SQUARE TWO

The record

SQUARE TWO is BLACKPINK’s second single, released on 1 November 2016. ‘불장난 (PLAYING WITH FIRE)’ and ‘STAY’ are its title tracks, and an acoustic version of the debut song ‘WHISTLE’ is carried alongside them. YG Entertainment’s album introduction presents it as new material three months after the debut.

Reviews

Idology (아이돌로지) took the single in its new-releases column on 22 November. Masitneun Pahita wrote that ‘PLAYING WITH FIRE’ is arranged past fault-finding, and that ‘STAY’, for all that its acoustic guitar and harmonica are conventional, makes a fine transition; a record this unhurriedly well made, the critic added, is one to welcome any time. Doldolmalling picked ‘PLAYING WITH FIRE’ as the song of that half-year, writing that the synth repeating like an incantation would not leave the head, and that keeping a song’s structure this simple while still dividing the parts evenly, with relatively few members to divide them among, is a strength of the group. Haemchwa turned to the words of ‘STAY’, writing that the line asking not to be asked why it has to be you is striking, and that shifting only slightly from the commonplace posture of nobody-else-will-do builds a character clear of cliché.

The Singles Jukebox ran a multi-critic panel on ‘PLAYING WITH FIRE’ on 30 November. Alfred Soto wrote that “the bass throb and ‘look at me now!’ hook evokes early-2000s J. Lo”. Leonel Manzanares de la Rosa wrote: “I’m marveled by the beat — it moves in several swing/shuffle groove variations without ever losing that mid-tempo riddim fluidity — and the way the low end is used to manage the space is exquisite.” Adaora Ede called it “a flashy take on chopped-n-screwed” that “meshes ravey-style maximalism with minuscule acoustic elements, dumps more moonbahton-ish sound over that, and washes out a pretty detuned piano interlude into synth breaks”.

Among the tracks

‘STAY’ got a review of its own eight years after release. IZM placed it in ‘K-pop tracks that moved us since 2010’ in October 2024, and Lim Dong-yeop, who wrote the entry, said that at the moment the music — running predictably along with a quiet guitar — steps a little out of position and turns the mood with a brisk rhythm, what is generally taken to be moving comes loose. On the edge where the song might have sunk into gloom, he wrote, a single light handclap sets off a nudge; the balance in which a sad melody and a cheerful beat sit together is the heart of it.

Numbers

Idology placed the single second in ‘Best new-act records of 2016’, published on 21 February 2017. That page reprinted Doldolmalling’s and Masitneun Pahita’s sentences from the column above as its reasons for the choice.