From left to right: Rosé, Jisoo, Jennie, Lisa

About

Blackpink, usually stylized in all caps as BLACKPINK, is a four-member girl group and K-pop band formed in 2016. Comprising of members Kim "Jisoo" Ji-soo, Jennie Kim, under the mononym "Jennie", Park "Rosé" Chae-young, and Lalisa "Lisa" Manoban, the group has seen popularity despite releasing only a few singles since their debut, before seeing international success in 2018 with their Square Up mini-album, topping the Billboard World albums chart and its lead single "Ddu-du Ddu-du" charting on the Billboard Hot 100.

History

Career

The group was formed in 2016 by South Korean entertainment company YG Entertainment, considered to be one of the "big three" Korean entertainment companies alongside SM Entertainment and JYP Entertainment, with a line up and name reveal on June 29th, 2016.^[1] The first girl group under YG since the now broken-up 2NE1, they made their debut on August 8th, 2016 with their single Square One containing the songs "Boombayah" and "Whistle," the music videos for which have received over 344 million and 228 million views respectively. (music videos shown below)

They later released a follow up single, Square Two later in the year on November 1st, with the songs "Playing With Fire" (music video shown below, left), "Stay" and an acoustic version of Whistle. In 2017, the group released the single "As If It's Your Last" on June 22nd as a way to prepare for their upcoming release (shown below, right). The music video for "Playing With Fire" would receive over 233 million views whereas "As If It's Your Last" would garner over 340 million views. On August 30th, they released their self-titled Japanese EP consisting of Japanese language versions of all previously released material. with its re-release Re: Blackpink following on March 28th, 2018.

In 2018, the group released their first mini-album Square Up on June 15th, with the lead single "Ddu-Du Ddu-Du" released the same day, the music video for the song reaching 166 million views as of writing alongside 4.3 million likes and over 727,000 comments. The music video also garnered 36.2 million views in its first 24 hours, making their music video the largest 24 hour debut of 2018 at the time, behind Taylor Swift's "Look What You Made Me Do" and beating out PSY and BTS when it was released. The mini-album peaked at the top of Billboard World albums chart and "Ddu-Du Ddu-Du" would make its debut on the Billboard Hot 100 at number 55, their most successful song to date. Later that year they would also collaborate with English singer and pop artist Dua Lipa on the song "Kiss and Make Up" that would be featured on the deluxe edition of her self titled album, and peak at number 93 on the Billboard Hot 100.

Online Relevance

On Twitter,^[2] the official fan account for the band has received over 743,000 followers since its initial creation in June 2017. On Facebook,^[3] the band's page has received over 2 million likes. The band's official Youtube channel boasts over 9.3 million subscribers since its creation on June 16, 2016. On Instagram, 5 accounts for the main band itself and its members exist, with the main account accumulating over 10.7 million followers, Jisoo's gaining over 3.9 million, Jennie's netting 4.4 million, Rosé getting over 3.9 million, and Lisa garnering 4.4 million, for a net total of over 27.3 million followers across all associated accounts. On V LIVE, they have over 3.6 million followers as of writing. The group also has an official Instagram account for their reality show "Blackpink House" which has garnered over 853,000 followers since its initial creation. On November 5th 2018, member Lisa started a Youtube channel that has garnered over 497,000 subscribers as of writing.

Reputation

The group has been a commercial success since their debut, and their brand influence had quickly surpassed that of other notable K-Pop girl groups including Girls' Generation and Wonder Girls, the latter of which had the highest and only charting entry in the Billboard Hot 100 from a K-pop girl group prior to Blackpink. They've gained several high-profile endorsements from companies including Reebok, Dior, Puma, Louis Vuitton, and many others.

In 2019, it was revealed that Blackpink would perform at the Coachella music festival, the first K-pop girl group to do so, along with making their Western television debut on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert.

Fandom

Blink

Blackpink's fanbase is known as Blink, a combination of the first few letters of both black and pink. On Reddit, the fandom's subreddit, created by Redditor mostinterestingtroll, has gained over 9,800 subscribers.^[4] On Deviantart, search results for "blackpink" gives over 20,000 results. On Tumblr, the group made their debut on Tumblr's Fandometrics K-pop chart at number 10, and made it on their 2017 K-pop year in review end of year chart. They also debuted on the April 23rd edition of the Musical Acts chart at number 33 when K-pop was included in the list. Regarding fanfiction, on Archiveofourown, 477 works under the band exist and 24 works exist when searching "blackpink" on Fanfiction.net.

Fan Art

Search Interest

External References