Album Review: BLACKPINK - The Album

BLACKPINK makes utterly disposable pop music which serves no purpose whatsoever other than to feed the industry.

Good. Now all the K-pop stans have clicked away hopefully I’m left with the smart ones. Either the K-pop fans who enjoy the music even for how disposable it ultimately is (I include myself in this category), or those who are just curious to know whether or not this new album from BLACKPINK is worth checking out. And, in answer to that question, while ‘The Album’ is slightly better than I expected, I still had problems divorcing it from the pop machine in which it was constructed. The scary thing is that if it didn’t start with two of the most detestable pop songs of recent memory, it might have actually ended up being pretty good.

And we might as well start with those songs. ‘How You Like That’ is an utterly embarrassing attempt at an ‘empowerment’ anthem that accomplishes nothing other than showcasing the band's uncanny ability to talk down to their audience. Then there’s ‘Ice Cream’, with its droning bassline and overwritten ice cream as sex metaphor that hardly makes a lick (pun intended) of sense the more you think about it, that might go down as one of the most annoying pop songs of the year. Also, the charisma vacuum that is Selena Gomez is the song, and she predictably contributes nothing of value.

But as I mentioned before, apart from those two obvious duds, there is at least something to this album that I do admire somewhat. The huge throbbing bass anchoring the really strong hook on ‘Lovesick Girls’ (it’s a shame that the production sounds as washed out as it does on that hook, though; I blame David Guetta), the staccato blasts of strings on the closing song ‘You Never Know’, and ‘Bet You Wanna’ where Cardi B shows up and, apart from referencing her Bruno Mars collab from last year that I’m fairly certain everyone forgot existed until now, doesn’t really drop a bad line on her verse. On the other end of the spectrum, the buzzy squawks of synth of ‘How You Like That’ and ‘Pretty Savage’ are headache-inducing, as is the oddly rickety drop on the otherwise pretty likable ‘Love To Hate Me’.

As for the songwriting, it’s pretty much what you’d expect. A whole lot of bragging on the vapid ‘How Do You Like That’ and ‘Pretty Savage’, some slightly more sensitive writing that turns up on the lovestruck ‘Crazy Over You’ and ‘Bet You Wanna’, but nothing really revolutionary and interesting. Then there’s ‘Lovesick Girls’ where Jennie and Lisa share an opening verse that frames them both as hopeless romantics, only for them both to betray that idea on the very next verse and take on the ‘strong woman who don’t need no man’ role that feels so played out at this point. The only song that truly feels like it’s punching above its weight in terms of songwriting is the closing track ‘You Never Know’, easily the most self-aware song here as the group goes

some way to acknowledge how far they’ve come as a group, as well as giving the fans the reassurance that the best is yet to come.

But overall, this is a completely inessential listen. There’s only so angry I will get at a pop album that’s not even thirty minutes and goes down pretty easy, but it ends up mediocre. There are good songs here, but you have to get through some really terrible ones to get to them. This is only for the fans.

2.5 / 5

Best Songs: ‘Lovesick Girls’, ‘You Never Know’

Worst Songs: ‘How You Like That’, ‘Ice Cream’