In post-Renovation ("Đổi Mới") Vietnam, the "Bolero Wave" represents the public resurgence of pre-1975 South Vietnamese popular music—a repertoire historically marginalized by state pressure and pejoratively labeled "yellow music" (nhạc vàng) against North Vietnam's revolutionary "red music" (nhạc đỏ). Focusing on the 2000s to the late 2010s, this paper examines how "bolero" evolved from a rhythmic descriptor into a depoliticized signifier facilitating this music’s re-entry into the official public sphere. Rapidly expanding to absorb interconnected local genres, the term’s use culminated in mainstream phenomena like the show Bolero Idol (Thần Tượng Bolero, 2016). By mapping conceptual overlaps between bolero and diverse local categories—romantic nhạc trữ tình ("music conveying emotion"), pastoral nhạc quê hương (“homeland/countryside music”), and repertoires simultaneously praised as mùi (pungent) and disparaged as sến (maudlin)—this study reveals genre-making as a complex process of cultural negotiation. Musically, Vietnamese bolero mediates between Latin American rhythms signalling cosmopolitanism and the provincial aesthetics of southern traditional genres (e.g. cải lương). Discursively, adopting the "bolero" moniker eases the genre away from politically fraught wartime repertoires in favor of apolitical romanticism. This shift transforms a stigmatized, southern artifact into a pan-Vietnamese popular tradition, a reorientation I argue is embodied in the divergent performance styles of two prominent vocalists: southern-born Đàm Vĩnh Hưng and northern-born Lệ Quyên. Ultimately, this presentation highlights musical nomenclature and aesthetics as strategic tools for historical reclamation, offering ethnomusicological insights into how post-conflict societies navigate censorship, rehabilitate marginalized archives, and leverage genre to reshape cultural memory.