Lisa - "Alter Ego"
The K-Pop Invasion continues
The second of Blackpink’s members to drop a solo album, Lisa is a Thai singer, rapper, and dancer. And this debut is nothing if not energetic and polished.
Blackpink formed in 2016, created by the group’s label, YG Entertainment. At their unveiling, Yang Hyun-Suk, YG’s founder and Executive Director, said:
“For the past 20 years, we have tried to stay away from the mainstream by focusing more on skills and charisma, rather than looks. However, this time, we wanted to give equal weight to talent and appearance.
[ . . . ]
“I feel like I’m dropping off my daughters on their first day of elementary school. But I have watched them for the past six years, so I am confident that they will do well. I think the group’s performance on stage will speak for itself.”
For those unfamiliar with K-Pop, or how South Korea operates, in general, the music industry truly emphasizes the industry half of the term. It’s big business, and big business is a big deal there. Mainstream K-Pop acts, including Blackpink, are overproduced and polished by default, and rising to the top requires machine-like precision and execution.
Of course, discussing the music in this fashion dismisses the work and skill demonstrated by the artists. Blackpink may be manufactured, but the four artists at its core are what makes it work — even if they weren’t chosen explicitly for their skills.
Lisa, for example, moved to Korea (from Thailand) at the age of 14 to begin her formal training (after successfully auditioning the year before). That was in 2011; YG trained her for the next five years, during which time she also participated in other labelmates’ efforts as a backup dancer and undertook her first modelling contract.
Since then, Lisa has released two albums with Blackpink and has clearly honed her craft. Watch any video of a Blackpink performance; these women are clearly immensely talented and have a crap-ton of training (and money behind them) to support that talent.
Alter Ego definitely exhibits it, as well. Lisa’s performance throughout the album is impeccable. It opens incredibly strongly, too, with all of the first five tracks being absolute bangers. The next two are very good, and then it just kinda falls off of a cliff after that. The last half of the album is…tolerable.
Let’s look more closely at the best track on the album, which is easily the opener, “Born Again”. The song features Doja Cat and Raye in a Disco-heavy Dance-Pop number. The hook is exquisite, and the song’s energy is absolutely infectious. It’s also the album’s longest song, and it suffers a bit for it. High production values often lean into repetition, so it starts to verge on being too repetitive by the end. And, despite the gloss, the amount of work that’s gone into it, the opening line of the chorus is “If you tried just a little more times”.
Read that again.
It’s a small mistake. A poor translation, perhaps. But Lisa is fluent in English (she doesn’t even have an accent), and she’s surrounded by plenty of resources. It’s a chip in the polish, which shouldn’t happen when you have this many people on each song.
Even so, that error and the clear overproduction might be forgiven if the album didn’t just die halfway through. It’s like my ears turn off, except if I jump back to the top, they’re working fine and I’m having fun again.
Lastly, I do enjoy the conceptual foundation of the album, which features various alter egos throughout the album (and alternate album covers for each):
The problem here is in the execution. There’s no clear definition as to which is which or what the actual point is (and, again, I just don’t enjoy most of the last half, so I’m not interested in digging deeper.
I really wanted to like this album, but it has several glaring missteps. There are some great songs here, but the album as a whole falls short.
Rating: Yellow