THE ALBUM

The record

THE ALBUM is BLACKPINK’s first album, released on 2 October 2020 with eight tracks. The title track is ‘Lovesick Girls’; the record opens on How You Like That and Ice Cream, both released as singles earlier that year, and Cardi B features on ‘Bet You Wanna’. YG Entertainment’s album introduction notes that the two pre-released songs are heard through their own single releases.

Reviews

IZM’s Jang Jun-hwan began with how the record was made. The central method, he wrote, is a process of breaking the past career finely apart, picking out the points of sound particular to the group and reassembling them; the eight tracks, each aimed somewhere different, spray out in all directions side by side and between them summarise everything the group has done and everything it is walking toward. He added that parts of the old sound, in which three or four effects used to bustle past one another, are deliberately brought up and out, while a method belonging to THE ALBUM alone fills the space and concentrates on casting a quiet newness.

The Guardian’s Alexis Petridis made it his album of the week on the day of release. He described the songs as unrelenting three-minute bombardments of hooks, in which barely a second passes without a melody hard to erase, a throwaway aside anyone else would build a whole chorus around, or an equally snappy production touch. He went on: “You’re struck by the sense that the quality control has been set very high, and that the writers and producers – old hands at K-pop and big western names including Ryan Tedder and the team behind much of Ariana Grande’s Sweetener alike – have felt impelled to bring their A-game.” Of its length he wrote: “There’s no time for longueurs, no padding, no ponderous ballads.”

Rolling Stone’s Tim Chan wrote the same day that “the eight-song set is a slick, confident and wildly entertaining release”. From the opening, he went on, “the album sprints across a brightly lit playground of sonic influences. The songs are unmistakably pop, while drawing liberally from EDM and hip-hop, with a sprinkling of South Asian beats and FM rock for good measure.” Mixing genres, he added, is a K-pop signature and something the group does extremely well.

Consequence’s Hannah Zwick gave the record a B- two days later and wrote that “the group deliver on everything fans love about them — like glossy production, addicting beats, distinctive vocals, and captivating performances — while managing to show off some new sides of BLACKPINK as well”. Of the opening track she wrote: “The elastic beat doesn’t stop once it starts, and every line is delivered meticulously.”

Among the tracks

‘Lovesick Girls’ is the song four of the pages settled on. IZM’s Jang wrote that the way it is built — joining the droplet synthesiser effect of the pre-chorus of ‘Don’t Know What To Do’ to a chorus recalling Icona Pop — is far more direct than the earlier work. The Guardian’s Petridis gave “the Popcorn-esque melody that ping-pongs behind Lovesick Girls’ chorus” as one of the album’s production touches. Billboard’s Jason Lipshutz, ranking the eight songs on the day of release, placed it second and wrote that “‘Lovesick Girls’ demonstrates Blackpink’s ambition, as they tackle well-worn subject matter with a fresh aesthetic”.

‘Crazy Over You’ and ‘You Never Know’ were named too. Of the first, Petridis wrote that “this production approach reaches a deranged height on Crazy Over You, its backing track constructed from a patchwork of eclectic sounds – bursts of Bollywood-ish strings, flute, rave-y synth stabs, a Brazilian cuica, what sounds like a Japanese gottan – interspersed with bursts of sub-bass”. Of the second, IZM’s Jang wrote that the proportions of ‘You Never Know’, which carries the emotional line of ‘Hope Not’ over in a piano melody and joins it plainly to a contemporary sound, are the model ones on the record.