SQUARE ONE

The record

SQUARE ONE is BLACKPINK’s debut single, released on 8 August 2016 with two songs, ‘휘파람 (WHISTLE)’ and ‘붐바야 (BOOMBAYAH)’. Both were issued as title tracks and both music videos went up the same day. YG Entertainment’s album introduction states that the producer Teddy worked on the record over two years.

Reviews

Idology (아이돌로지) covered the single in its new-releases column on 19 August, eleven days after it came out. Haemchwa said the minimal sound of ‘WHISTLE’ was far barer than expected, and that an opening built from a drum beat, bass and a whistled melody under a subdued rap starts the song simply but heavily, creating an odd tension that makes the listener hold their breath. Haemchwa called the release enough of a single to show that YG had thought hard and updated how it makes a girl group. Writing in the same column, Mimyo said ‘WHISTLE’ turns the ear toward the voices, displaying the four different ones the quartet has to offer inside three minutes and fifty seconds.

The Singles Jukebox ran a multi-critic panel on ‘WHISTLE’ on 29 August. Of its whistling, finger snapping and hooting, Alfred Soto wrote that “each vocalist redeems the mustiness of these activities”. Leonel Manzanares de la Rosa called the song “a great example of the sonic fluidity and genre-skepticism that made so many of us fall for K-Pop in the first place”, and Mo Kim wrote that “the final bridge and chorus, in which familiar elements meld together in unexpected ways, are sublime”. Jessica Doyle read the same passage this way: “So the parts might not be that fresh; but assembled so nicely, there’s a victory in it.” Jonathan Bogart, returning to it, wrote: “Listening again and again, the sonic detailling, and the way their voices coolly ride the always changing beat, are only more impressive.”

Among the tracks

‘WHISTLE’ is the half of the record the reviews settled on. What the writers above have in common is the spareness of the arrangement and the turn in the song’s closing section, and Idology’s Mimyo gave its running time — three minutes and fifty seconds — as the measure of how many voices it fits. No review of ‘BOOMBAYAH’ on its own has been traced: The Singles Jukebox took only ‘WHISTLE’ to its panel, and Idology’s column read the two songs together as one release.