Presumptuous question gets humble pi…
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[3.14]
Jessica Doyle: Why are we still talking about this group? Their music has been consistently shoddy and repetitive. The books haven’t been closed yet on the myriad accusations against YG on prostitution procurement and police bribery, despite various Korean prosecutorial offices’ keen efforts. The performers, though they seem like nice young women, aren’t orders of magnitude better than their peers. There’s nothing here except a hype train. Is it accelerationism? The idea that capitalism has warped everyone’s minds to the point that only nihilist destruction can improve anything, and maybe if we hype up this kind of dreck, people will either realize how shallow and empty pop music can be and start turning their attention to organizing, or collapse in their own stupidity? I don’t yet have a competing explanation as to why this is the Korean female group we all suddenly feel obliged to discuss.
[1]
Nina Lea: “How You Like That” deserves an award for most incongruous combination of the greatest number of different songs that had already been rejected by other K-pop groups; it’s like all the producers were assigned a school group project but none of them coordinated on their PowerPoint slides. Obviously the utter incoherence is kind of fun, but in a Eurovision-long-shot-entry-from-Belarus kind of way, and certainly not befitting artists hyped as the top girl group in K-pop.
[3]
Katie Gill: Is this a comeback? Blackpink’s career has been so all over the place that you can probably call half of their recent singles “comeback” singles. This is their most recent, and it… feels like a worse version of their last comeback single, mixed with some Itzy-brand obnoxiousness. I really want to like this song, but it just feels like a big bunch of something we’ve already heard before.
[5]
Alex Clifton: It’s the same single as “DDU-DU DDU-DU” and “Kill This Love.” Jennie raps, Rosé and Jisoo swap off in the pre-chorus, and the chorus proper is an electro-melody. Rinse and repeat, but swap out Lisa for Jennie. Throw in a dance break in the last thirty seconds. Bingo! You have the newest Blackpink single! Get yourself a writing credit next to Teddy! And yet this will tide me over until Blackpink releases their first full-length LP this September after four flipping years. Go figure.
[5]
Wayne Weizhen Zhang: Hook, pre-chorus, and chorus all glide together seamlessly, working like parts of an engine. I’m no expert in cars, but in that context “How You Like That” is probably an Inferno Red Kia Soul.
[6]
Michael Hong: It’s the kitchen sink approach in action, a slew of thoughts and ideas randomly stitched together, with a sprinkle of Blackpink’s touch: obnoxiously loud, annoyingly bright, and ill-fitting with current tastes. Groups have enough trouble making this approach work when the pieces are good and these ideas — Disney villain score to thin balladry to a chorus tasteless even by early 2010’s Skrillex standards within the first minute — should have been gutted even before you consider supergluing them together. But Blackpink’s greatest failing has always been the way they end their tracks, usually, a slapdash chorus or an underwritten left turn that squanders any momentum they’ve built. This one’s no different; more of the track is messy noise, like watching four headless chickens run amuck.
[2]
Kayla Beardslee: This drop makes me want to gouge out my eyes. Yes, my eyes, not my ears — why should my reaction be reasonable when this single was put together without an ounce of common sense? Maybe if “How You Like That” was abrasive for experimental reasons, I’d be less inclined to call it… oh, let’s say a borderline unlistenable byproduct of laziness, greed, and desperation. But unfortunately it’s the worst sort of bad music, the kind that has no ambitions beyond fulfilling commercial potential and so is not beholden to concepts like “good taste” or “artistic merit.” Previous Blackpink tracks have recycled the same tropes as this one (EDM-drop structure with a pumped-up final chorus, brassy production, shouted lyrics), but it’s like screenshotting a screenshot: the iterations are just getting worse, and I think the unoriginality has finally worn too thin to tolerate. Of course, “How You Like That” isn’t so much a song as a device meant to keep the world invested in Blackpink, but the irony is that to keep their career alive in this way is to kill it, too. If the group stays locked in the dungeon to maintain their air of mystery and desirability, the fanbase will wither; but if they continue this career path, where the girls are given insultingly awful singles to grin and bear, then those who care about Blackpink’s actual music (including the casual listeners that push artists into mainstream success) will give up and fade away, leaving only blindly faithful stans and a group spiraling towards irrelevancy. In almost a full year at TSJ, I’ve never given out this score, but this feels as good a time as any to do so — it’s what this soulless song, released by a soulless company in a soulless world, deserves.
[0]