Blackpink brought K-pop to Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival on Friday, April 12, and while the Sahara tent wasn’t as over-capacity as it has been in the past, it was a full house and a whole lot of lighthearted fun.
The girl group made up of Jisoo, Jennie, Rosé and Lisa is probably the second-most famous K-pop group in the world after the boy band BTS. And it’s the first K-pop group to play the taste-making festival.
With a new album that dropped last week, this 55-minute set was Blackpink’s North American debut, the kick off to a tour that also plays the Forum in Inglewood on Wednesday, April 17, before returning to Coachella next weekend.
And, judging from the performance on Friday, Blackpink is going to get a lot bigger in the U.S. — and quickly, too.
The four young women, dressed in outfits that mixed blacks, silvers and whites, strutted on stage shoulder-to-shoulder like they were Destiny’s Child plus one.
Their opening number didn’t mess around: “Ddu-du Ddu-du” is the song fans in the States have heard the most, and like most of their songs of offered uptempo rhythms, electronic beats and killer hook, all while the four Blackpink-ers and occasional backing dancers moved through crisply choreographed routines.
There’s something wholesome about K-pop that’s absent in a lot of Western pop today. Jennie, Jisoo, Lisa and Rosé are objectively beautiful young women but they’re almost modest in how they flaunt their sex appeal, the bumps and grinds weren’t as in-your-face as those of a lot of American pop stars.
They sing in Korean and English so I can’t tell you they don’t swear, but I’d be willing to bet Ariana Grande’s bunny ears that they’re not dropping the occasional F-bomb like Sunday’s headliner does.
Other songs on the set included catchy numbers such as “Forever Young,” “Kiss and Make Up,” the collaboration they recorded with Dua Lipa, and “Kill This Love,” the new single.
“To be here with you guys at Coachella tonight, it means so much to us,” Jennie said near the end of their hour on stage. “I just can’t thank you enough. We love you guys.”
A pair of crowdpleasers including “Boombayah,” wrapped up the set on a high note and left a strong impression: this isn’t the last Coachella has seen of K-pop, not by far.