IVE Part 3 — I Am Who I Am: The Artist Era
IVE's first studio album. Their first world tour. Lollapalooza. A David Guetta collab. The 'I Am' era wasn't just bigger music — it was IVE deciding, in public, exactly who they were going to be.
At the 2023 Melon Music Awards, IVE performed a medley of songs from their 2023 releases — “Baddie,” “Kitsch,” “Blue Blood,” and “I Am.”
It opened with Liz at a piano for the introduction. It built toward the kind of synchronized precision that makes a crowd go quiet before it goes loud.
Later that evening, IVE received Album of the Year for I’ve IVE.
It was their first studio album. Released just 16 months after their debut. And it had already been certified million-seller.
The night was a statement: IVE wasn’t just a singles machine. They were artists building something.
📌 This is Part 3 of a 4-part IVE series.
- Part 1 — I Have Everything: The Origin Story
- Part 2 — Eleven Was Just the Beginning
- Part 3 — I Am Who I Am: The Artist Era ← you are here
- Part 4 — Rebel Heart: The Empire Builds
🎪 The Prom Queens: First Fan Concert Tour (February 2023)
Before the studio album. Before the world tour. Before Lollapalooza.
IVE gave DIVE something more intimate first.
The Prom Queens — IVE’s first solo fan concert — ran from February to July 2023, visiting Seoul, Yokohama, Kobe, Manila, Taipei, Singapore, and Bangkok. Reported cumulative attendance across the run: approximately 97,000 fans.
The title “The Prom Queens” can be read as an extension of IVE’s confident, self-possessed image — not performers waiting to be discovered, but a group that arrives already sure of itself.
The concerts introduced songs that fans had never heard performed live — including “Blue Blood” and “Not Your Girl,” which debuted during the Seoul shows before the studio album was released. It gave DIVE a preview of where IVE was heading, and it gave IVE a chance to test their live stage before the world was watching.
💿 I’ve IVE — The First Studio Album (April 10, 2023)
I’ve IVE sold 601,669 copies on its first day — the 3rd highest first-day sales by a K-pop girl group in Hanteo history at the time.
On April 10, 2023, IVE released I’ve IVE — their first full-length studio album, just 16 months after debut.
The album had 11 tracks. Seven of them carried songwriting credits from IVE members — a significant creative step for a group at this stage. For a group whose concept centered on self-possession and knowing exactly who you are, having the members’ voices in the music wasn’t incidental. It was part of the argument.
“Kitsch” — Pre-Release, March 27
Before the album landed, IVE dropped “Kitsch” as a pre-release single.
The song climbed to #1 on both the Circle Digital and Streaming charts in the days following release, and on April 2–3 achieved a Perfect All-Kill (simultaneously topping all major Korean real-time charts) — the first Perfect All-Kill of any song in 2023.
The sound was deliberately playful — retro-leaning, bassline-driven, colorful — a contrast to the smoother, more formal feel of “Love Dive.” IVE showed a different face. DIVE loved it.
“I Am” — The Album’s Title Track
“I Am” became one of the defining IVE statements.
Where “Love Dive” was about falling, “I Am” was about standing. The lyrics are a direct declaration of self: I am my own hero. I decide who I become. For a group whose name means “I Have,” this was the logical destination — a full lyrical and musical articulation of IVE’s core identity.
“I Am” achieved a Perfect All-Kill on Korean music charts and topped the Circle Digital Chart for six weeks — IVE’s fourth #1 single on that chart. “I Am,” “Kitsch,” and “After LIKE” placed 3rd, 6th, and 10th respectively on the 2023 Melon annual chart — an exceptional result, with IVE placing three songs in a single year-end top 10.
Album Performance
I’ve IVE achieved the 3rd highest first-day sales of any girl group album in Hanteo history at the time, and became the 3rd girl group album in Hanteo history to surpass 1 million sales in its first week.
| Release | April 10, 2023 |
| Tracks | 11 (7 with at least one member credited on lyrics) |
| First-day sales | 601,669 copies |
| First-week sales | 1.1M+ (million-seller) |
| Year-end award | Album of the Year — 2023 Melon Music Awards |
| Label | Starship Entertainment / Kakao Entertainment, with Columbia Records supporting North American promotion |
Columbia Records: The US Partnership
Alongside the album’s release, Kakao Entertainment America partnered with Columbia Records to support IVE’s North American distribution, marketing, and promotion — part of a broader partnership between Columbia and Kakao Entertainment, Starship’s parent company.
The arrangement made IVE one of only a small number of K-pop acts with major-label backing for US market entry, opening doors to American promotion that most groups access only through independent channels.
▶ Watch IVE ‘I Am’ MV on YouTube
▶ Watch IVE ‘Kitsch’ MV on YouTube
🎧 Editor’s Pick — “I Am”
A personal note from the Editor.
“After Like” is the song that pulled me into IVE. But “I Am” is the one I keep coming back to — especially on the hard days.
The melody is beautiful on its own terms. But it’s the lyrics that hit differently.
The song opens by telling you to open a different door — that you don’t need to follow anyone else’s path. You go your way, I’ll go mine. Simple words. But delivered with that level of conviction, at that tempo, with that arrangement underneath — it doesn’t feel like a pop lyric. It feels like someone saying something true.
And then the song builds. And builds. And at the climax, it releases everything at once — the image of being completely lost on a deep dark night, and the answer arriving not as a map or directions, but as permission: just fly up. Wherever you pass, that becomes the road. One, two, three. Fly up.
That is not a self-help slogan. That is a philosophy. And when the six of them deliver it together at full volume, something in you lifts.
I’ve listened to K-pop for a while now. I’ve heard a lot of songs about confidence and self-belief — it’s a crowded genre. Most of them feel like encouragement from the outside. “I Am” feels like it’s coming from inside you. Like a voice that was already there, just waiting to be loud enough to hear.
There have been moments — genuinely difficult moments, the kind where the next step looks impossible — where I put this song on. Not consciously, not as a choice. It just came to me. And something in the combination of that melody, those words, and the way IVE performs them made the next step feel possible again.
That’s not something I say about many songs.
If you only ever listen to one IVE song, make it “After Like” — it will make you a fan. But if you want to understand what IVE is actually saying, make it “I Am.” It might stay with you longer than you expect.
▶ Watch IVE ‘I Am’ Studio Performance on YouTube
🌏 I’ve Mine and “Baddie” — EP #1 (October 2023)
In October 2023, IVE released their first Korean-language EP, I’ve Mine.
The lead single “Baddie” was IVE at their most assertive — a harder edge, more confident posture, a sound that leaned into hip-hop influences without abandoning the pop precision that defined their earlier work. It debuted at a modest #80 on the Circle Digital Chart, then climbed steadily over three weeks to reach #1 — becoming IVE’s fourth song to achieve a Perfect All-Kill, and their fifth #1 single overall on the Circle Digital Chart.
I’ve Mine sold over 1.6 million copies in its first week — one of the highest first-week totals ever for a K-pop girl group EP at the time. The EP later received double-million certification from the Korea Music Content Association.
🌍 Show What I Have: The First World Tour (October 2023 — September 2024)
In October 2023, IVE launched their first world tour — Show What I Have.
The tour ran for nearly a full year, across 37 concerts in 28 cities across 19 countries, drawing a reported total attendance of roughly 440,000 across Asia, North America, Europe, Latin America, and Oceania.
| Region | Cities |
|---|---|
| Asia | Seoul, Yokohama, Fukuoka, Osaka, Kuala Lumpur, Singapore, Taipei, Hong Kong, Manila, Tokyo, Jakarta |
| North America | Los Angeles, Inglewood (Kia Forum), Newark (Prudential Center), and other US cities |
| Europe | London (The O2), Paris, Berlin, Barcelona |
| Latin America | Mexico City, São Paulo |
| Oceania | Melbourne, Sydney |
Tokyo Dome — A Historic Finale
The world tour concluded at Tokyo Dome on September 4–5, 2024, drawing approximately 95,800 attendees across both nights. Initial tickets sold out extremely quickly when reservations opened, with additional restricted-view seats released later after the stage layout was finalized.
IVE joined a small group of K-pop girl groups to headline Tokyo Dome, and was the first Starship Entertainment artist to do so in the label’s history.
What the Critics Said
International music press covered the tour’s European and North American legs closely — including strongly positive reviews of the London O2 show from UK outlets and coverage from Billboard describing IVE’s growing identity as a global act. Fans who followed the tour across multiple continents echoed much of that enthusiasm online.
🎛️ IVE Switch and “Heya” — EP #2 (April 2024)
On April 29, 2024, IVE released IVE Switch — their second EP — with two lead singles that went in completely opposite directions.
“Heya” (해야) drew on Korean folklore imagery but centered on an original story created for the release — about a tiger longing for the sun. The music video leaned into Korean traditional aesthetics, vibrant and warm. The song reached the top 10 on the Circle Digital Chart and became a live concert staple for the rest of the year.
“Accendio” took the opposite path: dark, synth-heavy, spell-like, with lyrics about magic. It was often described as a darker, more mysterious extension of the confident energy established in “Love Dive.”
The contrast between the two singles showed DIVE something important: IVE wasn’t locked into one sound. They could move between warmth and danger, tradition and futurism, without losing coherence.
🎸 Lollapalooza Chicago 2024 — Expansion Into Western Festival Markets
On August 3, 2024, IVE performed at Lollapalooza in Chicago — one of the biggest music festivals in the United States.
They performed an 11-song festival set with live-band arrangements and extensive choreography. For a K-pop girl group, that level of performance — in front of a Western festival audience that hadn’t necessarily come specifically for K-pop — was a test. IVE passed it.
The performance generated strong coverage in US music media and reflected what their Columbia Records partnership had signaled: IVE was being positioned for growth in the American market, not just promoted there.
In 2025, they returned to Lollapalooza — this time in Berlin and then Paris, extending a run of Lollapalooza appearances across three different cities over two consecutive years.
🤝 David Guetta Collab — “Supernova Love” (November 2024)
On November 8, 2024, IVE released “Supernova Love” — a collaboration with French DJ and record producer David Guetta.
The collaboration was developed through THE COLLAB X, a project designed to connect K-pop artists with major Western producers. The track samples Ryuichi Sakamoto’s “Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence.”
The release gave IVE additional visibility among European and American dance-music audiences — listeners who might encounter the group through Guetta’s established fanbase rather than through Korean chart channels.
📊 The Artist Era in Numbers
By the end of 2024, the picture of what IVE had built in two years of their “artist era” looked like this:
| Metric | Figure |
|---|---|
| Perfect All-Kills | 4 (“Kitsch,” “I Am,” “Baddie,” and one earlier) |
| Music show wins (total) | 80+ across all singles (as of late 2024) |
| Album sales (cumulative) | Multiple million-seller certifications across releases |
| World tour dates | 37 shows, 28 cities, 19 countries |
| Tokyo Dome | ~95,800 attendees over two nights, sold out |
| Lollapalooza | Chicago (2024), Berlin + Paris (2025) |
| IFPI Global Album Chart (2023) | I’ve IVE ranked #20 — one of several K-pop acts on the chart that year |
| Year-end awards | Album of Year (Melon 2023), multiple Daesangs |
🔑 What the Artist Era Meant
Between 2023 and 2024, IVE made a transition that many K-pop groups struggle with: from a group defined by its singles to a group with a coherent artistic identity.
The studio album gave them depth. The world tour gave them presence. The Columbia Records partnership gave them infrastructure. The Lollapalooza performances expanded their reach into Western festival and arena markets. And the member lyric-writing credits gave them ownership.
IVE didn’t just grow in this period. They defined what “grown-up IVE” was going to look like. By the end of 2024, they had answered the question their debut raised: what happens after the perfect debut?
The answer was: this.
🇰🇷 Why “Perfect All-Kill” Is Such a Big Deal
This post mentions Perfect All-Kills (PAKs) several times, and it’s a very Korea-specific concept worth unpacking.
Korean music charts aren’t one chart — there are several real-time and daily digital charts run by different platforms (Melon, Genie, Bugs, and others), plus separate weekly charts like Circle’s. A “Perfect All-Kill” means a song is simultaneously sitting at #1 on every major real-time chart and the daily chart and is leading the weekly chart all at once — a level of total, simultaneous market saturation that’s genuinely hard to achieve, since it requires a song to be the top choice of essentially every kind of Korean listener (casual streamers, dedicated fans doing organized streaming, and general chart browsers) at the exact same moment.
Korean music fans and journalists track PAKs almost like a separate statistic from chart peaks or sales — a song can top the Circle Digital Chart without ever achieving a PAK, and a PAK is treated as proof of genuine, inarguable mainstream dominance rather than just fandom-driven chart success. IVE racking up six of them across different eras is part of why Korean industry coverage treats them as a genuinely dominant act, not just a hit-making one.
🔗 Continue the Story
- 👉 Part 1 — I Have Everything: The Origin Story — The casting stories and debut
- 👉 Part 2 — Eleven Was Just the Beginning — The 2022 triple-hit year
- 👉 Part 4 — Rebel Heart: The Empire Builds — Daesang sweeps, 13M albums, and 2026
▶ Watch IVE Show What I Have World Tour highlights on YouTube