APT.

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My cover of the incredibly catchy K-pop mega-hit, APT., by Rosé and Bruno Mars. At this time (January ***, 2025), it's currently the most popular song in the world (the #1 song on the Billboard Global 200 chart), and it is part of a trend of 80's style songs returning to pop music, I'm delighted to say! "K-pop" is "Korean pop", but the only Korean you need to know is 아파트 (apateu) which is an "English loan" word meaning "apartment" (hence the song's title, APT.).

Musical influences. If you listen carefully, you can hear quite a few musical influences in this song! Here are a few.

The most obvious is the drum track, which was sampled from Toni Basil's 1981 hit, Mickey, and is included in the writing credits for the song. Both songs have a "spoken chant" at their core: a cheerleading chant in Mickey and the repeated word, 아파트, in APT., taken from a popular Korean drinking game.

The influence of Blondie's 1978 hit, One Way or Another (a great song, by the way!) — and Debbie Harry's "getcha getcha getcha" — is also unmistakable:

The last 30 seconds of the song are accompanied by a beautiful melody with an Oriental influence (in its almost exclusive use of the five-note pentatonic scale). I've stripped away the other vocals so you can hear that melody more clearly:

The song intro. The song begins with an introduction (in Korean) to the Korean drinking game, APT, chanted by a group of Korean girls:

채영이가 좋아하는 (Chaeyoung's favorite)
랜덤게임 (random game)
랜덤게임 (random game)
Game start!

("Chaeyoung" is Rosé's actual name.) When I did this cover, I didn't have access to any Korean female speakers, and I didn't want to really speak the intro in Korean myself. So I made up my own "opening chant/game instructions" in English:

This is the start
Of a game called "Heart".
Now go play your part. . .
Game on!