Teddy Park and YG phone it in for Blackpink’s “Pink Venom”

So, Blackpink have made their long awaited comeback with a pre-comeback, comeback song. The main COMEBACK, comeback song releases in September.

Damn. That was a lotta ‘comeback’ in a short space.

I feel like Blackpink haven’t really gone anywhere, because they regularly pop up on my timeline and my news feeds. The sheer size of their fanbase and how active it is means that there is this constant Blackpink shadow (or should that be pink light!?) being cast even when the group itself isn’t really up to much. But then I remember how little music that Blackpink actually put out.

YG doesn’t seem to know what he’s doing with these girls. But that doesn’t matter, because whatever he isn’t doing is still working. Blackpink stay fucking up charts and breaking all sorts of YouTube records. It’s truly a mystery to me, but good for everybody involved.

HENNYWAY.

This new song “Pink Venom” sounds like every other Blackpink song. Looks like all of them too.

“Pink Venom” is terrible. The chorus is bad. The second verse is bad. But the problem with “Pink Venom” isn’t even that the song itself is bad. It’s that there is no evolution whatsoever from anything we’ve heard from Blackpink prior.

“Pink Venom” sounds like every other song that Blackpink have put out. “How You Like That”, “Kill This Love”, “Boombayah”. All o’ dem. All of their songs follow the exact same formula. The hooks all sound the same. The onomatopoeic repetition is always the same. The switches at the ends of the songs are always the same.

Fans will chalk all of this up to the Blackpink having ‘a sound’. But a group can still have a sound without every single one of their songs sounding the same, to the point that the lyrics and the music are interchangeable between them. Teddy Park and YG are lazy when it comes to Blackpink’s music. And whilst the success that Blackpink have is great for them, I think it’s unfortunate that their music is so damn stale, because it’s not fully reflective of the talents of all of the members. I also find it unfortunate that Blackpink have become one of the poster children for K-pop globally despite their music not being that good. So many will see Blackpink as a representation of K-pop as a whole, when they aren’t. And trust, that whilst not every other non SM Entertainment K-pop girl group has Blackpink’s music video budgets, they are releasing much better music. Blackpink is one of the least interesting girl groups in K-pop going on just the music alone. They just happen to be one of the most popular.

Blackpink - Pink Venom | © 2022 YG Entertainment

Blackpink have been in the same damn area for years, and they are never gonna leave it, because they’ve been so successful in it. And so few people with large platforms will entertain the idea of saying something negative about Blackpink, even if it’s all valid critique, because the stans will act heinously.

But stans just lapping up everything Blackpink puts out, regardless of quality, is partly why Blackpink are in this rut of their music not growing. On the few occasions that Blackpink have released something that sounded a bit different from the Teddy Park template and was a nudge in the right direction, the fans have hated it. I really liked “Lovesick Girls”, because it was different, and felt more reflective of the entire group, and not just Jennie and Lisa. But the stans shat all over that song, because they wanted the same tired rum-pa-pum-pum’s, airhorns and 808s.

We’ll see how the COMEBACK comeback song turns out. But my expectations are pretty low. It would be nice to be surprised. But it’s Teddy Park. He made 2NE1 his horcrux. And once they disbanded and left YG Entertainment, Teddy Park was left noseless, pale and with his fingernails untrimmed.

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💿 Blackpink reviews: Lalisa | R | The Album