Clearly I missed nothing of consequence during my absence. Trust me, I saw. Total snoozefest, just like this all-time boring year in K-Pop. So that means my threads had plenty of time to cook in the oven during the 2-week delay. But with that preamble out of the way, let me do what I do best.
BLACKPINK are not the top girl group in K-Pop right now. I'd be more willing to give that title to aespa, while the actual top group is on a forced hiatus. I want to be fair, so I will show this isn't just a Yama thinkpiece but instead an opinion I've reached after considering all the metrics we fans have always used to judge girl groups.
But I want to attack the fallacious reasons Blinks and BP sympathizers give for BP being a top group.
Fallacy #1: LOOK AT THEIR TOUR NUMBERS, Yama!
Yeah, okay. I see them. And? Any girl group stan who obsesses over touring numbers only is either delusional, lying, coping or all of the above.
Touring is fantastic. It's awesome. It doesn't carry you to top girl group status on its own. I guarantee that if Twice outdoes BLACKPINK in their upcoming tour, and both groups chart the exact same as they did in their last comebacks, not a single Blink on the planet will say: "Twice had better touring numbers, so Twice is definitely the top girl group in the industry. They had weaker sales, weaker charting, trended less, ranked lower on Gallup, won substantially less awards, got no daesangs and underperformed in every relevant category....but they toured better so they're the top!"
Yeah, bullshit and we all know it. And that's what I think of the "BUT THE TOURING!" argument. Great as a supplement. Can't be your crutch.
Let's move on to the next fallacious argument.
Fallacy #2: LOOK AT THE POWER OF THEIR SOLOS!!!
Sure, Jan. Sure. I'll be the first to give a song like APT its flowers as the biggest K-Pop song of the year easily. But girl group fans who always attribute solo success to group success are being brutally oblivious and illogical. It's short-sighted sophistry.
The success of a group can create a platform and garner an audience for an individual member to have solo success, but it is almost never a 2-way street.
And the logic falls apart under scrutiny. If APT being the hit of the year raises BLACKPINK, then what about all the times Lisa's songs couldn't chart AT ALL in Korea? Does that mean BLACKPINK were generational flops then? Jisoo's latest song could barely get out of the basement of the MelOn charts. Does that get attributed to BLACKPINK too?
Or should I use Twice as an example? When Nayeon had a mega hit song in Pop in 2022, while Twice the group couldn't break into the top 50, and haven't been in the top 100 since then?
I think I've made my point.
So what does make a top girl group? Well, it's not blind allegiance, loyalty or tribalism; it's results; relevance.
But you have to do a specific something to get those.
Release music.
If a girl group that hasn't released a new song since the summer of 2022 gets to keep their crown in 2025, despite having vastly inferior numbers to the actual top girl group during that same time frame, then something is wrong.
So, I doth protest BLACKPINK's unwarranted and expired adulation as the top girl group. That time is gone. If they release new music this year, there are several benchmarks they need to clear to prove themselves.
They need to at least dominate as much as 2024 aespa. If they can do that, then they have credibility. Credibility to see if they can at least dominate as 2023 IVE. If they can do that, then they can truly shut me up if they can dominate at least as much as 2023 NewJeans.
There are LEVELS to this.
But I think I'm on the right side of history. As always.
Welcome back, me.
