KILL THIS LOVE

The record

KILL THIS LOVE is BLACKPINK’s second mini album, released on 5 April 2019 with five tracks. The title track is ‘Kill This Love’ and the closing track is a remix of ‘DDU-DU DDU-DU’. YG Entertainment’s album introduction presents the record by way of what the group had done since the debut single SQUARE ONE in 2016.

Reviews

Kwibi of Idology (아이돌로지) went through the record track by track on 21 April. ‘Kill This Love’, he wrote, pours out beats clearer and heavier than any before it without pause; ‘Don’t Know What To Do’ joins a brisk pop to a thrilling EDM-style drop; ‘Kick It’, which he called the outright highlight, moves adroitly between the guitar backing and an 808 bass and lands a counterpunch; and ‘Hope Not’ avoids convention on a stable money-chord frame through well-judged chord changes and part switches. Of the title track he wrote that, as the point choreography changing from twin pistols to a bazooka shows, it is an expanded version of ‘DDU-DU DDU-DU’ — sharing the same structure while thickening the beat and bass and placing the drops between parts more boldly, so raising the firepower.

Cho Eun-jae, writing for the same outlet in its new-releases column on 5 June, took up the narrative of the music video. The four protagonists of ‘Kill This Love’, he wrote, attempt a story for the first time at YG, and the self despairing at its past set against the other self trying to kill a self eaten up by that past makes, in itself, a narrative beyond a fragmentary image.

NME’s Rhian Daly reviewed the record on the day it came out. Of the title track she wrote that “it has moments of great creativity – see the way Jennie makes her voice rise at the end of the last four lines of the first verse as if she’s stroking her own internal pitch shift wheel, or how the song’s insistent marching band brass transforms into elephant squeals as the song reaches its climax, as if a whole circus is erupting around the band.”

Stereogum’s Chris DeVille wrote in his column of 11 April that the title track “begins with thundering bass, a clattering behemoth of a beat, and digital brass blaring a jagged melody with the jarring force of an airhorn”, and that “by the end of the first bridge we’ve heard a swaggering serrated melody worthy of early Kesha, a snarlingly confident rap verse, and a more conventionally pretty hook awash in high drama”.

The Singles Jukebox ran a multi-critic panel on the title track the same day. Alex Clifton wrote that “the beginning is electric”, and Iain Mew that “it’s anchored by the brutal synth blare, pushing at the limits of what a sound in a pop song which approximates to a real instrument can be”, adding: “In context of how hard that goes, the abandon with which the chorus hits the self-destruct button is just right.”

Among the tracks

‘Kick It’ and ‘Don’t Know What To Do’ were singled out on more than one page. NME’s Daly called them “easily the gleaming jewels in ‘Kill This Love’’s crown, each highlighting different sides of BLACKPINK”, and wrote that ‘Kick It’ “throbs through deep bass, a collage of twinkling, melodic notes, and acoustic guitar lilts”. Idology’s Kwibi named the same song the record’s highlight.

Numbers

Stereogum set out the record’s placings in its column six days after release. By that account the title track’s music video took 56.7 million views in its first 24 hours, past the 55.4 million set by Ariana Grande’s ‘thank u, next’ video in November 2018, and became the fastest clip to reach 100 million views in under two days. The same column reported that ‘Kill This Love’ reached number one on iTunes, the first song by an all-female group to do so since Destiny’s Child’s ‘Lose My Breath’ in 2004.

Idology placed the title track ninth in ‘Best songs of 2019’, published on 11 February 2020. Cho Eun-jae, who wrote the entry, asked who but BLACKPINK could sing a marching song like this one, and said the heavily falling beat and solemn attitude are dyed ‘black’ while the ringing vocals and the elaborate group dance are dyed ‘pink’.