was the 2017 EP Kwon Ji Yong. He enlisted for mandatory military service in 2018 and was discharged the following year.

As part of BigBang, he put out the number Still Life in 2022, but that song was not promoted in music programmes or other live activities.