Blackpink review — all-conquering K-pop girl group captivate London’s O2 Arena

The FT and the world’s biggest girl group are an obvious match. But the last time the Pink ’un reviewed Blackpink, the result wasn’t so peachy. The show, at Wembley Arena in 2019, was stilted. A two-star write-up caused a sufficient schism for one of the South Korean act’s hardcore fans, who are called Blinks, to track your correspondent down on Twitter to tell me I was a “dirty pig”. 

It was a sad parting of ways, but the four women of Blackpink have managed to shrug it off. They were back in London this week to play two nights in a bigger venue, the O2 Arena, initial port of call for the European leg of their world tour. Thousands of Blinks waved pink heart-shaped light sticks. Meanwhile, the FT’s porcine critic slipped incognito into row K, block 110, notebook and poisonous pen at hand.

Since their last visit, the K-pop titans have cemented their position as the nonpareil girl group of their time, notching up billions of streams and multiple Guinness World Records in pedantic categories like “most viewed video on YouTube in 24 hours”. The song that got all those views, “How You Like That”, was the show’s opening number.

The foursome held a pose on a raised platform at the back of the stage, a crop-topped, miniskirted tableau of tilted shoulders, hands on hips and steady stares. Then — action! — they sashayed forwards amid screams and a fanfare of beats. The heart-shaped light sticks were joined by countless phone screens, lofted in order to record the presence of Jennie, Jisoo, Lisa and Rosé.

An elite product of K-pop’s Motown-like factory-line, Blackpink observe a division of labour: Jisoo and Rosé sing; Jennie and Lisa rap. The lyrics are polyglot, while the music is derived from globally sourced components. There are hip-hop chants, big booming basslines, EDM peaks, Bollywood-style melodies, Paganini samples (yes, really: “Shut Down”) and, topping it all, the pure-pop sugar-rush of precisely engineered, addictive hooks.

Unlike Britney Spears, a tutelary inspiration, they don’t just lip-sync to backing tracks. Some miming took place at the O2 Arena, but there was also actual singing. The music was a similar mix of live and pre-recorded, with a band bringing a real-time energy to the songs. Fourteen dancers added extra spectacle to the quartet’s formation dancing. The choreography was a slick take on street dance. The members of Blackpink were in constant motion, shifting patterns according to whoever was taking the lead vocal at any moment.

Made with production company Ceremony London, which worked on Dua Lipa’s latest tour, the staging was much more cohesive than before. Sparkling hits such as “Pink Venom” glittered and banged like the fireworks that periodically erupted from the stage. Ballads such as “Tally” were muscular. Solitary spots for each Blackpink vocalist — Jisoo doing a Camila Cabello cover, the rest performing spin-off solo material — were well integrated into the rest of the set. Stage talk was fluently conducted in English, on the cusp of rehearsed and natural.

The singing was on the thin side, although the songs didn’t need extravagant vocal embellishment: they are designed for maximum catchiness, a quicksilver quality that can’t reveal the effort that goes into creating it. This moreishly entertaining gig had it in spades. It also had a human element, evident when Rosé’s microphone broke during the final song, “As If It’s Your Last”. The show had to go on, and so it did with much merry corpsing from the foursome, more relaxed in manner than their stage-managed K-pop background might suggest. Jisoo gave a cheerful thumbs up at the end. On this occasion, the Pink ’un can reciprocate.

★★★★☆

blackpinkmusic.com