Jennie Kim, Lalisa Manoban, Rose Park, and Jisoo Kim are the four girls that make up the star-studded girl group known as Blackpink. After making their debut in 2016 with Boombayah, only 5 years into their career they’ve found massive global success and have become the biggest girl group. With this success, however, comes the golden question: Do they deserve it? This question lingers around Blackpink’s name and taunts fans of the group – ‘Blinks’ – every day, so I’m going to answer it once and for all.

To start, the group is infamous for their lack of content and music, something pretty important for a group that… makes music. Despite having 5 years under their belts, the group only has 21 songs and released their first album just recently in October of 2020. In 2018 Jennie released a solo song, but the others had no solo releases until this year with Rose releasing On The Ground and Gone and Lisa having a mini-album this September. In between releasing music, the girls are usually endorsing high-end brands such as Chanel or Tiffany & Co. on their Instagrams, and two of the members upload every few months on their personal YouTube channels. Blackpink is an anomaly in K-pop as most groups usually have two music releases a year, variety shows, sponsorships, do live streams, and use social media to talk directly to fans, yet Blinks only see these contents once in a blue moon.

“Quality over quantity” does not apply to the group either. With Teddy Park producing 99% of their discography, their songs can’t help but be similar.  Ddu-Ddu-Du, Kill This Love, and How You Like That all have the exact same structure, and all of their title tracks feature the same Blackpink theme – a girl crush beat with lyrics about love and passion. Despite these unfortunate truths, every comeback they make is largely successful and people love to hear that classic Blackpink sound, myself included.

The four members have received criticism for lack of content and lack of quality, but they continue to dominate the world. Why?

Blackpink has an it-factor no one can exactly pinpoint. There’s just something about them that draws people in, and many girl groups have tried to recreate their concept but none have found comparable levels of success. The girls are stunning, to say the least, and put forth girl boss confidence that this generation craves. My best friend and I seriously stalk Jennie’s Instagram at least once a week and find so much outfit inspiration, like, we are obsessed with her. And we don’t even know why. The group leaves you feeling empowered after consuming their content and quite frankly, I don’t care if it’s the same song just different, I’ll listen to their 21 songs over and over again. A lot of people complain that other girl groups work harder and deserve the fame Blackpink gets, and even though this sounds sad, they are living proof that you have to have an it-factor and talent. Not just talent alone. Blackpink deserves their success as much as the next, and the fact that others are failing to replicate what they’ve done goes to show they really are one of a kind and aren’t going anywhere anytime soon.