How Blackpink Rose in the K-Pop Industry With Meteoric Success

By: Anna Mengani

This photo depicts the girl group’s cover photo for the A-List playlist on Apple Music. Credit: Blackpink’s Official Facebook Page

The K-pop group Blackpink has garnered a ton of attention in the past few years. The group debuted back in 2016 with YG Entertainment and Interscope Records. They were the first girl K-pop group to debut with YG in seven years! 

The group consists of Lisa, Jennie, Rosé, and Jisoo. The meaning behind the group’s name is that everyone associates pink with being pretty, but the group’s name aims to contradict that assumption. Blackpink means to state everything isn’t always pretty.

The group’s debut album “Square One” came out in August 2016. Their first number one song was “Boombayah.” With Blackpink’s early success as a group, they snagged the New Artist of the year at the 26th Seoul Music Awards and the 31st Golden Disc Awards. 

The music video for Boombayah reached 1 million views in less than 12 hours and soon reached 40 million. Blackpink made their debut in Japan in August 2017.

The group is the highest charting female group on Billboard Hot 100 and Billboard 200! The song “Sour Candy” peaked at #33, and “Kill This Love” peaked at #24. 

They hold a Guinness world record with their song “How You Like That” which was released in June 2020. In the first 24 hours, their music video became the most premiered in Youtube history! The group has over 44.4 million subscribers on Youtube.

Blackpink has a ton of appeal as a girl group. They are fashionable, have catchy songs with high energy, and are breaking down barriers as a group in the South Korean music industry. They do not try to come off as cute and bubbly; instead, their music is empowering and to the point.

In 2020 alone, Blackpink has collaborated with world-renowned artists such as Dua Lipa, Selena Gomez, Cardi B, Ariana Grande, and more. Having performed at Coachella in 2019, they are now international stars being featured on shows like Jimmy Kimmel Live. 

Blackpink recently came out with a documentary on Netflix called “Light Up The Sky.” The documentary is about the story behind the group and the trials behind their increasing global success.

 It gives a relatable and more down to earth approach to the girl group. Most of us only know Blackpink as this superstar, global, and multimillion-dollar group, but not as people.

We meet their producer, Teddy Park, in the documentary. They discuss working with Lady Gaga and showing genuine excitement for the collaboration. The producer talked about living up to Blackpink’s hype and continuing to exceed listeners’ expectations. 

Blackpink is unique because of their cultural backgrounds and who they are. Rosé was born and raised in Australia, Jisoo was born and raised in Korea, Lisa came to Korea from Thailand, and Jennie was born in Korea but moved to New Zealand. 

The producer criticizes the use of the word “K-pop” and why it’s used. There is no one sound to K-pop, it’s just Korean people making pop music. The documentary highlights a bunch of artists like PSY, Big Bang, 2NE1, etc. and how the K-pop industry works. The groups are known to train nearly non-stop for about a decade, but some never manage to hit the stage. 

Next, the documentary highlights the group’s fashion and how much time and effort goes into it. Their outfits are engineered to work on stage, but also vary per girl based on the look they want to go for individually. 

Then, the documentary gets into each of the girl’s backgrounds, and how they started in the music industry. It gives a very humble and relatable aspect to the girls. You get to see how they became the artists they are today.

In the media, many famous people are seen as above the average person, but even though the group is talented, they still stick to their roots and the people they were before fame and success. After watching this documentary, I have a newfound love and appreciation for Blackpink. They deserve all the success and hopefully they’ll continue to rise!