ALBUM REVIEW: BLACKPINK – THE ALBUM
Leave a Comment / Kpop/ Album Review/ By Maham
Album Name: The Album | Release Date: Oct 2, 2020 | Length: 24 min 28 sec
Blackpink released their English debut album in 2020, simply titled “The Album” made up of 8 electro-pop, dance-pop and trap style songs with which they try to give the international market the definitive accolade, something that can be sensed by the two guest artists that appear: Selena Gomez (the most followed on Instagram) and fashion rapper Cardi B.
TRACK LIST
- How You Like That
- Ice Cream (with Selena Gomez)
- Pretty Savage
- Bet You Wanna (featuring Cardi B)
- Lovesick Girls
- Crazy Over You
- Love to Hate Me
- You Never Know
The album’s lead single How You Like That is a funky electro-pop track with a Trap and Hip-Hop influence sung in Korean and English with lyrics about not being intimidated in bad times and not losing the confidence to get up again. Thanks to the massive support that Blackpink has, the video clip of the song has exceeded 500 million views on YouTube and on a commercial level it has been his first top 20 in the United Kingdom and top 40 in the United States apart from the song with Lady Gaga.
As their second single, they released Ice Cream, their long-awaited collaboration with Selena Gomez, which was an insipid bubblegum-pop and electro-pop song. Ice Cream’s credits include Ariana Grande, her collaborator Victoria Monét and producer Tommy Brown, which indicates that it could be a discard from Ariana’s last album. The presence of Selena Gomez, has catapulted the single to #13 on the American chart, Blackpink’s best position to date.
Coinciding with the publication of the album, Lovesick Girls has been released as the third single, an energetic dance-pop and electro-pop song that stands out for the fact that two of the members of the group, Jisso and Jennie, participate in the composition of the song, in addition to David Guetta.
Within the album, of such brevity that it seems like an EP, stand out ‘Pretty Savage’, a noisy electro-pop and Trap song that could belong to Jason Derulo, ‘Crazy Over You’, a Trap song influenced by Balkan music in which the girls sing and rap, or ‘Bet You Wanna’, in which Cardi B participates and will surely be released as a future single to take advantage of the presence of the famous rapper.
ENDING NOTES
In summary, Blackpink offers what the teenage K-Pop fan demands: danceable, immediate and direct songs accompanied by colorful videos full of choreography, but that are nonetheless bland, generic and lacking in personality. Thanks to the extensive ‘fanbase’ that Blackpink has around the world, ‘The Album’ has occupied #2 in international markets however as a studio album it leaves a lot to be desired due to its lack of songs and the little involvement in the creative process of the components, who are still puppets in the hands of their record company.