{"id":322250,"date":"2026-02-28T18:45:07","date_gmt":"2026-02-28T18:45:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/322250\/"},"modified":"2026-02-28T18:45:07","modified_gmt":"2026-02-28T18:45:07","slug":"blackpink-deadline-mini-album-review-champion-jump-and-more","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/322250\/","title":{"rendered":"Blackpink ‘Deadline’ Mini-Album Review: ‘Champion,’ ‘Jump,’ and More"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tThe women of Blackpink<\/a> are feeling themselves hard on Deadline, and it suits them. It\u2019s the K-pop<\/a> queens\u2019 first new music in [blows dust off the calendar] more than three years, since their career-capping 2022 album, the excellent Born Pink<\/a>. All four \u2014 Jennie<\/a>, Ros\u00e9<\/a>, Lisa<\/a>, and Jisoo<\/a> \u2014 have kept busy since then, getting serious about their solo careers. Ros\u00e9 dropped her personal statement Rosie<\/a>, with the smash \u201cApt.,\u201d with Bruno Mars<\/a>, which she just performed to kick off the Grammys<\/a> a few weeks ago. We\u2019ve also gotten Lisa\u2019s Alter Ego<\/a>, featuring \u201cRockstar\u201d (one of the best hits ever with this title) and \u201cNew Woman\u201d (ditto). Last year also saw Jennie\u2019s Ruby<\/a> and Jisoo\u2019s Amortage.<\/p>\n

\n\tBut let\u2019s face it \u2014 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 \u201cJump,\u201d<\/a> released six months ago, and four new songs, three of them great. The best news about Deadline is that it doesn\u2019t have a single woe-is-me sob ballad, a massive relief, since that\u2019s the last thing anyone needs from the group at this point. The Blackpink ladies are in the mood to stunt, always what they\u2019re best at, oozing glam charisma. Their individual solo successes have obviously fired up their diva attitude \u2014 not that they\u2019ve ever been needy in that department. On Deadline, Blackpink mix up the tough and the coquettish in their own unmistakable style.<\/p>\n

\n\tIt\u2019s a curiously titled comeback, considering it took nearly four years, and also considering it\u2019s named for their 2025 Deadline World Tour, which already ended in January. (It raises the question of what exactly the title means to them.) \u201cJump\u201d 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.<\/p>\n

\t\tEditor\u2019s picks<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cGo\u201d is a splashier, more aggressive party banger, produced by Cirkut and Teddy \u2014 surprisingly, the first song that all four members of Blackpink have co-written together, after a decade in the game. Even weirder, it\u2019s got a writing credit for Coldplay<\/a>\u2019s Chris Martin. It\u2019s a fast-paced jumble of hardstep drops and \u201cBlack! Pink!\u201d chants, while Lisa warns, \u201cNo slow jams\/Bumping through the speakers when I do my go-go dance!\u201d There\u2019s a bridge that\u2019s close (really close) to the one in \u201cApt.\u201d But there\u2019s also an unexpected Springsteen shout-out, when the beat slows down and Jennie sings, \u201cWhen your heart is broken, baby\/Darkness on the edge of toooown.\u201d It\u2019s a rousing moment where Born Pink meets Born to Run, from deep in the emotional badlands.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cMe and My\u201d 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 \u201cpretty privilege,\u201d in her \u201chottie season,\u201d and raps, \u201cYou know that\u2019s my girl when I call her bitch.\u201d Lisa buys out the bar and endorses some questionable NBA etiquette. (\u201cCourtside on the call, we can touch the ball\u201d \u2014 wow, maybe not?) Musically it\u2019s definitely same-old, but Jennie gets in one of the album\u2019s wittiest fashion lines, declaring, \u201cDaisy Dukes make me speak my mind.\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\tTrending Stories<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cChampion\u201d is the biggest musical change-up on Deadline \u2014 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 \u201cYeah Yeah Yeah\u201d to Ros\u00e9\u2019s Toni Basil \u201cMickey\u201d tribute on \u201cApt.\u201d But \u201cChampion\u201d 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 \u2014 it makes you wish they\u2019d 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.)<\/p>\n

\t\tRelated Content<\/p>\n

\n\tBlackpink have a long-running weakness for the acoustic-guitar ballads, always divisive for listeners, but they do it right this time with \u201cFxxxboy.\u201d It\u2019s a loose, frisky, all-attitude ode to torturing exes by having meaningless sex with them, but refusing to nurture them emotionally, because they\u2019ve burned you too many times and now it\u2019s their turn to suffer. \u201cKeep your expectations under the pavement,\u201d Jisoo warns. \u201cGuess karma\u2019s a bitch\/How\u2019s it feel? Now I\u2019m the fuckboy!\u201d It might evoke \u201cTally\u201d from Born Pink, another moment where they grind their eight stiletto heels into an ex\u2019s heart. (As Jennie sang on that one, \u201cI like to play dirty just like all of the fuckboys do.\u201d) But it\u2019s even meaner and wittier. \u201cI don\u2019t like you, I\u2019m just bored\u201d \u2014 damn, Jisoo, that\u2019s telling it straight. Blackpink have definitely taken a long road to evolve from \u201cLovesick Girls\u201d to a four-woman squad of self-proclaimed fuckboys. But Deadline leaves you ready for more.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The women of Blackpink are feeling themselves hard on Deadline, and it suits them. It\u2019s the K-pop queens\u2019…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":322251,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[8139,93,61,60,58349,52479,6521,8141,278,8140],"class_list":{"0":"post-322250","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-music","8":"tag-blackpink","9":"tag-entertainment","10":"tag-ie","11":"tag-ireland","12":"tag-jennie","13":"tag-jisoo","14":"tag-k-pop","15":"tag-lisa","16":"tag-music","17":"tag-rose"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/322250","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=322250"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/322250\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/322251"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=322250"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=322250"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=322250"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}