BLACKPINK Are Back for Their 10th Anniversary

In three lines.

• BLACKPINK released a new record on February 27 and returned as a full group. The comeback is timed to their 10th anniversary.
• It's their first group activity in about four years, since their second studio album.
• In the meantime, the four members each toured stages overseas solo, and now the four of them are back together.

Let's start with the song.

Ten Years and Four, the Weight of Two Numbers

Two numbers are attached to this comeback. The ten years piled up from debut until now, and the roughly four years when full-group activity sat empty after their second album. The first number is time the four of them grew older together; the second is time they spent scattered apart.

A team that stood together on their debut stage meeting their 10th anniversary as four again isn't a common picture. The bigger each of their careers grows, the more just lining up four schedules in one slot becomes a job in itself. That they still matched dates and put out a record says that, for this team, the "together" way still holds.

It wasn't an empty four years, either. Jisoo, Jennie, Rosé and Lisa each put their names on stages in many countries, solo, outside the group. For four people who'd already become big names on their own to gather again on one stage isn't an obvious next step, it's a chosen one. The reason people who could go far enough alone still bother to come together as four is probably that there's a sound only the four of them make. And the knot of a 10th anniversary lent that choice a reason to stand on.

That's the Last of the Numbers

That's the last of the numbers. Now, the music. Fans weren't waiting on this comeback for firepower or records. It was one thing: the picture of the four of them standing side by side on the same stage. When faces that shone separately on solo stages layer their voices inside a single song, you feel again why the words "full group" ring so loud for fans.

Over the past four years, fans followed each of the four's stages separately while waiting for this moment. How the colors they built up solo will blend again inside the harmony of four, that's the part I'm most curious about. Four years is enough time for a person to change, and the sound made when the stories each carried in overlap in one song will be different from how it was around their debut.

For a team starting again on the knot of a 10th anniversary, this comeback is less a place to tidy up past time than one that opens the next chapter. What kind of picture appears when the four years each of them filled merge back into one team's sound, I hope we can watch that without rushing. With the heart of someone who's watched them a long time, I welcome BLACKPINK, four again at their 10th anniversary.