BY RAISA BRUNER
THE WAREHOUSE IN LOS ANGELES IS COLD AND DRAFTY, transformed this November day into a photo-shoot dreamland for Jennie, Jisoo, Lisa, and Rosé, the four members of Blackpink. Cement floors sprout into a fairy-tale garden, and a glossy vintage station wagon is parked next to a man-made hill. For nearly 12 hours, the performers—some of the most popular women in the world—gamely hit their poses. In the evening, huddled up with fuzzy blankets over bare legs in front of a makeshift plywood backdrop, they seem less like superstars than best friends unwinding. “We put in a lot of work so we could look like superwomen,” says Jennie. “We’re very normal girls, at the end of the day.”
Normal as they may be, their 2022 has been anything but. They appeared at the VMAs in August, performing their hit single “Pink Venom,” and onstage during their latest blockbuster world tour, which kicked off in October and will hit 27 cities over nine months. Shows sold out in minutes and were attended by tens of thousands of fans, including celebrities like Selena Gomez and Usher. The foursome released its highly anticipated second studio album, Born Pink, in September, which notched a record as the best-selling album by a Korean girl group, with over 2 million album sales. It continues to dominate on YouTube, where Blackpink is the biggest musical act with over 83 million subscribers.
You don’t accomplish all that by being like other pop groups. Most have a limited life span: they age out, flame out, or see one member rise above. But Blackpink has managed to become the biggest girl group in the world precisely by allowing its members to be solo stars in their own right. The group may be bigger than the sum of its parts, but each of its parts is bigger than most other pop groups’ combined efforts. As the culture becomes more stratified—only a handful of musicians stand out, from Taylor Swift to Drake to, yes, BTS—Blackpink has managed to succeed by demanding our attention everywhere we have attention to give: not just in our headphones, but also in fashion and onscreen. Still, in a pop landscape that’s not built for longevity, how do you maintain your spot at the top?
THE MEMBERS OF BLACKPINK were recruited through an audition process by YG, one of the traditional “Big Three” K-pop labels in South Korea. During their five-plus years of training at the dormlike YG facilities in Seoul, the young women learned to dance, sing, and perform together, watching as oth
