BLACKPINK, YG’s monstrous rookie setting new records in shortest period of time from debut
[헤럴드경제=고승희 기자] It is an unprecedentedly successful debut. “Monstrous rookie” BLACKPINK has become one of the three top girl groups in Korea, upon their debut, along with TWICE and GFRIEND.
BLACKPINK is YG’s first new girl group in seven years since 2NE1. YG’s new girl group has been drawing keen attention since the company’s announcement in May that a new girl group would be launched soon. The rookie YG girl group that had yet to make debut drew keen interest from the public, for the number of the members and profile of each member.
YG Entertainment unveiled debut teaser images of each member starting from JENNIE every week from June 1. Teaser images of LISA were unveiled on June 8, JISOO on June 15, and ROSÉ on June 22. Then, on June 29, group photos of all BLACKPINK members were unveiled. Pre-promotion before official debut was perfect. Every time each member was unveiled, BLACKPINK created sensation. Because of such promotion, BLACKPINK built recognition during the whole month. BLACKPINK was originally supposed to debut in July, but they actually made debut in a debut showcase on August 8. The four members of BLACKPINK are 19 years old on average. They were hard-trained by YG for four to six years. After numerous speculations and predictions for the new girl gorup of YG for years, BLACKPINK has been finally born.
At BLACKPINK’s debut showcase, YANG HYUN SUK said, “A few years ago, I once said that I wanted to make a girl group whose members are pretty and talented at the same time. It took a long time for me to create BLACKPINK who perfectly suits the concept. Rather than focusing on differentiation from other girl groups including 2NE1, I tried to create a team that has its own unique style that best-expresses YG’s color”.
When BLACKPINK’s debut song was unveiled after the showcase at 8PM on the same day, it took No.1 on four music-streaming websites. The music video released on the same day surpassed three million views within three hours of release.
BLACKPINK is showing substantial influence even on Billboard chart.
American Billboard extolled BLACKPINK on the 16 this month (local time), saying, “Blackpink is less than a month old, but the new girl group is already making major moves on the Billboard charts with their debut… Blackpink is only the seventh K-pop act to hit No. 1 on World Digital Songs. The group now joins the company of PSY (who has four No. 1s on the chart), BIGBANG (with three) plus 2NE1, EXO, CL, BTS, plus G-Dragon and Taeyang (all with one). Nevertheless, Blackpink is the fastest act to hit No. 1 on the chart, and only the third to hold the top two positions after PSY and BIGBANG.”
“BOOMBAYAH” and “WHISTLE”, the double title tracks of BLACKPINK’s debut single album “SQUARE ONE”, took No.1 and No.2 on American Billboard’s World Digital Songs chart, respectively. “WHISTLE” became the first K-pop song that topped American iTunes chart and worldwide chart at the same time within two days of release.
The music videos of the two songs surpassed 10 million views on YouTube within five days of release. On the 10th day from release, on August 18, the video of “WHISTLE” is recording 13,790,000 views and “BOOMBAYAH”, 15,960,000 views.
2016. 8. 18.
