Blackpink – Go

[Video]
[5.71]

Leah Isobel: “Jump” offered a tantalizing possibility that, maybe, Blackpink could make actual music rather than cross-media ad campaigns. “Go” gingerly walks that promise back.
[3]

Julian Axelrod: Pop at its most magisterial. Every element feels expensive and manicured, especially the gnarly bloghouse drop that could have been swiped from an old Justice hard drive. The individual members blur together a bit, but their Voltron-esque reunion is in service of the brutalist pop monstrosity around them.
[7]

Nortey Dowuona: Cirkut, I am very disappoint. What is this fake Memphis drum programming? C’mon.
[5]

Katherine St. Asaph: This would have ripped ass in 2014 — and given that the top credits are Cirkut and Chris Martin, it may well have ripped ass as a demo from 2014. (Then again, given that Cirkut also produced the considerably more recent “APT.”, maybe not.) Kind of like how the “BLACK! PINK!” outro has the same cadence as “duck season! wabbit season!”
[7]

Al Varela: I like the drop, at least? I dunno, something about this BLACKPINK reunion feels really uninspired. Now that everyone is BLACKPINK, the band itself is falling behind on the very sound they pioneered, especially now that the individual members have careers they’d rather keep pursuing. If the band can’t even make a better song than “How It’s Done” from KPop Demon Hunters, maybe it’s run its course.
[5]

Jacob Sujin Kuppermann: A completely incoherent object — they deliver to us action-movie-trailer pomp & circumstance, E-40 and Kriss Kross quotes, Lupe Fiasco-type flows, and sentimental melodies, all in just above three minutes of runtime. It doesn’t come together in any reasonable or meaningful way; you could tell me that none of the involved parties had ever met and I’d believe you. And yet, despite it all, “Go” endears itself to me. It’s maximalist and ambitious and ridiculous and slightly pathetic. As it turns out, the flop sweat all over its construction has done more to convince me, at last, that there’s something interesting going on with Blackpink.
[6]

Claire Davidson: Blackpink’s greatest struggle has always been their producers’ difficulty with integrating their various cacophonous styles into songs that feel genuinely cohesive, which has often devolved into chaotic posturing. “Go” is a refreshing outlier, opening with a stately backdrop of synthetic strings that allows an even-handed Rosé and Lisa to cultivate an imposing stance, as they both triumphantly sing of their ability to both steal one’s soul and provide their poor victims with some form of absolution. That gradual build to a crescendo dovetails quite nicely with the dubstep breakdown that follows, as rubbery synthesizers warp and cascade across the mix in a way that feels legitimately pummeling, the underside of the saintly mercy that the girl group describes in the opening verse. This noisier approach is a fitting transition into Jennie’s rapping, too, and even provides a moment of gentle release in Jennie and Rosé’s serene bridge, a graceful plea for vulnerability that earns the song’s earlier evocation of angels. It makes sense that Chris Martin is credited as a co-writer: the loosely supernatural lyrics are certainly of a piece with his work in Coldplay. Even more so is the track’s impressive sense of scale, which gives the song a true dramatic anchor even amid so many genre swerves. The track still betrays some of Blackpink’s erratic energy—the song could have included more developed transitions surrounding the bridge, rather than the rotely chanted outro—but “Go” is a fascinating evolution for the group. I’m glad they stuck around to record it.
[7]