Blackpink: Scary billing proves South Koreans have discovered the key to pop phenomena

Blackpink: Scary billing proves South Koreans have discovered the key to pop phenomena


Raising the highest box office in history for a show, the quartet becomes an Asian strategy of cultural-historical revenge

Something very serious is happening on the little more than 100,000 square kilometres South Korea. Entrepreneurs in the music business have discovered how to arm explosive devices with a much longer range than the occasional threats to their northern neighbors. The recipe seems easy, it just does it, given that the first laboratory experience gave the world the BTS group. But no one could have expected that the female version of the same torpedo would appear soon after – and that it could go even further.

the quartet blackpink he can no longer be ignored even by those who claim to hate his songs. Once again the numbers speak for themselves: the girls’ ongoing world tour, Around the world born pinkalbum release platform born pink, since 2022, has made them unique twice in a row. A show they played in Mexico in April became the highest-grossing act a performer has ever earned from a single performance. US$9.989 million. That is, just over R $ 50 million in one night. Neither U2, nor the Rolling Stones nor Elton John’s Last Tour of the Life (the highest-grossing tour in history to date) achieved similar numbers overnight. Up to here, Around the world born pink it has already raised over 163 million US dollars, almost 32 billion reais.

The story of the training process to integrate these well-targeted attacks by the South Koreans of the company YG Entertainment is already known. They have created an extremely functional and strategic roadmap to achieve their results, achieving a huge success rate. From carrying out surgical tests to identify the pre-adolescents who would be part of the group, to the strict clauses of the contract, providing that, once hired, they do not take a step without the authorization of their superiors, their projects boost laboratory production from a thousand hits held in other aggressive markets such as Brazil and North America.

Some differences that make South Koreans more successful than their extracontinental competitors, despite the lack of historical know-how to launch artists around the world, are the ability to get them absorbed by teenagers who speak any language; the ability to make them sound planetary while coming out of a territory stigmatized by the oriental secularism of their sonorities; the appropriation of the language of the North American pop universe; and, subject to sociological analyzes that are yet to come, the inclusion of the Asian figure among the idols of the planet.

And comes the factor that many observers of what is happening with the blackpink I prefer to ignore: the music. They need to be heard, not with a quick hearing like the one that did the Elle magazine classify venous rose as “catchy yet puzzling music, a disorienting mix of raps, floating vocals and an anti-drop chorus”.

born pink, the record sounds like an evolution of the only previous studio work. pink poison, the “pink poison”, is a heavy rap, well produced and recorded with strong bass. The voices of Jisoo, Jennie, Rosé and Lisa alternate in other songs of undeniable power: Stop, Girl typethe rock Yes Yes Yesthe rock ballad hard to lovethe lover of ballads The happiest girlalmost grunge indie rock feedback and the ultra track ready for love. Some of them with a sort of 2% ‘Korean share’ – something that reminds them of their origins, if only in the timbre of the voices.

the arrangement of pink poison it features Korean instruments, such as the geomungo, a kind of Asian zither that originated in the 5th century, a curious detail, but which disappears in the final result. Hard to Love, on the other hand, is 90s dance pop, without any regionalism or gentile representation. The drip, a variation of rap’s “drip” speech, Stop there’s a violin repeating a riff, which isn’t just a riff. Those six notes, thus arranged, belong to the third movement of Paganini’s Second Violin Concerto.

The accuracy of the South Koreans is the envy of the historically developed experiences of the West. Creating performers in meeting rooms is a practice that no one has ever taken up with the same shamelessness. European and North American producers have been doing it since the 1970s, presenting bands and singers culminating in the case of Milli Vanilli, a German duo born in 1988, the year the narrative went too far. The voice put on the hits that won the duo a Grammy for Best New Artist in 1990 was not their own, but a studio singer.

The funk and country duos represent Brazil in the field of this ‘popology’, a sort of pop science which consists in creating mass artists following scientifically proven criteria. The big agencies hire names with the potential to make it big, offer the signing of a contract to ensure that there is no cheating and invest heavily in building an idol. Buying space at radio stations and bargaining for seats at festivals is an old practice, but what’s new is the heavy investment in prominent chart spots on streaming platforms. In general, whoever has the most bullets in the needle wins.

The story of the South Korean phenomenon should be told in detail as breathtaking as it is grim, but not now. For now, the industry is celebrating. He has held the key to creating astronomical hits that reach the hearts of his fans.

Source: Terra

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