Sign In to rate and review

CRITIC REVIEWS

80
AllMusic

Overflowing with confidence, Jisoo, Jennie, Rosé, and Lisa conquer each track on The Album with their vocal ability (both singing and rapping) and effortless charm, switching up styles to offer something for every type of fan.

80
The Guardian
The K-pop group unleash an intense 24-minute bombardment of killer hooks and snappy detailing – but it’s a shame the lyrical topics are so narrow.
80
The Telegraph

Blackpink offer a maximalist mashup of old ideas, reheated, retooled and regurgitated, with all the originality of a photocopy montage and all the emotion of a set of emojis. It is Britney Spearmint Bubblegum on steroids, a masterpiece of chewy pop banality, all sound bites and furry costumes, signifying nothing.

70
Rolling Stone

Simply titled The Album, the eight-song set is a slick, confident and wildly entertaining release from the biggest girl group in the world.

70
The Forty-Five
As debut albums go, ‘THE ALBUM’ is perfectly fine, with range, fire and fun packed within its eight tracks.
67
Consequence of Sound
Where the album can get tired in production, the girls themselves are always there to keep you entertained. They’re master performers, with the vocal quality and skill to back it up.
60
Slant Magazine
The album feels stuck looking back to tried and true trends in both K-pop and Western pop music.
60
The Needle Drop
BLACKPINK's debut studio album is a bit too spotty for its size.
60
The Young Folks

As a whole, the project accomplishes what seems to be BLACKPINK’s greatest goal; inspiring confidence, and injecting energy into the ears of their listeners, but it also falls flat in several spots.

48
Sputnikmusic

There is roughly an EP worth of songs here that bring something remotely interesting to the table, rather than simply rehashing past ideas and reproducing beats you’ve heard in 100 other tracks before.

MrMercury7
0

That was the longest 24 minutes of my life.

Jesus Christ, where do I even begin with this? Ugh, let's just get into it shall we?

1. The Lyrics - I don't know if it's unfair to critique KPop lyrics because I know there's going to be no real poetry in it but damn, this sounds like a middle school girl who listens to nothing but Ariana Grande wrote most of these lyrics. "Drivin though your puddles like splish, splash" - Love To Hate Me, I could show more examples but that's gonna take ... read more

marvelgaryen
81

I don't care about the hate, I saw these girls debut and I'm proud of them! This is a fun pop album, also the production is quite good, happy first album blinks!

nostalgia
20

Now that the bots are gone, I can finally talk about the album itself:

Wow, what an overblown and generic album Blackpinks debut turned out to be. I never really dug the group's "so confident that it almost becomes uncomfortably narcissistic" style but here it just proves to be even more unbearable and uninspired than on previous releases, with the features doing absolutely nothing to aid the quality of the album. The production also sounds like something I would have found stale in ... read more

Issa2009
15

I DONT CARE BUT ALL K-POP SOUNDS THE SAME, AND THAT SOUND IS OVERRATED TRASH‼️🗣️🔥‼️

khafaz
3

I tired of this

althea_xo
90

the best they've ever released!!!!

Purchasing THE ALBUM from Amazon helps support Album of the Year. Or consider a donation?
Become a Donor
Donor badge, no ads + more benefits.
Advertisement

Track List

1How You Like That
3:00
68
2Ice Cream
2:55
45
3Pretty Savage
3:19
62
4Bet You Wanna
2:39
feat. Cardi B
41
5Lovesick Girls
3:12
74
6Crazy Over You
2:41
54
7Love To Hate Me
2:49
58
8You Never Know
3:49
57
Total Length: 24 minutes

Year End Lists

#15/Dazed
#23/Idolator
#25/Billboard
#41/Uproxx
#75/Riff
Sign in to comment
3w
1mo
1y
1y
2y


Added on: July 27, 2020