While Dracula owns the Hot 100, Jennie wants a little less than a lover
Jennie’s first solo single of 2026, Less than a Lover, lands while her Tame Impala remix still sits at Hot 100 No. 5 and Pop Airplay No. 1. Festival soft-launch, then a quiet song about wanting less intimacy.
Mina Park
Most artists in Jennie’s position would cash the chart week with something loud. She did the opposite. Dracula (JENNIE Remix) with Tame Impala is still sitting at Billboard Hot 100 No. 5 and Pop Airplay No. 1, and her first solo single of 2026 is a lo-fi alt-pop track about wanting less intimacy, not more.
Less than a Lover arrived Friday at 1 p.m. KST through Odd Atelier and Columbia. She co-wrote and co-composed it: vintage keys, soft guitar, a summer relationship parked between friend and lover. The hook is almost stubbornly modest. “All I want this summer / Is a little bit less than a lover.”
That is the interesting part. The remix is still doing the stadium-chart work. The new song refuses to compete with it on volume.
Soft launch first, single second
She had already road-tested the track live: Governors Ball in New York in June, then Roskilde, Open’er, and Mad Cool in July. Fan clips did the usual short-form work before the file went official. At Open’er she framed it as a song made while thinking of summer’s afterimage, which is a better brief than most press releases.
The video keeps the same temperature. Shot in Girona, Spain, opposite Taiwanese model Nah Kai, it plays like a short film about a girl who wants summer without the commitment paperwork. Photographer-director Choeey helmed the shoot; Jennie is in on the story, including the pull-away ending that matches the title. No victory-lap choreography. Just light, a truck, cliff roads, and the decision to stay a little less than a lover.
Our take
Pair this with our earlier Dracula Hot 100 read and you get the fuller 2026 picture: remix culture still buys her American chart oxygen, while the Odd Atelier lane gets to stay intimate and self-authored. Our read is that the restraint is the strategy. Let Dracula own the radio sentence. Let Less than a Lover own the late-night playlist. Next stops are Lollapalooza Chicago and Summer Sonic Japan, where both versions of Jennie can share a stage without one canceling the other. For the longer arc, the People profile still holds: she charts through unexpected doors, then decides how soft the next room should feel.
