After Billboard named “Blue Valentine” the No. 1 K-pop song of 2025 — and its parent album the year’s second-best — the NMIXX group chat lit up. 

“We were like, ‘Oh my God, this is crazy,’ ” recalls Australia-raised Lily. “We were all so happy.” But the critical adoration, Lily is careful to add, comes second to what their fans — known as NSWERs — think. “We did work hard to get to this place where Blue Valentine could be recognized like that, so it does really feel validating,” the vocalist shares. “But obviously, the most important thing to NMIXX always will be our NSWERs’ reactions and thoughts on our album.”

In 2026 alone, NMIXX has collaborated with Brazil’s drag icon Pabllo Vittar on “TIC TIC” and contributed a single for Anderson .Paak’s forthcoming K-Pops! film soundtrack — two partnerships that reflect the group’s growing stature in the music industry at large and the range of genres they want to tackle. NMIXX leader Haewon has even been studying Spanish with a purpose that speaks to the group’s aim to reach as many listeners as possible. 

“We’re trying to cater to a really diverse audience,” she says. “Our songs do that, so I wanted to learn a global language [like Spanish] to help connect with more fans across the world.” The recognition Haewon received after speaking to the crowd in Spanish at Chile’s Viña del Mar International Song Festival — a stage known for an unforgiving audience — was, Haewon says, proof the effort was worth it. And she’s already looking further ahead: “If we have the chance, we really, really would like to release more music in Spanish” as a follow-up to 2023’s “Soñar” plus their Pabllo Vittar collabs.

For NMIXX, validation has been a long time coming for a group that, since its 2022 debut, has operated by sticking valiantly committed to pushing the K-pop scene into new global markets and experimental sounds. Their current world tour is called Episode 1: Zero Frontier, a title that functions as both a statement of arrival and promise of more to come. With a new EP, Heavy Serenade, out next month, NMIXX appear just as curious to see where and what areas they can potentially conquer next.

“It’s going to be great,” Lily says of the release. “ We’re definitely not going to go away anytime soon.”

Get to know more about why NMIXX is Billboard‘s latest One to Watch.

Foundation

Announced seven months prior to the act’s debut in February 2022, JYP Entertainment built buzz for NMIXX before it joined the label’s historic roster of girl groups that also includes Wonder Girls (the first K-pop act to enter the Billboard Hot 100) and TWICE (which has seven top 10s on the Billboard 200). The group’s name is partly inspired by its self-coined “mixx pop” genre, mashing unexpected sounds and styles like hopping between baile funk and anthemic rock on debut single “O.O” or utilizing boom-bap and tempo changes for the emotionally charged “Blue Valentine.” The latter earned the act its first entry on the Mainstream Top 40 chart in January, spending seven weeks on the list. “NMIXX’s whole message is about the importance of diversity and how, especially in music, everyone deserves a spot at the table,” Lily says. “The beauty of music allows people from all over the world and all different types of people to come together for this one beautiful thing.  I hope that it’s helped a lot of our NSWERs who feel left out to feel included with our music.”

Discovery

After a 2023 showcase for fans in cities including New York, Los Angeles and Houston — plus appearances at iHeartRadio’s Wango Tango, KCON and on a panel at Billboard’s 2024 Latin Music Week, where the group sang in Spanish — NMIXX is making ample time for the West in 2026. The sextet performed its new Pabllo Vittar collaboration, “TIC TIC,” at São Paulo’s Carnival (“It was the most amazing energy I’ve ever received onstage,” Kyujin recalls) before Chile’s Viña del Mar International Song Festival welcomed the act as its first Korean performer (“We were worried because we heard the audience reacts very honestly and won’t hide it if they want us to wrap it up, but the response was amazing,” Sullyoon says). The group’s performances previewed five U.S. dates on NMIXX’s Episode 1: Zero Frontier World Tour, beginning with a sold-out show at the Brooklyn Paramount on March 31. “Last time was a showcase, so I feel like it was a taste of NMIXX,” Lily says. “This time is the whole meal.”

Kyujin adds, “The theme of this tour is the first journey that we’re taking with fans — and we are planning to have many, many more. So, we hope you can stay together with us through all of that.”

Future

The tour is scheduled through August, but future plans are already in motion. “We’re traveling the whole world and ­encountering music from all different countries, so I think we’re going to continue to be inspired by different types of artists and genres,” Lily says, adding that she and Bae ­cherished the Bad Bunny show they saw in Brazil. “This is our first full concert tour, so that’s why it’s ‘Episode 1’ — it implies that there might be more.” More immediately, NMIXX has a spring single dropping for the soundtrack to Anderson .Paak’s 2026 K-Pops! film, plus a forthcoming EP, titled Heavy Serenade, out on May 11.  ”It’s even more diverse,” Haewon teases. “We’re always experimenting and trying out new, different types of music.”

While Blue Valentine marked the first time the NMIXX members scored songwriting credits on a project, Heavy Serenade features Lily co-writing intro song “Crescendo” and is the sole songwriter of another new track, “LOUD,” while Bae co-wrote “Different Girl.” Lily predicts that the six will continue to collect creative credits as they move forward in their careers. “A lot of our members are really interested in songwriting,” she says. “Hopefully, a few of us can keep writing music for NMIXX for the next one.”

A version of this story appears in the April 18, 2026, issue of Billboard.

Olivia Rodrigo has been gutsy in relationships, and she’s had relationships go sour. But she’s never had one as serious as the relationship that inspired her new album, You Seem Pretty Sad for a Girl So in Love.

In an Audacy Check In interview posted Thursday (April 23), the pop star opened up about how third studio LP (due June 12) differs from 2021 debut album, Sour, and 2023 follow-up Guts, both of which topped the Billboard 200. “I think the challenge for me was to write songs about romantic love positively,” she offered.

“I think when I set out to write this album, I was really in love — sort of my first ‘big girl’ relationship,” she continued without naming her significant other. “Writing a song about happiness is a lot harder than writing a song about heartbreak … it was sort of challenging myself to make a love song and also talk about some of the more negative feelings that go along with being in romantic relationships, like longing and yearning and jealousy and missing your partner when they’re away.”

Rodrigo was last linked to actor Louis Partridge, with the pair first sparking dating rumors in fall 2023. Even before formally announcing You Seem Pretty Sad for a Girl So in Love, she was open in a March interview with British Vogue about how her next body of work would be full of “sad love songs.”

“I realized all my favorite romantic love songs were beautiful because they had a tinge of fear or yearning in them,” she told the publication at the time. “I felt a similar way about falling in love, that the second I’m in a really great relationship, I’m gonna start feeling good about myself, and this stuff is going to fall into place. But it just doesn’t work like that.”

Watch Rodrigo’s full interview with Audacy Check In above.

All products and services featured are independently chosen by editors. However, Billboard may receive a commission on orders placed through its retail links, and the retailer may receive certain auditable data for accounting purposes.

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Olivia Dean’s “So Easy (To Fall in Love)” sways a spot to No. 1 on Billboard’s Pop Airplay chart (dated May 2).

The sultry song becomes the British singer-songwriter’s second leader in as many visits to the chart, following “Man I Need,” which ruled for six weeks in January-February (and continues its run in the top five that dates to mid-December). She cowrote both singles.

Dean is just the seventh woman artist to have topped Pop Airplay on two initial tries (in lead roles). She joins Lady Gaga, who reigned with her overall-record first six entries, Avril Lavigne (three), Christina Aguilera, Iggy Azalea, Beyoncé and Mariah Carey (two each) since the chart began in fall 1992.

Both “Man I Need” and “So Easy (To Fall in Love)” are from Dean’s Polydor/Island/Republic album The Art of Loving. The set has ranked in the Billboard 200’s top 10 since mid-January, reaching No. 3, with its two biggest hits prominent in streaming, as well as on radio, having drawn a respective 13.9 million and 11.2 million chart-contributing official U.S. streams April 10-16, according to Luminate.

Notably, while “Man I Need” spotlights down-the-middle pop, Dean’s new leader dances into bossa nova, an obvious outlier for top 40 radio in any era.

Still, Dean’s momentum, among other potential factors, helped the best new artist Grammy winner hit No. 1 a second time.

“I feel the success of Olivia Dean is emblematic of the great variety of artists and songs we have across the format right now,” Mark Adams, iHeartMedia vp of pop programming and program director of WHTZ (Z100) New York, tells Billboard. “I’m thinking about the Latin and pop-soul influences of Bruno Mars, the pop, jazz and blues that help define RAYE, the innovative disco/funk from Harry Styles, the joyous dance and synth-pop from Zara Larsson and the soul and R&B-inspired sounds of Teddy Swims.”

Adams, who also cites the “pop awesomeness” of established stars such as Taylor Swift, Sabrina Carpenter and Olivia Rodrigo, muses that, in an era of streaming and blurry genre boundaries, “today’s radio listeners have been exposed to artists, sounds and influences that, in many cases, may be far older than they are. I think that helps contribute to being less bound by tradition and more excited to just embrace great music.”

Molly Cruz, Audacy top 40 format vp, concurs. “‘So Easy (To Fall in Love)’ isn’t a traditional [pop] sound, but it’s a great reminder that hit records aren’t defined by genre — they’re defined by connection,” she says. “It’s important that we listen to our audience instead of just following the norm. We’re also seeing a broader trend right now around soulful, vocal-driven records. Artists like Olivia Dean, RAYE and Sienna Spiro are all resonating.

“It speaks to where pop music is today, and it’s an exciting moment for the format.”

All charts dated May 2 will update on Billboard.com on Tuesday, April 28.