The women of Blackpink are feeling themselves hard on Deadline, and it suits them. It’s the K-pop queens’ first new music in [blows dust off the calendar] more than three years, since their career-capping 2022 album, the excellent Born Pink. All four — Jennie, Rosé, Lisa, and Jisoo — have kept busy since then, getting serious about their solo careers. Rosé dropped her personal statement Rosie, with the smash “Apt.,” with Bruno Mars, which she just performed to kick off the Grammys a few weeks ago. We’ve also gotten Lisa’s Alter Ego, featuring “Rockstar” (one of the best hits ever with this title) and “New Woman” (ditto). Last year also saw Jennie’s Ruby and Jisoo’s Amortage.
But let’s face it — the world has been fiending for more of the magic that Blackpink can only make when they put their four heads together and let it rip. Deadline is a modest 15-minute EP, featuring their 2025 single “Jump,” released six months ago, and four new songs, three of them great. The best news about Deadline is that it doesn’t have a single woe-is-me sob ballad, a massive relief, since that’s the last thing anyone needs from the group at this point. The Blackpink ladies are in the mood to stunt, always what they’re best at, oozing glam charisma. Their individual solo successes have obviously fired up their diva attitude — not that they’ve ever been needy in that department. On Deadline, Blackpink mix up the tough and the coquettish in their own unmistakable style.
It’s a curiously titled comeback, considering it took nearly four years, and also considering it’s named for their 2025 Deadline World Tour, which already ended in January. (It raises the question of what exactly the title means to them.) “Jump” kicks it off, a Top 40 hit from last July, a Diplo jam that mixes 2000s MTV-pop nostalgia with spaghetti-Western whistles, EDM breakdowns, and Eurocheese horn blurts, plus a salute to their girl-power godmamas in the Spice Girls.
“Go” is a splashier, more aggressive party banger, produced by Cirkut and Teddy — surprisingly, the first song that all four members of Blackpink have co-written together, after a decade in the game. Even weirder, it’s got a writing credit for Coldplay’s Chris Martin. It’s a fast-paced jumble of hardstep drops and “Black! Pink!” chants, while Lisa warns, “No slow jams/Bumping through the speakers when I do my go-go dance!” There’s a bridge that’s close (really close) to the one in “Apt.” But there’s also an unexpected Springsteen shout-out, when the beat slows down and Jennie sings, “When your heart is broken, baby/Darkness on the edge of toooown.” It’s a rousing moment where Born Pink meets Born to Run, from deep in the emotional badlands.
“Me and My” is one of their trap tributes, letting suckers know that you better watch out and hide your man when Blackpink roll up to the club. Jennie boasts about “pretty privilege,” in her “hottie season,” and raps, “You know that’s my girl when I call her bitch.” Lisa buys out the bar and endorses some questionable NBA etiquette. (“Courtside on the call, we can touch the ball” — wow, maybe not?) Musically it’s definitely same-old, but Jennie gets in one of the album’s wittiest fashion lines, declaring, “Daisy Dukes make me speak my mind.”
“Champion” is the biggest musical change-up on Deadline — and the strongest tune by a mile. They take a ride into Eighties new wave synth-pop, a frequent sweet spot for them, from the Blondie moves of “Yeah Yeah Yeah” to Rosé’s Toni Basil “Mickey” tribute on “Apt.” But “Champion” is a trip into big-hair goth-club darkwave ambience, rocking with heavily flanged guitar that comes straight from the Cure circa Seventeen Seconds or Siouxsie and the Banshees circa Juju, enough to hold you spellbound. For these four imaginary girls, this kind of slithery dance sound perfectly flatters their dynamic voices — it makes you wish they’d go for a whole album in new wave mode. (If they ever feel like trying a whole album again, that is. Hell, they could even do a full-on duet with the Cure, since Robert Smith takes deadlines as seriously as they do.)
Blackpink have a long-running weakness for the acoustic-guitar ballads, always divisive for listeners, but they do it right this time with “Fxxxboy.” It’s a loose, frisky, all-attitude ode to torturing exes by having meaningless sex with them, but refusing to nurture them emotionally, because they’ve burned you too many times and now it’s their turn to suffer. “Keep your expectations under the pavement,” Jisoo warns. “Guess karma’s a bitch/How’s it feel? Now I’m the fuckboy!” It might evoke “Tally” from Born Pink, another moment where they grind their eight stiletto heels into an ex’s heart. (As Jennie sang on that one, “I like to play dirty just like all of the fuckboys do.”) But it’s even meaner and wittier. “I don’t like you, I’m just bored” — damn, Jisoo, that’s telling it straight. Blackpink have definitely taken a long road to evolve from “Lovesick Girls” to a four-woman squad of self-proclaimed fuckboys. But Deadline leaves you ready for more.
