Blackpink: The Girl Group Modernizing K-Pop

NEWS | September 7, 2020

After collaborating with Lady Gaga, performing at Coachella, and scoring a handful of records on Youtube, the South-Korean girl group is getting ready to release its first album: named, quite simply, the Album.

In a world dominated by statistics, Blackpink still knows how to touch hearts and minds. On June 30th, the girl band's single How You Like That became the most-watched clip on Youtube in 24 hours flat, garnering over 82.4 million views (713 million at press time). The record is one of the quartet's several crowning achievements, which have multiplied quickly over the past few years, from a performance at Coachella in 2019 to collabs with Lady Gaga and Dua Lipa.

Following in the footsteps of other K-Pop legends, Blackpink has been entirely constructed by the music industry. "The group's members are all pretty, but that's not all. Their strength is that they aren't exactly what they seem to be," declared the label YG Entertainment in 2016, surfing the success of hits like "Gangnam Style" and enthusiastic about the girls' potential. Jennie, Lisa, Jisoo, and Rosé (one of Saint Laurent's recent muses) are rising symbols of a generation, much like the Spice Girls or the Pussycat Dolls before them.

The South-Korean entertainment agency has decided to bet big on the group, providing intensive training so that their mastery of dance, singing, and rap is unparalleled — skill to which 2016 singles Whistle and Boombayah attest. The two hits soared to the top of the Korean charts. Since then, nothing's slowed down for the Blackpink divas and the successes have only mounted. After demonstrating their EDM and hip-hop skills on Playing With Fire and Kiss and Make Up, August's Ice Cream brought us a highly anticipated collaboration with pop icon Selena Gomez.

The band consistently surpasses expectations by playing with K-Pop's inherent codes, and especially by breaking a rule or two ("Blackpink is the revolution," they declare in their songs). Their first full-length album, released October 2nd, should be nothing less than an international sensation.