Four years after their debut in the music scene, iconic K-pop girl group BLACKPINK finally have their first ever studio album.
BLACKPINK released today, Oct. 2, “The Album,” an eight-track masterpiece fronted by “Lovesick Girls” in which Jennie and Jisoo took part as songwriters together with David Guetta, Teddy, Danny Chung, LØREN, 24, Brian Lee, Leah Haywood and R.Tee.
Completing the album are “Bet You Wanna” that features 2019 Grammy winner Cardi B, “Pretty Savage,” “Crazy Over You,” “Love to Hate Me” and “You Never Know,” and the pre-released “How You Like That” and “Ice Cream (feat. Selena Gomez).”
Before the release of the album, Cardi B tweeted “And the song is amazing” and “Bardipink in your area” on Sept. 29.
The music video for “Lovesick Girls” has also been released on YouTube and many are looking forward to how this will fare in terms of the number of views.
According to YG Entertainment, “The Album” has racked up more than 1 million pre-orders worldwide as of Oct. 2 composed of 670,000 copies in South Korea and 340,000 copies in the US and Europe. Earlier, the album garnered 800,000 copies in pre-orders in just six days.
A total of 18,888 limited edition LPs were also sold out early. The final count for the album sales is expected to increase further when the physical album is released on Oct. 6.
Before the album was released, the hashtags #THEALBUM, #BLACKPINK and #LovesickGirls trended on Twitter.
“How You Like That” and “Ice Cream” are currently occupying No. 2 and 3 slots, respectively, on YouTube most viewed music videos in the first 24 hours of all time with 86.3 million and 79.08 million views.
Since its release on June 26, “How You Like That” has accumulated 558 million views on YouTube while “Ice Cream” has reached 302 million views as of writing since Aug. 28.
“How You Like That” won Song of Summer award at the 2020 MTV Video Music Awards (VMA) held last Aug. 30 (Aug. 31 in the Philippines).
BLACKPINK have reached a milestone when they became the second most subscribed artist in the world and the No. 1 most subscribed female artist on YouTube with 49.1 million subscribers, overtaking Marshmello, which has 48.8 million subscribers to date.
On Billboard Hot 100, “How You Like That” debuted at No. 33 last July and “Ice Cream” debuted at No. 13 last month and has spent four weeks on the chart so far.