What Does Rosé & Bruno Mars Song ‘APT.’ Mean? Here’s How to Play The Fun Korean Game

“Apa tu, apa tu?” You may have heard the song ‘APT.’ everywhere these past few days, online and on the radio (if you’re older than Gen Z.) Blackpink member Rosé randomly collaborated with Bruno Mars, and everyone is loving it!

Only 4 days in (as of 22 October), and the music video has already garnered 84.4 million views on YouTube. It also dominated iTunes charts worldwide, became one of the top songs on Spotify's daily chart, and climbed to no.1 on South Korea's MelOn chart.

What does APT. mean?

So we were kidding about the lyrics being “apa tu”, but it is actually “apateu”, the Korean word derived from the English word apartment. To be specific, the song refers to a Korean drinking game. The chorus rhythm is the same as the chant in the game where people shout, "apateu apateu, apateu apateu," before starting. There’s a clever wordplay with the lyrics "meet me at the apateu (apartment)."

The song intro is also a reference to the Korean ‘Random Game’, where the loser of the last round picks the next game to play, and in this case, Rosé chose to play "Apateu."

“‘APT.’ is actually my favourite Korean drinking game that I play with my friends back home. It’s so simple, puts a smile on your face and breaks the ice at any party,” Rose said in a statement.

“One night in the studio, I taught my crew how to play the game. Everyone was fascinated, especially when I started the chant, so we played around with it and I said we should make a song out of it... and after Bruno joined the track, the rest became history!”

The song was nearly deleted?

K-pop idols are known for their squeaky clean images, and Rosé told Vogue, “I remember going home [from the studio] kind of freaked out. Is this OK, that I’ve written a song about a drinking game?”. She even asked her team to delete their songs from their phones…only to realise they were already obsessed with it.

How to play the game?

According to The Korea Times, here’s how it works:

1. In this game, players stack their hands together, and the leader calls out a number.
2. Players then remove their hands one by one, starting from the bottom.
3. If someone pulls their hand out on the number the leader called or if they repeat a number already called, they must drink as a penalty. If two players say the same number, both also must drink.

Sounds simple, right? If you don’t drink, you can punish the loser in another fun way! You can spot Bruno Mars and Rosé playing the game (at 0:49), although it's not the same as the actual game.

How did Rosé & Bruno Mars collab?

Vogue also released a video of Rosé cooking Kimchi Fried Rice, in which she cutely discussed how her collaboration with Bruno Mars came about. Bruno performed in Seoul in 2023, and she attended his concert and became an instant fan. Fast-forward, someone set up a meeting with him, and “he jumped on the song and had all these crazy ideas for it.”

Watch this video of Bruno speaking Korean and just hanging out with Rosé:

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Watch the fun music video here if you haven’t already (their chemistry is insane!):

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Featured Image Credit: instagram.com/brunomars