Kwon Jin-ah drops mini album 'SAVE ME', her first all-rock record, 1 year 3 months after 'The Dreamest'

Kwon Jin-ah released SAVE ME, her third mini album, on July 15. It's her first new music since the full-length The Dreamest in April 2025—a gap of one year and three months.

Rock production anchors the entire project. All five tracks—'WHO CAN CHANGE', 'MONSTER', 'Rain on me', '87days', and 'Don't Save Me'—came from Kwon Jin-ah's pen. 'Rain on me' had already surfaced on June 23. The title track, 'MONSTER', is a rock number about overcoming self-hatred and saving oneself.

At the showcase that day at NOL Theater Hapjeong in Mapo-gu, Seoul, she laid out her vision: "I filled it entirely with band-sound tracks this time, wanting to tell deep inner stories." On self-hatred as a path to comfort, she pushed back against the usual refrain. The phrase 'love yourself' never quite worked for her. Instead, she wanted to offer something gentler: "let's go to tomorrow."

On the rock shift itself, she was blunt. Rock heats up the mood like nothing else. She framed it as pop-inflected rock rather than heavy metal, so she didn't even consider it a challenge.

The MONSTER music video was directed by Lee Ye-ji and Kim Seon-hyeong of Mushroom Company. They saw the 'monster' inside us—anxiety, hatred, wounds—not as something to erase but as "another self we must ultimately live with," rendered through visual metaphor.

Kwon Jin-ah performs at the 2026 Incheon Pentaport Rock Festival with KB Kookmin Card on August 1 at Songdo Moonlight Festival Park. She's calling it her rock star debut stage. "I'm counting down the days," she said. "I think of it as my rock star debut stage after this showcase."