LISA's 'SaWaDiKa' Is YouTube's No. 1 Worldwide and No. 69 in America

YouTube keeps two song charts for almost every country it serves: one for today and one for the week. On 17 September we read both, in 68 and 69 countries, as we do for every Trends piece, and looked for the song that shows up near the top of both at once. One title was in the top 10 of both charts in 26 countries. The next best managed 10. The song is 'SaWaDiKa' by LISA, and on the weekly chart it was number 1 in 12 countries, including the United States, the United Kingdom, Japan, South Korea and YouTube's global chart, which counts the whole world.

Billboard sees it differently. Its Hot 100 dated 19 September placed 'SaWaDiKa' at number 69. The UK's Official Singles Chart had it at 66. Both are a long way from the top. So the question here is simple: how does the song the world plays most on YouTube land in the bottom half of the charts the music business reads first? The lyric, it turns out, is part of the answer.

'SaWaDiKa' in five points

• The title is the Thai greeting สวัสดีค่ะ, a polite hello from a woman.
• The chorus opens on that greeting and turns straight into a boast: diamonds, a watch from Geneva, an indigo Ferrari.
• The first verse starts with rivals and ends on loneliness; the second is a tour of Bangkok in slang and Thai words.
• On 17 September it was in the top 10 of YouTube's daily and weekly charts in 26 countries, more than any other song.
• It entered the Billboard Hot 100 at 69, mainly because that chart also counts radio and paid streams, where the song is still new.

What does 'SaWaDiKa' mean in Thai?

The title is the Thai greeting สวัสดีค่ะ, spelled the way it sounds to an English ear. Sawasdee means hello. The short ka at the end is the polite word a woman adds to close a sentence, so the whole title is a courteous hello from a woman. The usual English spelling is Sawasdee ka, and Thailand's official romanisation would write it sawatdi kha. LISA chose neither, and the capital letters split the word into the four beats you hear.

The greeting arrived before the song did. In August red billboards reading hello, in English and in Thai script, went up in Bangkok, New York, Los Angeles and Mexico City, with a countdown to an announcement on 24 August. The single followed on 3 September through LLOUD and RCA Records as the first taste of her EP Press Play. It is credited to LISA, Thom Bridges, Mark Williams, Raul Cubina, Rachel West and Danny Chung, produced by Bridges with Ojivolta, and her vocals were produced by Kuk Harrell. Thailand's tourism authority thanked her publicly; its governor said the phrase adds "even greater resonance to the warmth and friendliness of the Thai people".

We describe the lyric below in the order you hear it, as we do for every song meaning on mymy, rather than reprinting it. The words themselves are shown with the song on Spotify and Apple Music, and part of the chorus is printed in the description of the official video on YouTube.

'SaWaDiKa' chorus meaning: a greeting that turns into a boast

The song opens on its chorus, and the chorus opens on the greeting. Then, within a breath, the manners are gone. She mentions a wrist so covered in diamonds it feels cold, a watch that came from Geneva, and a hint that anyone who knows the brand knows what it cost. She reminds the listener that she is the woman on their television, points to her Ferrari and its indigo paint, and calls herself a diva with a sing-song play on her own name, the same la-la sound her 2021 solo debut 'Lalisa' was built on. The last line waves her out of the room with the greeting still in her mouth.

That is the joke of the whole record. The one polite word in the chorus is the Thai one. Everything around it is swagger in English. A greeting normally lowers the speaker a little; here it is the entrance music. The chorus runs twice before a single verse begins, so the first thing a new listener learns is the title and the attitude, in that order.

Verse 1 meaning: a mock arrest and a lonely count

The first verse starts with someone having set her free like an animal and a warning to clear the path. The next few lines play a crime scene for laughs: she has murdered the track, she is also the detective on the case, and she raises her hands and asks to be taken away. Then the images switch to sport and styling. She is the champion, the one people name. She whips her hair as if she were in a salon. She throws fits, a pun on outfits and tantrums, that look like a highlight reel. The verse closes with a shooter's gesture: aim, hit, blow the smoke off the barrel.

What follows is the most interesting passage in the song. She begins to count, over and over, how many. At first the count is about rivals: how many people want to surf on her success, how many want her name. Halfway through the question changes. Now she asks how many have the discipline, how many really understand, how many have been through what she has, how many know her from the inside. The bragging stops being about money and becomes a statement about loneliness at the top, and it passes in about ten seconds.

The only sung, softer moment comes next. She admits that her emotions can get the better of her, that she is floating high above everything, and that her imagination has no limit at all. It is the one place the song admits to an inner life, and it returns twice more before the end.

The Bangkok verse explained, and where the song gets loudest

We cut the music video's audio into eight equal slices of about 23 seconds and measured how loud each one is. The opening slice, the first chorus, sits at half the level of the loudest. The loudest is the fifth, from about 1:33 to 1:57, and it holds the second verse, the one set in Thailand. The slice after it, which carries the end of that verse, is the second loudest, and the time most quoted in the comment section, 2:03, falls inside it. Across the track, the loudest moment is only about five times the level of the quietest, and the tempo reads about 144 beats per minute.

The second verse is where the title stops being a gesture and becomes a setting. It opens by folding the word bang into Bangkok. She and her crew shout geng mak, Thai for very good or so skilled. Baht, the Thai currency, keeps arriving in her account until she leaves with a bag of it. She is Thai'd up, a pun on tied up, because her diary is full, and she asks everyone to wait while she cooks, slang for doing what she does best.

Then the city fills in. She puts on a show just by arriving and spins doughnuts in a tuk-tuk, the three-wheeled taxi. She steps onto a terrace, then a rooftop, then into the back of a helicopter, and asks whether you are coming. She compares herself to the tick of an alarm clock, the thing that wakes people up. The verse ends on a string of rhymes: she loves trouble, she lives for the shock the way an allergic body reacts, she asks whether she is being too dramatic, and she says she is so sick, slang for so good, that someone should call a medic.

After the feelings passage returns, the chorus comes back twice, and the song leaves as it arrived. The outro is only the greeting, repeated four times, with her walking away on the last one.

Why 'SaWaDiKa' is number 1 on YouTube

The music video, directed by Bang Jae-yeob and filmed in Bangkok at Hua Lamphong railway station and nearby streets, carries much of the song's meaning. There are Muay Thai shorts, a tuk-tuk, the wai greeting with palms pressed together, and Thai street signs that Thai viewers point out in the comments by name. The video drew 70.8 million views in its first 24 hours, the biggest first day for any video released in 2026 and well ahead of the 33 million for BTS's 'Swim'. (For a BTS single that works the other way, holding one volume from start to finish, see our piece on BTS's 'Normal'.) It was still short of the 73.6 million her own 'Lalisa' drew in 2021. By 17 September it had 168.7 million views and 2.66 million likes.

The comments explain the rest. The most-liked ones are not about the lyric. They count views by the hour, set daily targets and urge fans to keep streaming. Many of the others are in Thai, and they are about pride: a Thai woman showing Thailand to a worldwide audience. A song built on a greeting gives every viewer a word to repeat, and a video full of places gives them a reason to watch again.

Why 'SaWaDiKa' is only number 69 on the Billboard Hot 100

The two charts measure different things. YouTube's charts count plays on YouTube, and a devoted fan base that watches, rewatches and organises its viewing moves them quickly. The Hot 100 blends streams on every service, sales and radio play in the United States, and Billboard gives a free, ad-supported stream less weight than a paid one. American pop radio is usually slow to pick up a new rap single with explicit language, and radio is still a large part of that chart. So the same week can look like a coronation on one chart and a debut on another. It is also why the global music trends we follow start from YouTube's charts: they show what people choose to play, not what radio adds.

That does not make either chart wrong. The official charts elsewhere show the same split: 'SaWaDiKa' reached number 2 in Singapore, 3 in Thailand, 4 in Taiwan and 5 in New Zealand, but only 70 in Canada and 76 in Australia, two more countries where YouTube had it at number 1 for the week. On YouTube the greeting has reached more people than any other song this week. On the charts that add up radio and paid listening, it is still introducing itself. LISA told The Tonight Show on 16 September that the EP follows her journey from her roots to where she is now, and that the next single, track four, has a title starting with T. Whether America answers the hello will depend on what that record does away from the video.