Asian Junkie Asian pop. Without discretion.
BLACKPINK returned with their first single in about two years, a pre-release off their upcoming Born Pink album called “Pink Venom“. While I was sorta hoping for an evolution, I expected much of the same, and indeed we got one of the BLACKPINK songs that ever existed.
The hype for this or any BLACKPINK release is obviously going to be off the charts, and it helped that “Pink Venom” starts with a meshing of traditional sounds (a geomungo, I believe) and modern elements, which has long been a favorite production choice of mine. However, like with most BLACKPINK tracks, the determining factor is basically how catchy the hook is, and the “this that pink venom“/”taste that pink venom” repetition just isn’t effective. Unlike with their onomatopoeia-heavy hooks of past songs, even TikTok spurts of the chorus shouldn’t be able to trick people into thinking “Pink Venom” is appealing. There’s a lot of bluster going on (“gratatatatatatatatatatatatatatatatatatatatatata“), and while the music video looked amazing when it wasn’t T-ara jump cutting everywhere, there’s just not a ton to latch onto all around.
As I said prior to its release on social media, I was hoping that it’d be something killer since it would mean a lot of people here would have to cope, this unfortunately won’t be doing that.
