Plus Magazine

K-pop’s leading girl group proves its status at the Coachella

| Written by Jang Junhwan (Editor for the music webzine IZM)

Coachella revealed its lineup in January for the upcoming 2023 Coachella festival. For international music aficionados and media outlets, the first thing that grips their attention among the list full of world-famous stars all over the world is, as it always has been, the headliners. The four-day festival starts with Bad Bunny, the leading artist representing Latin pop, and rounds off with Frank Ocean, the unrivaled musician in the alternative R&B scene today who draws praises from critics for every release. Finally, there is another artist who was proudly chosen in the headliner list along with these world-class musicians, BLACKPINK.

Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival, also known as Coachella, has been one of the most successful and iconic music events in history since 1999 when it was founded in California. Its overwhelmingly large-scale venue can accommodate up to 250,000 people, along with a number of spectacular stages and countless tents for on-site camping, all in place to enthrall music lovers of diverse ethnicities with different genres of songs. Would it be even possible to find a more thrilling experience than this? There would be more to be said about why music fans have long picked Coachella as “a must-go event before you die.”

Despite being a music event with the biggest scale on the planet, Coachella covers a myriad of music genres. The festival’s nickname “a cultural melting pot,” explains the very core idea of Coachella; it satisfies all different needs of melomaniacs by quickly spotting trends across the world. That is why Coachella can organize a bold lineup every year that encompasses an extensive spectrum of artists, ranging from widely known big names to indie artists outside the mainstream of the music industry. The festival also has a reputation for its richly ornamented, colorful stage designs and digital artworks, and thought-provoking installation works.

Before K-pop cemented its place in the international mainstream, the industry had focused more on the mysterious of K rather than the universality of Pop. For instance, Korean artists who received the first spotlight from the Glastonbury Festival in the U.K. were Via Trio, a Korean traditional music quartet, and Sultan of The Disco, an indie band that attracted international fans for its unique concept. XXX, an experimental hip-hop duo, and Glen Check, an electronica band were also invited to SXSW in 2017. Coachella’s demand for Korean artists also started to rise in 2016 when EPIK HIGH joined the event, but was lopsided toward indie musicians until 2019 such as HYUKOH and JAMBINAI, well-received Korean indie bands by international critics and a few indie music enthusiasts.

I remember the various voices over BLACKPINK’s debut at Coachella when they were invited as a first Korean sub-headliner. K-pop was increasingly strengthening its presence in the global music market, while Coachella just began to shift its focus more to pop than to rock music. Conversely, some skeptics were reluctant to approve of a Korean idol’s first entry into a major global music event. Those who were doubtful raised questions as to whether the group was chosen merely out of non-Asians’ curiosity about Asian music or whether it was for profit from the group’s fandom.

However, a lot has changed now. BLACKPINK’s headline marks an important milestone in Korea’s popular music history. The implications of this historic moment can be boiled down to three keywords.

1. Acknowledgment

K-pop has made remarkable achievements in the past years including BTS’s nomination for Grammy and their hits on the Billboard charts, but live performance platforms have more strings attached compared to other channels. The consumer base of live performance is highly dedicated and loyal, despite the fact that they make up only a small proportion of the pie of the music industry. While music streaming services provide easy access and are readily available, festivals require you to be present on-site and pay a huge sum for tickets. That is, the headliners are expected not only to be popular and high-ranking on music charts but also to have their own powerful weapons to meet with the approval of live music fans. On top of this, they must have widely known hit songs and a striking stage presence.

2. Adaptability
 

Today’s K-pop scene is heading in the direction to embrace broader audiences beyond its traditional fan base of Korean teenagers. Festival goers are more likely to be interested in music and performance in general than the public, but not expected to be familiar with every single musician in a line-up. In that sense, BLACKPINK has the edge over other artists: their radical globalization strategy. In their two latest albums, [THE ALBUM](2020) and [BORN PINK](2022), BLACKPINK tapped into the worldwide pool of songwriters, collaborated with other global pop stars, and sang in English to target the global audience, all under the slogan of “globalization.” It explains why the BLACKPINK music. That explains why you feel familiar with BLACKPINK’s songs, even when you listen to them for the first time.

3. Influence

The footage of BLACKPINK’s live performance ‘DDU-DU DDU-DU’ at the 2019 Coachella has garnered over 48 million views on Youtube with more than 90,000 comments from fans worldwide. BLACKPINK’s official MVs of ‘Kill This Love’ and ‘BOOMBAYAH’ are also listed among the related videos with the highest views. The COVID pandemic has dragged the entire festival business into an unprecedented slowdown, which makes its rebound (bounce back) more important than ever before. Against this backdrop, BLACKPINK with a wider and stronger fandom than any other artists in the music industry can guarantee Coachella a strong appeal to potential attendees and marketing power. BLACKPINK is the very artist who can represent multiculturalism and diversity, the identity of Coachella. On the flip side, the girl group can be provided with the best quality stage and live streaming technology to target music fans all over the world. In this win-win game, no one loses.

For the past three years, BLACKPINK has made remarkably fast growth, finally making a foray into the main stage of Coachella. Their accomplishment should be viewed more as a result of accumulated efforts made by players in the entire K-pop scene than as a sudden windfall. Last year, starting with artists from “88rising,” a music company founded by a group of Asian-American artists, 2NE1 and aespa hit the Coachella stage and successfully made their marks on the international music scene. j-hope from BTS also headlined Lollapalooza and demonstrated mesmerizing performance to more than 100,000 participants. Dreamcatcher, another Korean girl group, also succeeded in making headlines in a number of music magazines by impressing fans at Primavera Sound in Spain with their powerful metal sound, choreography, and their affection for fans. This year, Red Velvet was also listed on the lineup of Primavera Sound.

K-pop started to make an “invasion” into the global stage once regarded as impregnable, with more stars putting their names down for the international music chart and headlining major global music festivals. The pages of major moments in the history of Korean pop music are flipped through in my mind: from BLACKPINK’s warriors-like performance in which they proudly sang their songs in Korean in a roar of the crowd to the mind-blowing moment when 2NE1 reunited at Coachella and sang their hit song ‘I AM THE BEST’. Korean popular music has passed through innumerable changes and transitions for a long time and finally started to function as a cultural phenomenon shared from generation to generation and nation to nation, as American pop did in its prime time. All we have to do from now on is just lay back and look forward to what is meant to come next.

※ Manuscripts from outside writers may not reflect the editorial direction of this magazine.