In 2023, the four women of Blackpink – Jennie, Jisoo, Lisa and Rosé – stood on top of the world. In the seven years since their 2016 debut, the K-pop quartet became the biggest girl group of all time, off the back of delirious hooks, hard-ass stunting, cut-glass choreography and relentless work. With billions of streams, sold-out stadiums and YouTube viewership records in their wake, the group became the female face of the boundary-annihilating force that is K-pop, taking pandemonium and hype as its calling card; with the exception of their slender physiques, everything about the band was huge. Their 2023 headliner set at Coachella – the first Asian and all-female group to headline one of North America’s largest music festivals – served as a jet-fueled exclamation point on global domination. I stood in the crowd that night feeling like I’d been leveled by a sonic boom, in the best way.
Much has changed in the two short years since then. The band went on unofficial hiatus for each member’s respective solo careers, and the four subsequent releases – Jennie’s Ruby, Jisoo’s Amortage, Lisa’s Alter Ego and Rosé’s Rosie – all attempted to escape the Blackpink shadow with halting success; the group’s two rappers, Lisa and Jennie, also launched English-language acting careers on HBO, in The White Lotus and The Idol, and returned to Coachella as solo acts with plenty of bombast but less horsepower. The once ascendant wave of K-pop, buoyed up by the massive crossover success of Blackpink and all-male peers BTS, stalled out abroad and lost traction at home, global ambition and misfiring albums costing musical identity and momentum.
