Blackpink x Rolling Stone Announcement
Around the end of May, Rolling Stone magazine made an announcement that they have recently completed a project with Blackpink that soon will be published. The project itself garnered a lot of attention from Blinks that have been looking forward to see Blackpink appears together as a group since their last official appearance in January 2021 during their online concert, The Show.
Since then, there were only a number of instances where they appeared together including on the cover of Vogue Korea in June 2021 (cmiiw but I think this was the last magazine cover Blackpink appeared together on), during Blackpink 5th Anniversary VLive in August 2021, when they were hanging out wearing Lisa’s solo merch in September 2021, Lisa’s Instastory update in November 2021, and during Blackpink WeVerse Global Official Fanclub video call event which followed by their impromptu VLive Ch+ in January 2022. Most of their recent appearances are almost all solo activities so it’s rare to see them appear together as a group.
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I ended up following how the Blackpink ✕ Rolling Stone week-long project unfold through Twitter and it was fun to see the events leading up to it as well as the reactions from the fans during the week and after the project is finally revealed in its entirety. Since there were a couple of interesting of things that happened, thought it’d be fun to share my thoughts on this project.
Before I start, let me say a couple of disclaimers so you know where I’m coming from. For those of you who are a long-time follower of my Instagram or this blog, you probably already know by now that I am a Blink, so I’m looking at this project simply from a fan perspective. Do I know everything about Blackpink? Of course not. I think there are lots of veteran Blinks out there who know way more about Blackpink than I do (even to this day, I still learn a lot of new things about the group from other Blinks on Twitter). But I do think I’m quite well-read in things related to Blackpink since I’ve been following them for a good couple of years now.
This series is just meant to document the project and to share my personal observations and opinions on things that I find interesting. I tried my best to include/link all the sources of the things I found online. Most of the original posts came from Rolling Stone magazine and Twitter and the layout graphics used on this blog post are designed by yours truly. With that said let’s begin the first part of this series: The Blackpink ✕ Rolling Stone Announcement. And here’s the table of content (of some sort) for this post:
The Announcement
21 May 2022 — Rolling Stone magazine posted a teaser of their upcoming project with Blackpink on their Twitter. The tweet that consists of the hashtag #BLACKPINKxRollingStone and the words ‘Coming Soon’ was quickly noticed by Blinks minutes after it was posted.
Honestly for me, when I first saw this, I was like, oh okay. Probably just another magazine article. It didn’t feel like it’s anything big or special just looking at the image they uploaded. But the mood was quite different on Twittersphere when I checked on what others were thinking hours later. First thing that I noticed was there were a lot of Blinks that were active on Twitter that day, which I guess spread the news even faster.
I literally chuckled when I saw these kind of tweets. It almost felt like the notifications on every single Blinks’ phones went off. Everybody be like, “This is not a drill. I repeat, this is not a drill. Everybody get up and see this Rolling Stone tweet!” Lol. I mean, it’s kind of fitting since the tweet was posted at 8 am (GMT+7) on a Saturday. So everybody in Asia was probably still in bed considering it’s the weekend.
Twitter Theories & Comments
After Blinks on Twitter were awaken, that’s when things started to get interesting. Like every other teaser release, there will always be theories and guesses from Blinks on what the main event is as well as reactions and comments about them. Here are some of the theories and comments I found during the next 24-hours after the teaser was released.
Cover Feature Theory
One major theory that quickly rose on the top tweet category was that Blackpink is going to be on the cover of the next issue of Rolling Stone magazine. And if it’s true, they would be the first girl group to do so since Spice Girls in 2007 and Destiny’s Child in 2001, which I gotta admit is pretty epic.
But then there were some Blinks in the reply section (see slide two above) who were skeptical to this theory since there’s no single updates from Blackpink/YG side about the project. Plus, we’ve been clowned so much this year with comeback rumors every month so I think the skepticism is warranted for (I feel some Blinks now have major trust issue with unconfirmed news).
Cover Feature Outfit Theory
Following the cover feature theory, naturally Blinks started to speculate what the girls are going to wear. Some hopeful Blinks already have a vision in mind that the four will slay with their outfits while realistic Blinks, who I’m pretty sure have been keeping a close eye on every single photoshoot Blackpink has ever done, quickly commented that the girls probably just going to wear simple outfit with a plain background.
This prediction is not too far off than what I expect to be honest. Looking at the shoots the group has done in the past (including their individual shoots), their set usually mostly consist of plain backgrounds with minimal props and neutral (black/white/grey) outfits. The girls look beautiful of course, but sometimes I do wish that they’d do something more with the set other than plain backgrounds. Something like the Billboard March 2019 cover shoot or the Vogue Korea March 2020 cover shoot.
Blackpink for Vogue Korea March 2020 Issue | Photography by Petra Collins
I also found this one outfit related tweet that made me raise my eyebrows. I don’t know wether this person was being serious or not (I sure hope that this was a joke) but reading the replies made me laughed. People was quick to shut down this idea and pointed out that the outfits on the photos are definitely outdated and not the style the girls would ever go for.
New Album Announcement Theory
If we’re basing this theory off of Blackpink’s last two big releases, it kind of make sense. ‘Kill This Love’ was released in April 2019, following Billboard’s feature article in March 2019 while ‘The Album’ was released in October 2020 following Elle US’s cover feature for October 2020 issue that was released mid September 2020. And with the rumors circulating these past couple of months about Blackpink releasing new music in Q3/Q4, this theory is very plausible.
Comeback Theory
Related to the new album announcement theory, fans also speculated that Blackpink might announce their comeback in this Rolling Stone project. Whether they are coming back with a single, an EP or a full album, or simply coming back to the public’s radar by doing this appearance, we don’t know. But at the very least, I do have the same hope as @Borleh2’s tweet (see slide 2 below). Really hoping that the interview questions will be more substantial than surface level questions like ‘What’s your favorite color?’. Also, some Blinks took the opportunity to tease other Blink who were late to the party and asked if Blackpink is coming back on the reply section (see slide 3 below) which is pretty funny.
This Whole Excitement
With Blackpink having no music activity since their last comeback in October 2020, many Blinks’ and fanbases twitter accounts sometimes went into hibernation or became inactive. This announcement surely has an effect on the whole fandom seeing the high number of active Blinks on Twitter who were talking about this project in the matter of hours after the announcement was released.
Baby Blinks’ Excitement
Having been following Blackpink since their debut, I forgot how many new fans they’ve gained these past few years (especially after K-pop and K-drama sort of blew up outside Asia) who never even experienced a Blackpink comeback since their hiatus period is pretty long this time around. It’s nice to see that they can feel and experience the excitement even when the comeback rumor has yet to be confirmed.
For me, after I saw the Rolling Stone’s team retweeted the original announcement tweet, that’s when I started to think that maybe this project could be big. The Rolling Stone team trying to hype this up could be a sign of something different that they’re making. Even so, I still have my reservation about this whole project because sometimes (most of the time, really) the hype for Blackpink’s past projects didn’t always match the actual main event that was delivered. But let’s see how things go.
22 May 2022 - 35 hours later, another teaser dropped on Rolling Stone’s Twitter and Instagram account, followed by a quote tweet by Rolling Stone’s director of social media, Waiss Aramesh.
After seeing the words ‘Whole week of content taking over the timeline’, not gonna lie, I was starting to get excited. Well, cautiously excited that is because I know how all these magazines usually overhype things up. But the sentence clearly caught Blinks’ attention because a lot of people were expressing excitement and expectations after being starved of OT4 content this past year.
45 minutes later, the hashtag #BLACKPINKxRollingStone started to trend on Twitter and the image was quickly reposted and retweeted by Blinks, which then lead to the reactions that I found below.
Some Blinks thought it was a tour announcement because of the different city names and time, which if you look at it at a glance, it kind of does look like one. Some questioned why Blackpink & YG sides were so silent about this whole project since they didn’t post anything related to it. But then again, silence from their part is not necessarily new since they’re usually late with posts and updates. Some wondered what Blackpink’s next comeback is going to look like when only a magazine cover announcement could send Twitter into this frenzy.
23 May 2022 - On the D-day, 9 hours before the project was suppose to drop, a series of low-res screenshots and screen recordings of what seems to be the behind-the-scenes video of Blackpink’s photoshoot with Rolling Stone from their website started to circulate on Twitter.
After the hype over the weekend and knowing that Blackpink members can and have pulled some stunning looks in the past, seeing what they are wearing on these screenshots, I was honestly disappointed. I was expecting more than the looks that they have on which seem a little, dare I say, basic? And for a magazine as big as Rolling Stone, I was expecting a little bit more I guess. Majority of Blinks also seemed to agree with me seeing that many quickly voiced their disappointment of the styling of the group after seeing the low-res photos and videos.
Shortly after, the hashtag #YGteamStylistUneed2Rest started trending on Twitter alongside #BLACKPINKxRollingStone as a result of Blinks’ disappointment towards the outfit the girls are wearing. Here are some reactions I found on Twitter:
The disappointment and frustration were apparent on Twitter, especially if you read the tweets under the trending hashtag. But then again, this has happened multiple times in the past too. Every time Blinks were extremely unhappy with the outfits that Blackpink wore to an event, the complaints usually went immediately to the stylist. I don’t exactly know who get to decide what the girls would wear to an event or who has the finally say to approve the outfits. Whether it’s decided solely by the stylists, by the girls themselves, the brands they’re working with or a collaborative effort between the all of them (if anybody knows how this usually work, let me know. Would really like to learn about the process of a magazine shoot), I have no idea. So I don’t think I can make that judgement. But I do understand why the group’s stylist(s) is always under fire since the stylist’s main job is to style the group.
At this point, I was still holding to a small hope that there will be other looks than the two sets of looks that we’ve seen. User @Annaeeeel on twitter (see slide 4 above) also brought up a good theory on her tweet saying that these might not be the looks for the cover. I mean with the hype that they’ve been creating, there is a possibility that Rolling Stone probably going to do a big reveal for the cover, hopefully with outfits better than this one. But this definitely is not a good start to the project. I was starting to think that this is probably going to be another one of those overhyped Blackpink’s project (not that it’s a surprise or anything. I was kind of expecting that in the beginning). But I’ll hold my judgement for now to see what they meant by ‘Whole week of content taking over the timeline.’
To be continued in part 2 of this series (will be published soon).
