Everything about Blackpink - albums, achievements and more!

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The name "Blackpink" means that the group has two sides. It not only offers beauty, but also tons of talent. The members Lisa, Rosé, Jennie and Jisoo live up to the name: since their debut, they have not only been inspiring with their music, but are now also considered fashion icons and have all even established solo careers!

Blackpink is the most famous K-pop girl group in the world and there is hardly anyone who hasn't heard of them. Nevertheless, it's easy to forget individual milestones and highlights. That's why today we're taking a look back at Blackpink's road to success:

• Origins (pre-debut)
• The members
• Debut (2016)
• Japan debut & further records (2017-2018)
• The most important milestones (2019 to today)
• Solo career
• Discography - All albums by Blackpink at a glance

Origins (pre-debut)

YG Entertainment first announced plans for a new girl group back in 2011. Expectations were high, as YG was already considered one of the biggest K-pop labels in South Korea and was home to big stars such as boy group Big Bang and girl group 2NE1 at the time.

However, the plans for the girl group were repeatedly postponed and in 2014 YG first debuted a new boy group called Winner, followed by iKON in 2015. In June 2016, however, the time had finally come: YG introduced the four members of Blackpink one by one: Jennie, Lisa, Jisoo and Rosé.

The members

The 4 girls may not have been completely unknown to fans at the time, as they were all introduced as trainees by YG Entertainment back in 2012 and appeared in music videos by artists from the same agency, for example, or even had a singing part in their songs.

G-Dragon's song "Black" in 2013 was recorded together with Jennie. She even sang it with him on the music show Inkigayo! Jenni also appeared in G-Dragon's music video "That XX" and can also be heard in the song "Special" from Lee Hi's 2013 album "First Love".

Lisa was the first foreign trainee in YG Entertainment; she was the only one out of 4,000 applicants from Thailand to pass the audition and move to Korea! She made an appearance in the music video for "Ringa Linga" by Taeyang from BigBang in 2013, albeit only in the background, and promoted YG's fashion brand Nona9on and cosmetics brand Moonshot even before her debut.

Jisoo appeared in various commercials and music videos, such as "Im Different" by the unit "Hi Suhyun", consisting of AKMU's Suhyun and Lee Hi. She also made a guest appearance in the 2015 K-drama "The Producers" with other YG Entertainment artists.

In 2012, "Without You" by G-Dragon feat "? Of YG New Girlgroup" was released. "?" later turned out to be Rosé.

The group's long-planned debut finally became a reality in 2016:

On August 8, Jennie, Lisa, Jisoo and Rosé announced for the first time that Blackpink is in our area in their debut single "Boombayah" from the album "Square One"!

Blackpink announced their fandom name "BLINK" back in November 2016. Since then, fans have proudly called themselves "BLINKs". The name is a combination of "Black" and "Pink" and means that the fans start and end with Blackpink.

The phrase "Blackpink in Your Area" quickly became an iconic catchphrase, as it was heard in many more of the group's music videos, concerts and performances after Boombayah.

With various records, Blackpink showed early on that they had the potential to reach the top!

"Boombayah" and "Whistle", the two songs from their debut single album "Square One" reached #1 and #2 on Billboard's World Digital Song Charts; no one before them has done it so soon after their debut! They also became only the third Korean artist to hold both top positions at the same time. With their victory in the music show "Inkigayo" on August 21, Blackpink broke another record: they won the show 13 days after their debut. No other girl group had ever taken first place so quickly after their debut!

Before the year ended, the second single album "Square Two" was released. It reached number 2 in Billboard's World Albums Chart and stayed there for 22 weeks! Blackpink also topped Billboard's World Digital Song Sales Chart for the second time with the title track "Playing with Fire".

After all this success, it was no wonder that the girl group received all the Rookie Awards at the year-end awards shows! And Billboard also named Blackpink one of the best new K-Pop groups in 2016.

The first few months could hardly have gone better: In the short time since their debut, Blackpink have attracted attention both in Korea and internationally and made a name for themselves!

In 2017, Blackpink also made their debut in Japan.

First, the digital single "As If It's Your Last" was released in June 2017. The music video broke the record for the most likes by a K-pop girl group in the first 24 hours!

One year after their debut in Korea, Blackpink released their first Japanese album, called "Blackpink" like the group itself. Japanese fans were also impressed and catapulted the album to the top of the Oricon album charts. Oricon is one of the biggest Japanese charts in Japan and Blackpink were only the third non-Japanese artist to top the chart with their debut album!

2018 was packed with albums, concerts and of course more records!

Blackpink didn't rest on their success, but worked hard to always have something new to offer their fans. In January, Blackpink's first reality show "Blackpink House" was launched, which ran for many months and ended in August.

In addition, Lisa, Jennie, Rosé and Jisoo also gave concerts in Japan as part of their first Japan tour "Blackpink Arena Tour" in 2018. The demand for tickets was so great that two more dates were even added! And as if that wasn't enough, Lisa, Jennie, Rosé and Jisoo set off on their first world tour "In Your Area World Tour" in the same year. The tour continued through 2019 and only ended in 2020! It took the girl group not only to Asia, but also to North America, Europe and Australia. Of course, Blackpink also set a new record: It was the highest-selling tour by a K-pop girl group ever!

Fans could also look forward to new music:

In 2018, Blackpink presented, among other things, the second Japanese album "Re: Blackpink", a reissue of the first album "Blackpink". This was followed by the first Korean mini album "Square Up" (June 15), the Japanese single "Ddu-Du Ddu-Du" (August 22) and the first Japanese compilation album "Blackpink In Your Area" (November 23).

In addition, the members of Blackpink were also featured on Dua Lipa's new single "Kiss and Make-Up" in October.

Square Up was particularly successful: the album topped Billboard's World Albums Chart and Blackpink became the first female K-Pop artist to reach the top of the Emerging Artist Chart! The title track "Ddu-Du Ddu-Du" topped both the US and UK charts and the video was viewed 36.2 million times in the first 24 hours. In November 2019, the music video was even considered the most-watched video by a K-pop group ever!

But although so many exciting things happened, an event followed in November that was even more exciting for many fans: Jennie made her solo debut with the single "Solo"! And it was a complete success: Jennie topped several charts such as Gaon's Digital Chart or Billboard's K-Pop Hot 100 and stayed in the top spots for many weeks!

The project gave Jennie the chance to showcase more of her talent and proved that she could conquer the stage on her own. Naturally, this raised anticipation for the other members' solo debuts, but it took over two years before Rosé and Lisa followed her example. Jisoo didn't even make her solo debut until the end of March 2023.

2019 until today

Both as a group and on their own, Jennie, Jisoo, Rosé and Lisa have celebrated many more groundbreaking successes. So many that we can hardly list them all! So we've picked out the most interesting milestones of the following years for you:

In 2019, Blackpink appeared on many American shows such as "Universal Music Group's 2029 Grammy Artist Showcase", "The Late Show" and "Good Morning America". The girl group had already stormed the international charts before, but 2019 marked another breakthrough. This was also made clear by the fact that Blackpink was the first K-pop girl group ever to grace the cover of Billboard magazine in March and was also the first K-pop girl group to be invited to perform at the Coachella Music and Arts Festival in California!

On April 5, 2019, the second mini album "Kill This Love" was released, including the title track of the same name. Like its predecessor "Square Up", it topped Billboard's World Album Chart. Blackpink had already reached number 1 twice in a row. The music video also broke the record for the most views on YouTube in the first 24 hours. Fans all over the world watched the video 56.7 million times!

2020

In May 2020, Blackpink released the single "Sour Candy" together with Lady Gaga. It was the girl group's second collaboration, a year and a half after their collaboration with Dua Lipa. "Sour Candy" reached 33rd place in the Billboard Top 100 chart, the highest chart position for Blackpink in the United States to date. The girl group broke this personal record in the same year with "Ice Cream", a single created in collaboration with Selena Gomez, which reached thirteenth place in the Billboard Top 100. "Ice Cream" was released as a single on August 28, 2020, but is also included on the studio album "The Album", which was released on October 2.

"The Album" is Blackpink's first studio album, four years after their debut. In addition to "Ice Cream", it also includes the title track "Lovesick Girls" and the single "How You Like That", which was released on June 26. The music video broke several Guinness World Records, including the one for the most viewed video in the first 24 hours with a total of 86.3 million views. It was clicked on 30 million more times than "Kill This Love" in 2019! Blackpink was also the first female K-Pop artist to win the "Song of the Summer" award at the "MTV Video Music Awards" with the single.

The album set the record for the most albums sold by a K-pop girl group in the first week after its release. On the very first day, fans bought 590 thousand copies and after one week, a staggering 1.54 million copies had already been sold! This made Blackpink the first K-pop girl group to ever sell a million copies of an album! Today, K-pop artists are constantly outdoing each other with new record figures, but Blackpink can still be very proud of this milestone today.

Fans who would like to spend a TV evening with Blackpink have also been catered for, as the girl group released their first documentary "Blackpink: Light Up The Sky" on Netflix in 2020 and their reality show "24/365 with Blackpink" on YouTube. All four members formulated a potential title for the reality show and fans were able to vote for their favorite on Instagram. Lisa's idea came out on top against "Behind The Pinks" (Rosé), "BLACKPINK Log" (Jisoo) and "BLACKPINK is?" (Jennie). You can watch all 16 episodes of "24/365 with Blackpink" here:

2021

This was followed in August 2021 by the documentary "Blackpink: The Movie", which was shown in cinemas around the world. Among other things, it takes fans behind the scenes of the "In Your Are World Tour", which ended in February 2020, over 15 months after it began in November 2018.

But 2021 was above all a year of solo debuts. With Rosé and Lisa, two members of Blackpink took a new step:

Rosé kicked things off with her single album "R" in March. In just a few days, the album broke several records: "R" sold 448 thousand copies in its first week, more than any other album by a female K-pop solo artist. Rosé also became the first Korean female solo artist to top the Billboard Global 200 chart and the music video for the title track "On The Ground" was viewed more times in the first 24 hours than any other music video by a Korean solo artist. The last two records even made it into the Guinness Book of World Records.

Lisa already had more followers than any other K-pop artist in 2019, so it was clear in advance that her solo debut would hit like a bomb. With the single album "Lalisa" in September, Lisa broke several of the records that Rosé had set just months earlier. She sold more albums in the first week and her music video for "Money" was viewed even more times in the first 24 hours than Rosé's "On The Ground". Lalisa also became the first Korean solo artist to reach one trillion streams on Spotify!

2022 & 2023

In September 2022, Blackpink finally returned as a group after almost two years. This time, Jennie, Lisa and co. presented their second studio album "Born Pink". And although the singers have already set and broken countless records, they were able to celebrate a whole new level of success with "Born Pink"! They were the first girl group to top the Billboard Global 200 chart, first with the pre-release single "Pink Venom" and then again with the title track "Shut Down". They were also the first girl group to sell 2 million copies of their album. And these are just a few of the achievements of "Born Pink".

In October, Blackpink embarked on their second world tour "Born Pink World Tour", which led through North America, Europe, Asia and Australia and lasted almost a year. It ended after more than 60 concerts in September 2023. The tour made more money than any other tour by a female group before and attracted 1.8 million viewers!

In March 2023, the last member, Jisoo, finally made her solo debut. Jisoo released the single album "ME" on March 31 and sold more than one million copies in just two days! This makes Jisoo the first Korean solo artist to break the million mark. To date (as of November 2023), "ME" is the best-selling album by a Korean female solo artist of all time!

As you can see, Blackpink is not considered the most successful girl group in the world for nothing!

Solo career

As already mentioned, all four members of Blackpink have now made their solo debuts and are also very successful on their own. However, the members are not only active in the music industry, but also show their talent in various other areas:

Lisa

Lisa has presented an annual photo book consisting of her own photographs since 2020. They all bear the number "0327" in the title, an allusion to Lisa's birthday on March 27.

Lisa is also the ambassador of various fashion brands such as the French luxury brand "Celine", "Penshoppe" and the Italian luxury brand "Bulgari". In addition, the idol was a mentor for dance in the Chinese survival show "Youth With You" (Season 2 & 3) in 2020 and 2021 and impressed fans there with her tough criticism and strictness towards the trainees, especially because she also gave praise and motivation at the right moments.

Jennie

For her solo debut, Jennie was not only involved in the music, but also the outfits, concept and choreography. She put together more than 20 outfits for her music video! Because of her fashion sense, she has been invited to several fashion events and was even appointed as an ambassador for "House of Channel".

Jennie was also the first Korean model for "Bucheron Paris", a 160 year old luxury jewelry brand.

Rosé

Rosé was appointed the first global ambassador for "Yves Saint Laurent" in 2020 after 59 years and this year was named global ambassador for the jewelry brand "Tiffany & Co".

She is also in the Guinness Book of Records for topping the Billboard Global Charts both solo and as part of a group. She is the first Korean artist to achieve this!

Jisoo

Like the others, Jisoo is also interested in fashion and was appointed local ambassador for "Dior" in 2019.

As the only member of Blackpink to date, she is also currently building an acting career. After guest appearances in music videos and a brief appearance in the K-drama "Arthdal Chronicles", Jisoo even played the lead role in the series "Snowdrop"!

Discography - All albums by Blackpink at a glance:

Blackpink have released eight Korean albums, five Japanese albums and one compilation album in the more than seven years since their debut. Compared to other idol groups, who usually make a comeback in Korea several times a year, this is relatively few. Maybe that's why fans are especially eager for every new song they can add to their playlist!