The biggest girl group in the world, and the biggest girl group since Destiny’s Child, made their first appearance at the MTV VMAs last night. BLACKPINK won the award for Best Metaverse Performance and Lisa won the Best K-pop Video award for her song “Lalisa” during the main broadcast. 

 

Here’s her acceptance speech as Jennie, Jisoo, and Rosé cheer on: 

Not surprisingly, BLACKPINK and all related moments were among the most highly-trafficked of the night so it’s not like MTV was doing the group a favour. BLACKPINK in their area was a bonus for the show. For Jennie, Jisoo, Lisa, and Rosé though, no doubt this was also a major milestone in their career – to win awards on this stage, and to perform on it as well…

 

The song, of course, is “Pink Venom”, the first hit off their upcoming album, Born Pink. It’s a bop. Taylor Swift knows it too. 

That’s Taylor dancing during the BLACKPINK performance. But she was listening to “Pink Venom” even before she arrived at the show. 

@taylorswift

Team All Too Well bringing the emotional pain to the VMAs… 🧣

♬ Pink Venom - BLACKPINK
 

I wonder, by now, if Taylor knows some of the Korean lyrics. Because that is, to me, what’s really exciting about these moments. It’s becoming normal, with the success of both BLACKPINK and BTS, to hear Korean lyrics at these mainstream big-time western award shows. As you can see from the cutaways to the fans, people aren’t any less jacked up when the song aren’t entirely in English. When the song is good, they will learn the words no matter the language whether it’s Korean or Spanish. Bad Bunny isn’t the king of Spotify just from his Latin fanbase. 

Becoming normal, not totally normal yet, of course not, but getting there. Hopefully. For me personally it was a meaningful experience, seeing Jennie, Jisoo, Lisa, and Rosé, in the spotlight, four East Asian women as the lead characters during a performance at the VMAs – not a regular occurrence, and I’ve been watching this show since the 80s. If you were to have asked me before last night about East Asian girls onstage at the VMAs, the image that pops out most, sadly, involve the Japanese girls used as props for “Harajuku Girls”. Did you just wince? 

 

So maybe it’s not just BLACKPINK in your area…but opening up the area. It can’t just be BLACKPINK. But let’s not just focus on the serious. It was a party for them last night. Their first time was a TIME!