BTS isn’t the only K-pop group breaking records in the United States. While the phenom boy band was getting noticed for performing on “Saturday Night Live,” Blackpink — a four-member, all-female group also from Korea — was celebrating its career-best week of U.S. success.
Blackpink is conquering U.S. charts faster than any other female K-pop act ever has and could become one of the country’s biggest girl groups, period.
Its big week included a performance at the Coachella music festival that was simulcast on a billboard in New York’s Times Square. The first K-pop women to play the festival, the group got coveted second-line billing on a promotional poster that splashed the band’s name higher than those of Kacey Musgraves, Ella Mai and several others, all more familiar to many American listeners.
The band also made Billboard charts history by landing its new EP “Kill This Love” at No. 24 on the Billboard 200 chart with 19,000 album units.
And its single of the same name came in at No. 41 on the Hot 100 — the highest debut ever by a K-pop girl group.
Despite seeming to have burst into the consciousness of pop music mans in the blink of an eye, Blackpink has been around since 2016.
Its four members — who go by Lisa, Rose, Jennie Kim and Jisoo — are breathtaking performers. They execute intense choreography while rap-singing largely in Korean, though their songs sound made for U.S. radio regardless of the language barrier.
The Interscope label signed Blackpink in 2018, partnering with the South Korean music company YG Entertainment to manage the group and produce and release its music. Blackpink has netted a string of successes since signing with Interscope, including scoring a just kicked-off U.S. arena tour that will bring the band to the Allstate Arena in Rosemont on Wednesday.
Blackpink When: 8 p.m. Wednesday Tickets: $63.50-$253.50 (includes digital EP) Where: Allstate Arena, 6920 N. Mannheim Rd., Rosemont Info: rosemont.com
Rosé of the K-pop band Blackpink performs April 12 at the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival in Indio, California. | Rich Fury/Getty Images
Thanks to streaming successes and an established social media fan army, listeners around the world are paying attention.
The group’s “Kill This Love” video, released April 4, broke a YouTube record set by Ariana Grande’s “Thank U, Next” by racking up 56.7 million views in its first 24 hours. Like BTS’s own influential fan army, which floods social media with updates and praise for the boy band’s every move, Blackpink has powerful backing from its own international following of fans, who call themselves “Blinks.”
Blackpink also is similar to BTS in that it already has had huge musical achievements in the United States even before managing to land massive breakthrough singles.
If the past few years’ proliferation of Spanish-language singles on pop radio and the Hot 100 has shown anything, it’s that U.S. listeners are more open than ever to hits that take cues from different languages and cultures.
Read more at USA Today.
