You might not know their name, but you’ve definitely heard a BLACKPINK song before. They’re one of the world’s most successful girl groups, with cultural impact far beyond their home base in South Korea. For such a young group with a relatively small back catalogue, it’s extremely impressive that they’ve drawn the fanbase to perform three world tours. BLACKPINK’s commercial success, however, is at odds with the group’s critical success, especially from Western reviewers. Groups like BLACKPINK are designed by the K-pop trainee system to break into Western markets via songs written in English and marketing pushes into the American entertainment complex. Yet these songs, seemingly designed with an American audience in mind, often fail to capture the Zeitgeist beyond the group’s fanbase.
In recent years, BLACKPINK’s four members branched out into solo projects, three of which were engineered for success on the American charts. From festival and award show performances, the girls threw everything they had at the proverbial wall. There were little moments, such as “like JENNIE” becoming a dance trend and “APT.” receiving Grammy nominations. Little else stuck, not because the group isn’t talented, but because the South Korean entertainment system’s ideals for a good album, good song, and good performer differ significantly from American cultural values regarding entertainment and creativity.
While all major label releases are “boardroom” approved to some degree, the entire Korean popular music system is manufactured from the talent spotting and artist development phase up by the entertainment labels. By the time a South Korean group debuts their first single, each member has spent up to a decade training to sing, dance, act, look good on screen, and more. The paracosialism of Taylor Swift’s fanbase is on steroids with a group like BLACKPINK. K-pop fans are encouraged from the moment a group enters the scene to latch onto their career, which is why many K-pop stars’ dating lives are strictly regulated in order to appear permanently available for their fans. They’re even assigned personalities to play in public. The actual music is only important insofar as it is a vehicle for everything else. It’s the hook, the splashy attention grabber followed by an overwhelmingly CGI’d music video and frenetically choreographed performances.
To an American audience, this approach to music reeks of artifice. In the 90s or early 00s, before a social media-sized hole was blown in American labels’ artist development pipelines, the K-pop approach to artistry worked extremely well. The Korean Wave began in the 90sfor this reason. Today, however, in the era of authenticity and singer-songwriters, artists like BLACKPINK will struggle to truly break into the American music scene if they don’t rethink their approach to music and performance.
BLACKPINK’s rapper and dancer LISA got me thinking about this phenomenon again with her recent EP, “PRESS PLAY.” The jury’s still out on how successful it will be, but her debut album as a soloist, “Alter Ego,” completely bombed. LISA’s a perfect example of why the K-pop trainee system fails to produce compelling artists outside of their cultural context. LISA is Thai, a fact you would never know from the African American English (AAE) she uses almost exclusively in her songs. Without even getting into the issue of cultural appropriation, which is less heinous than many would claim but still an important factor to dissect, the songs are quite bad. The lyrics are utterly devoid of creativity, with almost every LISA song being a brag about how famous, attractive, and wealthy she is.
Ironically, this attitude might truly be authentic to who LISA is. Yet Americans—most people, really—don’t want to listen to a Thai performer poorly imitating Black American rappers when they could just as easily appreciate the skill and creativity of homegrown talents. LISA appears as convinced of her message’s quality as she is unaware of how generic she sounds. Her flows are uninspired, her lyrics are shallow, and her live singing is only enjoyable with heavy tuning and a backtrack to drown her out. Suffice it to say, someone who has trained as long as she has should be a better artist. “SaWaDiKa,” a song I genuinely enjoy, is probably her best attempt at bragadocious rap because there’s just the faintest smattering of references to her personal perspective and culture. To an American audience, marketing for LISA as an artist feels like being convinced to buy an expensive specialty ingredient only to discover what you normally get tastes much better.
Unlike in South Korea, we place great weight on the song and how it shares the artist as a person. This approach has its own toxicity, but it’s a cultural value nevertheless. LISA’s one claim to true artistry is dance, an art undervalued by American entertainment. We view dance as an accent to the music, never the main event. Some pop stars, such as Tate McRae—who has also been criticized for releasing generic music—are leaning into dance and fashion as core components of their artistry. LISA would do well to position herself as the excellent dancer she is and gather a stronger team of co-writers to keep clunkers like “Cobra” and “Lifestyle” from staining her name.
LISA’s failure to create artistically interesting music isn’t wholly her fault. She’s trained most of her life to be a mouthpiece for someone else’s vision, leaving little room for her own creativity to develop. Ultimately, the mediocrity of LISA’s music comes down to vision rather than resources or talent. Talent can be cultivated, after all. With the world seemingly handed to her on a platter, a performer like LISA might need more failure to seriously pursue the skill she would need for success in America. As for creative vision? That might be something even Thailand’s biggest export can’t find.
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