BLACKPINK’s Lisa recently released her first full album “Alter Ego” along with the “FUTW” MV, marking a major step in her solo career. The album was prepared by Lisa and her team over the course of a year, featuring collaborations with 5 international stars—Future, Rosalía, Doja Cat, Raye, and Tyla. With “Alter Ego”, Lisa clearly demonstrates her ambition to break away from the K-pop label and aggressively target the U.S. market. However, the industry’s reaction to “Alter Ego” has not been as expected.
Most international music review sites have given “Alter Ego” modest scores. “The Guardian”, a long-established British magazine, rated the album only two stars, stating that Lisa lacked originality and personal messaging. Other outlets, such as “NME” and “Times”, also expressed disappointment in “Alter Ego”, saying Lisa failed to showcase artistic vision or a distinct identity, with critics noting that the featured artists overshadowed her in collaborative tracks. However, the most “brutal” critique came from famous music critic site Pitchfork.
On March 5, Pitchfork published a review along with a score for Lisa’s debut album. The site gave “Alter Ego” a score of 5.2, an underwhelming number. Previously, Rosé’s album “-R-” was also rated poorly by “Pitchfork”, receiving only 5.5. Known as the world’s most critical music publication, “Pitchfork” is never shy about delivering harsh assessments of newly released music, and Lisa was no exception.
In their newly-published review, columnist Joshua Minsoo Kim opened his review with a not-so-positive manner, writing, “LISA wants you to believe she’s multifaceted. The Thai singer and rapper’s debut solo album is called ‘Alter Ego’, and if one takes her at her word, these 13 songs are meant to live up to that title”, adding, “This marketing ploy also highlights her biggest challenge: LISA, who is part of the record-setting K-pop girl group BLACKPINK, needs to convince you that she has depth without her bandmates. ‘Alter Ego’ proves she doesn’t.”
According to the critic, LISA is at a point in her career where she’s “too big to fail commercially but also too big to succeed creatively”, and her role is BLACKPINK is just “to offer moments of snotty charm”, so when she has to carry a track solo, her songs become “tedious”.
Notably, Pitchfork also accused BLACKPINK of following BTS’ strategy, saying, “When BLACKPINK was gaining international acclaim, they followed the BTS model of crossover appeal: They collaborated with Western artists, sang more in English, and avoided the genre-blending that makes K-pop a fascinating game of connect-the-dots.”
Multiple tracks from Lisa’s album were harshly critiqued by Pitchfork, with “Born Again” dismissed as a generic disco track, “Dream” labeled as a shallow ballad, Lisa compared to a second-rate Cardi B on “Fxck Up the World”, and “Moonlit Floor” described as Lisa singing about “her lover’s tongue doing tricks.” Of course, there was some praise, but all in all, Pitchfork found Lisa to be “the most generic embodiment of a pop star” with her best songs relying on “tried-and-true formulas”.
After Pitchfork’s review went viral, Lisa’s fans were outraged by the harsh criticism directed at “Alter Ego”. At the same time, some also pointed out that the author of the review is a BLACKPINK anti, and had been spotted comparing the group to “garbage” in the past, so their comments bear little objective value.
Overall, although “Alter Ego” did not meet critics’ expectations, this album s merely the first “brick” in the foundation Lisa is trying to build for herself. Fans hope she will continue to experiment, find the right direction, and grow further in the future. In the end, to win over audiences and industry professionals, only the music itself will speak.
