Review Summary: That pink venom could use a stronger flavour.
BLACKPINK’s newest may be new but it feels ancient. They claim, “we got bodies on bodies like this a slow dance” while worshipping top 2000s pop hits. Their course is set for inspiration but you’re fooling yourself if you believe this is innovation. Pink Venom opens the album, a pop/hip-hop song with an Indian music theme; I was immediately reminded of 2NE1’s song I Am The Best and for good reason because the “rrrrrrratatata” is stolen from that song. Needless to say, plagiarism isn’t a great way to start an album, even if it is one of the catchier/edgier songs included.
When I referenced 2000s pop I was thinking of BLACKPINK’s tendency to sing catchy verses and then have a “chorus” of a simple dance beat with no vocals, but a saxophone or some 2000s synths instead; you can hear this motif in the songs Yeah Yeah Yeah, Hard to Love, and Ready For Love. The potential for greatness was here and replacing it with lazy songs greatly reduces the album’s overall effectiveness. One of the most fetching slices here is Shut Down which introduces a classical violin to a hip-hop track. There’s no need for extra track breakdowns anymore because the album is simply generic pop. I was often reminded of Kesha, Katy Perry, f(x) and Girls’ Generation when listening to this and the lyrics are equally generic. Lyrics explore themes like what great girls they are/they are better, they are BLACKPINK, and they do what they like and even dare to say the F word - I’m sure some Evangelical Christians were out cold with those lines.
If you swear by K-pop and put up posters on your wall there’s nothing offensively bad here. The girls sound fantastic and even a little sassy, typical for a pop album but still. Production puts this album over the top with bass I could hear even through cheap headphones. That’s all I can say really, the tracks sound great and may decently entertain until you have longing pains for better pop albums. This isn’t quite the musical revolution to match their attitude, but at least it’s fairly catchy.
