ZEROBASEONE's 'ROSES' Is More Than a Fan Song — It's a Farewell in Full Bloom

ZEROBASEONE released "ROSES" on January 23 as the second pre-release from their farewell album RE-FLOW. The timing amplifies its emotional weight: with the group's contract concluding in March 2026, the warm, fan-dedicated single lands as one of K-pop's more resonant send-offs.

The single is the fourth track from RE-FLOW, the group's first special limited album due February 2, 2026. "ROSES" depicts the bond between ZEROBASEONE and ZEROSE — their fandom — through the image of a rose bouquet blooming underwater, each petal expanding outward until it encompasses the world. The music video develops this imagery with warmly animated sequences that document the group's two-and-a-half years together: concert stages, fan meeting moments, and shared milestones rendered in a soft animation style that functions as a visual thank-you letter.

A Group Built on a Different Timeline

ZEROBASEONE's trajectory is worth understanding fully to appreciate why "ROSES" lands with the force it does. The group debuted in July 2023 through Mnet's Boys Planet survival show, with nine members selected across Korean and international applicant pools — Zhang Hao from China, Ricky from Canada-Korea, and the others from Korea. Their initial contract ran for 2.5 years, a standard term for competition-show groups that reflects both the uncertainty of the format and the complexity of managing member schedules across multiple agencies.

Within that compressed timeline, ZEROBASEONE achieved a remarkable commercial record. The group produced four consecutive million-selling albums — a first-week sales consistency that placed them in the top tier of fourth-generation K-pop alongside IVE, aespa, and SEVENTEEN's extended catalogue. Their HERE & NOW World Tour extended the group's international footprint across Asia, North America, and Europe. The contract extension announced in late 2025 — adding two months to allow for tour encore dates and the RE-FLOW album — was framed as a considered farewell rather than an emergency measure, with all nine members agreeing to see the group's story through to a defined endpoint.

The Fan Song as Farewell Genre

"ROSES" belongs to a specific K-pop tradition: the fan-dedicated track released in the final phase of a group's active cycle. These songs serve a dual function. They are genuine expressions of gratitude from performers to their audience, but they also operate as closure mechanisms for a fandom that may have built significant emotional investment over years of engagement. Done well, they honor that investment without exploiting it; "ROSES" navigates this tension with care.

The production — mid-tempo, melodic, centered on vocal harmony rather than performance complexity — represents a deliberate departure from ZEROBASEONE's earlier high-concept work. Their debut material leaned into polished, conceptually dense production values typical of the survival-show-to-debut pipeline. "ROSES" strips that back: the instrumentation is warm and relatively uncluttered, with a chord progression that prioritizes emotional accessibility over technical demonstration. The group sounds comfortable. That comfort is precisely the point — this is not a track designed to showcase what ZEROBASEONE can do, but to mark what they have been.

ZEROSE Response and Platform Performance

Fan response to "ROSES" across ZEROBASEONE's official channels and ZEROSE community platforms was notably high-volume even by the group's established engagement standards. Weverse saw immediate trending activity following the midnight release, with fan posts compiling memories — concert photos, fan sign accounts, tour footage — in direct conversation with the music video's own retrospective imagery. The Melon chart placed "ROSES" within the top 40 upon release, consistent with the group's streaming baseline for pre-release singles.

The track's animated music video format — unusual for ZEROBASEONE, who have typically produced live-action concept-heavy MV content — drew specific attention. The animation style, described by multiple fan accounts as resembling the aesthetic of film credits sequences, gave the retrospective content a softness that live-action footage would have struggled to replicate. It also allowed the video to reference concert and fan meeting moments without requiring actual footage licensing, streamlining production while maintaining emotional coherence.

What RE-FLOW Represents for the K-Pop Farewell Model

The broader significance of ZEROBASEONE's RE-FLOW project — of which "ROSES" is one piece — lies in what it says about how competition-show groups are beginning to manage their endings. Earlier generations of such acts (IOI, Wanna One) concluded with relatively limited farewell documentation. ZEROBASEONE's approach is more deliberate: a special limited album, two pre-release singles, an extended world tour encore, and a structured timeline that gives fandom and members both a clear arc toward closure.

This model has value beyond ZEROBASEONE's specific situation. It suggests that the industry is learning how to honor the emotional investment of competition-show fandoms rather than treating disbandment as a logistical conclusion. "ROSES," in this context, is not just a farewell fan song — it is a data point in how K-pop is evolving its relationship with groups whose existence was always designed to be temporary. In March 2026, ZEROBASEONE concluded their activities as scheduled. The warmth of "ROSES" remained in ZEROSE's shared memory as one of the more graceful K-pop group endings in recent years.