A song that began life as an Australian psych-rock single about staying out too late has just rewritten a line in K-pop's record book. "Dracula," the Tame Impala track that Jennie of BLACKPINK re-recorded in February, has now spent more time inside the Billboard Hot 100's top 10 than any song by or featuring a Korean pop artist.
What Happened
Billboard's chart preview on Monday, U.S. time, showed "Dracula" holding at No. 6 for a second consecutive week. That extended its run inside the Hot 100's top 10 to 16 weeks — one week past the mark BTS set with "Butter" in 2021, and the longest top-10 stay any song involving a K-pop act has managed. Billboard publishes the official ranking on Tuesday, and Yonhap carried the milestone first in Korea.
The song's path to this point is unusual enough that it is worth retracing. Kevin Parker, who is Tame Impala more or less by himself, released "Dracula" on Sept. 26, 2025 as the third single from his fifth album, Deadbeat. It is a disco and electropop record with nightclub production, co-written with Sarah Aarons, and it became the first Tame Impala song ever to reach the Hot 100, entering at No. 55 on the strength of 6.5 million streams and 1.7 million radio impressions. The music video, directed by Julian Klincewicz, was shot as a night party in the Western Australian outback, a nod to the bush-doof culture the album keeps circling back to.
The Jennie version arrived on Feb. 6, 2026, after a tease that fans decoded before either camp confirmed anything. Parker quietly edited the "Dracula" video description on YouTube, swapping his own name out of the line "My friends are saying 'shut up Kevin just get in the car'" and putting Jennie's in. He was then photographed wearing her merchandise. The remix keeps Parker's instrumental intact, layers Jennie's vocals across the verses and chorus, and hands her a new rap section that opens with a direct address: "Hey, Kevin, what's up?" She is credited on the release as vocalist, songwriter and remixer. It went to U.S. pop radio on Feb. 10 and eventually peaked at No. 5.
Why It Matters
Most K-pop chart records are records about arrival. A group mobilizes a fanbase, the song debuts high — sometimes at No. 1 — and then falls off the chart almost as fast, because the streaming and sales spike was front-loaded into release week. Longevity records are a different animal. They measure whether people who were never going to buy the album keep playing the song six months later.
That is what makes the number BTS held so hard to beat. "Butter" spent 15 weeks in the top 10 during the summer of 2021, and it did so as an English-language song built expressly for American radio. It took five years and a completely different approach for anything to pass it.
"Dracula" got there by going the other direction entirely. It was not a K-pop song that reached out to Western listeners; it was a Western alternative record that a K-pop artist climbed into after it was already a hit. Parker had the radio infrastructure, the festival audience and the album cycle. Jennie brought a second release window, a new verse and an enormous short-form video audience that pushed the track back up the chart months after it had peaked. The billing reflects the arrangement: it is credited as Tame Impala and Jennie, not as a Jennie single with a guest.
There is a revealing footnote in the Korean numbers. The remix reached only No. 117 on Circle's domestic download chart. Whatever "Dracula" is doing, it is not doing it at home — the audience holding it in the American top 10 for four months is largely an American and global one. For BLACKPINK's members working as soloists, that is arguably the more useful outcome: a durable catalogue asset rather than another first-week sales figure.
Reaction
The response has been slow-burning in a way that suits the song. There was no coordinated streaming push, no album bundle, no fan-org spreadsheet driving the numbers week to week. What there was, mostly, was short-form video — the "Hey, Kevin, what's up?" line became a hook that people used without necessarily knowing whose record it was.
Australian outlets have covered the track as the biggest commercial moment of Parker's career, which it is: before "Dracula," Tame Impala had never charted a single on the Hot 100 at all, despite 15 years of critical standing and a No. 3 finish on Triple J's Hottest 100 for 2025. Korean coverage has focused on the record itself, with Yonhap, The Korea Herald and the Korea JoongAng Daily all framing it as a K-pop chart milestone even though the song is billed to an Australian act first.
Both readings are defensible, and the disagreement is the interesting part. Billboard's own record-keeping counts songs "by or featuring" a K-pop act, which is how a Kevin Parker production ends up in a sentence about BTS.
What's Next
The immediate question is whether the 17th week happens. Songs this deep into a chart run usually decay along a predictable curve — streaming erodes first, radio holds longer — and a No. 6 placement two weeks running suggests the airplay floor is still doing work.
There is also a calendar quirk worth watching. "Dracula" got a measurable bump around Halloween 2025, when the title and the video's imagery gave it a seasonal second life, and Billboard’s chart writers were openly wondering last November whether it would become an annual October fixture. If that repeats, the top-10 count may not be finished growing.
Beyond the chart, the remix puts Jennie in an unusual position for a K-pop soloist: holding a long-running American hit that sits outside the K-pop release system entirely, with no comeback schedule attached to it. Whether that becomes a template — Korean artists joining existing Western hits rather than launching their own crossover singles — is the thing worth watching over the next year.
Closing Thoughts
It is a little strange to call this a K-pop record. The instrumental is Parker's, the label is Columbia, the album it came from is a meditation on Western Australian rave culture, and the song charted for four months before Jennie ever sang on it. Filed under the rules Billboard uses, though, the record is real, and it says something about how the category has loosened.
The older model of crossover was a Korean act making an English-language song and hoping American radio picked it up. "Butter" was the high-water mark of that approach and it still only got 15 weeks. The newer model appears to be simpler and less flattering to national pride: find a record that is already working and add something that makes people hear it again. Jennie's verse is not a featured-artist cameo dropped into the last 30 seconds. It restructures the song.
What that leaves is a chart entry nobody quite owns. Tame Impala fans consider it a Tame Impala song. BLACKPINK fans consider it a Jennie song. Billboard files it under both. Sixteen weeks in the top 10 suggests a large number of listeners do not care either way, which may be the most durable position a pop song can occupy.
한글 요약
테임 임팔라와 블랙핑크 제니가 함께한 '드라큘라(Dracula)'가 미국 빌보드 핫 100 톱10에 16주째 머물며, K팝 아티스트가 참여한 곡 가운데 최장 기록을 세웠습니다. 빌보드가 현지 시간 월요일 공개한 차트 프리뷰에서 이 곡은 2주 연속 6위를 지켰고, 2021년 방탄소년단 '버터'가 세운 15주 기록을 한 주 차이로 넘어섰습니다. 공식 순위는 화요일에 발표됩니다.
원곡은 호주 뮤지션 케빈 파커의 프로젝트 테임 임팔라가 2025년 9월 26일 앨범 Deadbeat의 세 번째 싱글로 발표한 디스코·일렉트로팝 트랙입니다. 제니가 참여한 리믹스는 2026년 2월 6일에 나왔고, 제니는 보컬과 작사, 리믹서로 크레딧에 이름을 올렸습니다. 새로 추가된 랩 파트가 숏폼 영상에서 화제가 되면서 곡은 발매 수개월 뒤 다시 차트를 밀어 올렸고, 최고 5위까지 올랐습니다.
이번 기록이 흥미로운 이유는 방식이 기존과 반대이기 때문입니다. 한국 아티스트가 영어 곡을 만들어 미국 시장의 문을 두드리는 대신, 이미 히트한 서구권 곡에 뒤늦게 합류해 곡의 수명을 늘리는 구조입니다. 실제로 리믹스는 국내 써클차트 다운로드 부문에서 117위에 그쳤습니다. 톱10을 넉 달 가까이 지탱한 청취층이 국내가 아니라 해외에 있다는 뜻이고, 솔로 활동을 이어가는 블랙핑크 멤버에게는 초동 판매량보다 오래 남는 자산일 수 있습니다.