"Playing with Fire" (Korean: 불장난; RR: Buljangnan) is a song recorded by South Korean girl groupBlackpink. It was released on November 1, 2016, together with "Stay", as the group's second digital single album titled Square Two, through YG Entertainment. The song was written by Teddy and composed by him alongside R. Tee. "Playing with Fire" peaked at number three on the Gaon Digital Chart and topped the BillboardWorld Digital Song Sales chart, making Blackpink the K-pop female act with the most chart-toppers. It was the first song by a Korean girl group in history to enter the Canadian Hot 100.
In October 2016, a teaser image of Jennie was revealed, along with the name of one of the title tracks, "Playing With Fire", followed by teaser images of Lisa, Rosé, and Jisoo the next day. On October 31, the behind-the-scenes video for "Playing With Fire" was released.[2]
"Playing with Fire" debuted at number 3 on South Korea's Gaon Digital Chart, with 203,263 downloads (landing at number 2 on the component Download Chart) and 3,825,893 streams (debuting at number 4 on the component Streaming Chart). The following week, it fell to number 4, before reaching number 3 again in its third week. As of September 2018, the song has reached over 2,500,000 digital downloads and 100,000,000 streams in the country.[3]
In the United States, the song debuted at number one on the BillboardWorld Digital Songs chart, selling 4,000 copies in its first week of release. It marked Blackpink's second number-one song on the chart following "Whistle" earlier in the year. With this, they became the K-pop female act with the most chart-toppers, surpassing 2NE1 and CL, who each earned one number-one song.[4] "Playing with Fire" also entered the Canadian Hot 100 at number 92, making Blackpink the first South Korean girl group and only the fifth South Korean act (after Psy, EXO, CL, and BTS) to enter the chart.[5] In the United Kingdom, the track had reached 10.9 million streams as of 2019.[6]
A screenshot from the music video, with Blackpink members dancing the choreography of the song in a flamed area
The music video for "Playing with Fire" was directed by Seo Hyun-seung,[7] who previously worked with the group and directed the music video for "Boombayah", and it was released on Blackpink's official YouTube channel at midnight on November 1, 2016 KST. As of January 2023, the video has over 800 million views. Blackpink also released the dance practice video for "Playing With Fire" on YouTube on November 4, 2016. It was choreographed by Kyle Hanagami, who had worked with them for "Boombayah" from their previous single album Square One.[8] The group had their comeback stage for both songs on November 6 on SBS's Inkigayo and on Mnet's M Countdown on November 10, 2016.[9]
^C., Daniel (September 12, 2018). "Gaon's 관찰노트" [Gaon's Observation Notes] (in Korean). Gaon Music Chart. Archived from the original on November 28, 2018. Retrieved December 19, 2018.
