Listening To: APT by Rosé and Bruno Mars

But I have not been listening to the group she came from

Lately I’ve been listening to APT by Rosé and Bruno Mars.

I can’t stand Blackpink. The four-member K-pop girl group is the only musical act this side of the mainstream that I truly dislike. They have an uncanny ability to produce music that gives me a headache, and I’m not normally prone to musical headaches. I’ll admit that I don’t know many of their songs, really just their hits (Shut Down, Pink Venom, How You Like That, DDU-DU DDU-DU), but these have not inspired me to dig farther into their discography.

My qualm with Blackpink is partly just aesthetic. I have a hard time describing their aesthetic, but to try, I’d say it’s epiccore empowerment anthems sung by Regina George wannabes. It doesn’t work for me. But more than that, I just don’t like their music. They borrow lots of hip-hop sounds, particularly samples, trap beats, and onomatopoeia (the ra-ta-tas and du-du-dus). They even rap. There’s nothing wrong with this – these are probably the most common sounds in the world at this point, and the production is always masterfully done, punchy and ear-catching. But this sound palette (particularly onomatopoeia that’s meant to mimic gun shots), is drawn from a genre that has a substantive history of violence. In contrast, Blackpink’s lyrical content (at least in English - the group is bilingual) consists only of taunts with vague allusions of violence, and is oftentimes downright nonsensical. I don’t speak Korean, so I could absolutely be missing something, but even the translated Korean lyrics don’t leave me optimistic. So the vapid lyrics, combined with their intentionally abrasive and “savage” public personae (and abrasive production that’s meant to compliment their abrasive personae), make it seem like Blackpink wants the allure of gangster rappers, but can’t distinguish the real violence of a gangster from the cartoon violence of a superhero movie. They claim to be savage but what is actually savage about them? The disconnect makes their whole schtick come across phony. And in that way, even their masterful production works against them. Their production is abrasive, yes, but just like their lyrics and aesthetic, it’s too clean, too crisp, all style, and no substance, with only vague references to anything truly risqué.

Blackpink

It might sound like I’m taking pleasure in bringing them down. And yeah, it is actually more cathartic than I’d like to admit. But I’m also frustrated by my inability to enjoy Blackpink. It’s more fun to enjoy things than to not enjoy things. and Blackpink are so beloved by their millions of fans (they’re handily the biggest girl group in the world) that there has to be more to enjoy than what I’ve picked up on. Besides, there’s plenty of abrasive music that I love, and plenty of corporatized and nonsensical music too, for that matter. Contradictions, like black and pink, or savage and sweet, are an integral part of their branding. That’s why their fans (the Blinks) love them. And I’ll admit there is a lot to like about their music. Like I mentioned, the production is technically great even if it’s used for evil, and the song Shut Down in particular would be a certified bop if it weren’t for the tacky “whip it” line in the chorus. But ultimately I just haven’t found a window into fully getting the appeal myself.

At least, not until now.

In the last couple months, three of the four members of Blackpink have released solo music, and without realizing it, I’ve become a fan of all of them. It started when Jennie released her song, Mantra, back in October. I listened to it out of curiosity when it came out and loved it immediately. The titular line sums up the song as succinctly as I ever could: “this that pretty girl mantra” (a nice contrast to Megan Thee Stallion, who’s taken over the hot girl market). It’s everything I want a pop rap song to be: witty, catchy, and pleasant to the ear. It’s also just silly, with Jennie rapping about cold plunges and stating that “Pretty girls don’t do drama, unless we wanna. It’ll be depending on the day”. I know that it’s not meant to be taken too seriously because Jennie says so herself that “it’s not that deep”. Mantra is bubblegum pop rap, and like the best bubblegum, it’s not trying to be anything else. And the instrumental matches the fun perfectly. Crisp as ever but in a way that fits the song, and not so flashy so as to overshadow Jennie’s lyrics. And what can I say, I’m a sucker for a song with a good bass line and horn riff.

Then I noticed Moonlit Floor (Kiss Me) by Lisa climbing the global Spotify charts. Lisa’s the only member whose solo work I’d heard before, but up until now it hadn’t clicked for me. But Moonlit Floor is something special. Of course, that’s largely due to its interpolation of Sixpence None The Richer’s Kiss Me, but Lisa injects it with a shot of Espresso (the Sabrina Carpenter kind) to keep it trendy and suited for today’s pop landscape. This sort of dreamy nu-disco love song has become a genre in and of itself in the last couple years, but I still eat it up every time, and Lisa keeps it from feeling stale. That’s thanks to how smoothly her voice glides through the song, particularly on the ooh-la-la-las, and the little details Lisa gives about her French boy that paint a clear picture of who this boy is. It’s all so captivating.

But none have taken me (or the world) by storm as much as APT by Rosé and Bruno Mars. APT is perhaps the most basic and generic pop song of the year, complete with one of the most common melodies in pop music (personally, I think it sounds like Don’t Phunk With My Heart by the Black Eyed Peas), and a beat that sounds like it was lifted straight from Mickey by Toni Basil (a song which has also been trending again lately). And I love it so much. It’s fun, it has a nice pop rock touch to give it a boost of energy, and Rosé and Bruno have way more vocal chemistry than I’d have expected. I also like that there’s a big pop song about staying in and hanging out at someones apartment, and that it taught me a Korean word and drinking game. It’s formulaic, but it’s a winning formula. And the public seems to agree, as this has become one of the biggest songs of the Blackpink extended universe, at least in the US, having topped the US Spotify chart for a week and debuting in the top 10 on the Billboard Hot 100.

(Also, to continue my chart tangent, you might notice that Moonlit Floor is underperforming in Korea compared to the global chart. That’s because the song is a bigger hit, relatively speaking, in Southeast Asia. It’s doing especially well in Thailand, where Lisa is from.)

So, what gives? If it’s not Jennie, not Lisa, and not Rosé, are my problems with Blackpink solely the fault of the odd member out, Jisoo? Well, no. She’s released solo work, just not as recently, and it’s perfectly fine as well. Maybe they’re all good individually and it’s just together that they’re a match made in hell (for Jackson’s ears). This is the point in the post where I should return to Blackpink. Maybe I could relisten with a new understanding of its members to better appreciate the group. Or I could give their back catalog a try and learn that while I might not be fond of their hits, they have other songs that I’m more fond of. I’d like to write something like that, but I’m not going to. If anything, putting words to why I dislike Blackpink’s music has solidified my opinion, and seeing how great their solo work has been just makes me upset that the group is so much less than the sum of its parts. I’m glad Blackpink works for some people. Just not for me.

But then, just yesterday, I stumbled across a YouTube video by whenfinish titled The PROBLEM with Le Sserafim and kpop vocals: a video essay. Le Sserafim is another K-pop girl group, one that I don’t know much about but are popular enough that I recognize their name as one of the ‘big ones’ in K-pop. They also, apparently, are quite bad at singing live. The video made me realize that the K-pop world functions much differently than the music industry here, not just in terms of its record labels, but also the way K-pop listeners engage with music in the first place. She mentions that Le Sserafim is a “performance based group”, which sounds ridiculous to some commenters. “What even is a performance based group?” one of them asks, “Dancers pretending to sing?”. From what I gathered in the replies, it’s essentially when idols have a greater focus on choreography and energy than pure vocal skill - orchestrating concerts that are perhaps like music videos that happen to be live. And fans attend shows mainly to see dancing and theatrics and the idols themselves. While this isn’t the way I personally engage with music, I think it’s fine and valid. But I also agree with whenfinish’s thesis that even for a performance based group, we as an audience should demand at least competency in live vocals (or they should at least have the decency to lip sync for us).

So I got curious and started watching some videos from the other K-pop groups that I know to get a sense of where my faves stacked up. I watched NewJeans, and they seemed thoroughly decent. I also watched Illit and they made Le Sserafim sound like Mariah Carey. But then I watched Blackpink perform Shut Down as the opener to their Born Pink World Tour, and I was blown away. For whatever my issue is with their songs, these girls can sing. And I realized that I do, actually, love Shut Down. The sample is phenomenal and their performance made me interpret that ‘whip it’ line as nothing more than a throwaway. I don’t think a throwaway line works in the middle of the chorus, but I can make peace with it as a slight blemish on what is otherwise a banger. Maybe I will get into Blackpink one day. For now, I can at least respect that while I don’t entirely understand it, they are all (individually and as a group) damn good at what they do.