“Kill This Love” would go UK top 40 and US top 50, making Blackpink and BTS the only South Korean pop groups to have impacted these hard-to-reach singles charts. Given their proven selling power - magazines have reported needing to print quadruple copies to supply demand, their tours sell out in seconds - the relationship between the band and fashion’s leading houses will long continue to flourish. In February 2020, Lisa - currently muse for Hedi Slimane’s Celine - took a trip to Milan for Prada’s autumn/winter 2020 show.
Meanwhile, Jennie found herself next to Cardi B at Chanel, for whom she is also a brand ambassador. In September 2019, Jisoo popped to London for Burberry, while Rosé wowed at Saint Laurent (and was also asked by Anthony Vaccarello to be brand ambassador). Their innate understanding of style has made them hot property, with the girls now FROW fixtures at Fashion Week.
Like many successful musicians, Blackpink understands the power in marrying the worlds of music and fashion. It’s turned every comeback into a global event and has funnelled the fandom’s streaming power into the kind of headline-making, spreadsheet-melting numbers that have seduced many a label executive. It’s not a failsafe plan - it draws constant fan criticism, petitions and boycott threats - but the old-school approach, in an era of oversaturation and instant gratification, has created heightened desire and demand. Groups now average two or three releases (known as ‘comebacks’) a year in a bid to grow and maintain fandoms, but YG Entertainment - one of South Korea’s oldest K-pop agencies - remained unapologetically committed to less is more. One release per year was once standard in K-pop, when there were fewer groups fighting for a share of a small domestic market. These milestones came via a fandom that had grown rapidly since late 2016, but who had to wait eight months for 2017’s single “As If It’s Your Last”, then an entire year for its follow-up “Square Up”. The four-track EP, Square Up, would go platinum in South Korea, “DDDD” would reach gold in the US, becoming their first billion-view video, and “ Kill This Love” would make them the first-ever Korean girl group to enter the UK singles chart. Success lay in the catchy titular refrain, the memorable finger-gun dance and a gloriously excessive video, but also in Blackpink themselves as aspirational but emulatable, aesthetically fierce but not intimidating, killer on stage but adorable off it. Nineteen-year-old Ally (not her real name), a Singaporean who runs a sizeable fan account on Twitter calls “DDDD” “their total breakthrough”. Their debut, Square One, was an overnight smash, the insistent build of “ Whistle” and cocky chorus on “ Boombayah” making for a short but thrilling introduction. There were big shoes to fill the beloved, trailblazing four-member girl group 2NE1 were over and Blackpink were expected to revive the bold EDM pop sound they’d embodied. How on earth did they do it? New-gen girl bandĪs the first girl group in seven years out of YG Entertainment (home to K-pop legends Bagbang, 2NE1 and formerly, Psy), excitement prior to Blackpink’s August 2016 debut had built to fever pitch. And all this with just a handful of songs in their repertoire. They’ve been front-row fixtures at runway shows and the faces of mega brands including Chanel, Puma, Louis Vuitton and Dior. That same year they also undertook the most financially successful concert tour by a Korean female group. Read more: 7 K-Pop Stars Shaping Fashion In 2020 In 2019, they broke three Guinness World Records with the single “ Kill This Love”, which has had more than 312 million plays on Spotify and over 824 million YouTube views - a mere fraction of the quartet’s billions of streams, downloads, views and followers. They were the first K-pop girl group to play at Coachella and to reach 1 billion YouTube views - now they’re the most-subscribed-to music group on the platform - as well as being the first girl group from any country to feature on Forbes Asia’s 30 Under 30 list. It’s taken just four years for Blackpink to become one of the biggest girl bands in the world, with members Jennie, Jisoo, Rosé and Lisa continuing to smash new records and forge new ground.
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