[Misc] Thought Corner: Black Pink Fade

Apology for poor English. Where were you when Black Pink was kill? Seriously, the new Twice teaser images got me thinking. In the NFL subreddit, team flairs get faded when a team no longer qualifies for the playoffs. If there was a Black Pink / Blink flair (and Kpop playoffs) it'd be hella faded right now. They haven't been around for two years yet and their inactivity is already that of a veteran group. YG is really doing something impressive here. Maybe modeling this group after 2NE1 was a little too close to home...  They're a powerful group with loaded potential but they lack the action to show for it.

While Red Velvet and Twice are cruising in popularity and dominating statistics, Black Pink should be right up there with them. And in most aspects they are - or at the least remaining competitive. However, when looking at the sheer number or quantity of releases, Black Pink leaves much to be desired. I created a makeshift chart that shows the Korean releases of the Big 3's flagship girl groups since Black Pink debuted in August of last year.
Sure it's not the prettiest graph (I don't know why it's not centered), but it works! All it needs to do is show how sparse Black Pink activity is compared to the others. There is a slight disclaimer for Red Velvet this year as two of those stamps are releases from Station, but hey those songs have accompanying music videos so that's fair game in my opinion. No matter where you start on this timeline, it looks terrible for Black Pink. Red Velvet and Twice are simply outperforming them in the promotion department. Obviously that's not their fault, but like damn. How can you assemble this solid of a roster and yet lock them away in the dungeon for so long? Yeah, Twice and Red Velvet have been active longer, but shouldn't the early years be the time for the crazy activity? That's before all the individual interests and agendas start kicking in. The day is young and YG is wasting their potential. At least they're not a boy group and don't have military service to worry about...

Granted, overlap in promotion cycles are a thing (and almost act as a legitimate argument for why they'll never butt heads) but clearly Black Pink has been locked away leading to suffering for themselves and fans alike. They aren't necessarily "losing" anything, because they're still a great group with solid music, but they sure as fuck aren't gaining anything either. What's really lame is that they have the best roster comparatively speaking. Jennie and Lisa are the two best rappers out of all the candidates by far, and while they lack a vocalist like Wendy, every member is a serviceable singer at worst. Choreography-wise is probably where all three squads are the closest (plus they're all so different anyway) so you can imagine that if Black Pink had higher levels of activity, who knows where they'd be right now. This ends my pseudo-rant and analysis (haha) of where Black Pink stands against their two main competitors in a sea of rivals. The sky is the limit but their inactivity is drowning them.