Album Review: Blackpink - Born Pink

I could honestly just copy and paste my entire review of Blackpink’s first album, because much of how I felt about that album applies here with its follow-up Born Pink. But let’s get into this anyway.

Born Pink really does highlight that YG Entertainment have no idea what to do with Blackpink’s sound. Which is largely why their sound has stayed the exact same since 2016, when the group first debuted. 6 years. And no growth. And 6 years doesn’t sound like a crazy amount of time. But think of the gaps some artists take between albums. All that’s happened in the past 3 years alone. And how many K-pop acts have come and gone in a much shorter space of time. *Take a period of years, multiply that by 2, and that’s K-pop years*.

Despite their mammoth, unprecedented success, Blackpink have long been dragged for just releasing the same songs over and over. And despite widely being seen as a replacement / copy and paste of the YG group of lore, 2NE1 - Blackpink’s discography has nowhere near the amount of variation or range that 2NE1’s had. It easily could. But it just doesn’t. And Born Pink barely entertains the idea of Blackpink’s sound being anything more than it has been for the past 12 years*.

Blackpink has a sound, and this is great. Some acts go their entire careers without being able to nail down a sound to help brand them. But the problem with Blackpink’s sound is that it hasn’t changed, nor grown. So many of Blackpink’s single releases have been the exact same song. “Boombayah”, “How You Like That”, “Kill This Love” and “Pink Venom” are all the same song. Y’all stans can argue between yourselves that they’re not. But they are. Blackpink are so far beyond the tipping point of having to rely on a particular sound to obtain or maintain success. And yet, they keep releasing the same damn songs. Even Britney Spears, who was known primarily for the Max Martin sound (“...Baby One More Time”, “Oops!... I Did It Again” and “Overprotected” are all the same), which was her bread and butter, moved on from that. Not just because she knew that her sound would never grow if she stayed with it, but because of the realisation that she herself WAS the sound. It didn’t matter if she was on a Max Martin production or something from The Neptunes; it would still have that unmistakable Britney sound, because IT’S BRITNEY BITCH.

YG Entertainment has more faith in Blackpink’s sound, than they do Blackpink themselves.

Blackpink - Born Pink | © 2022 YG Entertainment

There seems to be this consensus at YG Entertainment that Blackpink’s signature sound is the only reason they are successful, and that they can’t be shit without, which is just isn’t true. Because, let’s be real. If Blackpink’s success was completely reliant on their music, they would not be as successful as they are.

It’s easy to just say that ‘all of Blackpink’s songs sound the same’. Because they do. But there is more which is contributing to why Blackpink’s music is so stale and allergic to evolving, and why Born Pink falls so short.

Firstly, none of Blackpink’s songs these days feel whole. Their songs just end just when they sound like they’re about to get started, and this is a problem with each and every song on Born Pink. Every time a song ended, I was sat like ‘Oh, that’s it?’. When we should be going into a bridge section, the song ends. When we should be about to hit a middle eight, the song ends. When I thought we were about to get a rap from Lisa, the song ends. When the song should be building up to a switch, the song ends. Before, I could just chalk this incompleteness up to Blackpink‘s producer Teddy Park and his team’s laziness. But at this point in the streaming age, shorter songs are favoured by ‘the system’. Born Pink feels like its short song runtimes are in order to play into this, and it feels a bit shameless. Blackpink are one act that doesn’t need to participate in these shorts of games. They are so popular, that they could pull a Donna Summer and release a 5 song album, where all but one song ranges between 5 to 8 minutes long, and it would still break streaming records. Fans have already been short changed with the lack of music that Blackpink have put out in 12 years*. So to drop an 8 track ‘album’ of short, incomplete sounding songs is foul.

Blackpink - Born Pink | © 2022 YG Entertainment

Secondly, Blackpink’s music on this album sounds like it’s becoming too Americanised.

Now, I know a whole bunch of you just screwed your faces up at this statement. But stay with me on this one.

I know that K-pop pulls from what’s hot in the US, and predominantly rips off cherry picks from R&B and Hip-Hop; from which K-pop also pulls its fashions. But on Born Pink, it sounds like there has been a deliberate choice to move Blackpink out of ‘K-pop’, and this makes sense given how big they are in the US. Many K-pop acts have effectively shunned the K-pop-isms of their sound when vying for the American market. BTS, BoA, Se7en, Girls’ Generation. Everybody. But the problem here with Blackpink is that their sound is not in a place for them to be able to do that and truly compete. I’m absolutely looking at this from a purely musical and creative perspective, because I know if we look at figures and metrics, that Blackpink are already competing and dragging bitches by their ponytails. But by trying to further Americanise Blackpink’s music and move it out from under a K-pop (by genre only) umbrella, it really shows the cracks in how...not great the music is. For example, having Lisa and Jennie rap whole verses in English highlights how bad some of the lyrics are. And not, in a ‘so bad it’s good’ kinda way. Just straight up bad. Popular rap right now is not about great lyricism, skill or strength of bars; so Blackpink are able to slot right in for the time being. But even so, some of their rap lyrics are just plain terrible. And as with Blackpink’s sound as a whole, there’s no evolution in Lisa or Jennie’s approaches to rapping. They’re on autopilot. Just like Teddy when it comes to the songwriting and production. It feels like YG and Teddy are trying to have Blackpink’s music run before it’s even been able to walk.

A big part of what separates K-pop from just being US chart knockoffs, and in some ways even defines it, is that standard song structures and rules in US pop music need not apply. Songs can switch genres, change rhythms, have multiple melodic lines - one song can sound like it’s three different songs just because it can. Blackpink’s music hasn’t even scratched the surface of what it could do within the genre of K-pop, yet it’s vying for competing with US chart music on its own terms. And as a result of this, Blackpink and YG aren’t making the most of being great emissaries for K-pop with the success they have right now, but that’s a whole ‘nother post.

The short of it is, that the more Blackpink try to just do what they think global audiences want and do what other artists on the Billboard Hot 100 are already doing, the more it further exposes the shortcomings of their own music. And I do wonder how much of this is a YG decision, and how much of it is pushback from Interscope Records, who Blackpink’s albums are distributed through. Either way, I think Blackpink’s music is leaning too far in the wrong direction. It’s leaning too far in a bunch of wrong directions.

Then there is Teddy Park, the primary talent behind Blackpink’s music. I would liken Teddy Park and Blackpink to Nakata Yasutaka and Perfume, in that I feel he has far too much power over Blackpink’s music, and it’s a problem. Like Nakata, Teddy is extremely talented. But if he’s in a funk with his songs, it affects his output, and has a knock-on effect on Blackpink’s output. Teddy did not write and / or produce every song on Born Pink, and it’s telling that the better songs on this EP album are the ones he had nothing to do with. But the other producers involved on this album are affiliated with Teddy or came up under him; so Teddy’s shadow and shortcomings still manage to be cast somewhat over the songs he had no direct involvement with.

Teddy’s songs for Blackpink have been one note for years now, and it’s beyond tired. Nakata at least pulled his finger out and delivered something good with a Perfume album after 6 years and 2 misfires. But Nakata’s rise to prominence with Perfume was because of how good their debut album was. Blackpink have yet to get a good solid release out of Teddy, and it’s a problem. Blackpink’s growth (of lack thereof) is too tied to him. His laziness and inability to try new things and actually think about what is best for the group musically is holding their music back. His primary focus seems to be giving Blackpink title tracks that people will hear and know are Teddy productions, as opposed to just creating really great songs. When people hear a Blackpink song, and hear his signature production style, they go ‘Oh, it’s Teddy’ with disdain. People are tired of the same flows, the same cadences, the same song structures, the same hooks, the same switches at the end of songs, and the same Rum-pum-pum-pum’s and Rat-ta-ta-ta’s. In the days of Big Bang and 2NE1, Teddy Park had a far greater range. Iyanla might need to fly to Seoul and find out what happened to it.

But the problem of all problems, on top of what feels like a stack of problems with Blackpink’s music, is that Born Pink does not feel like a body of work. It’s just a dump of songs. And it’s crazy to me, that with all the time everybody had to put this album together, that we ended up with this cobble of just 8 songs of a wholly middling quality. Nobody approached Born Pink with any form of vision for what it should sound like, and what in Blackpink’s future it should build a bridge to.

Born Pink just further cements for me that YG and Teddy do not have an idea of what Blackpink’s sound should be, beyond what it’s already been. As it stands, Blackpink isn’t just Jisoo, Jennie, Rosé-like-the-wine and Lisa. It’s also YG and Teddy. But YG and Teddy need to step back and stop looking at Blackpink as extensions of themselves, and let the music be what it should be, and not just what they need it to be. At least two members of the group seem to be onto something, and some of the talent under Teddy seems to be onto that same something. Let them steer the ship for a little bit. There’s absolutely nothing to lose here at this point in anybody’s career.

Blackpink - Born Pink | © 2022 YG Entertainment

Looking at Born Pink purely from a product perspective, Blackpink have once again released an EP and are calling it an album. I don’t know what YG Entertainment has against a regular 11 to 12 track album, but it’s a mess. Fans had to wait far too long for ‘The Album’, just for it to be 8 tracks. And now we get another 8 track EP branded as an album. It’s ridiculous. Also, Born Pink features a Rosé-like-the-wine solo song. This is nothing out of the ordinary, given that she did go solo in 2021. And every now and then when groups release an album, there may be a solo song on there. Given that we’re sat with an album with only 8 songs, and one of them is a Rosé-like-the-wine solo song; why did we not get solo songs from the three other members of the group? Not only would this have made things a little more fair, but it would have given us an album with 11 songs. And not that Blackpink need any more interest garnered in them, but it would have also gotten fans excited about the prospect of a Jisoo solo project, with her now being the only member who is yet to properly have a solo debut. I will say this. I am slightly biased in favour of Jisoo, because she is the member of the group who intrigues me the most. Blackpink’s songs tend to mostly be showcases for Lisa and Jennie, with Rosé-like-the-wine being able to just fit into that and adapt - which is another big issue with Blackpink’s music. Jisoo has always felt like the odd one out. There is a sense of where her musical tastes may lie to some degree, with the likes of “Lovesick Girls” and “Yeah Yeah Yeah”, both of which she co-wrote, and both of which just happen to be the best songs on The Album and Born Pink respectively. So, giving Jisoo a solo song on Born Pink would have not only made sense, but also given YG Entertainment something to gauge in terms of how they could package Jisoo as a solo act. But nope. Just a solo song from Rosé-like-the-wine. The inclusion of Rosé-like-the-wine’s solo song makes me wonder if the Rosé-like-the-wine solo song was even recorded specifically for this album, or if it was just a leftover from R which was just tacked on; because nothing about Born Pink feels like it was approached as a body of work. And speaking of that Rosé-like-the-wine solo song, it’s more of what I expected from her solo debut.

Blackpink - Born Pink | © 2022 YG Entertainment

Born Pink is a better EP album than The EP The Album. The only two songs on it that I flat out do not like are “Pink Venom” and “Shut Down”, because they stick too closely to the Blackpink formula that I and more fans than are willing to admit are genuinely sick of. All of the other songs at least TRY to do something marginally different with Blackpink. But Teddy and co. aren’t learning anything from release to release. With The Album, there were clear actionable things that everybody should have taken out of it. The Blackpink song formula needs to evolve beyond what it’s been since the start. Blackpink’s sound needs to stop hinging on this need to be ‘hood’. Because not only is it feeling overly forced now (one of many things I cannot stand about “Shut Down”), but it doesn’t showcase Rosé-like-the-wine or Jisoo, who are valued members of the group that have something very worthwhile to bring to the table. I genuinely think that Rosé-like-the-wine and Jisoo hold the keys towards helping Blackpink’s sound move into the space that it should be right now. Blackpink should embrace pop more, because it suits the WHOLE group, and it expands their sound without getting rid of their personality. It would also help offset the rap comparisons that Lisa and Jennie will start to face against US rappers, now that Blackpink are global pop stars. Lisa has a cool factor for sure. But she’s not a great rapper, and I think that casual music listeners would be fine with this if the songs weren’t trying to position themselves as these hard hitting Hip-Hop bangers where there is some form of expectation that a rap is at least going to be half decent. “Lovesick Girls” was the best song The Album, and it’s good to hear that sound and vibe come through in “Yeah Yeah Yeah”. (Shout-outs to Jisoo). But why is it only for one song? Or two, because I guess you could fold “Hard To Love” into that sound and vibe.

Nothing about Born Pink is memorable or allows it to stand alone in any way. The success of the group isn’t tied to the quality of the music; which is why we end up with EP’s for albums which show no growth and are completely half-arsed. This isn’t an album, or even a good EP. It’s a mixtape. And I feel bad using this as a comparison, given the quality of some of the mixtapes out here. Everything about Born Pink is unfortunate. Because there is enough talent in the group, and within Teddy Park’s team for these songs to be great and truly realise the potential of Blackpink. And yet we end up with nothing but this, and will probably keep ending up with nothing but this.

Verdict: Pepto-Bismol

Highlights:
▪ Yeah Yeah Yeah 🏆
▪ Hard to Love
▪ Tally