If you haven’t heard Blackpink’s “Kill This Love,” you might want to stay away — it’s an earworm that’s been lodged in my brain all weekend. But you’re not going to be able to dodge some basic knowledge of the latest musical sensation, because the four female members of this K-pop group are catapulting themselves into the history books over the span of a single week.
Blackpink is having a moment — and it will be livestreamed in Times Square
‘Kill This Love’ will face down The Beast
‘Kill This Love’ will face down The Beast
Photo by Chung Sung-Jun/Getty Images
is a senior editor and founding member of The Verge who covers gadgets, games, and toys. He spent 15 years editing the likes of CNET, Gizmodo, and Engadget.
As Vox reports, they’re the first all-female group to claim the No. 1 spot on the US iTunes chart in fifteen years — Destiny’s Child did it last in 2004 — and just had the biggest music video debut on YouTube ever.
YouTube confirmed to The Verge that “Kill This Love” is the fastest music video ever to hit 100 million views, and — at 56.7 million views in its first 24 hours — it’s the most viewed music video debut in YouTube history. (It narrowly beat Ariana Grande’s “thank u, next,” which had 55.4 million views in its first day.)
Blackpink is also about to be the first K-pop girl group to play Coachella in the festival’s 20-year history this coming Friday, and YouTube announced today that it’s going to do something special for their debut: their Coachella performance will be broadcast live on a giant digital billboard in New York City’s Times Square at 11:50 PM ET.
“Kill This Love” is currently closing in on 131 million views as I write this post, so don’t expect it to become YouTube’s most-viewed music video anytime soon. “Despacito” (6.1 billion), “Shape of You” (4.1 billion), “See You Again” (4 billion), “Uptown Funk” (3.5 billion) and “Gangnam Style” (3.3 billion) are still holding onto their spots with more than two years of views under their belt each — even Baby Shark may be hard to surpass with its 2.5 billion views as of today.
Correction, April 10 at 7:02 PM ET: An earlier version of this story stated that “The Beast” was the eight-story-tall digital billboard, then the largest in Times Square, which The New York Times profiled in 2014. A representative says that is not the billboard YouTube is using, but rather a smaller one a little ways down the street.
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