Blackpink, the K-pop superstars who became the first Asian and all-female band to headline Coachella on Saturday night, are a testament to the increasingly porous language and cultural barriers in pop music.
The group’s members – Jisoo, Jennie, Rosé and Lisa – are from, respectively, Korea, Korea via New Zealand, Australia and Thailand. Their lyrics are a free-flowing blend of Korean and English; their loyal fan base, known as the Blinks, spans the globe and several YouTube viewing records. And on Saturday, their high-octane, nearly 90-minute set hammered home why: the universal language of the hard pop banger. Blackpink’s discography is, almost without exception, uppers only – bombastic, confident and uniformly energizing, an adrenaline shot which lifted the crowd to anywhere from bopping along to jumping up and down.
