Blackpink are out of touch with today’s pop music trends, and a throwback to an era that no longer exists

Where other young artists such as Billie Eilish are bleary and improvisational, Blackpink are polished and crisp – and can seem old-fashioned in comparison

There’s something vaguely oppressive about their new record, ‘The Album’, which hardly ever provides a sense of what Blackpink’s members are all about

3-MIN READ3-MIN

Blackpink’s debut album, The Album, has eight tracks and features cameos by Cardi B and Selena Gomez.

Published: 10:15pm, 6 Oct 2020Updated: 10:34pm, 6 Oct 2020

Blackpink’s success may be the best known thing about them.

Since emerging a little over four years ago, the K-pop girl group have racked up billions of streams, sold countless pieces of merchandise (including branded sleep masks and hand-sanitiser holders) and played the 2019 Coachella festival in a widely acknowledged first for an act of its kind.

In June, the video for their taunting How You Like That set a YouTube record when it was viewed more than 80 million times in 24 hours. Yet the quartet’s speedy ascent has come at a moment when Blackpink’s approach feels almost entirely out of alignment with pop music’s prevailing trends.

Where other young artists such as Billie Eilish are bleary and improvisational, Blackpink are polished and crisp. And where other acts use social media to emphasise their rough edges, Blackpink keeps their audience at a strategic remove with elaborate costumes and choreography that look back to an earlier, more constructed idea of pop stardom.

Think of the group as an Imax production in a TikTok world.