After a Billboard 200 No. 1, ATEEZ open GOLDEN HOUR : Part.6 with ‘Drip’

ATEEZ have released “Drip”, the pre-release single from their 15th mini album, GOLDEN HOUR : Part.6, and its official music video passed 8 million YouTube views in under two days. It is the first look at the next chapter of a series whose previous instalment, led by “Bad”, gave the group a No. 1 album on the Billboard 200 and the biggest opening week of their career.

KQ Entertainment built the rollout around images rather than sound. The first spoiler pictures showed a pile of worn matchboxes printed with close-ups of the members’ eyes, lips and hands, the word “Drip” repeated across them in faded colour and rough texture, with no full face in sight. The teaser that followed was the first time fans heard any of the song, and it leaned on performance: the eight members moving through several sets with a large crew of dancers, in a groove-led routine cut with hard, precise hits. The finished video goes cold. Its key image puts the members in black leather on a frosted, icy set, with a long line of dancers crouched on a ledge behind them.

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The credits keep the song inside the group’s own circle. Leader Hongjoong and rapper Mingi share the lyric credit with EDEN, the producer who handled every track on GOLDEN HOUR : Part.5, and with Maddox, Peperoni, Oliv, Jordan Shaw and Conor Blake, who also share the composition. At just over three minutes, the track runs about 25 seconds longer than “Bad”.

“Bad” set the bar “Drip” has to clear. GOLDEN HOUR : Part.5 became ATEEZ’s third No. 1 on the Billboard 200, sold more than 1.88 million copies in its first week, a group record, and kept “Bad” collecting music show wins after its promotion cycle had officially ended. A pre-release single after a run like that is less a launch than a temperature check: it tells KQ whether the audience that bought the last album in such numbers is still paying attention between comebacks.

The early signals are uneven, and that is worth stating plainly. The video numbers point to a fan base that showed up on day one. Western streaming is a slower read: on Last.fm, whose user base leans Western, “Drip” logged about 6,500 listeners and roughly 87,000 plays in its opening days, a modest figure for a group that tops the US album chart. Billed as a pre-release, the song does not have to carry the comeback on its own, and the rest of the record is still unheard, so whether the cold, choreography-first approach defines Part.6 or only opens it remains an open question.

“Drip” arrived on streaming platforms on October 23 at 1 p.m. Korean time, together with the music video on KQ Entertainment’s YouTube channel. GOLDEN HOUR : Part.6 follows on November 13 at 2 p.m. KST. The GOLDEN HOUR series began in 2024, and Part.5 came out in June this year. ATEEZ then open their ZERO TO ALL world tour in Incheon in January, with legs announced for Japan, Europe, North America and South America.

The matchboxes were the right teaser image for a single like this one. “Drip” is a small flame struck three weeks before the main event, and its job is to show the fire is still there.

Tags: K-pop, ateez, Drip, GOLDEN HOUR : Part.6, KQ Entertainment

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