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    ‘The Interview’: K-Pop Trained Rosé to Be ‘a Perfect Girl.’ Now She’s Trying to Be Herself.

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    South Korean pop, known as K-pop, is not just a type of music — it’s a culture, where bold style, perfectly choreographed dance moves and ebullient earworms that draw from pop, hip-hop and traditional Korean music attract a huge and particularly devoted global fan base. The genre’s stars, known as idols, are trained, often for years, by entertainment companies that then place the most promising trainees in groups, write and produce their music and obsessively manage their public images. It’s a system that works for the idols who make it big, but it has also drawn criticism for its grueling methods, which some call exploitative.One of the biggest stars to come out of that system is Rosé. Born Roseanne Park, she trained for four years with one of K-pop’s largest agencies, YG Entertainment, eventually breaking through as part of the girl group Blackpink. Now at age 27, she is striking out on her own with her first full-length solo album, “Rosie,” which comes out on Dec. 6 from Atlantic Records. (The album’s first single, “APT.” a collaboration with Bruno Mars, is a true bop and has made history as the first track by a female K-pop artist to break into the Top 10 on the Billboard Hot 100.) She is still a member of Blackpink, and the group re-signed with YG in 2023. But after years of singing other people’s songs and performing as Rosé, which she described to me as “a character that I really worked hard on as a trainee,” writing her own songs for this solo album has made her think about where she came from and who she is, separate from the system that turned her into a global phenomenon.Listen to the Conversation With RoséThe Blackpink star talks about striking out on her own, away from the system that turned her into a global phenomenon.Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | YouTube | Amazon | iHeart | NYT Audio AppYou’re about to release your first full-length solo album. Can you tell me what you’re feeling? Like I’ve been waiting to release this album for my whole life. I grew up listening to a lot of female artists. I used to relate to them, and they used to really get me through a lot of tough times. And so I would always dream of one day having an album myself. But I never really thought it would be realistic. I remember last year when I first began the whole process of it, I doubted myself a lot.It probably would be surprising to anyone who would look at Rosé, with all your success, with the enormous fan base that you have, to know that you doubted yourself so much. I don’t think I ever learned or trained myself to be vulnerable and open and honest. So that was the part I feared, because it was the opposite of what I was trained to do.You were born in New Zealand to South Korean immigrant parents and then you moved to Australia when you were 8. In 2012, when you were 15, you auditioned for a slot in YG Entertainment’s trainee program, which is basically a boarding school for becoming a K-pop star. It was your dad’s idea, right? Yes. More

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      9 Songs That Will Make You Say ‘Yeah!’

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      Usher is headlining the Super Bowl halftime show, inspiring a playlist of fantastic “yeah” tracks.Usher said “Yeah!” to the Super Bowl halftime show.Scott Roth/Invision, via Associated PressDear listeners,On Sunday, the N.F.L., Roc Nation and Apple Music announced that Usher will headline the 2024 Super Bowl halftime show. Only one reaction will suffice: “Yeah!”Such was the refrain heard everywhere in 2004, when the singer’s enthusiastically titled club banger “Yeah!” topped the Billboard Hot 100 for a whopping 12 weeks (only to be dethroned by “Burn,” the next single from his blockbuster album “Confessions”). Slick, strobe-lit and infectious, the smash featured a dexterous guest verse from Ludacris and production and assorted yeah!s and OK!s from Lil Jon. “Yeah!” remains irresistible — and among the most successful homages to one of pop music’s trustiest syllables.The word “yeah” — or, even more emphatically, “yeah!” — is so entwined with the history of modern pop that when the critic Bob Stanley published a 2014 book charting “the story of pop music from Bill Haley to Beyoncé,” he titled it “Yeah! Yeah! Yeah!” Stanley was probably referencing the specific yeah!s that punctuate the iconic chorus of the Beatles’ “She Loves You,” but the phrase also captures something quintessential about the exuberance of popular music.“Yeah” is slangier, more irreverent and often more musical than “yes,” and it bypasses that pesky hissing sound, for one thing. “Yeah” is also younger than its stuffier counterpart “yea” (as in the opposite of “nay”); its earliest citation in the Oxford English Dictionary is from 1905 — not too long before the popularization of recorded music, incidentally. “Yeah” is both question (“yeah?”) and answer (“yeah!”). “Yeah!” can be used in a song as a vehicle for both percussion and melody, an easy call for audience participation or an ecstatic place holder for those moments when more complex language just won’t suffice.Am I suggesting that this glorious word is worthy of its own playlist? Oh, yeah!With Usher, Lil Jon and Ludacris as my inspiration (and with all due respect to the Yeah Yeah Yeahs), I have chosen to limit today’s playlist to songs with “yeah” in the title, and specifically songs that revolve in some way around that particular lyric. This still left me with an eclectic collection to pull from, including songs from Daft Punk, Blackpink, LCD Soundsystem and the Pogues.Does this playlist also include a certain zany theme song from a certain 1980s teen comedy about playing hooky and hanging out with Connor from “Succession”? I think you know the word I’d use to answer that question.Listen along on Spotify while you read.1. Usher featuring Lil Jon and Ludacris: “Yeah!”What van Gogh is to sunflowers, Lil Jon is to yeah!s. I cannot imagine — and do not even want to imagine — this song if he had not produced it and blessed it with his gravelly, prodigious exclamations. (Listen on YouTube)2. Daft Punk: “Oh Yeah”Perhaps the greatest musical qualifier of “yeah”: “Oh.” Gently ups the ante but doesn’t take too much attention from our prized word. (That attention-seeking “ooooh” is another story.) Daft Punk certainly knows how to spin that titular refrain into mind-numbing bliss on this hypnotic, bassy track from the duo’s 1997 debut, “Homework.” (Listen on YouTube)3. The Pogues: “Yeah, Yeah, Yeah, Yeah, Yeah”Five yeahs in a song title? These guys mean business. This 1989 single finds the English rockers the Pogues at their most jubilant, leading the way toward a fist-pumping, shout-along chorus. It also features a midsong saxophone solo, which is basically the nonverbal sonic equivalent of “yeah!” (Listen on YouTube)4. Pavement: “Baby Yeah (Live)”The phrase “baby, yeaaaaahhhhh” comes to hold an almost talismanic power in this Pavement B-side (a personal favorite), released only as a live cut on the deluxe reissue of the band’s 1992 debut album, “Slanted and Enchanted.” (Listen on YouTube)5. The Magnetic Fields: “Yeah! Oh, Yeah!”A (very) darkly funny duet between the Magnetic Fields’ Stephin Merritt and Claudia Gonson that relies upon the tension created by their contrasting vocal styles, “Yeah! Oh Yeah!” appeared on the group’s 1999 epic, “69 Love Songs.” (Listen on YouTube)6. Yolanda Adams: “Yeah”“Yeah” becomes a spiritual affirmation on this uplifting song from the gospel singer Yolanda Adams’s 1999 album, “Mountain High … Valley Low.” (Listen on YouTube)7. Blackpink: “Yeah Yeah Yeah”“Yeah” also transcends language barriers, as the K-pop girl group Blackpink remind us on this track from the 2022 album “Born Pink.” Most of the lyrics are sung in Korean, but the quartet deliver that catchy chorus in the universal language of “yeah.” (Listen on YouTube)8. Yello: “Oh Yeah”An early exploration of pitch-shifted vocals, the Swiss electronic group Yello’s absurdist “Oh Yeah” was used heavily, and memorably, in the 1986 comedy “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.” Yello’s Boris Blank once recalled that the group’s vocalist Dieter Meier initially came up with more lyrics, but Blank told him that would make the song “too complicated.” Said Blank, “I had the idea of just this guy, a fat little monster sits there very relaxed and says, ‘Oh yeah, oh yeah.’” Sure! (Listen on YouTube)9. LCD Soundsystem: “Yeah (Crass Version)”Our grand finale is a nine-minute extravaganza of yeah (extravaganz-yeah?) from LCD Soundsystem. By the end of this mesmerizing 2004 single, on which James Murphy and company chant the titular word ad infinitum, “yeah” has transcended language, and maybe even music itself, to become a state of mind. (Listen on YouTube)Yeah, yeah,LindsayThe Amplifier PlaylistListen on Spotify. We update this playlist with each new newsletter.“9 Songs That Will Make You Say ‘Yeah!’” track listTrack 1: Usher featuring Lil Jon and Ludacris, “Yeah!”Track 2: Daft Punk, “Oh Yeah”Track 3: The Pogues, “Yeah, Yeah, Yeah, Yeah, Yeah”Track 4: Pavement, “Baby Yeah (Live)”Track 5: The Magnetic Fields, “Yeah! Oh, Yeah!”Track 6: Yolanda Adams, “Yeah”Track 7: Blackpink, “Yeah Yeah Yeah”Track 8: Yello, “Oh Yeah”Track 9: LCD Soundsystem, “Yeah (Crass Version)”Bonus Tracks“Baby yeah: a seductive and sentimental call for human connection.” I thought I was alone in my obsession with that live recording of Pavement’s “Baby Yeah” until I read this beautiful, heart-wrenching n+1 essay by Anthony Veasna So.And, on a much lighter note: Watch the “CSI: Miami” star David Caruso, compelled by the power of Roger Daltrey’s “Yeah!” to deliver an endless string of mic-dropping one-liners. This video has 7.5 million views, and I believe that over the past decade or so I have been responsible for at least two million of them. More

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      For Some, Blackpink’s Jennie Is the Only Reason to Watch ”The Idol”

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      Fans of the K-pop group are tuning in to the new HBO series to marvel at the global pop star in her acting debut.Before airing on HBO, the drama “The Idol” dominated headlines and social media for its controversies: At the Cannes Film Festival, where the first two episodes premiered, the series was widely panned for its graphic sexual content; it was rewritten and reshot after Sam Levinson, the creator of the series “Euphoria,” replaced Amy Seimetz as its director; and in March, Rolling Stone published an article detailing a troubled production.But after its first episode was released on Sunday, a pop songstress took center stage. Not the main character Jocelyn, the show’s aspiring idol played by Lily-Rose Depp, but Dyanne, one of Jocelyn’s backup dancers portrayed by Jennie Kim, better known as Jennie of the K-pop girl group Blackpink.Blackpink — which consists of Jennie, Jisoo, Lisa and Rosé — has become one of the most globally recognized K-pop acts in recent years. Though Jennie isn’t the only member of the group to try her hand at acting, she may have its most high-profile role.On the internet, clips abound praising Jennie in her acting debut. In one widely circulated scene, Dyanne, eyes half-lidded, lips parted and hair perfectly tousled, shows Jocelyn how to do the choreography for her new single.The K-pop idol — clad in a loose, slightly ripped midriff, a black sports bra and high-waisted booty shorts — struts, poses, grinds, pops, locks and drops. Later, Jocelyn can be seen watching and wiping her tears over her failure to embody Dyanne’s indomitable stage presence.That star quality wasn’t lost on fans of the singer and viewers of the show either.“Jennie’s acting was very good for what her character was,” said Greta Dobson, a 27-year-old student in Brooklyn who considers herself a “blink,” what Blackpink fans affectionately call themselves. “It seems like it almost felt natural for her since she always has to do this for dance rehearsals. It must have been so meta for her.”“Jennie’s acting was very good for what her character was,” said Greta Dobson, a student in Brooklyn who considers herself a “blink,” what Blackpink fans affectionately call themselves.Eddy Chen/HBOSearch “The Idol” on TikTok or Twitter, and the number of posts critiquing the show is likely to match those commending Jennie’s performance.Within hours after the series premiere was released, a TikTok account (@d4jenn) posted seven “fancam” videos of nearly all the scenes where Jennie was featured in the show’s pilot. (Each clip has garnered thousands of views.)Anisa, 18, of Seattle, who runs the account and declined to give her last name, was one of many viewers who tuned into “The Idol” to watch her favorite K-pop star. She said had it not been for Jennie, she never would have watched the show.“I would completely stop watching it,” she said. “And end my subscription with HBO Max.”Though fans like Anisa were proud of Jennie’s acting debut, many hope the show’s first season, which consists of six episodes, will provide her with more screen time. “The show producers could’ve done a little more, even if she was a side character,” Ko Im, 37, a managing producer in Seattle, said in a message on Twitter. “They barely gave her lines she could really own.”She added, “We need to see that main character energy she already has.”Ms. Dobson, however, already speculates that Jennie may play a bigger role in the series.“Are they going to utilize Jennie’s dancing and singing background in the show? Is she going to take Jocelyn’s role?” she said. “I guess we’ll just have to watch to find out.” More

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      Blackpink, Aespa, NewJeans: The Evolution of K-Pop Girl Groups

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      Subscribe to Popcast!Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Stitcher | Amazon MusicOver the past few years, Blackpink has emerged as a worldwide force — hit singles, huge tours, influence in the fashion world — becoming perhaps the first K-pop girl group to reap the full benefits of the genre’s globalization. Standing on the shoulders of earlier innovators like Girls’ Generation and 2NE1, it has become a pop standard-bearer all around the world.It also has been joined in recent years by a slew of other girl groups with growing profiles and unique personalities: Itzy, Aespa, Ive, and the most recent microgeneration, NewJeans and Le Sserafim.On this week’s Popcast, a conversation about the different paths girl groups have had to traverse compared to their male peers, the manner in which they blend music and storytelling and how the worldwide spread of K-pop has amplified opportunities for them.Guest:Tamar Herman, who writes about K-pop for Billboard, Forbes and othersConnect With Popcast. Become a part of the Popcast community: Join the show’s Facebook group and Discord channel. We want to hear from you! Tune in, and tell us what you think at popcast@nytimes.com. Follow our host, Jon Caramanica, on Twitter: @joncaramanica. More

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      K-pop Queens Blackpink Hit No. 1 With CDs and ‘Signed’ Digital Albums

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      The girl group tops the Billboard 200 for the first time with “Born Pink,” which had 102,000 equivalent sales — including 64,000 on CD.It may be a streaming world, but getting to No. 1 on the Billboard album chart these days often comes down to selling a lot of vinyl LPs or even those semi-passé silver data platters known as CDs.Back in April, Tyler, the Creator catapulted 119 spots to the top when his album “Call Me if You Get Lost” came out on vinyl nearly a year after its initial release. The following month, Harry Styles’s “Harry’s House” had solid streaming numbers but relied on vinyl to nab the year’s biggest opening (still). And in June, the K-pop kings BTS landed at No. 1 with mediocre streams but big CD sales of a compilation album, “Proof.”This week, another K-pop group, the four-woman Blackpink, rockets to the top with physical sales.“Born Pink,” the quartet’s second full-length studio album, becomes its first No. 1 on the Billboard 200 chart with the equivalent of 102,000 sales in the United States, according to the tracking service Luminate. That total includes 37 million streams — a modest sum, representing only about a quarter of the group’s composite sales number for the week. The rest is attributed to old-fashioned purchases of “Born Pink” as a compete unit, including 64,000 made for the 17 different configurations of the album on CD.As Billboard noted, many of these CD editions came in collectible packages — with alternative covers, autographs and other goodies like postcards and stickers — that were initially priced as high as $50, but were discounted over the course of last week. Blackpink also sold a “signed digital album” through its website for $4.99, and marked its standard downloadable album down to $3.99.Those sales helped push “Born Pink” past Bad Bunny’s “Un Verano Sin Ti,” the streaming behemoth that has occupied the top slot on and off for 11 weeks. In its 20th week on the chart, “Un Verano” falls to No. 2 with the equivalent of 93,000 sales, mostly from streams.Another K-pop group, NCT 127, opens at No. 3 this week with “2 Baddies”; most of its 58,500 equivalent sales were for CDs, with the album’s 12 tracks garnering fewer than four million streams. By comparison, the 23-track “Verano” has been averaging 130 million to 140 million clicks a week for the last couple of months.Morgan Wallen’s “Dangerous: The Double Album” is in fourth place, notching its 88th time in the Top 10 since early 2021. Since the Billboard 200 began in 1956, only five other titles have appeared more times in the chart’s Top 10. All of them were movie soundtracks or Broadway cast recordings from 1965 or before, like “South Pacific,” with 90 weeks charting that high, and “My Fair Lady,” with 173.Also this week, the Weeknd’s hits collection “The Highlights” is No. 5. More

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      Blackpink and the Limits of K-Pop Maximalism

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      The genre’s more-is-more moment might be coming to an end, and younger acts like Aespa and NewJeans point a way forward.As K-pop was broadening its global ambitions in the late 2000s and early 2010s, it was also expanding its appetite, becoming the hungriest pop music scene on the planet. It feasted especially on American pop, hip-hop, R&B and dance music, alchemizing it all into a maximalist fantasia, creating an aesthetic of absurdist excess that became, for a while, that world’s most progressive and most popular approach.Acts like the YG Entertainment girl group 2NE1 thrived in that environment (along with its boy band compatriots BigBang), and helped set the stage for the genre’s worldwide takeover. Here was music — largely masterminded by the producer Teddy Park — that was curious, chaotic and cocksure. Other pop scenes seemed to dematerialize in its wake.Blackpink, the next-generation YG girl group that debuted in 2016, seemed poised to carry that torch with the early success of singles like “Whistle,” “Ddu-Du Ddu-Du” and “How You Like That.” But by the time of its first full-length release, “The Album,” in 2020, the group’s music had become somehow more bombastic and more brittle than that of its predecessors, and the blueprint was showing its seams.“Born Pink,” the second full-length Blackpink album, is in theory an opportunity to innovate, both for the group and for the genre itself. And it finds Blackpink — Jennie, Jisoo, Lisa, Rosé — at a crossroads: whether to continue its high-energy sonic collision; whether to fully embrace the English-language market; whether to dismantle its own house.The first single, “Pink Venom,” is classic Blackpink — which is to say, pandemonium stitched so tight it achieves its own internal logic, both caffeinated and fatiguing all at once. Jisoo’s singing is as rich and austere as ever, and Jennie’s rapping is flexible and dotted with clever little filigrees.“Pink Venom” plays like a theme song, more a jingle for the group than a pure musical statement. And it is something of a relief that the album doesn’t over-index on this approach, which has become a genre default.“Born Pink” is occasionally galvanic, and occasionally iterative. When the group does push into new territory — or more accurately, unshackles itself from familiar ground — it doesn’t leave much of an impact. “The Happiest Girl” is a brittle melodrama of a piano ballad, and “Yeah Yeah Yeah” is a cheerful ’80s pop simulacrum that also nods to the Weeknd and Daft Punk.Four of the songs are wholly in English, including “Hard to Love,” performed in full by Rosé (Blackpink is far more effective in this idiom than, say, BTS). And there’s cursing as well — not new for the group, but still a pointed gesture.Densely stacked production remains central to the group’s mission and positioning, especially on the songs Park worked on. And throughout the album, there is intense sonic layering, with G-funk swirls and classical music string samples and references that are so buried that they might not even be there at all. “Still Tippin’” on “Typa Girl”? “Mighty D-Block (2 Guns Up)” on “Pink Venom”? “My Baby Takes the Morning Train” on “Yeah Yeah Yeah”? Who can say?The smorgasbord of Blackpink, or 2NE1 before it, was at least in part a reaction to an earlier wave of girl groups that helped establish K-pop’s ambitions and scale, but whose dalliances with Western influences were more glancing.Last month, one of the crucial acts of that era, Girls’ Generation, released a new album, “Forever 1,” 15 years after its debut. More than a decade ago, Girls’ Generation was among the first, if not the first, K-pop acts to release an album on an American major label. But its ambitions aren’t as relentless as Blackpink’s.“Forever 1” is a refreshing throwback to a less agitated moment in the genre. The production is largely mellifluous and bright, and the singing is sweet and uncomplicated. It is redolent of an era in which K-pop was still establishing its own grammar, before it voraciously consumed everyone else’s. There are light flickers of hip-hop and new jack swing, as on “Seventeen” and “You Better Run.”But in the main, this is classicist music — the sheer brightness of the piano on “Closer,” the light sashay on “Summer Night.” It posits the music not as a world killer, but as a respite and a dream.As compelling as “Forever 1” is, it doesn’t feel of the moment, more like a rediscovered memento. That’s especially clear when it’s contextualized not simply alongside Blackpink, but also the intriguing wave of girl groups that has arrived in that group’s wake, identifying the contours of its success and building upon them.Of those acts, Aespa has been the most vital in recent years, and its recent EP, “Girls,” is one of the year’s most impressive K-pop releases precisely because of its dual mastery of the intricate and the elegant. That’s captured in its closing run: “Black Mamba,” a warrior stomp that channels flamboyant early 2000s pop, the throwback up-tempo ballad “Forever,” then “Dreams Come True,” which feels like a nod to K-pop’s earliest engagements with R&B.By contrast, Itzy stands out for its resolute quirk. Its recent “Checkmate” EP continues the group’s boisterous mayhem, with vocals that are intensely alert and jubilant, and production that seems to be bubbling in real time. “365” recalls industrial or avant-garde club music, and “Racer” sounds like Disney theme park music run through a glitter factory.Finally, and perhaps most promisingly, there’s NewJeans, which has just released a stellar self-titled debut EP that’s utterly cool and poised. The production is sensuous and restrained, and the singing is both lustrous and unhurried.On the surface, NewJeans harks back to an earlier, pre-2NE1, unhectic moment in K-pop. But its submerged references are deeply modern, especially the detour into New Jersey club music on “Cookie.” NewJeans deploys its contemporary reference points in service of a throwback idea, though. Or perhaps more pointedly, it’s learned all of the lessons the world has to offer, and is bringing them back home. More

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      Blackpink’s Genre-Clashing Return, and 8 More New Songs

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      Hear tracks by Blake Shelton, Chloe Moriondo and Madonna.Every Friday, pop critics for The New York Times weigh in on the week’s most notable new songs and videos. Just want the music? Listen to the Playlist on Spotify here (or find our profile: nytimes). Like what you hear? Let us know at theplaylist@nytimes.com and sign up for our Louder newsletter, a once-a-week blast of our pop music coverage.Blackpink, ‘Pink Venom’Over the four years leading to its 2020 debut album, Blackpink — Jennie, Jisoo, Lisa, Rosé — became one of K-pop’s biggest global success stories: musically modern, engaged with pop from around the world, versatile. The first single from the group’s upcoming second album, “Born Pink” (due next month) has the comfort of anarchy.  Every four bars, a new approach enters — familiar K-pop elasticity, loose Middle Eastern themes, gaudy rock, West Coast rap, and more. It exists out where maximalism moves past philosophy to aesthetic. JON CARAMANICAMadonna, ‘Get Together’ (Jacques Lu Cont Vocal Edit)The remixes on Madonna’s “Finally Enough Love: 50 Number Ones,” out Friday, throb, zigzag and shimmer, highlighting the pop superstar’s deep connection to the dance floor — starting with her 1983 single “Holiday” and wrapping with “I Don’t Search I Find,” the glorious house standout on her most recent studio album, “Madame X” (its lyrics give the collection its name). As a full body of work, Madonna’s 2005 LP “Confessions on a Dance Floor” represents her most potent love letter to the form, and the Jacques Lu Cont Vocal Edit remix of its “Get Together,” available digitally for the first time, is a refreshing break from the (still great!) 4 a.m.-at-the-club pound that marks most of the set. Replacing its oozing synths with a snaking guitar riff, the track rides nearly like an indie-rock song that eventually glitches out and finds a way home again. CARYN GANZ⣎⡇ꉺლ༽இ•̛)ྀ◞ ༎ຶ ༽ৣৢ؞ৢ؞ؖ ꉺლ), ‘[] vȯ)) ̷̨ʅ (۝ʅ(Ɵʅ():::()̵̳̗̊(Ɵʅ()vȯ)) ̷̨ʅ)’This garble of characters is an alias of the innovative electronic music producer Kieran Hebden (also known as Four Tet). His fleet and cheeky new song is indebted to sensual garage and boisterous house. CARAMANICAZedd, Maren Morris and Beauz ‘Made You Say’Like Zedd and Maren Morris’s previous collaboration, the unavoidable pop smash “The Middle,” “Make You Say” is the expertly engineered product of a whole cadre of collaborators: This time around, that includes co-writing credits from the sibling D.J. duo Beauz and the thirst trap aficionado Charlie Puth. All throughout, Morris hopscotches nimbly across Zedd’s syncopated arrangement and sing-songy melody, but the song is at its best when it really lets her rip, contrasting the grainy texture of her voice with the sleek surfaces of Zedd’s production. “You got your arms around her when you sleep,” she belts with alluring sass, “but I’m the one you dream about.” LINDSAY ZOLADZIsabella Lovestory, ‘Sexo Amor Dinero’An industrial post-reggaeton thumper about the sweat at the intersection of money and sex. CARAMANICAChloe Moriondo, ‘Fruity’The ever-evolving Chloe Moriondo — a young musician who basically came of age on her YouTube channel — makes an exhilarating pivot to hyperpop on “Fruity,” the first single from her forthcoming album, “Suckerpunch.” The song begins with Moriondo singing in her signature, sweetly muttered register atop some bright, pulsating synths, but as it builds in intensity her vocals become increasingly urgent and start to warp like melting plastic. “So close I can almost taste,” she sings of a “fresh and fruity” crush who she compares to a whole litany of sugary treats, building toward a chorus that’s deliciously hysterical and relentlessly catchy. ZOLADZPony, ‘Peach’It turns out that Pony, the tuneful grunge-pop band from Toronto, is quite aptly named: Earlier this year, the vocalist and guitarist Sam Bielanski announced a new gig: voicing a character in a “My Little Pony” cartoon. The charismatic pull of Bielanski’s vocals are on full display on the group’s new, ’90s-alt-rock-nodding single “Peach,” a bittersweet tale of love bombing and, eventually, cold clarity. “Picturing the salt of the beach,” Bielanski sings on the chorus, as a kind of personal reminder, “’Cause I don’t wanna drown in the taste of this peach.” ZOLADZBlake Shelton, ‘No Body’A sashaying splash of early ’90s power-country revivalism from Blake Shelton, a superstar who’s traversed many styles with ease in his career, but never quite owned one. Here he’s reviving a once-rowdy sound and nodding to Brooks & Dunn (“Don’t wanna scoot the boots with nobody”) — a convincing mimic, as ever. CARAMANICANick Hakim, ‘Happen’“Happen,” from the Brooklyn-based indie musician Nick Hakim, is a hypnotic, woozily romantic ballad that nonetheless contains flashes of melancholic darkness: The muted, sludgy acoustic guitar conjures Elliott Smith, while the close-miked, near-whispered vocals are faintly reminiscent of the softer side of the Deftones. That overcast sound, though, balances out the openhearted nature of Hakim’s lyrics, which are almost devotional in their description of a transformative love. “The sweetest angel fell into my world,” he sings. “She gives me reason, was lost for a damn long time.” ZOLADZ More

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      K-Pop Star Lisa of Blackpink Tests Positive for Covid

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      Lalisa Manoban, a global megastar who performs as Lisa in the K-pop group Blackpink, tested positive for the coronavirus on Wednesday, her production company announced.The other members of Blackpink, a four-woman group whose fame and commercial success have traveled far beyond South Korea, were not listed as close contacts but were awaiting results of a PCR test, the production company, YG Entertainment, said in a statement sent to Korean news organizations.As of Wednesday morning, Ms. Manoban, 24, had not yet addressed her nearly 68 million Instagram followers on the positive test.A Thai-born singer and rapper, Ms. Manoban is among the most acclaimed faces of K-pop, with legions of fans. She is part of K-pop’s most globally successful all-female group; five of Blackpink’s videos have been watched more than 1 billion times on YouTube, including 1.7 billion views for “DDU-DU DDU-DU.”Ms. Manoban’s debut solo album, “Lalisa,” was released on Sept. 10; her first single, “LALISA,” set a YouTube record for the most-viewed music video by a solo artist in 24 hours with 73.6 million views, dethroning Taylor Swift’s “ME!” in 2019. More

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      China's Weibo Suspends BTS, Blackpink and EXO Fan Accounts

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      Weibo accused one account devoted to a BTS member of illegal fund-raising amid a crackdown on 22 pages.HONG KONG — One month before the 26th birthday of Park Ji-min, a member of the South Korean boy band BTS, his fans in China pooled money to plaster his photographs and a declaration of their “eternal love” on the exterior of an airplane.As pictures of the customized Jeju Air plane circulated widely in China last week, Weibo, a Chinese microblogging platform, took notice. It accused the fan account of “illegal fund-raising,” and on Sunday, it banned the page from posting on the site for 60 days.The First in the world—Customized Exclusive Airplane in cooperation with Jeju AirPeriod: 9.1-11.30Flight Number: HL8087Note: The route may be changed due to some special reasons, please download Flightradar24 to check the flight information. pic.twitter.com/vp6AMpqjgd— PARKJIMINBAR👑 (@JIMINBAR_CHINA) September 1, 2021
      Weibo did not stop there. Hours later, the social media platform said that it would also suspend 21 other K-pop fan accounts for a month, including those that worship other BTS members; the girl group Blackpink; and EXO, a band with Chinese members, after receiving complaints.It was not immediately clear what social media crimes the fan accounts for Blackpink and EXO were deemed to have committed, but the move by Weibo came amid the backdrop of a broader government crackdown on celebrity worship and online fan culture in China.Beijing has recently taken steps to rein in fan clubs amid growing concern that the quest for online attention and celebrity adulation is poisoning the minds of the country’s youth.In its statement, Weibo said that stricter oversight of the fan groups would “purify” the online atmosphere and fulfill the platform’s responsibilities to society. It said that it would remove related blog posts that violated regulations and stressed that it “firmly opposes such irrational celebrity-chasing behavior and will deal with it seriously.”Weibo repeatedly cited a National Radio and Television Administration notice issued on Thursday for the need to manage the “chaos of fan clubs.” In the notice, the government regulator said it would ban broadcasts of “vulgar internet celebrities” and feminine-looking men. It stressed the importance of rectifying the “unlawful and immoral behavior” of celebrities and of upholding an industrywide standard of “loving the party and loving the country” in artistic creations.Representatives for BTS, Blackpink and EXO could not immediately be reached for comment. K-pop fans denounced Weibo’s action, calling it unwarranted and overly harsh.Agnes He, a university student in the southeastern Jiangsu Province of China, said that she believed it could help rein in fan behavior that had gone too far. But she also fretted about whether she could still buy albums at a discounted price through group purchases organized by the fan accounts.“I am quite sensible when chasing stars,” Ms. He said in a phone interview on Monday, adding that she saw pop idols as positive and energizing influences. “It’s a personal freedom. Just because I like Korean pop idols doesn’t mean I’m not patriotic.”K-pop fans around the world are known for their organizational prowess, with many decking out billboards, giant LED screens and public transportation vehicles to show support ahead of an album release or a favorite band member’s birthday. Some have turned to political activism, and others took credit for helping to inflate expectations for a rally in Oklahoma for Donald J. Trump, then the American president, by reserving tickets they had no intentions of using.But the online armies of Korean pop music fans are running up against President Xi Jinping’s sweeping agenda to clean up aspects of the entertainment industry in China. The Cyberspace Administration of China banned the ranking of celebrities by popularity. A regulator also accused an actress, Zheng Shuang, of tax evasion, fined her more than $46 million and ordered broadcasters to stop showing content in which she had appeared.BTS ran afoul of Chinese patriotic sentiment last year, when its leader, Kim Nam-joon, who performs under the stage name RM (formerly Rap Monster), made a seemingly innocuous remark about the shared suffering of Americans and Koreans during a ceremony commemorating the Korean War.Chinese internet users erupted in anger, questioning why he had not also recognized the sacrifices of the Chinese soldiers who had fought on the side of North Korea. To pre-empt a nationalistic backlash, multinational brands scrubbed references of their collaborations with BTS on their Chinese websites and social media accounts.This week, Chinese internet users both celebrated and criticized the suspension of the K-pop fan accounts. Some saw it as a necessary balm against idol worship and excessive spending on celebrities, even going as far as to call BTS an “anti-China group” and Korean pop music a form of “cultural invasion.”Dew Ding, a 24-year-old filmmaker in Beijing, was among those who supported the banning of the BTS singer’s fan account, saying that fans were overly incentivized to spend money in order to maintain an imaginary relationship with their idol.“This crowdfunding is getting more and more crazy, so I don’t think is a good thing,” she said.But Allen Huang, a Taipei-based D.J. who often writes about K-pop, said he did not believe that the ban would be effective in stopping fan accounts. To evade censorship and suspensions, many were rushing to hide their fund-raising campaigns, he said, sometimes by merely removing the word “fan page” from their accounts.“Chinese people will find ways to continue to support, whether that’s through non-Weibo fan clubs, silent fund-raising or just a rebranding of the idea of fan funding,” he said.Li You More