After debuting in 2016, Korean girl group Blackpink released their first studio album on the first of this month. During this four-year period, Blackpink fans—termed Blinks—have begged for an album and protested to Blackpink’s agency YG Entertainment for “starving” them. Blinks even began to interpret Blackpink’s lyric “See you later maybe never” from their song “See U Later” literally. With Blackpink’s success coming from a repertoire of only thirteen songs released before 2020, Jennie, Blackpink’s lead vocalist and main rapper, famously said at their Atlanta concert in 2019, “I had so much fun today. I want to do ten more songs if I had any.”

Such was the starvation for Blinks and the frustration from Blackpink as a group, so the long-awaited album, appropriately titled “The Album,” seemed like the culmination of years of patience, hope and persistence. 

The album cover, highlighting the group’s signature colors.

Of the eight songs on the album, the title track, “Lovesick Girls,” dynamited Blackpink away from their typical black and pink colors, trappy beats and fierce yet cute image. Unlike the pre-release song, “How You Like That,” which was a bold declaration of self-confidence, “Lovesick Girls” seems to be an anthem for single girls with a melodic chorus. There is a questionable message in “Lovesick Girls” from problematic lines like “I’m nothing without this pain.” Even more, what is being said is inconsistent, from the lines “love is a drug that I quit” to “but we are still looking for love.” The music video also appears inconsistent from a life-size neon sign that flickers between “Born Alone” and “Die Alone” to another sign that says, “You never have to be alone.” There are other depressing and random neon signs like “NO EXIT” and a 5 by 50 feet “NOTHING.” It leaves fans wondering if this song could be referring to YG Entertainment’s ongoing five-year dating ban for Blackpink members.

However, it would be wrong to discredit Blackpink’s new venture into the melodious and more gradual realm. Songs like “You Never Know” continue this quest with a ballad that spotlights every members’ previously underutilized vocals. Other songs like “How You Like That,” “Pretty Savage,” and “Crazy Over You” refer back to their classic hits like “DDU-DU DDU-DU” and “Kill This Love” that garnered global fans and landed them a spot at the 2019 Coachella Music Festival. Though these songs fail to defamiliarize from the proven formula for success in the charts, they also have the idealized addictive beats and energy that fans love. 

Other upbeat songs like “Ice Cream” featured Selena Gomez and “Bet You Wanna” featured Cardi B. Such big-name features by Western artists and lyrics being all or majority English point towards Blackpink’s hopes of entering the Western market. Perhaps the most obvious turning point in audience targeting is the release time set by YG Entertainment: midnight in Eastern Standard Time rather than midnight in Korea. After the release, Blackpink continued their campaign into the Western market through interviews with Jimmy Fallon, Apple Music, Spotify, YouTube Released, Entertainment Tonight and Elle. Selena Gomez joined several interviews via Zoom and Cardi B did what Cardi B does best by tweeting non-stop about her feature in “Bet You Wanna.” Coincidentally, the night of the album’s release was also the night of Trump’s coronavirus announcement, prompting Cardi’s tweet to Trump, “’BET YOU WANNA’ wear a mask now.” It is also important to mention that Cardi B garnered extra attention by entering a Twitter war with K-Pop fans and Blinks themselves and summoned her fans, the Bardigang, before returning to promoting the album. 

Since the release of “The Album,” Blackpink has broken the record for a K-Pop girl group selling the most physical albums on their first day, at 590,000 copies. They broke the record for fastest video to reach 100,000,000 views on YouTube with the “How You Like That” music video. They also broke the record for fastest girl group to reach 500,000,000 streams on Spotify. 

Despite not remaining within their binaries of black and pink, the colors of Blackpink we do see in “The Album” are so varied and erratic that the outcome is a rather confusing hue you would get from mixing too many colors together. Fans can hear Blackpink, but the songs lack the depth to hear them as individuals. The lyrics seem designed as quotes for fans to scream (“Sound the alarm!” or “Look up in the sky, it’s a bird, it’s a plane!”), and they also ring with an air of over-simplicity. There seems to be no subtext, and the album itself denounces love, then announces love as the sole objective to life. Such contradictions both within and between songs make it difficult to synthesize an overall message from the album. “The Album” becomes an aesthetic project that lacks a greater statement besides “Blackpink in your area.” Yes, they are here, and that’s all. 

Yet Blackpink’s album has definitely been catered to their patient Blinks. From main vocalist Jisoo’s rap verses and deep notes, Jisoo saying “Blackpink in your area,” which all members have done except her, to Jennie and Lisa having longer raps, Rosé showing off her vocals and high notes, and an even line distribution, Blackpink has checked off several boxes that only dedicated fans would know. The album itself also condemns haters with lines like “You ain’t worth my love if you only love to hate me” and what seems like a diss track in “How You Like That” with the line “Look at you, now look at me.” As Jennie said in an interview, “We just wanted our fans to enjoy whichever [song] that they like because we have everything ready for you.” Indeed, Blackpink has an appetizing feast satisfying those who have closely followed the band and their Blinks’ wishes, but it leaves new listeners still wondering who Blackpink really is.