Light Up The Sky: 20 Things We’ve Learned about BLACKPINK

Netflix documentary film Light Up The Sky has reintroduced K-Pop sensation  BLACKPINK with its heartwarming storytelling. Directed by Caroline Suh, the film has taken us back to the humble beginnings of the girl group, with some never before seen clips.

Here are some of the most interesting things we’ve learned about the iconic K-Pop group:

1.Jennie is “a perfectionist”.

According to music producer Teddy Park, at least. “She is super clear– her opinions, her emotions. She’s a perfectionist,” he said upon introducing Jennie in the docu film.

The group’s main rapper implied that her early teenage years alone in New Zealand may have had a lot to do with that.Jennie shared, “From ten to 15 (years old), I was in New Zealand by myself. I never got to spend so much time in the house with my mom…until recently.”

Jennie was born and raised by her mother in Seoul, South Korea until she was ten years old. In one of their travels together, her mom suggested that she pursue her studies in New Zealand.

She further explained how New Zealand was like for her growing up. “They have classes in school to go out, go camping, to go learn (musical) instruments. If you want, (you can) do art.”

“Everything was up to you. Even if you’re ten (years old), you still got to make your own decisions. That was very important for me to have at such a young age. That built me as who I am right now,” Jennie said.That strong decision-making skill has become a paramount factor in her life obviously. Can you imagine a K-Pop world where Jennie did not even decide to be an idol?

2.Speaking of Jennie’s decisions: She almost chose America over K-Pop.

“When I turned 15, I was deciding  whether  I should move to America. And I went there, I checked the school out. Everything was kind of decided, like 80%,” she said.“Then I came back to New Zealand to pack my stuff up and that’s when I realized that I don’t want to go to America and do another study there by myself. I actually want to become a singer– and I don’t know where it came from,” Jennie said.The 14-year-old aspiring singer indeed went back to her hometown in South Korea and auditioned at YG Entertainment, where she got in to be one of the female trainees.

3.There were initially 9 girls being trained to be YG’s next girl group.

After the global success of YG’s first girl group 2ne1, the debut of a new female k-pop group from the record label was very much anticipated by the fans and the media. So it was pretty clear that even becoming a trainee for YG at the time was such a huge deal.

“I think there were 9 girls. They were planning on creating a big group. So they had a lot of girls there,”  BLACKPINK’s main vocalist Rosé shared.

Needless to say, the trainings were extremely rigorous.

Jennie, who was the first member from the group to get in and one who got trained for six years shared how she had to see some former co-trainees got sent home. “It’s sad to say that the very first group of people that trained with me, none of them are here right now,” she said. “I remember having to send a good friend of mine home every month because they got eliminated from the tests,” Jennie said.

4. Lisa’s aunt is prolly the first person who exposed her to performing.

Lisa was born in Buriram Province, Thailand and then moved to Bangkok when she was three years old. She grew up watching her aunt practicing and performing in her own music group.

“So they had mic stands, and I always played with them. I would lower it until it was the same height as me, then I would just dance and sing to myself. That was how my mom knew I loved dancing,” the group’s maknae narrated.“My mom signed me up for a dance course when I was in kindergarten.  That was how it all began,” Lisa said. “I participated in a lot of dance contests growing up. I was around 12 or 13 years old when a talent scout at a dance contest told me to try singing. Then I realized that I loved both singing and dancing. YG happened to have an audition that time.”

She was the only one who passed the YG audition in Thailand back in 2010. She then got signed on to be a trainee by 2011.  She flew to South Korea at age 14 without knowing how to speak the Korean language.

“I only knew how to say ‘hello’, so it was really a new start. Fortunately, there was Jennie. She was the only one who could speak English among the trainees,” she said.

“I was a mama’s girl. So when I had to go to Korea without mom, I felt that I had to take care of myself,” she said.

5.Jisoo originally wanted to be a writer.

“I’m living a very different life than the one I thought I’d be living,” Jisoo confessed. “I used to want to be a writer, or a painter, although I couldn’t paint well.”“I joined the drama club in 11th grade. They were saying I had to start auditioning for stuff because I needed experience,” the main vocalist said.

6.Jisoo’s first ever audition was at YG.

Jisoo admitted that she did not know much at all about YG Entertainment before her audition.

“My first audition was at YG.  It felt like something far removed from me,” the singer said, as she explained that she was born and raised in Sanbon in Gunpo City, Gyeonggi-do Region in South Korea.

“I never thought I’d actually be doing it for real,” she said.

She started training in 2011, and went on to train for five years.

7.Rosé played piano a lot growing up in Australia.

“I was born in New Zealand. And then I moved to Australia when I was eight,” the lead singer said.

“I went to church every Sunday and had a lot of Korean friends there. But then at school, I was just a normal Australian kid. And I think I enjoyed kind of like having two lives. Kind of like Hannah  Montana,” she said in jest.

“Back then, I was always on the piano. I’d sit there, and I’d play this lullaby for myself. I’d be really sleepy and I’d fall asleep and then I’d put my chin on my knees,” she said as she shared about her early love for music.Upon seeing in the news that YG was holding auditions in Australia, Rosé’s dad encouraged the young singer to go try.

“He was like ‘Rosé, do you wanna audition?’ And I was so shocked. I think I asked him, “Do I like music? Do I?’. And he’s like, ‘Yeah, obviously. You’re gonna have to try to do something about it. Otherwise you’re gonna be 25, and you’re gonna regret that you didn’t try anything’.”

Sound advice, Rosé’s dad.

8.Rosé shared she’d never danced in her life until she started training at YG.

Now this is one nugget that’s hard to believe. Rosé certainly has sharp dance moves. I mean, I cannot take my eyes off of her in the ‘How You Like That’ dance practice video. The girl got swag.“I can still remember the first day that you had a dance lesson! It was so cute!” Lisa said as she teased Rosé.

“Cause I’d never danced in my life! If you asked a 16 year-old to dance for the first time, it’s the funniest,” Rosé laughingly said.

Rosé, who was the last one among the BLACKPINK members to join YG to train, shared her first ever sesh with the girls. “There’s this basic routine you have to learn in dancing. Jennie was like, ‘The first thing you have to learn is that and I’ll just teach you the first moves’. And I was like, I don’t know how to do it!” Rosé said.

“After that, I got so angry at myself. I was like , ‘I was going to become like Lisa. She was the dancer. She was at the top.”

9.Lisa and Rosé instantly became “two peas in a pod”.

“We were the same age and we had similar tastes. Since we both came from another country, we relied on each other when we were having a hard time,” Lisa explained. “We became like two peas in a pod. We were like genuine twins. ““We have so many days where we walk out and we’re wearing the same thing. Then she started getting an Australian accent,” Rosé said about Lisa. “I grew up with a sister. Think about not having a sister (while training in Korea). But Lisa was there.”

10.The girls’ first night together was like written in the stars.

Rosé was fresh off Australia, and the night she arrived in South Korea, the three other girls were all in one room.

“The first night in the dorm, they were all in the same room. Everybody was sleeping,” Rosé said.

“She brought a guitar from Australia and I was like, ‘Play something for us’,” Lisa narrated.“It was just us four, and I didn’t even know why, but it was just us four. We covered songs until morning. All four of us, we were singing. I think Jisoo was harmonizng. It was so funny, can you believe that?” Rose said.

11.The four girls designed their own performance routines for monthly evaluations.

As emphasized before by many articles about K-Pop, trainees had to go through extremely strict series of evaluations before one can debut as a performer. Some trained for even a decade, while some never got to debut as idols despite training for many years.

The girls didn’t have it the easy way either.“For me, there were so many lessons in the beginning. I took three to four dance lessons a day. I had vocal lessons from two to three teachers. It was a rough time,” Jisoo said.

The girls recalled training for 14 hours every day. At the end of every month, the bosses and producers would evaluate them with a series of tests.

“We’d perform a solo song, a group song, and a group choreography. For that, we’d have to plan everything ourselves,” Rosé said.

“But we each had a role. I always took on the role of the dancer. So I’d always design the choreography. Every month. Literally every month… for five years of my training,” Lisa stated.

12.Lisa almost thought of quitting.

Jennie trained for six years, Lisa and Jisoo trained for five years while Rose trained for four years.

“Waiting was the hardest part. I didn’t think I would make it. I was on the verge of letting it go,” Lisa confessed.“But I thought, I had to keep fighting. I had to give it my all. I thought, ‘I don’t care how long the training will take. Bring it on, I don’t care about that anymore’.”

13.Jennie wished she had a normal high school life.

Jennie, who was the first and longest one to train among the group members, reflected how she missed the chance of having a typical teenage life.“I don’t regret spending time as a trainee learning how to dance, how to sing. But one thing I wish is to maybe I (should’ve) lived at home until I was like 18, 19 years old. A lot of people make lots of memories as a high school student. But I never had that.”

14.The four girls just stood out together.

It was in 2015 when the YG bosses clearly saw the potential of putting together the four girls in a group.

“We were evaluated  together, and the four of us did screen tests and recorded demos together,” Jisoo said.“The CEO would put us into different groups every other month just to see, and there was a point where he pointed the four of us out,” Jennie shared. “We just got along so well. Because usually there’s like, ‘Oh I wanna sing more, or oh, I wanna be in the middle’. There’s always those little fights going on in the groups. But when it was the four of us, it was clear what we were doing. And that’s what made it possible for us to be in a group.”

15.Fashion is one of the biggest parts of the group’s creative process.

BLACKPINK members are known to be fashion-forward, as they’re seen to be very particular about their style choices.

“Preparing for a new album is definitely fun because it’s like trying to come up with something new. But fittings like this is one of the biggest creative parts that we do,” Jennie said at one of their fitting sessions.

“If we were trying something, we all try to see how it fits as a group. It takes a long time,” Rosé chimed in.

“Since we do crazy, crazy choreography on stage, it has to be really engineered, basically. Just to make sure nothing flops out anywhere,” Jennie said in jest.

“It’s so hard to define style. I don’t think there’s any boundaries within that. We don’t go, ‘This is Korean, and this is Western. Or this is Asian’. I think fashion is just really international. The more there aren’t any boundaries, I think that’s when you can get more creative,” Rosé concluded about fashion.

16.Lisa loves vintage clothes.

The rapper and lead dancer of the group took the film crew to her vintage shopping trip.“I love vintage clothes. So wherever I go, whether it be America or anywhere else, I try to look for vintage shops,” Lisa said. “My mom manages my finances. She’s gonna be like, ‘Lisa, no. Stop shopping for now’. But I don’t really, like… listen to her. Sorry mom!”

Lisa was seen browsing vintage street fashion pieces from the early ’90s, which were amounting from 350,000 to 1M South Korean won.

“Lisa has diverse tastes in fashion. She can pull off anything,” Jennie said about their maknae.

17. Rosé has started writing songs with music producer Joe Rhee.

“When it comes to writing songs, Rosé has certain stories in mind, and she’s shy about sharing that story. It’s just super personal to her. It’s like her diary,” Teddy Park stated.“You know how some people are afraid of heights or afraid of water? I’ve always been so afraid of getting in the studio or writing something. I always thought just someday I have to just start it,” Rosé said.

The singer has been composing and making songs with music producer Joe “Vince” Rhee.

“We even saved this whole file in this secret folder because I said nobody can listen to it,” Rosé shared. “I really have a lot of respect for music, so I don’t wanna be just like another girl who sings and just kind of tells everybody that she writes music. That’s the last thing I wanna be.”

18.BLACKPINK didn’t expect to have a huge audience during Coachella.

The girls made history as the first ever K-pop girl group to perform at the world-renowned music festival Coachella. But apparently these K-Pop queens did not exactly expect a huge crowd during their set at the event.“It was really nerve-wrecking. We were a group from South Korea representing our country. Usually, a BLACKPINK tour is filled with fans who came to watch us. But people who come to Coachella are just people who love music in general, ” Rosé shared. “I was personally really worried that not a lot of people would walk up to our show.”

“I didn’t even think there would even be, I don’t know, 100 people or 200 people at least? I was just hoping to have somebody just watching us,” Jennie said.

19. Jisoo was really sick during their Coachella performance. 

By now, we all know that BLACKPINK had an iconic performance during the Coachella Festival. That’s why it was a little surprising to learn that Jisoo was not actually feeling well that night. 

“I was so sick. That was the sickest I’ve ever been. My back was killing me. It hurt to move. I was pretty worried,” Jisoo said.

“We were all very worried,” Jennie said.

20. BLACKPINK considered Coachella as one of their huge and defining moments as a group.

“I think Coachella was the moment where I felt like that there are people who understand that this is not just about K-Pop music. They see us as doing something new and I really like that. I’m happy to be in an era where people are open to new culture, new music. Who would’ve imagined at Coachella thousands of people singing in Korean?” Jennie said. “This was the moment where I felt really satisfied with our work. Like all those training years were worth it.”

“It makes me feel that I had chosen the right path. This was what I really wanted to do in my life,” Lisa concluded.

The film has truly shown us the strong bond between these ladies. Beyond their brilliant talents and exquisite beauty, it’s truly inspiring to learn that BLACKPINK‘s wide success is made of the group’s artistry and skills, deep passion for their craft, relentless determination and sacrifices. They’re certainly more than just pretty faces and K-Pop idols.

 

*****

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