[Album Review] BORN PINK (2nd Studio Album) – BLACKPINK

Welcome to the first official album review of the year. All the other album reviews I posted so far this year were drafted last year, and my review for BORN PINK is the first album review I have written this year. Woo! There is plenty more album review coming your way, but I thought I start off with a big release from 2022 that I hadn’t looked at just yet. BORN PINK is BLACKPINK’s second studio length album and was released mid-September 2022. It features the pre-release single Pink Venom and the title track Shut Down, alongside down another 6 side tracks. It follows The Album from 2020. Personally, my biggest takeaway from this studio album is that BLACKPINK and their producers could have done more with majority of the side tracks on the album. Despite that comment, there are still some standout and solid tracks on the album to enjoy. So continue reading to see which songs I thought were great and which songs could have been better.

1. Pink Venom (Pre-Release Track) – Click here to read the full review for Pink Venom. (6.5/10)

2. Shut Down (Title Track) – Click here to read the full review for Shut Down. (8/10)

3. Typa Girl – Typa Girl had some potential with the opening synths. It gave off intriguing vibes which I was all excited for. Given BLACKPINK’s consistent sound with majority of their promotional tracks, intriguing is definitely something good. Unfortunately, the intriguingness isn’t worthwhile. Once we enter the verses and choruses, we get that familiar sound profile that we all associate with BLACKPINK. Despite going down the same route as their previous track, Typa Girl’s instrumental continues to disappoint, as there just isn’t a whole heap going on. It does place the focus on the members. But clear vocals and fast rapping just doesn’t make up for the rest of the song, in my opinion. (5/10)

4. Yeah Yeah Yeah – I am glad the disappointment is short lived. Things start looking up for BORN PINK’s side tracks with Yeah Yeah Yeah. I really liked the retro tinge that the song had, especially when the chorus comes along. It is a centrepiece that I look forward to on this album. The vocal work was solid and presented the members in a pleasant light. My only gripe about the song is how cliché the main hook of the song is – just simply being “Just say Yeah Yeah Yeah”. (8/10)

5. Hard To Love (Rosé Solo) – The only member of BLACKPINK to have a solo song on this album is Rosé. The pop feel of the Hard To Love and the guitar work in the chorus were highlights, along with Rosé’s vocals. I particularly like that emotional pull that Rosé subtly provides to Hard To Love, which makes it more riveting to listen to. (9/10)

6. The Happiest Girl – Stealing my attention away from the entirety of this album is The Happiest Girl, which is a stunning and beautiful ballad. This is not exactly a style of music that I associate with BLACKPINK, but it was so well done. Repetition is the song’s biggest and only problem, but that can be easily overlooked when you consider the orchestration and the emotionally fragile vocals of the members caused by the breakup that is imagined in the lyrics. My favourite part of all, if I had to pick, would be Jisoo’s harmonic line “I can stop the tears if I want to”. (10/10)

7. Tally – For me, Tally is a skippable song. It is a decent display of potential from the members themselves and there is a neat swaying melody to the song. But apart from that, there isn’t much to remember about Tally. It is probably more because Tally follows The Happiest Girl – all of my attention is directed towards the previous song and I don’t have much more to share for Tally. But I felt the instrumental was plain, while there isn’t much of a hook to the song other than the aforementioned melody. (6/10)

8. Ready For Love – Final song on the album is Ready For Love. It is another pre-release single released back in July 2022 which I had not reviewed as the song was marketed to us as a promotional single for PUBG Mobile at the time. But its inclusion on the album allows me to finally review it! I quite liked the EDM chorus (definitely the highlight of the song) and the house pop style the rest of the song opted for. BLACKPINK themselves sound quite good in the song, but the hooks again were repetitive and I wished there were more to the hooks of Ready For Love. (7.5/10)