BLACKPINK Part 2 — How Four Girls Conquered the World: The Rise
From the highest K-pop girl group chart position in history to headlining Coachella — the complete story of how BLACKPINK broke every barrier the music industry put in front of them.
In April 2019, BLACKPINK walked onto a stage at Coachella.
No Korean girl group had ever performed at the festival before. Jennie, Lisa, Jisoo, and Rosé became the first K-pop girl group in Coachella history — playing a high-profile Friday night set on the Sahara Stage, several tiers below that year’s headliners (Childish Gambino, Tame Impala, and Ariana Grande). It wasn’t the main stage and they weren’t headlining — that would come four years later, in 2023, when BLACKPINK returned as the festival’s first-ever Korean headliner. But in 2019, simply being there, as the first K-pop girl group in the festival’s history, was already historic.
It had taken them three years to get there. But the story of how they got there starts in 2016, with two songs that nobody expected to hit the way they did.
📌 This is Part 2 of a 3-part BLACKPINK series.
- Part 1 — Four Strangers, One Dream ← where it began
- Part 2 — How Four Girls Conquered the World ← you are here
- Part 3 — In Your Area — Everywhere
Phase 1: The Fast Start (2016–2017)
A Debut That Moved Immediately
Most K-pop groups need time to build momentum. BLACKPINK didn’t get the memo.
“Whistle” debuted at #1 on the Gaon Digital Chart. “Boombayah” debuted at #1 on the Billboard World Digital Song Sales chart, with “Whistle” entering at #2 — making BLACKPINK the fastest act ever to top that chart and the first K-pop girl group to occupy the top two positions on it simultaneously.
Thirteen days after debut, they won their first music show trophy. The fastest debut-to-win record for a Korean girl group at the time.
YG had waited seven years to launch a new girl group. BLACKPINK made that wait feel worth it in the first two weeks.
📍 Milestone: First Canadian Hot 100 Entry (November 2016)
With “Playing With Fire” from their second single album Square Two, BLACKPINK became the first K-pop girl group to chart on the Canadian Hot 100. A small signal — but an early indicator that their reach was going somewhere unusual.
The “Girl Crush” Identity
From the beginning, BLACKPINK’s concept was clear and consistent: confidence, power, beauty, and danger. Not cute. Not soft. Not the kind of girl group that waits around.
Songs like “Playing With Fire” and “As If It’s Your Last” reinforced a girl group identity that felt genuinely different. The choreography was aggressive and precise. The fashion was high. The energy said: we know exactly who we are.
BLINK — their fandom — was forming fast, particularly in Southeast Asia, where Lisa’s Thai background gave BLACKPINK a natural cultural bridge to a massive market that few K-pop groups had connected with so directly.
Phase 2: Breaking into the US (2018)
2018 was the year BLACKPINK stopped being a K-pop story and became a global music story.
📍 Milestone: “Ddu-Du Ddu-Du” — Billboard Hot 100 Entry (June 2018)
On June 15, 2018, BLACKPINK released their first Korean EP, Square Up, and it landed differently than anything before it.
Lead single “Ddu-Du Ddu-Du” debuted at #55 on the Billboard Hot 100 — the highest-charting song by a K-pop girl group in US chart history at the time. It also debuted at #40 on the Billboard 200 — the highest by an all-female Korean act. In just 10 days, the music video hit 100 million YouTube views — the fastest ever for a K-pop girl group.
The record wasn’t just a chart position. It was a signal: BLACKPINK had found an audience in America before American radio had found them.
📍 Milestone: Dua Lipa Collaboration (October 2018)
“Kiss and Make Up” — a collaboration with Dua Lipa — was released as a bonus track and became a commercial success worldwide. It was a high-profile pairing with a major Western pop star that helped introduce BLACKPINK to a broader international audience.
📍 Milestone: First Billion-View Music Video (2019)
“Ddu-Du Ddu-Du” became the first music video by a K-pop group to reach 1 billion YouTube views, hitting the milestone in November 2019. (PSY’s “Gangnam Style” had already passed a billion views years earlier as a solo act — BLACKPINK’s record was specifically for K-pop groups.)
BLACKPINK’s YouTube subscriber count was growing at a pace that defied industry logic, though at this point they had not yet become the most-subscribed music act overall — that milestone came later, in 2021.
Jennie’s Solo Debut (November 2018)
Before the group had even released their first full album, Jennie became the first BLACKPINK member to release solo music with “Solo” on November 12, 2018 — which topped the Billboard World Digital Song Sales chart and the Gaon Music Chart simultaneously.
In retrospect, Jennie’s solo debut foreshadowed a structure that would define the group’s later years: BLACKPINK as a group remained powerful, while each member also built out an individual career.
Phase 3: Coachella and the Global Breakthrough (2019)
📍 Milestone: First K-Pop Girl Group at Coachella (April 12, 2019)
April 12, 2019. The Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival. The Sahara Stage, Friday night.
BLACKPINK became the first K-pop girl group to perform at Coachella. That year’s headliners were Childish Gambino, Tame Impala, and Ariana Grande — BLACKPINK played several tiers below them on the bill, but the slot itself was still historic: no Korean girl group, and no K-pop group of any kind at that scale, had stood on a Coachella stage before.
The set was livestreamed on YouTube and covered extensively by international music press, who were watching to see how a Coachella crowd — many of them unfamiliar with K-pop — would respond. Four years later, in 2023, BLACKPINK would return to Coachella as its first-ever Korean headliner, closing on the festival’s main stage. But 2019 was the foothold.
📍 Milestone: “Kill This Love” — Breaking Their Own Record (April 2019)
Released just before Coachella, “Kill This Love” debuted at #41 on the Hot 100 — breaking the record they had set themselves with “Ddu-Du Ddu-Du.” The EP debuted at #24 on the Billboard 200 — again, the highest ever for an all-female Korean act.
The music video set the record for the biggest YouTube debut in history at the time: 56.7 million views in 24 hours.
BLACKPINK was now breaking their own records faster than anyone else could catch up.
📍 Milestone: First Female K-Pop Group RIAA Gold Certified (August 2019)
“Ddu-Du Ddu-Du” was certified gold by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) — making BLACKPINK the first female K-pop group to receive RIAA certification in the United States.
Gold certification requires 500,000 units. The certification was achieved largely through digital sales and on-demand streaming, despite comparatively limited US radio exposure for a Korean-language track.
Phase 4: The Pandemic Year That Proved Everything (2020)
📍 Milestone: “How You Like That” — Three Guinness Records in 24 Hours (June 2020)
On June 26, 2020, BLACKPINK released “How You Like That.”
The music video’s first-24-hour numbers (86.4 million views) earned a set of Guinness World Records, including:
- Most viewed YouTube video in 24 hours
- Most viewed music video on YouTube in 24 hours
- Most viewed music video on YouTube in 24 hours by a K-pop group
The livestreamed premiere itself, with 1.66 million peak concurrent viewers, separately set records for most concurrent viewers for a YouTube video premiere and for a music video premiere specifically.
These records had previously been held by BTS, and were later broken again by BTS’s “Dynamite” and “Butter” — but for a stretch in mid-2020, they belonged to BLACKPINK.
📍 Milestone: “Ice Cream” with Selena Gomez — Hot 100 Top 13 (August 2020)
The pre-release collaboration with Selena Gomez debuted at #13 on the Billboard Hot 100 — the highest-charting song ever by a female Korean act on the chart at that point. It was also their longest-charting entry on the Hot 100.
📍 Milestone: The Album — First Full-Length Studio Album (October 2020)
After four years of singles and EPs, BLACKPINK finally released their first full studio album — simply titled The Album.
It sold over 1.2 million copies worldwide by late October 2020 — making BLACKPINK the first million-selling K-pop girl group in history at that point. It debuted at #2 on the Billboard 200 — the highest ever for a female Korean act at the time and the highest for any girl group since 2008.
The Album also debuted at #1 on the Gaon Album Chart and was, at the time, the best-selling album by a Korean female act ever — a record later surpassed by BLACKPINK’s own Born Pink.
| Album | The Album |
| Release | October 2, 2020 |
| Billboard 200 peak | #2 |
| First month sales | 1M+ copies |
| Historic note | First million-selling K-pop girl group |
Phase 5: Becoming YouTube’s Most-Subscribed Music Act (2021–2026)
📍 Milestone: Surpassing Justin Bieber (September 2021)
In September 2021, BLACKPINK’s YouTube channel surpassed Justin Bieber to become the most-subscribed music act on the platform.
📍 Milestone: 75 Million Subscribers (June 2022)
BLACKPINK became the first music act to reach 75 million subscribers.
📍 Milestone: 100 Million Subscribers (February 2026)
BLACKPINK became the first Official Artist Channel on YouTube to reach 100 million subscribers — a number no other music act’s channel had reached before.
Their dominance on YouTube was built not just on music videos, but on a global BLINK fanbase that streamed, shared, and watched with extraordinary consistency.
What Made the Rise Happen So Fast?
Three years from debut to their first Coachella appearance. How?
① The “Girl Crush” concept traveled instantly. BLACKPINK’s identity — confident, powerful, visually striking — translated across cultures without needing much explanation. The visual and musical vibe communicated a lot on its own, even to audiences with no context for K-pop.
② The multilingual, internationally experienced lineup proved advantageous. Lisa’s Thai background gave BLACKPINK an especially visible connection with fans in Thailand and other parts of Southeast Asia — building on ties that other K-pop acts, including 2PM’s Nichkhun and 2NE1’s Sandara Park, had already begun forging in the region. Jennie and Rosé’s fluency in English gave BLACKPINK an easier foothold in Western media and interviews. Each member brought something different to how the group was received internationally.
③ YouTube was their territory. BLACKPINK arrived at a moment when YouTube was becoming the dominant global music platform. High-production music videos and a large, highly engaged BLINK fanbase helped generate intense attention around each release.
④ YG’s long training period gave them a fully-formed debut. Training periods ranged from about four years (Rosé) to nearly six (Jennie). By debut, the choreography was tight and the group’s identity was clear. What YG didn’t give them — enough new music, fast enough — became a recurring point of fan frustration. But what they did release consistently performed at a high level.
🇰🇷 The “More Famous Abroad” Conversation
Here’s a nuance that doesn’t show up in the chart numbers above: inside Korea, there’s a long-running conversation about BLACKPINK being, in some ways, more visible internationally than they are dominant on Korea’s own domestic charts and weekly music shows compared to some of their labelmates and peers. Korean entertainment commentary sometimes uses the term “글로벌돌” (roughly, “global idol”) to describe this pattern — a group whose commercial center of gravity sits outside Korea, in contrast with acts whose fame is built primarily through domestic broadcast and music-show wins first.
This isn’t a criticism, and it isn’t really controversial — it’s simply an accurate description of how BLACKPINK’s career actually developed, driven by YouTube, Western festival slots, and international collaborations from very early on. But it’s worth knowing this conversation exists, because it explains why Korean coverage of BLACKPINK sometimes reads a little differently than international coverage: the story being told at home is partly about how enormous they’ve become somewhere else.
🔗 Continue the Story
- 👉 Part 1 — Four Strangers, One Dream — The casting stories and the debut
- 👉 Part 3 — In Your Area — Everywhere — Born Pink, Coachella headlining, solo careers, and DEADLINE